Names in African American Novels -- ep. by Howard Rambsy II

A brief take on the unforgettable names found throughout African American novels, exploring how Black writers use naming to reveal character, history, irony, and identity across generations of novels.

Written by Howard Rambsy II

Read by Kassandra Timm 

Transcript

Teacake. Bigger Thomas. Milkman. Mama Day.

Have you ever thought about all the fascinating names of protagonists and supporting characters who appear in African American novels? So have we.

You’re listening to Remarkable Receptions — a podcast about African American literary art and more.

Names and naming, that is, distinct names and naming practices constitute important elements of novels by Black writers, including Zora Neale Hurston. Richard Wright. Toni Morrison. Gloria Naylor. The names of the characters, along with the powerful storylines, make the novels and their central figures unforgettable.

We have characters whose names speak volumes, revealing personality, ancestry, or irony. There’s Corregidora from Gayl Jones’s novel of the same name. There’s the protagonist of Richard Wright’s The Outsider Cross Damon, whose first name signals conflicting moral struggles, while “Damon” evokes the demonic. Raven Quickskill, the narrator of Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada, bears a name that fuses the literary and the mischievous.

The names of some characters from novels adapted to the screen hold a special place in our collective imagination. Shug Avery from The Color Purple. Kunta Kinte from Roots. Baby Suggs from Beloved.

 Toni Morrison seemed to take delight in crafting unforgettable names. She presents a long line of vividly named figures in her works: Pecola Breedlove, Sula, Shadrack, Chicken Little, and Golden Gray. And Morrison’s Song of Solomon? Listen, that novel overflows with fascinating names: Macon Dead, Pilate Dead, Sing, Guitar, and First Corinthians. Imagine that: a character named First Corinthians.

 The narrator of James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird is named Onion, a name that nods to the layers of identity and disguise he must peel back. In The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty, the protagonist is a poet named Gunnar Kaufman, a surname that pays homage to African American surrealist poet Bob Kaufman.

And in Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, there’s a character known simply as NP. He earns that nickname because of his habit of telling exaggerated stories, ones so unbelievable that friends would respond with a defiant and skeptical, hmmm, “N-word Please,” hence the abbreviation, NP.

In a few notable cases, Black writers chose not to name their main characters. That’s true of James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, both of which feature unnamed narrators. Ironically, in Colson Whitehead’s Apex Hides the Hurt, the protagonist is a nomenclature consultant, someone whose job is to name products, yet Whitehead deliberately withholds a name for him.

 From Teacake to Kunta Kinte, from Milkman and Pilate to Onion, the names in African American novels do more than identify characters, they tell remarkable stories all their own.

******************************************

This episode was written by Howard Rambsy, edited by Elizabeth Cali, and read by me, Kassandra Timm.

******************************************