Merger and Metamorphosis in the Fiction of Mildred D. Taylor

Afro-American folktales abound with the audacious antics of the rabbit and the daring deeds of the slave character, John or Jack. Whether animal or human, the heroes of these tales, usually smaller and certainly less powerful, eventually triumph over their stronger and more powerful foes through sheer cunning and wit. Without the aid of magic they ponder, plan, and act—sometimes quickly, sometimes deliberately—and most often succeed in their endeavor. Should they not attain the total success hoped for, they regroup, ponder anew, and plan another course of action. Those who read or listen to these tales remain delighted.

Perceptive readers or listeners recognize that the primary thrust of these shenanigans is survival and that beneath the mischievousness and the lighthearted banter, lies a deeper, more profound meaning. Such readers or listeners realize that these characters symbolize the spirit, the will of those men, women, and children who searched for momentary release as they too struggled to survive. The real life descendants of John and Brer Rabbit and other folkloric characters have continued to enthrall as they have regaled audiences with tales of their hardships, their accomplishments, joys, faith and hope. In so doing, they have created legacies that have been passed on orally from generation to generation.

Such oral legacies undergird much of Afro-American writing, from the slave narratives and autobiographies to the more imaginative literature. This rich oral tradition infuses Mildred Taylor's work, resulting in an imaginative blending of history, cultural traditions and practices so as to create a sequential Bildungsroman in four works—the novella, Song of the Trees (1975), the novels, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976), Let the Circle be Unbroken (1981), and the novella, The Gold Cadillac (1987).

In her Newbery Award Acceptance speech, Taylor recalls how she absorbed this oral tradition:

And at night when neighboring relatives would gather to sit on the moonlit porch or by the heat of the fire . . . talk would turn to the old people, to friends and relatives who then seemed to have lived so long ago. As the storytellers spoke in animated voices and enlivened their stories with movements of great gusto, I used to sit transfixed, listening, totally engrossed. It was a magical time.

(401)

Other Afro-American writers have also been captivated by this tradition. Similar magical times in Henning, Tennessee led Alex Hailey through ten years of research, resulting in his fusion of the oral, the real, and the imagined in Roots (1974), a work he himself refers to as "faction," a combination of both fact and fiction. Along with the influence of the writers whose books she devoured at the local library, novelist Paule Marshall remembers the women gathered in her mother's kitchen after working all day as domestics and how the utterances of these "mouth-kings"—as she calls them—heightened her sensibility as a writer.¹ Margaret Walker, influenced by her grandmother's stories, researched her ancestors and created Vyry and other memorable characters in Jubilee (1966). Virginia Hamilton and many others recall the tales of their childhood and acknowledge their influence.

James Baldwin, likewise, has incorporated the memory of this tradition in his short story "Sonny's Blues" as the narrator, Sonny's older brother, remembers those times in his own childhood of "the old folks . . . sitting around the living room talking about where they've come from, and what they've seen, and what's happened to them and their kinfolk" (98).² And eventually the child intuitively knows that the lightness of that magical time metamorphoses into a darkness and then into the light of stark reality:

The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about . . . The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's happened to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him.

(98)

Similarly, Taylor asserts, "Yet even magical times must end" (Newbery Award speech 401). Taylor, the child, comes to realize that her beloved stories are not just "tales of faraway people, but...