Synopses & Reviews
The process of naming is a transformative act that inherentlyimparts meaning, whether it be through the conscious use of a familiar historical orallegorical appellation or through the creation of a new word. Critics have oftennoted the importance of names and naming in African-American literature, but DebraWalker King's Deep Talk is the first methodological discussion of the process. Inthis original study, the author seeks out the discourses existing beneath theprimary narratives of these literary texts by interpreting the significance ofcertain character names.
King explores what shecalls the metatext of names, an interpretive realm where these chosen words offerup symbolic, metaphoric, and other meanings, often simultaneously. Literary namescan thus revise and comment upon the surface action of a novel by giving voice tounspoken themes and events, a process known as deep talk. Drawing on the work ofKristeva, Bakhtin, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the author explains the interpretiveguidelines necessary to read deep talk in African-American texts. She appliesthese guidelines to texts by Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, JamesBaldwin, and Alice Walker, among others.
Perhapsmost important, King reveals how the process of naming became a form of empowermentfor African Americans, a way of both reclaiming black identity and resistingconventions of white society. Black men and women whose ancestors were stripped oftheir identity through the Middle Passage and during slavery embraced theincantatory power of names and have long used this power to defend themselves fromthe effects of racism, sexism, and classism.