The Sound of Political Change
“‘We make many false starts because we have been programmed to depend on white models or white interpretations of non-white models, so we don’t even ask the correct questions... Perhaps we need to to face the terrifying and overwhelming possibility that there are no models, that we shall have to create from scratch.”
~Toni Cade Bambara
http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.wayne.edu/stable/pdf/20616429.pdf?_=1460393664839
The quote above is an excerpt taken from Toni Cade Bambara’s essay, “On the Issue of Roles,” used in Carter A. Mathes’ essay, “Scratching the Threshold: Textual Sound and Political Form in Toni Cade Bambara's ‘The Salt Eaters.’” Throughout “Scratching the Threshold,” Mathes discusses how sound is used as an “organizing principle,” representative of sociopolitical change in the black community in The Salt Eaters (Mathes 364). Mathes argues that Bambara’s experimentation with the notably “non-linear” sense of sound functions as way to move beyond the “paradigms” imposed by America’s white-dominated society (Mathes 365). Therefore, by establishing sound as the primary sensory vehicle in the narrative, The Salt Eaters permits African Americans to “create from Scratch” (Mathes 365).
As part of Mathes’ analysis of sound, he includes the significance of silence in the novel. In Bambara’s “On The Issue of Roles,” she describes how many changes in the “black experience” cannot be effectively communicated in English (Mathes 365). Mathes applies this concept to the silences within The Salt Eaters, recognizing their relevance as marking an absence of adequate language (367). These silences seemed most effective during the internal dialogues between Minnie and Old Wife and later on, Minnie and Velma. Although the reader is able to follow these conversations, the observers within the narrative hear nothing. After reading Mathes’ essay, I noticed that readers’ unique window into the supposed silences not only reflects tensions between the spiritual and the practical, but also illustrates the political struggle to move beyond convention.
Mathes, Carter A. "Scratching the Threshold: Textual Sound and Political Form in Toni Cade Bambara's "The Salt Eaters""Contemporary Literature 50.2 (2009): 363-96. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.
