Gender-Voice-Vernacular.

Eva Boesenberg. Gender-Voice-Vemacular. Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag C. Winter, 1999. 324 pp.

Gender-Voice-Vemacular by Eva Boesenberg, published as part of the German publisher Winter's monograph series in American Studies, is a work which merits a wide audience in the United States because it contributes substantially to African American Literary criticism. Utilizing theories of the Bildungsroman, Boesenberg analyzes the novels Their Eyes Were Watching Cod, Sula, and The Color Purple by illustrating how Hurston's, Morrison's and Walker's protagonists develop a voice despite the constraints of race, class, and gender, and by demonstrating how the authors transform oral traditions into innovative "literary language." Her definition of Bildungsroman focuses "less [on] the development of a fixed identity than the emergence of voice." The Bildungsromane of these authors, then, offer a process through which the protagonists find their voices; thus, African American vernacular and folkloric genres are central to her study as sites of inspiration, community, and silencing.

Boesenberg establishes the validity of the concept of the Bildungsroman, in which "art holds the promise of unique satisfaction for the protagonist." Though the novels being analyzed are very different, each espouses a belief in the need for artistic expression. This central ideal is manifested in the blues and other forms of African American folk art because they serve "to retain a measure of psychic health" under oppressive conditions. Yet there exists a tension between the notions of individual artistry and artistry created from a concept of a communal self; the authors critique American individualism. Furthermore, Boesenberg notes that the limitations of gender roles distinguish the features of the Bildung process found in the novels of women writers: "The Bildungsroman may be particularly attractive for women writers not only because of its focus on becoming, on individuality as malleable rather than fixed, but also because its conventions foreground the dialectical interaction of the individual and soc iety in a manner also characterizing much feminist theory about the interplay of personal experience and socio-cultural formations." What is significant is not that Hurston, Morrison, and Walker were cognizant of this German genre when they wrote their works, but the adaptability of culturally specific theories beyond their time or place in order to afford important insights and ways of understanding art. The literature of African American women resonates for a German "reader" who responds through scholarship that combines German theory with extensive research into African American culture in this intriguing work.

The constraints of identity formation in the novels involve a process that must negotiate "race, class, gender and sexual preference." This entails a journey away from community to find subjectivity and a move toward a unification of the fragmented self. The authors identify the sites of oppression and themselves critique the process of integration, resulting in three distinct black female voices, whether or not the protagonists successfully find themselves. Nonetheless, the three novels do share elements central to identity formation. Gender within identity as a woman is empowering for the protagonists. Within these works, this female identity is based on relationship-differentiation rather than separation-individuation to reconcile confining gender roles of community with the need for an individual feminine self. The empowered female voice must, at this juncture, grapple with the objectification of women within language and narrative genres. Boesenberg asserts, "But if there is a discursive space congenial to black female self- expression, the texts suggest, it is characterized by a multiplicity of languages." Thus this work investigates a black female subjectivity that is heterogeneous, polyphonic, and multivocal.

As strong as Boesenberg's readings of the novels are, so too are her critiques of other theorists. Her discussions of Black English vernacular and folk culture are a strength of the text. In Their Eyes Were Watching God Boesenberg identifies Hurston's use of "double-voiced discourse [a]s the text's most sophisticated representation of the 'dialogue of languages' initiated by the intrusion of Black English Vernacular into the written literary language." Engaging Bakhtin's theory of the novel as dialogic, Hurston also masters a hybridization of Black English Vernacular and Standard English that becomes a new voice in literature. "... rather, the written text engages an accomplished storyteller's performance resounding with the practiced rhetorical strategies and deft linguistic mastery of African American public verbal art." Janie's art was that of the storyteller.

In the discussion of Morrison's Sula, the "art of rhythm and repetition" is identified as a structural principle in her narrative technique. Furthermore, Morrison's use of space for the reader to improvise within the text "bears great resemblance to a blues performance, a dialectic of integration and distance." While the impact of the blues on the novel's style is noted, its rhetorical possibilities are not completely understood. For example, in the discussion of Nel's howl at the end of the novel and the wails of the women at Chicken Little's funeral, a deeper understanding of how music functions culturally could change Boesenberg's readings. Nonlinguistic utterances are a feature of African music, which may indicate an inadequacy in English and literacy to convey all forms of human expression. These utterances may serve an additional role for the author because they are gender-neutral. Ironically, it is Nel who becomes the blues woman rather than Sula. This affirmation of art as a means of self-expression, though not "proper language," can be interpreted as more than an "inchoate utterance" that signifies the reuniting of the bifurcated self, Sula and Nel, in a song that perhaps completes the Bildung.

In the section on The Color Purple Boesenberg theorizes Walker's use of speech as "free direct discourse." This term is appropriate because it "emphasizes agency and autonomy of spoken language." An interesting discussion on the fairy tale aspects of the novel is balanced by the analysis of the Bildung and voice that are achieved. Though the novel forces a happy ending for Celie, Celie the writer gains intimacy with the reader in her Black vernacular voice about her experiences.

This text is to be recommended. The sources drawn upon are wide-ranging and extensive, and the mastery of these materials is exceptional. Boesenberg's readings of the novels are also provocative. Gender-Voice-Vernacular is written in the spirit of the works it examines and, thus, is a response to contemporary criticism on Hurston, Morrison, and Walker. It furthers our understanding of voice and empowerment within literature and folk forms which will generate, in turn, responses to its call.