A University Classroom Writing Project
Edited by Shelley Ingram, Kyrsten Householder, Oakley Montgomery, and Cheylon Woods
With contributions by Elayna Diaz Del Valle, M. Cade Harrison, Kourtney Milson, M. Tanner Powell, May Prather,* McKenzie Spears, and Elizabeth Veazy (*pseudonym)
Week 1
Memory, Place, Community
Oakley: The first line in “Remembering Randall: A Written Roundtable” stood out to me. …
Shortly after Randall Kenan passed away in August of 2020, I reached out to those whom he loved and who loved him. We created a community of sorrow and light that ultimately culminated in the series of tributes below. We offer them in hopes that those whom Randall touched might find their grief comforted—even remotely—by the sharing of the burden of his loss.—James A. Crank, “Remembering Randall”
May: Someone that can make everyone feel important to them has to be a beautiful person; it’s much easier to pick and choose the type of people you want to be around.
Kyrsten: This concept of community and unity seems important to both Kenan and the people he surrounded himself with. Not only are we seeing that he saw the people in his life as important, but also that those people hold him in high regard. I am thinking of the LGBTQIA+ community, and how that is part of Kenan himself.
Cheylon: There is something about the South and its impact on its artists that is really felt in the memorials. …
Cade: Randall Kenan’s greatest accomplishment – an accolade not claimed lightly, in light of his reputation – might reside not within the pages of his books, but the hearts of those who read them. …
- James A. Crank, Ch. 1 of Understanding Randall Kenan (2019)
- “Remembering Randall” Written Roundtable, Mississippi Quarterly 73.3 (2020)
- Tom Rankin, “Front Porch: The Imaginary South”
Week 2
On Birds, Freedom, and Death
Oakley: . . . Horace mentions that he wants to live, “not as a tortured human, but as a bird free to swoop and dive, to dip and swerve over the cornfields and tobacco patches he slaved in for what already seemed decades to his sixteen years. No longer would he be bound by human laws and human rules that he had constantly tripped over and frowned at” (12). Being a bird would give him the opportunity to separate himself from the frivolous laws, rules, and expectations of a human being. He is expected to act a certain way and is told by a preacher that liking men is wrong and he shouldn’t give into those feelings. By becoming a bird, I believe he thinks he will have the ability to get away from a life no one in his town approves of. He can fly away and go wherever he wants. …
Family and Identity
Cade: … a theme common in queer communities: the idea of the “chosen family.” Oftentimes, queer people are not accepted by their biological families, or even their friends upon coming out, and the idea of a chosen family becomes a huge comfort. I like to think the exploration of these themes in his books brought a lot of comfort and familiarity to LGBTQ+ readers.
Difference and Genre
Kyrsten: Noticing the references to Marvel comics, Lord of the Rings, possibly Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars/Trek, Stargate, is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. The fantasy and sci fi community both in the ’80s and still today has major white gatekeeping. The backlash of introducing black characters in Star Wars and the new LOTR series has been wild. So, I think it is interesting that a queer black teen is absolutely obsessed with these things. I think it makes perfect sense in terms of how speculative fiction can create that space of safety for marginalized people, but it is also inherently a space that actively tries to push out POC and queer characters from what cis, hetero, white “fans” think it should be. …
- Omari Weekes and Elias Rodriques, “A Close Reading of Randall Kenan …” Literary Hub 16 Sept. 2020
- Begin A Visitation of Spirits (1989)
Ghosts and Trauma
Cheylon: … Thinking about the impact trauma can have on people and communities, how it impacts growth, both communally and personally, thinking about the continual impact of the plantation system on the economy and rural communities to this day, the idea that “ghosts of those times are stubborn” (10) is clearly true …
Oakley: … Sometimes the ghosts of our past go away, sometimes they are so submerged that we can no longer remember them, and sometimes they follow us like a shadow. I think that Horace’s ghosts follow him around like a shadow and eventually develop into a demon attempting to possess him. …
Week 3
More On Birds
Professor Ingram: Does Horace become a bird?
