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1 Eudora Welty, Powerhouse 1941 Powerhouse Studies in English and American Literature, No. 46, March by the Engish Literary Society of Japan Women s University

2 58 I. Fats Waller, Prenshaw 25 Suzanne Marrs 10 Waller s performance had enhanced her understanding of the plight of African Americans in the segregated South, and Welty created her own work of art to express that understanding 5 6. There is no one in the world like him. You can t tell what he is. Negro man? he looks more Asiatic, monkey, Jewish, Babylonian, Peruvian, fanatic, devil. He has pale gray eyes, heavy lids, maybe horny like lizard s, but big glowing eyes when they re open. He has African feet of the greatest size, stomping, both together, on each side of the pedals. 131

You can t tell what he is. Negro man? he looks more Asiatic, monkey, Jewish, Babylonian, Peruvian, fanatic, devil.

3 59 monkey devil Asiatic Jewish Babylonian Peruvian Powerhouse and His Tasmanian 131 Everybody just stands around the band and watches Powerhouse. Sometimes they steal glances at one another, as if to say, Of course, you know how it is with them Negroes band leaders they would play the same way, giving all they ve got, for an audience of one.... When somebody, no matter who, gives everything, it makes people feel ashamed for him. 133 giving all they ve got, for an audience of one 133 feel ashamed 133 Kenneth Bearden Waller like most early blues and jazz performers who were black, had to

way, giving all they ve got, for an audience of one.... When somebody, no matter who, gives everything, it makes people feel ashamed for him.

4 60 contend with financial concerns. Racial attitudes often prevented them from gaining recognition for their work, and many of their songs were sold to white artists who then claimed them as their own. 69 giving all they ve got 133 sold 1930 W E B W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903 double-consciousness 2

and many of their songs were sold to white artists who then claimed them as their

5 61 Lewis Hyde T rickster is a boundary-crosser 7. Every group has its edge, its sense of in and out, and trickster is always there, at the gate of the city and the gates of life, making sure there is

6 62 commerce. He also attends the internal boundaries by which groups articulate their social life. We constantly distinguish right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction.... Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox. 7 II. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 1950 The Signifying Monkey, 1988

and dead and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction.

7 63 Signifyin g By supplanting the received term s associated concept, the black vernacular tradition created a homonymic pun of the profoundest sort, thereby marking its sense of difference from the rest of the English community of speakers. Their complex act of language Signifies upon both formal language use and its conventions, conventions established, at least officially, by middle-class white people monkey 131 He has African feet of the greatest size, stomping both together, on each side of the pedals 131 I t is highly probable that Welty ran across this African American

Their complex act of language Signifies upon both formal language use and its conventions, conventions established, at least officially, by

8 64 trickster legend while working with the WPA in black communities 71 Uranus Knockwood The narrator leaves the specific spelling of Uranus to our imagination. How about urinous, your anus, ewe anus, or you re an ass? With such puns on the first name in mind, we might even venture to play with Knockwood, not in the sense of fear of Nemesis s vengeance Knock on wood but rather of anal sex, with one s wood knocking at another s backdoor. Powerhouse s men are playing on the sound of the words in their lingo. Thornton 22 Uranus Knockwood OED wood peckerwood knockwood

With such puns on the first name in mind, we might even venture to play with Knockwood, not in the sense of fear of Nemesis s vengeance Knock

9 65 Uranus Uranus Gaea 18 Gypsy Gypsy Powerhouse s identification of Uranus Knockwood with a song stealer as well as a wife stealer He takes our wives when we gone indicates that Gypsy is not merely Powerhouse s wife. Rather, Gypsy symbolizes

well as a wife stealer He takes our wives when we gone

10 66 his music or, more exactly, African Americans hard-won beloved treasure, jazz. Thornton 18 Signifyin g Gypsy a member of traveling people with dark skin and hair, traditionally living by itinerant trade and fortune telling OED with dark skin Egyptian gipcyan The Egyptians put slave drivers over them Israelites to crush their spirits with hard labor.... They made them work on their building projects and in their fields, and they had no pity on them Exod. 1: Y our wife Gypsy is dead 133 Her brains all

fortune telling OED with dark skin Egyptian gipcyan The Egyptians put slave drivers over them Israelites to crush their spirits

11 67 over the world 137 Brains and insides everywhere 137 All the watching Negroes stir in their delight 137 Pagan Love Song 3 4 drenching rain 135 a hundred dark, ragged, silent 135 delighted

12 68 Somebody loves me! Somebody loves me, I wonder who! His mouth gets to be nothing but a volcano. I wonder who! Maybe Maybe... He pulls back his spread fingers, and looks out upon the place where he is. A vast, impersonal and yet furious grimace transfigures his wet face. Maybe it s you! 141 I wonder who Maybe... Maybe it s you furious grimace transfigure 70

..... Maybe... He pulls back his spread fingers, and looks out upon the place where he is.

13 69 20 Dean Flower While Mississippi politics enraged and sickened her, so did New Yorkers who assumed all Southerners were racists. As her fame increased so did the expectation that she represent the South. Clearly she hated the politics of that, but the deeper pressures were social and they required loyalty to her place. 332 Powerhouse Bearden, Kenneth. Monkeying Around: Welty s Powerhouse, Blues-Jazz, and the Signifying Connection. Southern Literary Journal 31, 2 Spring 1999 :

14 70 DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover Publications, Flower, Dean. Eudora Welty and Racism. The Hudson Review 60, 2 Summer 2007 : Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes This World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Marrs, Suzanne. Eudora Welty: The Liberal Imagination and Mississippi Politics. The Mississippi Quarterly April 2009 : Prenshaw, Peggy Whitman, ed. Conversation with Eudora Welty. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, Thornton, Naoko Fuwa. Strange Felicity: Eudora Welty s Subtexts on Fiction and Society. Wesport, CT: Praeger, Welty, Eudora. Powerhouse. Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

Eudora Welty: The Liberal Imagination and Mississippi Politics. The Mississippi Quarterly April 2009 : 5 11. Prenshaw, Peggy Whitman, ed. Conversation with Eudora Welty.

2 Brer Rabbit =Brother Rabbit John Jack

2 Brer Rabbit =Brother Rabbit John Jack The Negro is determined to laugh even if he has to laugh at his own expense.... His world is dissolved in laughter. Zora Neale Hurston, Folklore and Music 1 Folklore and Music, Library of America, Mules