SOURCE: "Alice Childress's Rainbow Jordan: The Black Aesthetic Returns Dressed in Adolescent Fiction," Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2, Summer, 1988, pp. 70-4.

[In the following review, Govan explores the role of the Black Aesthetic in Childress's novel Rainbow Jordan.]

In 1988, twenty years beyond the period and in an age enamored of political voyeurism as opposed to political participation, it is decidedly unfashionable to speak favorably of the Black Aesthetic. As critical literary theory the Black Aesthetic was, after all, an overtly political doctrine, an artistic manifesto of the militant "revolutionary" 1960s. Nowadays, art from this period which adhered to a Black Aesthetic is shunned for its stridency or militancy; the aesthetic credo itself is now largely ignored or discredited. Yet curiously, I find that in order to discuss Alice Childress's Rainbow Jordan, I must also discuss the Black Aesthetic because for me, the one most decidedly evokes the other.

Briefly then, let me indicate the principal spokespersons and basic tenets of what was once proudly trumpeted as the Black Aesthetic. Its chief architects were Larry Neale, Hoyt Fuller, Julian Mayfield, Addison Gayle, Carolyn Gerald, and Ron Karenga. For Julian Mayfield, in "You Touch My Black Aesthetic …," the new critical credo could be distilled as "our racial memory and the unshakable knowledge of who we are, where we have been, and springing from this, where we are going." For Carolyn Gerald in "The Black Writer and His Role," the Black Aesthetic fell upon the artist as a concrete responsibility. The artist was to be a "guardian of image; the writer [was] the myth-maker of his people." Gerald went on to argue that there was a "sense of power" derived from a "mythic consciousness based on a people's positive view of themselves" which was also inherently part of the then emerging critical code. Poet Mari Evans crystallized many of these sentiments in her "Speak Truth to the People." Evans demanded that artists:

    Speak Truth to the people
    Talk Sense to the people
    Free them with reason
    Free them with honesty
    Free the people with Love and Courage, and Care
    for their
    Being
    Spare them the fantasy
    Fantasy enslaves

By far, however, the best known, most provocative proponent of the Black Aesthetic was Maulana Ron Karenga, a Black nationalist. Karenga's "Black Art: Mute Matter given Force and Function" presents the most codified requirements for both Black artists and Black art.

Karenga argued bluntly that "black artists and those who wish to be artists must accept the fact that what is needed is an aesthetic, a Black aesthetic, that is a criteria for judging the validity and/or beauty of a work of art." Karenga proposed to judge art from two perspectives, the social and the artistic. For him, "artistic considerations" while necessary for any art, were by themselves insufficient. What finalized any artistic endeavor was its social dimension, the "social criteria for judging art." This was the most crucial criterion for, in his terms, "all art must reflect and support the Black Revolution, and any art that does not discuss and contribute to the revolution is invalid." Strong statements alone, but Karenga further augmented them by borrowing from traditional African art three guiding characteristics which became the cornerstone of the Black Aesthetic. Black art was to meet these essential tenets: it must be "functional," that is "useful"; it must be "collective," that is, it must emerge from and return or speak to the people; it must be "committing" or committed. This meant Black art must "commit us to revolution and change," commit us to a new and different reality.

It is time to call the question—what precisely does Rainbow Jordan, a contemporary adolescent novel considered "outstanding" (Nilsen & Donelson) in its field, have to do with an avowedly political, although now apparently unpalatable approach to art? The answer is a great deal. On Rainbow Jordan—on its narrative mode, its themes, and most particularly its characters—is imprinted the stamp of a conscientiously Black literary/political agenda. While Alice Childress is not wedded to a concretized notion of what Black art "must do," this novel, as do her other novels and plays, has embedded—refashioned and redressed, to be sure—the substantive core of what was the Black Aesthetic. Not a strident text, Rainbow Jordan nevertheless reflects these values: it is functional, it is collective, it is committed.

