Attaway, William - Samuel B. Garren (essay date September 1988)
Samuel B. Garren (essay date September 1988)
SOURCE: "Playing the Wishing Game: Folkloric Elements in William Attaway's Blood on the Forge," in CLA Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1, September, 1988, pp. 10-22.
[In the following essay, Garren examines "the wishing game," a verbal game associated with black culture, as it is depicted in Blood on the Forge.]
One element of black folk culture that plays an important part in William Attaway's novel Blood on the Forge (1941) is the wishing game. Early in Part I, Melody, one of three Moss brothers subsisting on a poor Kentucky farm in 1919, begins the game. His motive is distraction from hunger while awaiting Big Mat, the brother who sharecrops the farm and who may bring some food. In the call-and-response fashion characteristic of Afro-American culture, Melody involves his brother Chinatown in the game: "'China,' he half sang, 'you know where I wish I was at now?'" Chinatown needs no...
[The entire page is 4349 words long]
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