Rewriting

Polytropic Identities

in the Postmodern African American Novel

Chapter V

“Fiction-Made Characters”

Parodying Stereotypes in Ishmael Reed’s

Flight to Canada

“Ascent” vs. “Immersion:” Whose Canada?

The types of the black pacifist and the rebellious mulatto discussed in the previous sections can be associated with what Robert Stepto calls the narrative of ascent and the narrative of immersion. On the one hand, the self-sacrificing black corresponds to the narrative of immersion that is a “ritualized journey into a symbolic South, which is the most oppressive environment.” In this place, “a hero or heroine must be willing to forsake high individualized mobility in the narrative’s least oppressive social structure for a posture of relative stasis in the most oppressive environment, a loss that is only occasionally assuaged by the newfound balms of group identity” (Stepto 1979 a, 167). On the other hand, the self-assertive mulatto corresponds to the narrative of ascent, which is focused on the journey from an enslaved South to a liberating North. The questing figure is “increasingly literate,” and at the end of the narrative, he or she is “situated in the least oppressive social structure afforded by the world of the narrative” (Stepto 1979 a, 167).

These “counterpointing rituals” of ascent and immersion are skillfully revised by Reed who focuses on Canada as a central topographic symbol.⁴⁶ Reed’s flight therefore makes specific reference to the nineteenth century narratives of ascent that relate the protagonist’s pursuit of freedom with idyllic images of Canada. In nineteenth century texts, Canada epitomizes the nostalgic land of freedom, so much cherished by Stowe’s and Brown’s characters.

An antipode of America, the Canadian utopia reflectively augments the racism of the American society. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Eliza’s rhetorical question—“Is it very far off, is Canada?” (91)—points to Canada as a hard-to-reach reality. Her husband, George Harris also advocates Canada’s and America’s antithetic locations: “I don’t want anything of your country, except to be let alone,—to go peacefully out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey” (118). In the same line, for Brown’s George, Canada is a place where he can work undisturbed, while also continuing his education, so that his freedom could prompt the reconstruction of his manhood.

The idea of flight to Canada can be traced back to Douglass’ three autobiographies (written in 1845, 1855, and 1881). During his enslavement, Douglass dreams about Canada as a ubiquitous free land, where only wild geese can fly. Later, Douglass escapes via the underground railroad in 1838 and goes to New York, England, and later Canada. Physically free, yet legally bound, Douglass experiences the tragic condition of being still chased by his owner.

In depicting Raven Quickskill, Reed relies on Douglass’ flight, his repeated border crossing, and his endangered liberty. Like Douglass, Raven is never secure after escaping to the North, as he is still chased by the Nebraska tracers sent by his master. Raven’s recurring departures and returns to his master’s plantation, his explicit details concerning his escape serve as a means of filling the gaps of Douglass’ text. While remembering Douglass’ cautious refusal to disclose the details of his escape, we hear Reed’s farcical laughter that lays stress on such details.

The arch-theme of Canada is de-fetishized in Reed’s novel. Fluctuating from utopia to dystopia, Canada is an exilic land continuously re-shaped and mis-shaped,⁴⁷ as in Quickskill’s poem, “Flight to Canada:”

Dear Massa Swille:

What it was?

I have done my Liza leap

& am safe in the arms

of Canada, so

Ain’t no use your Slave

Catchers waitin on me

At Trailways

I won’t be there

I flew in non-stop

Jumbo jet this A. M. (3).

 Since fact and fiction continuously intermingle, the poem becomes Raven’s manumitting document that makes possible his textual escape.⁴⁸ Flight to Canada can be understood ad literam as a flight by plane, in a true narrative of ascent.⁴⁹ Ironically, in the novel’s scenario, Raven’s poem is a prelude that prompts his later Canadian liberation, but also a postlude that hints at his later return. The poem serves accordingly as a frame within a frame, a mise en abyme that reverberates with the message of the whole novel and creatively juxtaposes temporal levels: it speaks about Raven’s departures and returns, about his stealing from his master with the benumbed assistance of his mistress, and about Raven’s filial relationship with his white master.