When a theory has been discarded and rejected largely for its vehemence and the seeming rigidity of its proscriptions, it could be dangerous or perhaps presumptuous to try to link a particular artist and her work to it. And had not Childress consistently reiterated her own ideas about literary politics, ideas which sometimes seem in conflict but which are, on balance, not that distant from the political motives of the Black Aesthetic, I would not even attempt it. For instance, in "A Candle in a Gale Wind," Childress illuminates her literary stance. She acknowledges "bending" her writing "to most truthfully express contents, to move beyond the either/or of 'artistic' and politically imposed limitations." This pronouncement seemingly undercuts my initial premise; yet, if what is accented is her commitment to "truthfully express content," the argument saves itself. Truth, after all, and truth tied to knowledge emerging from the unique perspective of the Black writer who observes and records it, is the greatest demand "imposed" on the Black artist. Within this essay Childress outlined her methods, goals, and intentions. Rejecting the premise that the writer's duty was to compose inspirational tracts about Black high achievers—large heroic figures who surmounted the barriers of racism and economic deprivation—she chose to focus on illustrating the "have nots in a have society"—those who seldom receive attention unless as targets of "derogatory humor and/or condescending clinical and social analysis." "Politically," wrote Childress, "I see my Black experience, my characters, and myself in very special circumstances." In depicting the powerlessness inherent in that "special circumstance," in showing the complexity of frustrated dreams, frayed hopes, yet persistent determination Childress finds her calling. As she put it: "I continue to write about those who come in second, or not at all—the four hundred and ninety-nine and the intricate and magnificent patterns of a loser's life." As if anticipating and deflecting the shopworn charge of "universality," Childress forthrightly defines her philosophical commitment: "My writing attempts to interpret the 'ordinary' because they are not ordinary. Each human is uniquely different. We are uncommonly and marvelously intricate in thought and action, our problems are most complex and, too often, silently borne."

Clearly, Childress's concern is for the people, for showing them as they are. She is not concerned with constructing necessarily better or "positive" images of poor or "ordinary" Black folk. In fact, image-building for its own sake becomes an empty symbolic gesture devoid of substance. There is no inherent value in "self-deception," or in ignoring those "who are poor, lost, and/or rebellious" merely in the service of proper "image" ("The Human Condition"). When we refuse to see the poor, Childress argues, "we also fail to see ourselves. The wrong is not in writing about them but in failing to present them in depth, in denying their humanity, in making them literary statistics…." Further, Childress asserts that her goal is to write "about characters without condescension, without making them into an image which some may deem more useful, inspirational, profitable, or suitable" ("Human Condition"). This last statement is certainly an unqualified rejection of the image-as-symbol school and possibly a reaction to any critical ultimatum specifying that the artist adopt a set didactic approach to the question of Black "images." In Childress's realm, "images" are not essential; rather, characters are the focal point.

And yet ironically, me thinks the artist doth protest too much. As surely as any sensitive reader digests Rainbow Jordan, that reader will be unable to leave the novel without some sense of [the] more "positive" images of particular people/characters resonating in the imagination. And, that reader will be unable to put the novel down without some sense of admiration—inspired by the unassuming almost stoic heroism of characters facing hard choices and hard compromises daily. Childress's characters have all their foibles showing; it is in watching them recognize and reevaluate their weaknesses and their strengths that readers may see conflict as a way of testing or molding "character," as a way of recasting image. Without excluding any sensitive reader, Rainbow Jordan successfully becomes an attractive version of the Black Aesthetic redressed because it is myth-making at work for younger audiences. By focusing on the Jordan family and Rainbow's alliance with her adult mentor, it is also illustrative of "racial memory," racial identity—of "where we have been … and where we are going" (Mayfield). And to reiterate, because Childress chooses to present truth, as she witnesses it, Rainbow Jordan reflects those three essential characteristics defining the Black Aesthetic; that is, it is functional, collective, committed.

Obviously, most adolescent readers of Rainbow Jordan have never heard of the Black Aesthetic. It's likely that neither have their teachers. And that's okay. It isn't necessary to know about the Black Aesthetic in order to enjoy and appreciate the novel at its first level. Teachers like the novel because it is well written, discusses significant issues, and treats realistic conflicts sensitively. Youngsters who enjoy reading like the book because it addresses them. The novel features a fourteen year old heroine with whom teens can easily sympathize or identify. It treats subjects—stressful parent-child relationships, peer pressure, sex education and teen pregnancy, friendships beyond family—teenagers respond to. It has familiar themes in contemporary cloth. Most importantly, Rainbow Jordan, the protagonist, speaks frankly to adolescents at their level. Although Childress uses a modified variation of the Rashomon shifting narrative structure technique—or what she calls "monologue style" first and second person storytelling ("A Candle")—when Rainbow speaks, her voice remains consistent, never breaking for authorial intrusion or comment. When Rainbow speaks, it is as a child, albeit a woman-child carrying far too much responsibility on her young shoulders.