Tanner: Horace genuinely expected his deal with the demon to come true. …
Cade: It’s honestly hard to say truly, but I think that Horace’s view of the bird transformation is indicative of the way he copes with his problems generally. …
Kyrsten: … it is interesting to think about whether or not Horace is actually possessed by a demon or is imagining this demonic possession. …
Cheylon: What is more important: if the possession is “real” or if it was real to Horace? …
Oakley: Jimmy says, “You’re too intelligent, Horace, to fall for that crap. It’s a copout” (253). Not only is he dismissing Horace’s belief of possession, but he is kind of belittling what he believes in rather than attempting to coax him from it. …
Cade: … How do we, especially when clouded by our own beliefs and experiences, come to deal with other people’s feelings, especially those which do not align with said beliefs? I don’t think it’s Jimmy’s goal to dismiss him, but rather the impossibility of understanding the depth of Horace’s situation due to Jimmy’s limited perspective. I find that a lot of the novel is about this, the fact that our pretenses and personal beliefs (especially religious ones) are effectively a barrier between people.
- Finish A Visitation of Spirits
- Brandon Costello, “Randall Kenan Beyond the Final Frontier: Science Fiction, Superheroes, and the South in A Visitation of Spirits,” Southern Literary Journal 43.1 (2010)
- Robert McRuer, “A Visitation of Difference: Randall Kenan and Black Queer Theory,” Journal of Homosexuality 26 (1993)
Jimmy as Character, Jimmy as Horace
Kyrsten: What do you all think about the duality of Jimmy and Horace’s character? …
Oakley: This makes me think of McRuer’s discussion in “A Visitation of Difference.” He suggests that although the various communities Horace is a part of have the “presence of sameness,” they are ultimately not comfortable with “difference.” With his family Horace is black but not gay, and Jimmy is coming from that same family, so what is Jimmy’s identity within the family?…
Cheylon: … I am thinking about how all the Cross men are described in the book. Strong, steadfast, community-building, patriarchs . . . Jimmy and Horace were none of those things. …
Cade: To me, Jimmy seemed so unrealized. Not as a writing flaw, but as a character trait. …
May: The hurt and pain could be felt in the words. Jimmy has also been through a lot, but his dependence on pleasing others overshadows who he is or ever finding out who he really wanted to be. …
Form in the Novel
Oakley: [The scenes within the novel written in dramatic form, with stage directions and dialogue] are only included in Jimmy’s confessions, and I think they show us that Jimmy is playing these scenes over and over again in his head, possibly because of the guilt he feels in how certain parts of Horace’s life played out. Is it possible Jimmy wishes these moments would have played out differently? Is it possible that these scenes are different from what actually happened? When someone is watching a play, there is no interaction between the audience and the actors. Jimmy cannot take back or undo any part of his life; he doesn’t have a second chance to change the outcome of his life with Horace, his family, his wife.
Kyrsten: …These mini-plays have me questioning Jimmy’s motivation in using that method of remembrance. Jimmy is the one that is alive, not Horace, so why does he leave so much out of the telling. No, Jimmy can’t take back what he did, but he can choose to relate all of the facts and he doesn’t, and that I think is something that is important about his sections of the story. . . . .
Week 4
Transformation and Speculative Fiction
Cheylon: … The continuation of the conversation regarding the soul after death is an interesting way to connect the two works and begin Let the Dead Bury their Dead. Kenan does an amazing job of infusing science fiction elements into “mundane” living of rural southern blackness outside of the better-known tropes of hoodoo or voodoo. …
Kyrsten: I think this is a really fascinating thing to bring up, as I think it aligns with the interview we were asked to listen to for this week. As far as I am aware, Kenan is not viewed as a sci fi writer, but I really like how he infuses his interests in speculative fiction within his stories of Black rural life. There is an almost melding of the genres, where we can view this rural life as alien in and of itself, as something different from the everyday that people are accustomed to in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries (more specifically the kind of suburban life that people associate with American living). And I feel that his interview shows us that even as he shifted genre for his writing aspirations, he stated himself that he didn’t want to give up all things speculative, despite the seemingly stark contrast in telling these rural Southern stories. …
- Read Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, through “This Far; Or, A Body in Motion”
- “Writer Randall Kenan,” Fresh Air with Terry Gross, NPR 1 June 1992
“The Strange and Tragic Ballad of Mabel Pearsall”
Kourtney: I feel as if Mabel’s brain is a song that is on constant repeat. Each verse, lyric playing louder than the time before. Those constant sounds makes it hard for her to grasp reality and leaves her very uneasy. She overcompensated for everyone but herself, and in the end, it ended the life of a baby. I really like this short story because it was chaotic, but it was like within those lines I could feel her screaming for help.
