Delaney Collins
Dr. Tuttle
ENG326
10/29/20
Modalities of Madness and Racism
Systemic and structural racism are common themes in 20th century literature. However, in August Wilson’s play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Hisaye Yamamoto’s short story, “The Legend of Miss Sasagawara”, the writers specifically rendered the themes of systemic and structural racism through their representations of characters experiencing madness— or, a state of mental illness—who simultaneously exist in racially oppressive social structures. Specifically, In Yamamoto’s short story the author chose to depict the character named Miss Mari Sasagawara: a former ballerina in her late thirties— rumored to have been treated at a “state institution”—imprisoned in a Japanese Internment camp (99, 112). In Wilson’s Play, the writer chose to depict the character Levee: a young black man working as a trumpet player in Chicago in 1927— when segregation of people of color and white individuals was a societal expectation— who compulsively stabs his bandmate (xv, 23, 110-11). While Yamamoto and Wilson both utilized characters experiencing mental illness to demonstrate the detrimental internalization of systemic racism, the two authors differentiate their modalities through their specific depictions of their characters identities and their behavior, and the recount of their trauma.
Hisaye Yamamoto’s depiction of Mari’ smadness in “The Legend of Miss Sasagawara” includes the narrator’s descriptions of gossip in the internment camp regarding Mari’s ‘madness’ leading to her treatment at a “state institution” (112). Specifically, the narrator includes a rumor— which is later corroborated by the narrator’s own experience— that Mari refused to shower with other people in the washroom. The narrator states that she found Mari in the shower “Once… past midnight… but she turned her back to [her] and did not answer [her] surprised hello.” (Yamamoto, 102). However, it is ultimately suggested that the antecedent to Mari’s eventual institutionalization was her suspected stalking of the young boys who lived across the street from her (Yamamoto, 113-14). Mari’s behavior is later rationalized through Yamamoto’s inclusion of the narrator’s interpretation of Maris poetry— which elucidates the mental and emotional suffering that internment inflicted on Mari (115). Specifically, the poem implies that Mari’s father, as a buddhist priest, was able to find the freedom of enlightenment in internment causing him to be “…blind to the human passions rising, subsiding, and again rising, perhaps in anguished silence, within the selfsame room…”— which were, presumably those of Mari (115). The interpretation of Mari’s poem provides a near first-person recount of her trauma, clarifying that she was imprisoned and oppressed by both the physical institution of the camp itself and the neglect of her father and, consequently, his faith to recognize her pain. Yamamoto’s choice to include this context provides clarity to the true antecedent to Mari’s madness: the systemic racism leading to her oppression.
Conversely, August Wilson’s descriptions of Levee’s madness include verbal and physical acts of violence.Specifically, Levee’s final act of violence and madness is his stabbing of his bandmate, Toledo, to death (Wilson 110). Levee is driven to rage after Toledo steps on his new shoes— which were previously the target of some banter regarding their representation of race and class and ultimately freedom— and while Toledo’s back is turned, he compulsively stabs Toledo (Wilson 39-41, 110). After he recognizes the consequence of his action, Levee says “He… he stepped on my shoe. He did…” still unable to fully believe Toledo is dead (Wilson 110). Levee’s irrational and compulsive violence is pre-contextualized by the first person recount of his own trauma, where he was forced to witness his mother as she was raped by a gang of white men at the age of eight while his father was away (Wilson 68-70). After the event, Levee recounts his father’s determination to murder the white men (Wilson 70). Through Levee’s first person recount of his trauma, it’s clear that he experienced an act of blatant racism, and found the only reparation for this experience was violence. Therefore, Levee’s trauma rationalizes act of madness, as Toledo was threatening his freedom by stepping on his shoes, which Levee equalized through a compulsive act of murder. Wilson’s inclusion of Levee’s trauma clarifies that it was not Toledo stepping on levee’s shoes that was the antecedent to his madness, but rather his traumatic experience associated with acts of racism, that was the antecedent to his madness.
In both stories, “The Legend of Miss. Sasagawara” and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, there are characters that are depicted as ‘mad’ or mentally ill, whose actions are provided context by the societal context of racial oppression. Wilson and Yamamoto’s uses of differing modalities to represent the effects of systemic racism ultimately implicate their modern interpretation. Yamamoto’s depiction of the character of Mari indicates how the irrational behavior of those who are oppressed, can be rationalized through the first person recount of trauma— as Mari’s stalking and isolation was by her poem. Arguably, Wilson’s depiction of the character Levee is more pertinent to modern politics as Levee symbolizes the epithet afforded by society to angry men who are also black: that they are also violent. While Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom was written in 1984, and takes place in 1927, the maturation of Levee’s internalized racism into the actualization of murder demonstrates the self-fulfilling prophecy— that existing as a black person is equivalent to an act of violence— that young black men consistently have to work against in today’s society. This societal prejudice rationalizes the tragic epidemic of racially stratified police brutality, leading to the disproportionate murder of young black men by law enforcement and the concurrent lack of jurisprudence afforded to the families of the victims.
Works Cited
Wilson, August. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: A Play in Two Acts. New American Library, 1985.Yamamoto, Hisaye. “The Legend of Miss Sasagawara.” The Kenyon Review, vol. 12, no. 1, 1950, pp. 99-115. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4333124.
