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Karla Responds to Questions
What does it mean to have written a portrait
of death and dying in twentieth-century America?
Perhaps most important is the opportunity to capture the
image of the business of death and dying, as well as its
practice, for the record of our cultural history. Memory would
certainly preserve them; but I felt it important as well to make
this a recorded history.
Death is very much a business. What role has the black death
care industry played in twentieth century?
Black funeral directors and morticians made certain that the
practice of their craft, and the experience of black folk--who
died in record numbers throughout the century--came together in
a way that respected the cultural moments of our dying, and that
enabled, however horrific our deaths, the integrity of the
rituals associated with death and burial. They knew the
communities they served, lived within them, socialized within
them, and serviced generations of families. >
Why focus on the black death care industry? What is unique
about it? How did you research the industry?
Black professionals "had" black bodies throughout
most of the century. Their practiced attention to our rituals
and our bodies (how do you 'do' black hair? how do you repair a
lynching victim for burial? what kinds of cosmetics are best for
a body that gets darker at death?) made certain that the ways
and means of our cultural practices were revered during the
funeral service. To research this, I went to archives, funeral
parlours, conventions of funeral directors, visited morticians
and ministers and spoke to embalming chemical businessmen and
"garment" makers.
How has violence, including lynchings, executions, and gang
violence, > affected the experience of black death in the
twentieth century? In what ways did Jim Crow laws impact African
American death?
These experiences obviously meant that black folk died more
frequently, more violently, and "out of our time." In
other words, black folk are vulnerable to black death (a death
related to our skin not our character) from the moment we are
born. Consider infant mortality tables. Even the stress of
living Jim Crow led to the higher incidences of stroke and high
blood pressure that contributed to black mortality...not to
mention the inequities that made our living conditions
hazardous.
How can the prominence of death and dying in African America
be seen in music, film, and literature?
It is, quite simply, ubiquitous. Death is a theme that recurs
in every artistic genre, including dance. (Recall Bill T.
Jones's "Still Here")
The church is of central importance in African American life.
What roles > has the church played in relation to death and
dying? What relationships > exist between churches and the
death care businesses?
Ministers and morticians have had an intimate relationship
throughout the century past, including, sometimes, being the
same person! Churches sometimes featured the name of both on
programs and bulletin boards. The black church has come to
understand its critical space in the rituals of the dead.
Funerals have been its everyday business, and the black church
brought ceremony and extended ritual to this experience. Its
passion has been, from my perspective, the ways and means of
catharsis; and is responsible in great measure for the sustained
resilience and strength of these vulnerable communities.
Your research took you to the graves of many prominent
African Americans, > including Billie Holliday, Arthur Ashe,
and Thurgood Marshall. How did these > visits shape and
impact your project?
They actually gave me some calm in a project that was often
quite discomfiting. These quiet and solemn spaces held different
kinds of memories. Although the book is not morbid--I believe it
is finally evidence of our cultural resilience and hope, the
graves were ways for me to see 'the rest of the story.' The
story does not end with burial, I found as many narratives
within graveyards and cemeteries as I found at deathbeds--the
submarine sandwich and can of Fosters beer on Louis Armstrong's
grave...the elderly Jewish couple who kept Billie Holiday's
grave tidy.
In what ways is this book a memorial?
It is cultural memory of African America in the twentieth
century, and a memory of mine own. The story of my son, framed
at the book's beginning and near its end is means of memory that
I cherish.
Your research took on a personal quality when you lost your
son Bem. In what ways did this experience affect your project?
How as Bem's death illustrative of the larger themes in your
book?
I found his death inseparable from the stories I told of the
losses of our children. It dramatically changed the tone and
timbre of the book, and it ironically proved the thesis, that
African America is vulnerable to the ravages of black death.
This vulnerability was mine as well.
You have spoken across the country on end-of-life issues.
What do you have to say to those involved in end-of-life-care,
particularly those caring for African Americans?
Understanding the cultural experience of our death and dying
in America means we have to have a great sensitivity when we
bring the idea of "dying well" to a population that
experiences dying every day often without the balm and solace
and calm that hospice would offer. Acknowledging the histories
of institutionalized racism that our medical facilities own is
critical before we offer these same facilities as spaces where
one might learn to "die well."
Contact: Laura Sell, Publicity, Duke
University Press / (919) 687-3639 / Fax: (919) 688-4391 / lsell@dukeupress.edu
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update 23 June 2008 |