“The Origin of Whales”
Kourtney: In all of the stories … Kenan both highlights and mocks the community as a whole. The community has problems that they think are “not of God,” such as homosexuality, adultery, incest, and murder. Hence the title, Let the Dead Bury their Dead, a biblical line but also a literal one. Tims Creek is Kenan’s home, but it is also a burial ground that is rooted in oppressive Christian values.
Kyrsten: [“The Origin of Whales”] is meant to show the blending of the past and present in a subtle way. Perhaps show the ways in which the stagnant Tims Creek isn’t as stagnant as it seems. Maybe there can be shifts and changes in the town if Aunt Essie and Thad can come together like they do. I especially like the final lines when Thad is thinking of physically reaching out to Essie, but instead just verbally asks if she is going to help him with his homework (almost like a lost moment of connection). Now, I say all of this because a thought that keeps coming to me is the uncanny. The uncanny is when you recognize but don’t recognize something. You have this moment where something seems normal but there is something about it that is off. I feel as if there is a level of uncanniness in Kenan’s writing, in all of his stories. I feel as if Tims Creek and its inhabitants are the uncanny things, that we are meant to have a level of uncanny recognition in them – maybe it is something of ourselves, others we know, society, maybe a little of all of that, but I continue to have these moments where I am grasping at something that I cannot put my finger on.
Week 5
Folk Tradition and Communal Knowledge
Professor Ingram: What are three places in the second half of the collection where you see direct or indirect reference to myth, legend, folk tale, or other communal folk knowledge? Where do you see Kenan alludingto other texts or stories?
Kyrsten: I would like to start with “Run, Mourner, Run.” Dean seems to me a Cinderella figure, working hard and constantly being undervalued. …
“What Are Days?”
Kyrsten: I felt huge Snow White vibes from Lena’s story in “What are Days?” There are so many moments in that story where she is looking in the mirror and speaking to herself about her body, her image, and self-perception. And while she does not blame some other young thing for her aging, there is a realization for her that she is not what she used to be. But something that I love about Kenan is that he does not stick to any expected trope. Lena learns acceptance of self by the end of the story . . .
Cheylon: Despite how far away Lena moved and her deep desire to not be in Tims Creek, she could not escape the way it structured her world view. It wasn’t until she met “Shang” (not his real name) that she was able to shed some of the cultural presets she learned in Tims Creek, which were oppressing her. I feel like Shang is definitely a trickster character. …
- Finish Let the Dead Bury Their Dead
- Randall Kenan Fiction Lecture, Sewanee Writers’ Conference (2019)
- Uzzie T. Cannon, “Disturbing the African American Community: Defamiliarization in Randall Kenan’s Let the Dead Bury Their Dead,” Southern Literary Journal 42.1 (2009)
- Brian Norman, “Death and Futurity in Randall Kenan’s Reinvention of the Passing Narrative,”Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 23 (2012)
Week 6
Tims Creek All Grown Up
May: I mentioned the idea of Tims Creek developing and now we’re looking at the “adult” version of it. In the story “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel,”Gloria expresses the way she feels about her oldest daughter’s girlfriend (96). This goes to show the growth that has been taking place in Tims Creek.
Tanner: “Angels’ Feet” also symbolized a lot of growth in Tims Creek. In the years since Horace’s death it seems like being a gay man is not something that determines your social standing in the town. . . .
Cheylon: [In “What Are Days”] Lena was no longer in Tims Creek, but she did not forget certain things about Tims Creek. Instead, she found ways to layer it with the new things she learned in New Jersey. I think another example of this is Lazarus in “Ain’t No Sunshine” refusing to listen to his aunt Hortensia, who has deemed herself the head of the family. …
Cheylon: Something I have found interesting throughout the first half of this book is that, one way or another, Tims Creek is the final voice in each story. Either through a memory of a dead community member (“When I Get to Heaven”), the literal last word (“I Thought I Heard the Shuffle of Angel’s Feet,” “The Eternal Glory That is Hamhocks”), or simply not answering (“Ain’t No Sunshine”), someone in Tims Creek has the last say or last impression.