Rainbow's voice is the first voice heard in the novel. Since she is the central protagonist and it is largely her story, she narrates more often than any other character. Initially, Rainbow confides that she has heartaches and that there are good reasons for her woes. Her mother is missing; a social service caseworker is due any moment to remove Rainbow from the apartment she and her mother share; she will be placed, for the third time, in an "Interim Home," that is, foster care. In addition, she has research papers due for school and she has no real communication with her boyfriend. Under the circumstances, Rainbow has ambivalent feelings about her mother and about the life they both live. She realizes that her 29-year-old mother is often irresponsible ("What else is it but abandon when she walk out with a boyfriend, promise to come home soon, then don't show"), immature ("My mother taught me to call her by first name … Kathie for Katherine. I never had a mama and a daddy. I got a Kathie and a Leroy"), and occasionally abusive ("Some of the best presents I ever got was the day after a beatin. Truth is, she was not beatin on me every minute. Sure wouldn't hear about any outsider givin me a bad time"). Nevertheless, Rainbow loves her mother fiercely, has lied for her repeatedly, and would much rather remain at home and wait for her than go to a foster home. But even she doesn't know where Kathie is or when she will return. "Life," in her words, "is complicated." The complications multiply when she is forced to make painful critical assessments of Kathie's virtues and failings, then live her life accordingly—shielding the disruptive pattern of the small family's life from the prying eyes of peers, school officials, and social service agents. The frustrated love for Kathie remains, but it is driven inward and Rainbow, often forced to cope with the outside world alone, becomes an introspective, self-contained, "difficult" child who pulls a protective shell around her sensibilities, daring anyone to knock.

The second dominant voice in the novel belongs to Josephine Lamont, Miss Josie, the "Interim Parent" who takes Rainbow into her home. Anticipating cute and cuddly children (as a result of T.V. images) when she first undertook the responsibilities of foster parenting, Josephine has learned to accept with good grace the chip-shouldered, silent, often sullen teenaged youths sent to her for nurturing. Normally, Miss Josie offers hugs and affection warmly for she believes all profit by hugging. This time, however, when Rainbow returns, Miss Josie almost grudgingly gives of herself, resignedly accepting the burden of Rainbow and her shell. It seems Josephine is busily constructing one of her own. She, too, has heartaches which she imagines Rainbow cannot fathom. A sturdy, gentle, hard working seamstress and an attentive, gracious homemaker in her fifties, Miss Josie attempts to conceal her wounds from Rainbow—her marriage is disintegrating; Harold, her husband, is now more visitor than helpmate.

With her own emotional center destabilized, Josephine must still make room for Rainbow. Casting herself in the role of the martyred woman who must remain the mature responsible adult, Josephine sees in Rainbow merely a defiant child in need of guidance. Completely devaluing Rainbow's attempts to maintain her pride, Josephine perceives only arrogance: "not directly rude but walks around with her nose slightly in the air … as if she's superior and is merely allowing me to handle her situation. She is a definite case of child neglect but puts on like it's all some kind of misunderstanding." Of course, Miss Josie considers herself the "superior" partner in this match. She plays several roles including surrogate parent, guardian, teacher, and mentor "exposing" Rainbow to traditional middle-class values and culture, to multi-cultural perspectives, to the "gray" areas between right, wrong, and hard societal "rules." However, as the novel progresses and both Rainbow and Josephine tell their respective stories and share their observations and perceptions about each other, it becomes quite apparent that Josephine sadly underestimates Rainbow and overplays her role as stoic mentor.

Kathie's is the third narrative voice in the novel. Appropriately, as she is an absentee parent, we do not hear from her often nor are her comments as thoughtful or as perceptive as Rainbow's or Josephine's. Kathie focuses most often on her own dilemma; her daughter's is often an afterthought. Here is a cautionary tale. She was a teenaged parent; she now has a teenaged child whose very presence reminds her that time passes. An attractive woman, Kathie attracts men; but, invariably, the kind with little to give her except physical love and/or physical abuse. Stymied by her inability to do more than barely provide, Kathie vacillates from one stance to another: from firm responsible parent, to negligent abusive parent, to self-centered irresponsible parent. Stranded eighty miles away when a "gig" or job is cancelled, Kathie thinks that with her boyfriend she "could really have a good time except for worryin about Rainbow. No way to forget her with rent due and me stranded … pleasant as a strand might be." Receiving only haphazard child support and not content with the small ADC (Aid to Dependent Children) check, Kathie seeks work to supplement her minimal income. But with no education and no training, the only jobs she finds available are as a go-go dancer, a precarious occupation at best.

