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NEWS & LETTERS, Janurary-February 2010
Traveling down Gloria Joseph's Glory Road
On Time and In Step: Reunion on the Glory Road by Gloria I. Joseph (Winds of Change Press, Christiansted, St. Croix Virgin Islands, 00820) is a difficult book to characterize. It is certainly fictional--a novel based on historic figures whose names will be recognized by ordinary, well-read people, especially those in both the Black and Women's Movements. But these historic figures are all living in the "hereafter" and engage in constant very alive dialogues with each other, discussing both the past and contemporary events with an energy that can become a trajectory to the future, for its readers.
Joseph has created a highly original and provocative work by following her story's two main characters, Sojourner Truth and Malcolm X, as they walk down Glory Road and meet up with a mind-boggling number of other celebrated world figures. It is not a "fast read" and cannot be skimmed. It is provocative because these characters argue and debate with each other all the way through the 266 pages of the work, on the philosophic questions that history has revealed.
A few examples will give some indication of what the reader has in store, and reveal the meaning of the distinctive names given to the various lodges where the characters are housed, and that Sojourner and Malcolm visit on their stroll. One can only imagine, for example, the intensity of a discussion on education, at the "Philosophers and Writers' Retreat," between W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, in which Sojourner enters and interjects a discussion of Amy Jacques Garvey and the importance of the role of women.
There is the discussion at the "Musicians Mansion" between Tupac Shakur and Mahalia Jackson, known fondly on Glory Road as the "odd couple," on the condemnation of Shakur's misogynous rapping vs. the possibility of setting gospel songs to a rap beat and bringing rap into a place in musical history.
One of the most important discussions takes place in "Caribbean Corners" and involves the tragic stories of Maurice Bishop in Grenada and Walter Rodney in Guyana. What deserves particular study here is the inclusion, as part of the Endnotes to this chapter, of the full pamphlet titled "Grenada: This Invasion Was Not Televised," written by Gloria I. Joseph and Johnnetta B. Cole at the time of the event in 1983.
There is no room in this review to look into all the other dwellings where the characters carry on their pursuits: from Ida B. Wells Tea Room, where she continues to hold forums and debates; to the Skies of the Native American Ghost Riders; or Gay Gardens; or Inventors' Enclave; or the Writers and Poets' Pavillion. Those titles can, however, provide a hint at the cover of this book, where the portraits are far from what you might expect to have been chosen: Mother Jones, Geronimo, Amelia Earhart and Babe Ruth.
"Why a portrait of Babe Ruth?" is fully explained in the chapter on the Athlete's Arena as a serious dialogue between him and Josh Gibson, widely known as the "Black Babe Ruth"--which Babe ends with the conclusion that "racism in sports still stinks to high heavens," and Josh's warning to him to "remember where we are." These pages are a testament to Joseph's extensive knowledge of sports, male and female.
Indeed, all of the topics and characters she tackles in this fascinating book provide an important picture of who Joseph is. The pages "About the Author" tell us important facts about her education, which goes well beyond her academic degrees to what she called her "truly meaningful education" that took her, from months to several years, in China, France, Southern Africa, Italy, Cuba, South Africa, Germany, and across the U.S. The text tells us about her deep knowledge of history, her openness to differing ideas, her creativity, her wonderful sense of humor; and her love of dress, color, food, of trees and flowers--in the detailed descriptions of all the characters and places she introduces to us.
Most of all we get to know the author through the contentious dialogues she "hears" and the principles she finds important to explain the history and philosophy she has discovered. It is why the last two essays, one on Sojourner Truth, the other on Malcolm X--after the two protagonists she has chosen to follow on their stroll down the Glory Road, have returned to their respective domains--are so important to study as the principles she has discovered for herself.
The essay on "Sojourner Truth: Archetypal Black Feminist" was written in 1990 as part of "Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afro American Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaissance."
In its penultimate paragraph, Joseph quotes from Raya Dunayevskaya--as "one of the handful of white scholars to criticize the feminist historical analysis of the women's rights movement"--who had stressed Sojourner as not only brave, but as Reason, that is, as an orator, a general, and a thinker, above all. Dunayevskaya's point, to Joseph, is that "there is no such thing as women's history that is not the actual history of humanity's struggle toward freedom."
Very early in the book's second chapter, Joseph had quoted this same passage from Dunayevskaya's Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution, but in a more complete form, as Raya's dialogue with South African Lillian Ngoyi on what an "all-people's movement" would mean for today. The full quote is: "If you want to have a successful historical movement for total liberation it must involve all people. There is no such thing as Black history that is not also white history. There is no such thing as women's history that is not the actual history of humanity's struggle toward freedom."
That principle is what underlies much of what Gloria Joseph has created in this work. It is truly a thought-provoking journey that needs to be read widely by all who want to be part of that struggle.
--Olga Domanski
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