Canada thus entails both positive and negative cliches. It is optimistically seen as a haven for runaway slaves that anachronistically has all the attributes of modern technology, containing “the plentiful supply of gasoline, the cheap, clean hotel rooms that could be had in Toronto and Montreal; the colorful Eskimo sculpture that could be bought in the marketplace, the restaurants specializing in lobster; the scuba diving, the deep-sea fishing” (61). On the flip side, Canada is a terrifying nowhere, a disheartening image fabricated by white masters in order to prevent their slaves from running away. For instance, Mammy Barracuda is the spokesman who disseminates a negative notion of Canada in her discourse that includes images of a black holocaust similar to the Jewish one: “As for Canada, she said, they skin niggers up there and makes lampshades and soapdishes out of them, and it’s more barbarous in Toronto than in darkest Africa, a place where we come from” (57).

In a transnational scenario, Canada turns into a mere version of America and reproduces the same logic of capitalism, within which the past racism coexists with the present consumerism. Canada is just an American outpost, where “Americans control fifty-five percent of sales of manufactured goods and make sixty-three percent of the profits” (160-61). Far from being a “Peaceable Kingdom,” Canada reproduces America’s propensity toward racial segregation and inequality, its annihilation of a multicultural society. Carpenter, a free black man, warns Raven and Quaw Quaw:

Man, they got a group up here called the Western Guard, make the Klan look like statesmen. Vigilantes harass fugitive slaves, and the slaves have to send their children to schools where their presence is subject to catcalls and harassment. Don’t go any farther, especially with her. They beat up Chinamen and Pakastani in the streets. West Indians they shoot (160).

In the cyclical journey of his anti-quest, Raven returns to the States, to the South that is reevaluated as a land of affluence. This nostalgic attraction to a Southern idyllic life points to a return to a “national consciousness grounded in the local” (Levecq 2002, 281). The Southern plantation thus becomes the ultimate image of a utopian Canada, where the past and present coexist in a collage. Uncle Robin concedes: “These rolling hills. Mammy singing spirituals in the morning before them good old biscuits. Watching ‘Sleepy Time Down South’ on the Late Show” (19). Reed proposes a reversed image of the Southern plantation, a world turned upside down, in which the slave acts the master, and the master exits the stage through death. Moreover, the Southern plantation becomes a model to be transplanted in Canada, as the mistress gets a job in a Toronto museum, where her task is to create “a replica of a Virginia plantation” (172).

“Strange history. Complicated, too” we can finally say with Reed (Flight 8). As Flight to Canada ends with Raven’s departure from Canada and his return to the South, the last sentence in the novel—“Raven is back!”—has a double scriptural meaning. It points to Raven’s mission after his return to rewrite Robin’s story, so that the story of a black man is to be narrated by another black man. It also rewrites nineteenth century narratives of ascent, in which the hero does not come back to the South. In Stowe’s book, George goes to Canada, and later to Africa; in his turn, Brown’s protagonist leaves for Canada, and later for France.⁵⁰ In Reed’s novel, a narrative of ascent is turned into a narrative of immersion, in which this recurrent return to the South may designate the preservation of the Southern mentality after slavery, but also a possible revision of the South grounded in the rewriting of the local slave (hi)stories.

Ultimately, Reed’s narrative freedom is as much at stake as his characters’ personal deliverance. Flight to Canada’s polyphonic discourse parodies standardized versions of stereotypical characters by offering “a zone of contact” with his precursors’ style (Bakhtin 1981, 39).⁵¹ He thus draws attention to the permeable nature of his characters’ discourse, to the way in which former meanings can be liberated through reexamination. Reed’s overlapping of temporal aspects—from the nineteenth century to nowadays—highlights the actual significance of historical events, their crucial consequences for the contemporary reader.

NOTES