Kathie's most earnest attempts at introspection or self-analysis fail miserably; she becomes willing accomplice, participating in her own victimization. Lacking the courage of her daughter or Miss Josie, Kathie capitulates to fear and violence. Once her ill-tempered violent boyfriend falls asleep, Kathie reflects: "No matter how hard I try to do the right thing … I always mess up. I can't love Burke as much as he loves me … maybe can't love anybody else either. Not a man in this world is takin care of me … except this clown, Burke." Yet when Burke awakens and offers her a drink, Kathie's mask is fixed in place. "Okay, sweetie," she replies. "Thank you, Burke. Just a small one … sugar pie." With this, Kathie abdicates any further responsibility for her own life or for Rainbow's; thereafter, she virtually disappears from the novel.

Oddly, although she is neither heroic nor admirable, rather, merely a callow young woman perpetually the Peter Pan, Kathie's capsulized story is strangely compelling and threatens to steal the novel. Indeed, she is the novel's most tragic character though her flaws are not entirely of her own making. But that is another subject; suffice it to reiterate here that hers is a cautionary tale which Childress asks her readers to ponder.

At this first level of Rainbow Jordan we are asked to ponder or consider a great deal. We see a 14-year-old struggling alone to preserve her equilibrium, to maintain her grades, to maintain both her integrity and her identity in the face of powerful peer pressure, to build relationships with adults beyond the parent-child bond. While considering what it means to be rejected or abandoned, Rainbow must also think about her homework and of how to obtain parental permission (with her mother gone) to attend sex education class. Rainbow is a concerned student; and unlike a young Alice Childress who resisted such topics and directives to write on them, Rainbow willingly writes papers on Black high achievers and receives high marks for them. But she recognizes clearly that knowing the "Accomplishments of Black People in America" or the history of "The Black Family in America" or about Black millionaires or celebrities or even about the lives of Black martyrs like Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers will not help ease her immediate problem of survival with her soul intact.

We are witnesses, watching Rainbow make the painful passage from child to adult. Her initiation is not easy; but, because Rainbow is perceptive beyond her years, her insights are both useful and keen. Rainbow knows, for instance, that though she is lonely, family "business" is never confided to friends or outsiders. The continual absences of her mother are linked to death. After a class discussion about death and saying goodbye to the dying, Rainbow makes this analogy: "When my mother is away if feel like death; but when she's back it's like life again." Rainbow must cope with her boyfriend Eljay's constant pleas for sex. He resurrects some old lines ("If you love me you'd be willin to give up somethin. What you savin it for?") to assault her position. Eventually, when her alienation from her peer group means confronting humiliation daily, Rainbow does waver and actually plans her first liaison. Fortunately, however, Rainbow discovers that her sense of self worth is not dependent on Eljay and thus, she is able to reexamine her sense of values and reinstate them at the core of her soul.

True, by taking her key and returning home alone to await Eljay, Rainbow has betrayed Miss Josie's trust. Yet having won a painful moral victory, Rainbow is willing to atone for this betrayal if Josephine is willing to listen and try to trust again. But emotionally battered by Harold's desertion—which she has denied and kept hidden—Josephine is unprepared or unable to hear about trust or truth from a child. In that accusatory manner the newly vindicated can adopt, Rainbow uncovers and somewhat painfully points to Josephine's own conceits and deceitfulness. Honest Josephine is not 50 but 57; she uses, kept hidden in a drawer, bleaching cream, false eye lashes, and hair dye; Harold Lamont is not assisting sick relatives as Josie has said but has left for another, younger, woman. Josephine then recognizes they have more in common that a simple "interim" relationship. Finally Josephine notices that Rainbow is not simply a difficult child but is an observant, maturing womanchild. And Rainbow learns to see Josephine as more than a perfect "role-model"—she is a decent middle-aged woman with her private vanities, dashed hopes, and heartaches, just like countless other women. It is an extraordinarily poignant moment when these two isolated individuals face each other honestly, each stripped of pretense or hostility. The reader unmoved is carved from stone.

But moving readers, and demonstrating that her characters are indeed human and not mere symbols, statistics, images, or stones, is clearly a part of Childress's multi-layered strategy, part of the function of her art.

And when we examine the novel at its second level, we see Childress being attentive not only to function but to the other considerations of the Black Aesthetic as well. If, for instance, the function of Black art is to accent racial identity—who we are and where we are going; or if it is to make myths and render the ordinary extraordinary—Childress achieves this "function" and yet accomplishes this in her own singular fashion. Unlike a Mildred Taylor or a Toni Cade Bambara, writers known for their creation of sassy or tough young female protagonists, in Rainbow Jordan Childress makes her heroine, and each of her other characters, walk the high wire in a solo balancing act, alone and unsteady until they learn first to reach inward for self-validation and strength, then outward to touch others who themselves are authentic and thus willing to reach out.