Cade: Rather than any specific story or moment, I felt the growth of Tims Creek mostly through the nonchalant announcements of many deaths of characters [from] Visitation or Let the Dead. … I felt the town’s shift was very natural, like rotated soil, one crop is just replaced with another, fertilized by the last.
Kyrsten: I feel this organic shift aligns with Kenan himself and his own shift. Often, as we are seeing, the older generation tends to feel that their power is waning and shifting, so they try and hold onto the reins even tighter. I think Kenan’s previous novel and short stories show how these older generations are fearing a shift in their control of Tims Creek, and … some of the moments from the previous books are driven by that fear. In this collection. I almost feel less of that fear, or at least, less of the power they hold through fear, so change can occur. One example is Cicero’s uncle who is angry, but his power is gone so the fear he holds or the anger he unleashes doesn’t really matter because Cicero has left and has raised himself above it.
“Ezekiel Saw the Wheel”
Oakley: In “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel,” I wanted to talk about dreams. Gloria speaks of dreams throughout most of the short story. Kenan writes, “She knew when a dream was a dream and when a dream was more than a dream. This one felt like something more than a dream, and she knew there was not a thing she could do about it but pray” (96). She even questions how her daughter’s girlfriend will react to the death of Tamara. This makes me wonder how she knows whether a dream is only a dream. I suppose it is the intuition a mother has for her children. I really liked the ability to see inside a mother’s mind and her concern for her children. Here she is with a client mourning the death of his wife while she is mourning the “death” of her daughter.
Kyrsten: … I saw this story aligning the old with the new. Gloria has clearly grown with acceptance of her queer daughter, but her supernatural connection with death almost seems to connect with the old school ideas of Tims Creek. I think it is more her experience working with death that aids her knowledge in knowing the dreams that will come to pass and those that are merely dreams. Her age and experiences allow her to know this, but it is that same thing that has aided her in growing and accepting change in her family and society as a whole.
- If I Had Two Wings (2020), through “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel”
- Kenan, “Come Out the Wilderness,” from his Black Folk Could Fly
- Kenan, “Crook’s Corner: Demography of a North Carolina Future,” Southern Foodways Alliance (2014)
“I Thought I Heard the Shuffle of Angels’ Feet”
Kyrsten: … In each section, Cicero is bringing to light something about his life, his past, his past entwined with others, through his use of imagery . . . as if each section of reminiscence is pulling from one emotion or another – sadness, anger, acceptance. …
Cade: … His descriptions were always powerful – the opening of Visitation is still one of the most riveting meals I’ve ever read – but they seemed more segmented. It feels as though Kenan has, in familiarizing both himself and the reader with the way he wants to write about Tims Creek, come to realize how interconnected everything is. No longer is there a need to separate the foodie sections with the family lineage, or magical realism, it is all connected through the atmosphere of Tims Creek.
“The Eternal Glory That Is Ham Hocks”
Cheylon: … So [Howard] Hughes goes all the way to Tims Creek to find a woman he did not respect when she was in his life. Hughes cannot fully explain why he needs this woman in his life as an adult, so he reduces it to food. He doesn’t need her; he needs her cooking. Hughes cannot connect the lines between food and love …
Tanner: I did think of the Mammy trope while reading this story. Kenan reminds us throughout that Hughes was a difficult child to deal with, and it seems as though Mrs. Cross did not nurture Hughes the way many “Mammies” might have, according to literature based off the myth of the Lost Cause. As for Hughes needing her cooking, I totally agree. The amount of money he offers is not out of respect, but more about getting what he wants.
Cade: I think the “raising” and the “Mammy” aspects correlate with Howard Hughes being diametrically opposed to the established Black experience – as is so often overlooked in capitalist America, the “employment” upon which people like Howard Hughes make their wealth is hardly gainful, or fair, and around the time of the Hughes fortune’s start they were barely fifty years out of completely legal slavery. For a Black person, of all people, to profit immensely off the backs of undervalued labor is an abject betrayal of everything slavery could have taught this country. …
Week 7
“Resurrection Hardware”
Cade: I really loved the way that Kenan inserted himself into these stories with ‘”Resurrection Hardware or, Lard & Promises.” . . .
