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Books by John Oliver
Killens
Youngblood /
And Then
We Heard the Thunder /
The Cotillion
/
The Great Black Russian
A Man-Aint-Nothin But A Man Adventures of John Henry /
Slaves /
Sippi A Novel /
Black-SouthernVoices: An Anthology
Great-Gittin-Up-Morning: A Biography of Denmark
Vesey /
The Black Man's Burden
Keith
Gilyard,
Liberation Memories: The Rhetoric and Poetics of
John Oliver Killens (2003)
* * * * *
Interview
with Keith Gilyard
author of
Liberation
Memories
the Rhetoric and Poetics of John Oliver Killens
Rudy:
Liberation
Memories is a
clear and excellent portrait of the writings and political
efforts of the much-overlooked writer John Oliver Killens within
the African-American intellectual community. I strongly
recommend this work for both high school and college students
and professors of English and African-American Studies. It’s
simply a book that should be on the shelf of every serious
student of African-American life and culture.
Professor Gilyard, let us start at the
beginning with your interest in this overlooked spokesman of
black interests. How came you to Killens? What was
the first book of his you read and your first impression of his
work?
Keith: First of all, thanks for the
props. When you do this sort of work, you're uncertain if you'll
get a serious read. So it's good to run into folks like you who
care deeply about the subject matter. As for meeting Killens, I
first read
The Cotillion shortly after it came out in
1971. Back then I wasn't that serious a student of African
American literature.
I was getting up on the poetry but hadn't
done much in reading the novels. I was scribbling a little prose
as well as poetry, but my reading of fiction was lagging way
behind my composing efforts even though my reading should have
been way out in front. I think John's book came into the
Langston Hughes Library in Queens—just walked in I guess—and since I hung around the library all
the time I just bumped into it. It happened something like that;
that's the spirit of the thing, although I can't guarantee that
my memory is flawless. What I'm sure about is that I got through
almost all of the novel in one sitting, just read on through the
night.
I was drawn in by the language, the political
and cultural issues addressed, and the characters—I was even in Evelyn and Lumumba's age
group back then. So I was feeling the youthful aspect of the
book. Unfortunately, I hadn't yet developed my habit of reading
all the work I can find by an author I like before I move on to
another author—how I read Richard Wright, for example.
So after reading
The Cotillion I moved on to something
else and other writers and didn't even remember the novel all
that well until I started working at Medgar Evers College in
1981.
Killens was also on the faculty and I
remember folks talking about
The Cotillion and describing
it and the story started coming back to me, especially the scene
with Jomo Mamadou Zero the Third. So, to sum up, I came to
his work through The Cotillion and then had the good
fortune to actually work with him a bit while we were both on
the faculty of Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.
Rudy: Before I heard of your work from
Louis Reyes Rivera, Killens son-in-law, I had read
And Then
We Heard the Thunder, which impressed me greatly as a novel
of heroism, and
The Cotillion, which mocked black
pretensions and blind imitation of white cultural models. He was
widely recommended by my Black Power friends. But I
had never thought deeply about Killens, as I had Baldwin or
Wright, though I enjoyed and admired his work. What brought you
to this full study of Killens?
Keith: I have to stop and thank Louis
too for his insight and support. He sort of inspired me to write
Liberation
Memories. Louis knew and was vocal about
the fact that John had been underappreciated in critical
circles. Only a few people—like Addison Gayle and William Wiggins,
Jr.—tried to do him justice in the
scholarly literature. But even they missed articulating some of
the richness of John's writings. And Arthur Flowers is a good
friend of mine—and present-day underappreciated novelist and
Killens protégé.
Flowers joined the faculty at Syracuse
University during the years I worked up there. We used to talk
about doing something to honor Killens' memory, maybe a
testimonial book, get former students and friends to contribute.
Arthur was more focused on John's legacy and his role as a
teacher and cultural worker and even as a cultural orchestrator,
as Arthur liked to say. By then, I had gotten more into
his fiction. I heard all that Arthur was saying, and even a few
years before I had drafted a manuscript about Killens that I
tried to get included in one of the series that publishes short
biographies of notable African Americans targeted for an
adolescent readership. But that project didn't get far.
At any rate, I began focusing on his fiction.
I began scribbling drafts of my readings of parts of his novels.
At that point, Arthur and I were still thinking about bringing
our different strands (he had even written a proposal) together
in a book. But it went, as things often do, another way. I ended
up pushing ahead on my own manuscript, with Arthur's
encouragement, and after several fits and starts I got it done.
