Alice Childress's Rainbow Jordan: The Black Aesthetic Returns Dressed in Adolescent Fiction

In 1988, twenty years beyond the period and in an age enamored of political voyeurism as opposed to political participation, it is decidedly unfashionable to speak favorably of the Black Aesthetic. As critical literary theory the Black Aesthetic was, after all, an overtly political doctrine, an artistic manifesto of the militant "revolutionary" 1960s. Nowadays, art from this period which adhered to a Black Aesthetic is shunned for its stridency or militancy; the aesthetic credo itself is now largely ignored or discredited. Yet curiously, I find that in order to discuss Alice Childress's Rainbow Jordan (1981), I must also discuss the Black Aesthetic because for me, the one most decidedly evokes the other.

Briefly then, let me indicate the principal spokespersons and basic tenets of what was once proudly trumpeted as the Black Aesthetic. Its chief architects were Larry Neale, Hoyt Fuller, Julian Mayfield, Addison Gayle, Carolyn Gerald, and Ron Karenga. For Julian Mayfield, in "You Touch My Black Aesthetic . . .," the new critical credo could be distilled as "our racial memory and the unshakable knowledge of who we are, where we have been, and springing from this, where we are going" (26). For Carolyn Gerald in "The Black Writer and His Role," the Black Aesthetic fell upon the artist as a concrete responsibility. The artist was to be a "guardian of image; the writer [was] the myth-maker of his people" (353). Gerald went on to argue that there was a "sense of power" derived from a "mythic consciousness based on a people's positive view of themselves" (355) which was also inherently part of the then emerging critical code. Poet Mari Evans crystalized many of these sentiments in her "Speak Truth to the People." Evans demanded that artists:

Speak Truth to the peopleTalk Sense to the peopleFree them with reasonFree them with honestyFree the people with Love and Courage, and Care for their BeingSpare them the fantasyFantasy enslaves

(253)

By far, however, the best known, most provocative proponent of the Black Aesthetic was Maulana Ron Karenga, a Black nationalist. Karenga's "Black Art: Mute Matter given Force and Function" presents the most codified requirements for both Black artists and Black art.

Karenga argued bluntly that "black artists and those who wish to be artists must accept the fact that what is needed is an aesthetic, a Black aesthetic, that is a criteria for judging the validity and/or beauty of a work of art" (477-78). Karenga proposed to judge art from two perspectives, the social and the artistic. For him, "artistic considerations" while necessary for any art, were by themselves insufficient. What finalized any artistic endeavor was its social dimension, the "social criteria for judging art" (478). This was the most crucial criterion for, in his terms, "all art must reflect and support the Black Revolution, and any art that does not discuss and contribute to the revolution is invalid" (478). Strong statements alone, but Karenga further augmented them by borrowing from traditional African art three guiding characteristics which became the cornerstone of the Black Aesthetic. Black art was to meet these essential tenets: it must be "functional," that is "useful"; it must be "collective," that is, it must emerge from and return or speak to the people; it must be "committing" or committed. This meant Black art must "commit us to revolution and change," commit us to a new and different reality (478-482).

It is time to call the question—what precisely does Rainbow Jordan, a contemporary adolescent novel considered "outstanding" (Nilsen & Donelson 17) in its field, have to do with an avowedly political, although now apparently unpalatable approach to art? The answer is a great deal. On Rainbow Jordan —on its narrative mode, its themes, and most particularly its characters—is imprinted the stamp of a conscientiously Black literary/political agenda. While Alice Childress is not wedded to a concretized notion of what Black art "must do," this novel, as do her other novels and plays,¹ has embedded-refashioned and redressed, to be sure—the substantive core of what was the...