speaking in tongues
by Douglas Messerli
Fran Ross Oreo
(New York: Greyfalcon House, 1974); reprinted with a Foreword by Harryette
Mullen (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000)
I recently reread Fran Ross's
wonderful satire, Oreo, and enjoyed it
even more than my original encounter. I first heard about this title at the
Page Mothers Conference at the University of California, San Diego, in March of
1999, organized by Fanny Howe and Rae Armantrout. There Harryette Mullen spoke
of the book which she had accidently come upon, noting, as she does in the
Foreword to this new printing, that the work failed to "find its
audience,"
“possibly because in the process of
commingling two ghettoized vernaculars, African American and Yiddish, the novel
also draws on material that both black and Jewish readers might find offensive,
perplexing, or incomprehensible. Ross's double-edged satire includes a Jewish
immigrant who retains a voodoo consultant Dr. Macumba; a reverse-discrimination
tale of an all-black suburb where a local ordinance is selectively enforced to keep
to keep white people from moving into the neighborhood; a black radio
producer's script of an advertisement for Passover
TV dinners; ...and a fight in which
Oreo beats a predatory pimp to a pulp while wearing only a pair of sandals, a
brassiere, and a mezuzah.”
It sounded like the perfect kind of book for Sun & Moon or Green
Integer, and soon after, I found a copy of the original and devoured it;
discovering the book's editor was listed in the New York telephone directory, I
began the slower process of trying to obtain the rights; unknown to me, Harryette
had already been in touch with Northeastern University Press, and before I was
even able to make a formal offer, the book was published in their Library of
Black Literature, an appropriate place.
I cannot believe, however, that Oreo
has yet found a wide readership, ten years later. Ross' bawdy take on American
life features a half Black, half Jewish heroine who like a comic-book character
successfully overcomes thousands of obstacles—lack of money, prejudice and
hatred, sexism and abuse, and just plain ignorance—that face her upon her voyage
to discover her identity. Oreo's greatest defense is what she calls WIT (the
Way of the Interstitial Thrust), on the surface of the story a kind of mix of
jiu-jitsu, karate, kung-fun and numerous other body moves, but in the work's
poetic truth, represents her ability to speak, parody, imitate, twist, mock,
and translate almost any form of language she encounters. And it is this verbal
wit that stands at the center of this book.
Indeed, Ross' jumps, splices, cuts, fissures, and all out leaps of
language might remind one the slightly later experiments of
"language" writing. Like that poetry, the reader has sometimes to
make his or her own associations and choices of meaning in order to
successfully maneuver Ross' pages. But the experience is always worth the trip:
Oreo on the subway
She was too preoccupied to observe noses, mouths, and shoes
and award prizes.
She did overhear someone say
impatiently, "No, no, Mondrian's the lines, the
boxes. Modigliani's the long
necks."
And: "She a Jew's poker. Take
care the sinnygoge fo' 'em on Sat'd'ys."
This gave her an idea whose
ramifications she considered during the ride.
Distractedly, she doodled on her clue
list. Her basic doodles were silhouettes
of men facing left and five-lobed
leaves. Her subconscious view of her father as
a mystery man? A pointless,
quinquefoliolate gesture to the Star of David? No.
Silhouettes and leaves were what she
drew best. Next to her profiles and palmates,
she made a line of scythelike question
marks. Next to that, she sketched an aerial
view of a cloverleaf highway, her
gunmetal-gray divisions making a cloisonné of
the ground. Then with offhand but
decisive sweeps, she crossed "Kicks,"
"Pretzel,"
"Fitting," "Down by the river," and "Temple" off
her list.
This event occurs after Oreo has
described her hilarious life in Philadelphia for half the book and gone off to
find her father, bedding down for the night in Central Park near a family of
dog food-eating midgets, and battling it out with a pissed-off pimp and his
long-hung monster sex fiend, Kirk.
The list she refers to above are some of the clues her father has given
her to find him, and in her quirky searches, she somewhat reminds one of a Paul
Auster-like detective, settling on chance.
Ultimately she encounters him briefly just before his accidental death
(an accident which she and a dog precipitates); in that short meeting,
moreover, she discovers he has left something for her, the clue of which is
hidden in one of her father's books.
Daring fate, Oreo sneaks back into his house, pretending to be a
caretaker for his current wife's children. There she discovers the clue,
unravels it, and collects her heritage: her father's sperm kept in a nearby
clinic.
Sperm? This woman of wit has used her abilities to speak in tongues not
only to overcome obstacles but, like some Amazon warrior, has been able to wrest
reproduction from male dominance; by book's end, she is in control of the
future, not only her own future but the possible future of others as she
ponders whether to sell her inheritance to her bigoted Jewish grandfather or to
destroy the stuff.
The chapter closes with her whispering to herself: Nemo me impune lacessit (No one attacks me with impunity). Like
Theseus, Oreo has finally won her throne, becoming the King-Queen of her empire.
Seldom have we witnessed such a powerful figure in American fiction, and none
them has been as funny.
Los Angeles, February 12, 2010
Reprinted from American Cultural Treasures (February 2010).
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