The usual or traditional community support structures typically illustrative of Afro-American life and culture play virtually no role in Rainbow. The Black church, a staple symbol in much Afro-American literature, is notable by its absence. In fact, Josephine's Quaker neighbor teaches Rainbow the Quaker concept of "centering down" rather than prayer to help face a problem. The strong nurturing community with neighbor helping neighbor, a recurring motif in much Afro-American literature, especially that set in the South, is also absent. Rather, Childress unabashedly depicts the divisive, splintered, often antagonistic communities which are, regretfully, a truism of contemporary urban living.

Rainbow's awkward family situation stands as ironic counterpoint to the dominant Afro-American literary tradition that paints a strong cohesive family, either nuclear or extended, as central element in the formation of character. Here we have a portrait of family disintegration, again an all too frequent truism of modern urban life. Authentic female bonding among peers, such as that which occurs in Toni Morrison's Sula (1973) or Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), is also missing. Of course, Rainbow and Josephine "bond" but 14 and 57 is hardly the same peer group. Instead, Rainbow painfully learns the wisdom of that deathless folk pronouncement, "Everybody who say they your friend, ain't." Intriguingly, the one remaining traditional symbol or cultural ritual which Childress permits is a very subtle bow to the blues. Both Rainbow and Josephine suffer from heartache; and heartaches are, as every mature reader knows, a staple of the blues. Even Kathie has heartaches, but she is essentially a "good time girl," another kind of staple blues figure. Heartaches, of course, don't last always and by novel's end, Rainbow and Josephine have hardened their will, left the "low-down" men in their lives behind, and walked away. They suffer still, but they've experienced the catharsis the blues afford.

Because of the skill with which they are invoked, both Rainbow (and certainly the name is weighted with obvious symbolic intent) and Josephine become, despite any intent to the contrary, symbols of survival. They are also powerful images of what it can mean to "hold fast" to one's dreams, as Langston Hughes has said, and to live with integrity and dignity. Childress's commitment to depicting the lives of people within the working-class and middle-class Black communities provides us with, as Trudier Harris says, a "sensitive readable book which entertains quietly and teaches without being overly didactic." Thus, the call for a "functional" art is satisfied at a variety of levels.

"Function" is probably the most significant cornerstone of the Black Aesthetic. The parallel calls for "collectivity" and "commitment" can be addressed summarily. The idea of art "emerging from" and "returning or speaking to the people" translates to a question of audience. Naturally, any novelist hopes that her work will have a large general audience capable of following both the broad sweeping moments in the text and its subtle nuances as well. Though Childress conceptualizes her books as theater pieces, particularly as she stages the settings and the "visual, staged scenes and live actions" ("A Candle"), the voices in the novel call loudly to a Black audience attuned to the inflections, rhythms, structural patterns, and nuances of urban Black folk speech. We see through the voice characters clearly identified with or emerging from a familiar Black experience. We see them operate and function almost totally within the confines of that experience. Childress accents the intraracial community; very little energy is expended on noting interracial tensions. Thus, the reader examines an enhanced segment of Black life with characters who function as guides to various components of the community Josie bridges the working class and the middle class; Kathie "represents" the bottom rung, the hand-to-mouth existence so many endure. Rainbow struggles to keep her feet on the right road; her aim, troubles not withstanding, is to march on to victory.

Committed or committing art calls for a commitment to revolution and change. That "directive" which grates so harshly on the celebrated freedom of the artist, is nonetheless imprinted on the thematic structure of the novel. The revolutions Childress speaks to, however, are revolutions of habit and heart and mind rather than violent large scale social revolutions. Her revolutionary call to arms is embodied in the dictum: each one, reach one, teach one. Rainbow and Josephine learn from each other; each also teaches the other something significant about facing life's complexities. Kathie is something of the "counter-revolutionary" character. She is a conservative reactionary who refuses to change, refuses to accept responsibility for her own life, preferring the worn illusion of female dependence on dominant men. Rainbow and Josephine survive because adversity has taught them resiliency and toughness. Theirs is a strength which emerges through the process of change, by a "revolution" if you will, in their approach to life. They will march on until the victory is won.

Consistently, just as Mari Evans demanded, Alice Childress in Rainbow Jordan speaks "truth to the people." The novel "talks sense" to us; it "frees" readers with any awareness at all to see the honesty, reason, love, courage and caring interwoven as part of its message. Coincidentally or not, in Rainbow Jordan Childress has redressed the Black Aesthetic and given it a daring new look with a vivid splash of contemporary color.