In short, I was trying to fill a void in the scholarship about
African American literature. It's interesting that you
mention Wright and Baldwin.
When studying the African American novel, one
could logically be pointed, if we're thinking in terms of major
developments and connections chronologically, from Wright to
Chester Himes first and then Ellison and Baldwin and Killens--in
that order--(and a few others). In terms of critical attention,
Killens, maybe along with Himes, got the short straw in that
group. It was obvious to me, though, that Killens did
commendable work and deserves to be more widely studied. Also, I
knew him and it seemed to me that his spirit wasn't letting me
rest until I did what he and I both knew I could do, get him
somewhat back on the agenda, not for him but for what he stood
for: African American art with a political commitment on behalf
of the masses of African Americans and the masses of humanity
overall.
Rudy: Killens was nominated for the
Pulitzer – once, twice. But fell short of the mark of
full recognition by both white and black critics. For instance,
Arthur P. Davis in his From the Dark Tower seems to
deride Killens in reference to
And Then
We Heard the Thunder,
which I consider his best work, as “still using the old
protest tradition.”
Recently, a white commentator Jonathan
Yardley in the Washington Post made a similar
disparagement of Killens writings: “He was also the
prisoner of his own artistic convictions; what drove him –
what drove Du Bois and all those white "proletarian"
novelists of the 1930s – was not art but politics, and
the two are poles apart.” In a response to Yardley, you spoke
of apples and oranges and concluded: “we have to continue to
develop appropriate paradigms to enable the fullest and most
fruitful discussion of texts like Thunder.” Could you
now extend your remarks about Killens’ work falling short of
“true art.”
Keith: But the remark about
"the old protest tradition" is the extent of Davis'
commentary about Killens, at least that's what I recall about From
the Dark Tower. He might have implied that, nevertheless,
And Then
We Heard the Thunderr is a novel of quality. So I
don't think he actually was derisive in the sense that you
suggest. But it's not a big point. I really don't
regard Arthur P. Davis as someone who took Killens' work
seriously. Just a sentence or two on the work of someone
who had published four or five novels by the time of Davis'
study doesn't do a lot for me.
As for "true art," my remarks would
be that Killens' work did not fall short. Judgments of art
are obviously subjective but coalesce roughly around notions of
creativity, significant form, beauty, and craft. What I
argue is that on some reasonable measures of creativity, form,
beauty, and craft, one could say that Killens' work is art.
I won't detail the argument here; I do want to sell some books.
But my main point is that his work can reasonably be seen as
art. We can argue about how good it is as art, how bad it
is as art, but to argue that art and politics are poles apart
just misses the point for me. I actually liked the piece
by Yardley that appeared in the Washington Post.
Yardley does take Killens' work seriously and
gave it space in the Post. That's good. I was happy to
see the article and know–this is fairly certain–that my book
prompted him to write the piece. I'm not hatin'. It's just
that Yardley doesn't escape from the vagueness that critics like
him slip into sometimes when judging the work of African
American writers who portray activism. Politics, for them, can't
be art–unless Dickens or Marquez does it. Those are Yardley's
examples. I agree with him about Dickens and Marquez. But
the problem is that he doesn't specify the criteria that make
the work of Dickens and Marquez art and that of people like
Killens not art.
The argument is that Dickens and Marquez can
make politics be art because they can. Killens can't
because he can't. So it's hard to persuade someone like
that because he does not acknowledge the grounds on which he is
willing to be persuaded. You can show certain aspects of
Killens' creativity, but if one has decided that politics can't
be art unless you're Dickens or Marquez, then what can you do?
One thing you can do is to take the conversation beyond the
sites where the restrictive notions predominate. That's what I
do because I don't get to pontificate in the Washington Post. So
you thank the Jonathan Yardleys for the play you get. His
piece certainly wasn't overly negative. And you move on.
Rudy: In his From the Dark Tower,
Arthur P. Davis also points out that Killens moved from
integrationism to “blackness.” I assume from your reading of
Killens that that swing, if indeed it is a movement at all, was
not a radical one.
Keith: Yeah, I guess that was
the one other remark that Davis made. But the so-called swing
wasn't that big, which you can tell if you read the whole career
closely. The political sentiment of the 1975 A Man
Ain't Nothin' but a Man is not far removed from the politics
of the 1954
Youngblood. And the 1954
Youngblood is
not really less "Black" than the 1971
The Cotillion.
That easy intregationism-to-Blackness theory doesn't really get
at the work in the most productive way.
