Sharon Bell Mathis: Features of a Culture

Sharon Bell Mathis's children's books—Sidewalk Story (1971), Teacup Full of Roses (1972), Ray Charles (1973), Listen for the Fig Tree (1974), and The Hundred Penny Box (1975)—create contemporary black images, the sounds of the blues, and the accompanying emotions of the heart. Mathis writes of death, drug addiction, and alcohol dependence, of figurative and literal blindness, of old age and senility, and of eviction and displacement. She also writes of life, of love and caring, of friendship and understanding, of convictions and forgiving, and of family. She celebrates children, innocent and determined children who gain the psychological and spiritual strength which they need to survive in a frightening and threatening world.

Mathis's writing is rooted in the oral tradition of story telling. As each story unfolds, rich cultural features are revealed; language comes alive and realistically communicates the joy, sadness, and disconnectedness of the spirit of the characters. Her words, like poetry, tell meaningful stories through images and allusions, through carefully chosen language. It is fitting, therefore, to use Langston Hughes's "Mother to Son," as an interpretive guide to the features of the culture that Mathis gives.

Sharon Bell Mathis's use of language is varied and plentiful as is the language of poetry, as is the language of children. The language of the children, and other characters, in Mathis's works illuminates the very rhythm, rhyme and nuance of black language patterns and gives her works a distinctive style.

In Listen for the Fig Tree, Muffin Johnson, in her childlike innocence, remembered the summer that she and Ernie had driven up to Seven Lakes. "She had sat there listening to the light touch of water against natural things. But what she remembered most of all was the quiet of him. The rough embroidered designs on his African shirt. And the sweet smell of wet wood and wet grass and wet flowers" (42). Later she recalled the moment in her child language—affirmative, rich, sweet, gentle language—"And it came to her that if Ernie was the smell of wet wood and wet grass, a quiet forest in the rain, then Mr. Dale was some rare flower crushed and pressed and dried and treasured" (74).

Mathis's language is vibrant; it is what Maya Angelou refers to as the "sweet language," the "crystal stair," in Hughes's poem. It is also the language of bitter-sweet experience, the "reachin' landin's," and "turnin' corners," and "goin in the dark." The language expresses pain and discordance: "It's had tacks in it, / And splinters, / And boards torn up." Mathis uses language much like the poet—intentional, but sometimes indirect; genteel, but often coarse; and always effective and purposeful.

In Listen for the Fig Tree, it is Mr. Dale, the flamboyant, kind and caring Midnight Club owner, Muffin's trusted friend, whose language is abundantly gratifying. His language envelopes Muffin in the warmth of knowing that she is loved, cared for and held in high esteem:

. . . sweet angel . . . Black diamond girl . . . Black love . . . Muffin, my lifesong . . . sweet precious balance in my life . . . sweet Black Muffin child . . . Plum of my life . . . Cleopatra, Black Queen of the Nile . . .

Even his admonishments of Muffin's teenaged posture are filled with a sweet tone:

Stand tall . . . stretch those elegant limbs of yours, flow! You are woman! . . . Little clumsy whooping crane child, do you never listen to me! Look how you're sitting!

And it is Mr. Dale's strength through language, as he assists the assaulted Muffin, which mixes a knowledge of the pain, suffering and beauty of black women with the "sweet language" causing a "bitter sweet" tone:

you're kind of a clumsy crooked walking standing thing but that's not true . . . . You are incredibly lovely . . . .And there will always be men who will want you just as that monster did—but it will be different . . . what he tried to do . . . happens to Black women everyday . . . (132) You know why this happens to Black women? . . . All of you—each one, nobody left out—are so incredibly beautiful, profoundly beautiful . . . filled up with...