Gayl Jones's Corregidora and Song for Anninho: Historical Revision, Female Diaspora, and Music
In this article I analyze how black music may be used to (re)interpret the legacy of slavery in Gayl Jones’s literary works Corregidora (1975) and Song for Anninho (1981). I argue that female Classic Blues from the 1920s functions as a testimony of resistance and as a means to recount the stories fe...
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| Format: | Article |
| Status: | Published version |
| Publication date: | 2014 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Universidad de Sevilla (US) |
| Repository: | idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:idus.us.es:11441/61053 |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/11441/61053 https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2014n67p37 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Gayl Jones classic blues diaspora black feminism historical revision |
| Summary: | In this article I analyze how black music may be used to (re)interpret the legacy of slavery in Gayl Jones’s literary works Corregidora (1975) and Song for Anninho (1981). I argue that female Classic Blues from the 1920s functions as a testimony of resistance and as a means to recount the stories featured in these two texts. The U.S. black author uses the cadences, themes, and tropes of the blues in order to decode female versions of the black diaspora in the Americas. In addition, by setting her literary work in Brazil, Jones establishes an inter-American dialogue and imagines polyphonic and syncretic spaces where the blues is the model for historical revision. Inscribing my study within the theoretical frame of black feminist cultural studies, I emphasize the importance of the first person enunciative voice in female blues, as well as in the texts selected. |
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