Rudy: You have pointed out in
Liberation
Memories that a “black nationalism” and an emphasis on
glorifying and redemption of black culture is found as subthemes
in most, if not all, of Killens
fiction. Why do you think these elements in Killens’
writing are a significant contribution to American literature?
What has been the influence of such themes?
Keith: I think those traits were
models for some of the writers that came afterward.
Addison Gayle dubbed Killens the "spiritual father" of
a generation of African American novelists. Toni Cade
Bambara noted that Killens broke from the Wright school of
social protest. I think by this she meant Killens' focus on
community struggle rather than on a protagonist's singular
dilemma. I also think Bambara
appreciated Killens' focus on what was healthy in African
American culture. And I think other writers have seen this also
and have been inspired by the example.
Rudy: You point out in your
Introduction “Killens will always be associated with the Black
Arts Movement.” When I usually think of BAM, I think of poets
and dramatists. I do not think of novelists. Would you agree?
I suppose one might indeed say
The Cotillion (1971) is a BAM novel. But it seems difficult to
make such an assertion about other Killens novels, whether about
‘Sippi or those works that follow
The Cotillion.
Keith: I think the tendency is indeed
to think of BAM as largely an outpouring of poems and plays.
That's an understandable perception, as the poetic and dramatic
production was considerable. Baraka, for example, was well
known as a poet and dramatist and his personality and energy
informs how we think about BAM. His name is synonymous
with the movement. But economics plays into the picture
because so many of the people who assumed, say, the role of
poets could find an outlet for their work even if they had to
publish it themselves.
But think about it. Given the nature of the
novel, you're going to have fewer published novels if for no
other reason than the fact that the financial investment to
bring a novel into publication is so much greater than it is to
do the same for most collections of poems.
There might be almost as many novelists or
aspiring novelists as poets, but it's hard to determine that.
I remember that a while back, some folks were doing an African
American novel project, trying to ascertain all the African
American novels that were in existence, not just those that were
published. I think Abdul Alkalimat told me something about that.
Anyway, the results of such an investigation would shed more
light on African American literary activity of the 1960s and
1970s. I have an unpublished novel from the 1970s myself.
One from the 1990s also, for that matter.
But even if you look at the published work, I think the novel is
a larger part of the Black Arts Movement that many folks assume.
Thinking deeply, however, you would have to consider John A.
Williams' The Man Who Cried I Am, Sam Greenlee's The
Spook Who Sat by the Door, Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo
and The Last Days of Louisiana Red, even Toni Morrison's The
Bluest Eye to be BAM novels. They are each more than
that, but check out the themes: Black pride, the damage of
Euro-brainwashing, embrace of African culture, militant
political action. That's BAM, no?
And Killens'
The Cotillion is in that
mix, a very complementary novel, as I point out in my book, to
Morrison's novel–almost mirror images. Evelyn Lovejoy (LOVE
JOY) has the support system that Pecola Breedlove (BREED NOT
LOVE, given Morrison's ironic sense) lacks. But
The Cotillion is not simply a Black Arts Movement novel; Killens
is too much artist and satirist for the easy label.
I guess I'm thinking of BAM two ways.
One, as a description that sums up a work structurally and
thematically--and I think that's what you mean—and two, as a
set of artifacts from a specific period.
The Cotillion
fits easily the second way, and partly the first way.
That's what I would say. My reason for stating that
Killens will always be associated with the Black Arts Movement
had only partly to do with
The Cotillion. It had at least
as much to do with his cultural organizing and positions he took
in public forums, what might be termed literary
manifestoes–speeches like "The Black Writer and the
Revolution," for example. When you think about BAM and a
Baraka or a Ron Milner or a Sarah Webster Fabio or a Haki
Madhubuti, well, those are the people that Killens was inviting
to his writers' conferences.
Thus the association. As for other novels by
Killens being BAM novels, I say maybe, maybe not. Only 'Sippi
is another major novel of his that fits timewise. On
the other hand, militant self-defense and Black pride are
hallmarks of his 1954 novel
Youngblood. I don't
think one needs to get so much into trying to ascertain a shelf
to which one can confine a particular work, though talking about
dominant traits is certainly cool and definitely appropriate.
I'd rather folks read Killens and tried to figure out all the
things that he is doing as an artist.
Rudy: On the whole, your criticism of
Killens work is balanced and scholarly. For instance you point
out in both your Introduction and Conclusion and throughout
Liberation
Memories the shortcomings of Killens literary
method: you say, Killens “eschewed realism . . . complex
environmental and psychological portraiture – in favor of . .
. noble and polemical characters.” You also point out
that Killens had a “utopian” political perspective.
