Honors Program Distinguished Speaker Series
New
York State University’s professor of English Arthur Flowers is a self-proclaimed
"literary hoodoo man." As he told the audience in LaCorte Hall, he considers
himself part of two literary traditions - the Western written tradition and
the African oral tradition.
"Hoodoo," explained Flowers, is not the same thing as "voodoo." It incorporates aspects of Catholicism and the Fon religion from Africa, a spiritual bridge between beliefs that arose when Africans were forced to become slaves in America and found different religious rites thrust upon them.
Though religion was suppressed, culture and spiritual tradition surpassed and evolved into the magic of hoodoo. Flowers says he sees each of his books as a spell, trying to work a spell on the future, a spell on reality.
Flowers read from his novel, Another Good Loving Blues. The main character of the book, Lucas Bodeen, is a blues man. Flowers is a blues singer as well. He weaves the blues throughout his novel, which the narrator describes as "a fine old delta tale about a mad blues piano player and an Arkansan conjure woman."
How
Flowers became interested in the blues is a bit astonishing. Flowers, who
was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, served in the Vietnam War. Whenever
people found out he was from Memphis, they always asked him about the blues.
Flowers did not know about the blues because, as he says, the popularity of
the blues took a hiatus during his youth.
When Flowers moved to New York to pursue his career as a novelist, he began working with performance poets. "As I grew as a novelist, I started getting into the African spirit of the Delta," he says. He began researching Hoodoo and the blues, discovering that he was from a Hoodoo family. As he became more involved with his studies, he became an activist.
A friend convinced Flowers to perform one day and a review of the performance made mention of the appearance by a "Memphis Blues Man." Though a bit surprised by the title, Flowers got into the role and began doing the blues with his readings.
According to Flowers, writing a novel as an African American requires a dual sensibility. There is a need to immerse the European writing style. Yet at the same time, he says, one must complicate the language in order to match the culture. Blues novels, jazz novels and hip-hop novels are all attempts to bring the African vernacular to literature.
Flowers’ next novel, Mojo Rising, will be released in February 2001.
- E.E.