Cheylon: I feel like “Resurrection Hardware” is the most intimate story Kenan has written. As I read it, I could recall the interviews we read and watched, and I remember that set of memorial articles from the beginning of class. The main character’s name is Randall; he is a successful gay man who moved to New York and worked in print, surrounded by successful friends with an interesting love/hate relationship for his North Carolina roots.
Cade: I loved the melding of the fantastical and mundane in this story. It almost felt like a glimpse into his writing process, as if he has these near-science fiction visions at a lunch with friends, or like the impact of these stories that he writes has become a major part of his life, not just his work. It feels like a testament to the spiritual significance of his work to himself.
“Now Why Come That Is?”
Oakley: In “Now Why Come That Is?” I questioned why Kenan chose a hog to “haunt” Percy … I think Percy is being “haunted” by a hog because he almost sees himself as one. … He is feeling guilty for what he and his father have done.
Cheylon: I think the hog is his conscience coming to the surface, which is why the “witch” couldn’t help him end the haunting, because his truth is the haunting. Like a hog, he and his father “ate” up anything and everything that they wanted and within their sights. …
Kyrsten: … To add to this, in the following story, the final story, we learn that Malcolm Terrell, Percy’s son, has lost his home to the storm. Specifically, it has flooded with water, hog shit, and dead hogs, and I think this is meant as a small callback to this story of hog hauntings, and how the Terrells are coming face to face with consequences that they have not seen in the past. …
- Finish If I Had Two Wings
- “A Gathering of Friends: Remembering Randall Kenan,” Southern Cultures website
- Kenan, “Letter from North Carolina: Learning from Ghosts of the Civil War” Literary Hub 18 Aug. 2020
- Marcie McCauley, “Soaring and Singing in If I Had Two Wings,” Chicago Review of Books 3 Sept. 2020
- Charles H. Rowell, “An Interview with Randall Kenan,” Callaloo 21 (1998)
“God’s Gonna Trouble the Water”
Oakley: I did some research into the song “Wade in the Water” which is where the title “God’s Gonna Trouble the Water” comes from. Legend is that it was used to tell people escaping from slavery to get off the trail and into the water so that the dogs could not sniff out their scent. The song is also expressed as an idea of purification and a reaffirmation of life (such as baptism). In this story there is a hurricane that floods the town, kills Mrs. Streeter’s beloved vegetable garden, and takes Marisol’s daughter from her. What do you think this title was intended to mean in reference to this story?
May: There’s a place in the Bible that talks about how a certain time of the year God stirs up the waters and whoever comes into it can get whatever they need. Whether it be healing, renewing, to be made whole, to be able to see, there was life and restoration coming to those that stepped in the water. I believe Kenan was making a reference to this biblical story.
Kourtney: I think he was trying to connect back to the concept of rebirth. Washing away the old and moving into the end. The title “God’s Gonna Trouble the Water” is a hymn that many church-going people sing, especially in older Black churches. It is also a saying which generally means that God is going to stir up the healing waters and put things in order. Hence the reason why this story was at the end of the book. The hurricane came in at category five and went only two places, Barbados and North Carolina. Kenan wrote each book to bring his (once) buried lineage front and center. With this book, he wanted to wash away the unsettling and disturbing parts of Tims Creek.
Cade: Considering the religious connotations of a flood in Christian mythology, it does almost feel like a wiping of the slate,”the last we see of Tims Creek is an erasure of the old way (literally, in the case of the main character), and a very poetic destruction of the Terrell’s rich estate.
Kyrsten: …This wiping clean through such a large and violent storm is also connected to Mrs. Streeter herself and the fact that she is a woman in her eighties. I point this out because she is what we could consider to be a part of the “old” Tims Creek – the more backwards, homophobic, and stagnant version we are introduced to in Visitation. However, despite her desire to come back home to this place she views as safe and as home no matter what, that home has been destroyed (more metaphorically than literally, but still destroyed), and thus it is no longer what it once was.We have discussed throughout how we see Tims Creek as its own character, perhaps as the overarching character throughout these stories, and I think this final story is truly meant to become a reflection of how the town can and will change. Over time it refuses to remain stagnant, that the world does not allow it to remain the same, and as you cannot stop a hurricane from coming, you cannot stop the change coming to Tims Creek.