Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Éva Miklódy: Redefining the "Other ": Race, Gender, Class, and Violence in Gloria Nay lor's Bailey's Café

ÉVA MIKLÓDY "REDEFINING THE "OTHER": RACE, GENDER, CLASS, AND VIOLENCE IN GLORIA NAYLOR'S BAILEY'S CAFE" What is most striking about Bailey's Café (1992), Gloria Naylor's fourth and latest novel, is its narrative structure which recreates the form of the traditional blues in an inventive and masterful way. Her book is, however, not only a bravura of form, but a highly lyrical rendition of human suffering and desperation. It is an unquestionable fact, though, that Naylor's adaptation of the form and content of the blues enables her to simultaneously represent extraordinary human pain and misery in extreme proportions and, to alleviate the despair and grief inherent in this theme with the "melody" of her blues, that is to say, the lyricism of her expression. Put differently, her novel accomplishes what Ralph Ellison suggests about the blues, that is, that it "keep[s] the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience in one's aching consciousness, [it] fmger[s] its jagged grain, and transcend[s] it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism" and it creates "autobiographical chronicle[s] of personal catastrophy expressed lyrically" as well (qtd. in Murray 130). Accordingly, Bailey's Café centers on loneliness, alienation, uprootedness, and lovelessness as experienced by the various characters of the book. The novel's multivocal blues structure is comprised of a series of narratives told from the specific points of view of these characters, who frequent Bailey's café, which functions in a "clean, well-lighted place" fashion for society's "waste," the wretched of the earth, who "fall through the cracks of the upswings and downswings" (Bailey's 41). At this point, it seems important to note Naylor's obvious interest in places 57