Both your definitions of “realism” and
“utopian” need more commentary. Despite his sketchiness of
character, his novels on the whole seem realistic. Though I
understand to a degree what you mean overall, the character of
the hero in
And Then
We Heard the Thunderseem to gather
complexity. I am altogether at a lost by what you mean by
“utopian.” Do you mean in the sense that King was utopian in
that he had faith that blacks and whites would eventually work
out their differences and become one people?
Keith: I meant realism in terms of the
psychological realism of particular characters. That's why I
qualified my statement by saying something like "if by
realism you mean..." I don't think you get the
deepest psychological portraitures in Killens. It's not so
much a shortcoming but a choice he made. Sophocles made
similar choices. And you're right that he comes closest to the
sort of realism you mean in
And Then
We Heard the Thunder.
And you're right that the novels have elements of realism and
complexity. Again, I was mostly speaking about character
development.
As for utopian, he was indeed a kindred
spirit of King's in that regard. Folks need to check out
Black
Man's Burden. I say Killens was utopian in that he had
a vision of a socially just world. Louis calls it
"romantic realism," envisioning something better and
working for it in the everyday. I like that phrasing,
separates itself from the idea of pie-in-the-sky dreaming.
Part of what I'm saying is that intellectually Killens never let
go of the proletarian consciousness that he developed in his
youth. That's why the big-swing theory doesn't work.
He was never simply an integrationist or ever simply a
nationalist, though he experienced emotional shifts, as many of
us do. Now I'm not sure that Killens--or King for that
matter--had "faith" that blacks and whites would work
it out most productively. They had a vision that it should
happen. But I'm not sure how deep the faith was that it
would happen.
Rudy: There is much that I like
thematically about Killens – 1) “his acceptance of an
enabling black identity as a rule,” 2) emphasis on the role of
family in Negro progress and struggle. Both are elements not so
evident in Wright, Ellison, or the early Baldwin. Killens swing
from mockery and burlesque (as in
The Cotillion) to
heroism (as in the
Slaves or
Great Black Russian) seem to
suggest an uneven or an uncertain or a less than mature vision
of African-American life and culture. His emphasis on folk forms
hit the mark but his bringing forth the true dignity of its
essence and the inherent conflicts and dilemmas falls short.
Would you agree that his fiction has little to say about the
presence conflicts and dilemmas that exist within the
African-American community?
Keith: I can't say that I do
agree with that assessment. For one, I would probably say
that his portrayal of such a range of experiences is a sign of
artistic maturity, not of immaturity.
Black people run the gamut from the burlesque to the heroic. It
is also evident to me that a lot of his work is precisely about
conflicts and dilemmas that exist in the African American
community. In
Youngblood, there is occupational
tension, what Joe Youngblood's actions are relative to those of
Mr. Myles. That relationship also reflects geographical
tension as Youngblood is from the South and Myles is from the
North. So that North-South Black thing is played out.
Class difference is articulated, the middle
class folks don't respond to the struggle in the same way the
folks out in Rockingham Quarters do. There is political
tension between those that embrace radical organizing as per the
labor movement and those that are afraid to embrace such
organizing. In ‘Sippi you have some of the same
tensions as well as a portrayal of tension between a sometimes
exploitative college student body and the surrounding
working-class community, particularly along sexual lines.
Class tensions are all up inside
Thunder.
Millie gives you one slice of African
American thought, largely accommodationist.
Fannie Mae gives you the activism. Solly embodies all
kinds of tensions. The Cotillion gets into the
colorism thing inside the Black community, hits at those
divisions and pretensions. It also lampoons all kinds of
charlatans. Come to think of it, I don't know what Killens
misses in terms of the conflicts and dilemmas in the African
American community. But he left behind an unpublished
novel, so he might have done even more in this vein than we now
know.
Rudy: Do you find it troubling that
Killens recommended creating sparkling heroes and saints out of
ordinary black men and women who made sacrifices, yes, but as
every day men and women, yes, bold and courageous in the face of
cruelty and tyranny? The creation of black saints, like the
building of monuments and museums, seem to be that work that
kills the spirit and places the work of freedom and liberation
out of the reach of every day men and women.
Keith: Don't know if I go along
with all of that either. But I do think I see your point
about the creation of icons. It reminds me of how folks
used to sit around in the 1970s and decry the fact that
"there are no more Black leaders." An
accompanying argument was that Blackfolk could get it together
if only the right leader came along. It was that
cult-of-personality reasoning. So the idea that the heroic can
arise from the everyday is an important concept. I think that's
what you mean. And I agree. However, I don't think that
idea is oppositional to what Killens actually said. All of his
heroes, except the fictionalized Pushkin, rose from humble
circumstances.
And I don't think he said to make those
characters Black saints. He called Harriet Tubman, Fannie
Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther
King, Jr., and Paul Robeson saints–because of what they
achieved, emphasis on achieved. And I'm thinking that he meant
that sainthood thing metaphorically.
The real point is that African American
artists should honor the memory of those who have performed
heroically in the past and have been examples of Black struggle
and Black sacrifice. Let those people become fodder for our
mythmaking, which is very important activity in sustaining a
people and giving them the sense that they will ultimately
prevail. Killens is borrowing from Samuel Yette and Yette's
thinking about "hero dynamics." As Yette once wrote,
"a people with no hero concept has, at best, an aimless and
confused existence." So it's in that sense that Killens was
promoting artistic hero work or mythmaking. That's not the
only thing an artist can do, but that's not a bad thing.
Rudy: Some believe that Baldwin is a
greater essayist than a novelist. That indeed may be so. But do
you think that Killens has any novel that compares well with the
excellence of Go Tell It on the Mountain?
Keith: I generally don't like to rate
writers against one another, at least not in public. You
never have time to play the whole thing out and stuff gets taken
the wrong way. But I think
And Then
We Heard the Thunder
and
Youngblood beat any fiction that Baldwin ever
wrote–and a lot of other people too. I'll just leave it at
that.
Maybe I'll just add that I hope you have a
connect to Spike Lee. I can't believe that Spike hasn't brought
And Then
We Heard the Thunder to the screen. At one time, I
thought Spike was going to do great things with African American
literature after I saw how he used Zora's novel as the basic
structure of She's Gotta Have It. And when he made
comments about the Black absence in films like Saving Private
Ryan, and with all the mainstream Tom Brokaw-style talk
about the "greatest generation," and with Pearl Harbor
and a resurgence of interest in World War II stories, I just saw
Spike getting somebody like Denzel to run around as Solly
Saunders. Thunder is the best depiction we have of
the World War II experience and African Americans.
Rudy: Despite whatever reservation you
or I may have about Killens as novelist or critic, Yardley is on
the money in this comment: “it is no less a pity that he [Killens]
has been allowed to disappear from the literary landscape
– incredibly, he does not rate an entry in the current
edition of The Oxford Companion to American Literature
– because he was a substantial figure not merely in his
own right but also in the work of those other writers who
profited from his example and support.
Based on Arthur P. Davis’ definition of
“a major Negro writer as one whose works deals largely with
black experience, measures up to appropriate aesthetic
standards, and influences to some extent his contemporaries
and/or those who come after him” – one must consider Killens
“a major Negro writer.”
Isn’t that the basic tenor of
Liberation Memories – that he "measures up” and in your 3rd
and 6th chapters you point out his broad influence on his
contemporaries, from Malcolm X and other noted writers
(like Margaret Walker) to college students?
Keith: That is the basic tenor of the
book. Thanks for the space you have given me to talk about
the project. But now I'm going to settle for the short
answer so folks can get on to the business of chasing down the
book. I would say, though, that Killens would indicate that
Walker had a great influence on him. I didn't argue that he
influenced Margaret Walker–not that he didn't, just that I'm
not prepared to make the case based on textual evidence or any
statements she made to that effect.
Rudy: I understand you are working on
a biography of Killens. What is its thrust and when will that
work reach the shelves of book stores?
Keith: Actually, Louis and I are
trying to kick the project into full gear. We'll try to give a
fuller sense of the life and activities than one can get from a
critical monograph. The monograph was all I thought I would do,
but Lorenzo Thomas, who reviewed the manuscript before
publication, suggested that I move on to the biography that we
need. I wasn't really ready for anybody, including John, to take
up full residence inside my head like that, but I also knew
Lorenzo's suggestion was a good one. So Louis and I have
been trying to block this thing out and get to it.
As I said earlier, Louis has this notion of
"romantic realism" as a way to describe John's work,
so we're playing with that idea some. Our priority right now is
to gather as much oral testimony as we can. What's already
archived will be there for us to discover, but, sad to say, the
folks who can offer first-hand accounts about John are becoming
fewer and fewer. We're facing our own "greatest
generation" problem. So if you can help in that
way--identifying folks who have a Killens story—that would we
be good. We don't have a firm timetable for completing the book;
it's probably going to take a few years.
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updated 12 June 2008 |
