| Episodes |
Not Just One Black Woman
Hannah Masse
[1] Barbara Chase-Riboud did a job that no one else was willing to attempt, one that has been mercilessly criticized and discredited. She gave Sally Hemings a voice.
[2] In Sally Hemings: A Novel (1979), Chase-Riboud put herself in direct line of fire from the Jefferson defenders by humanizing the mysterious black mistress of our third president. However, she was not always the daring, ruthless author that rescues Hemings from hiding. In fact, as early as age eleven Chase-Riboud had given up on writing after being accused of plagiarism by a teacher who "obviously thought that no little black girl was capable of writing this poem about falling leaves and death and what have you" (Spencer 736). What gave Chase-Riboud the courage to rediscover her writing talent? To overstep the bounds American society has placed on the nation's racial history? Her motivation was the responsibility to both herself and Hemings to make people believe in the forbidden love affair and to see how racial prejudices continue to shape our world.
[3] Identifying with Hemings, Chase-Riboud brings her to life in her first novel as part of her personal project to prevent her own invisibility because of her skin color. As a young girl, Chase-Riboud discovered her father's deep secret: "He wanted to be an architect, and of course he couldn't. He was rejected [because of race], and he couldn't get into architectural school" (Spencer 737). Chase-Riboud grew up with intimate knowledge and experience of the restrictions placed upon African Americans and could connect with Hemings on that level. Reflecting on her time at Yale, Chase-Riboud said that "I'd been going through life, up until a certain point, with this attitude that nobody really cares what I do or nobody notices who I am" (Spencer 738). Like Hemings, then, Chase-Riboud, a woman with so much depth, was living life under the radar. Therefore, Sally Hemings can be seen as a tribute not only to its quadroon narrator but to its overlooked author as well. By allowing Hemings the right to think and speak, Chase-Riboud makes a name for herself in this first novel, asserting that black women, too, have voices.
[4] Aside from doing justice to the invisible women in history, Chase-Riboud, through Sally Hemings, urges readers to believe in the love that existed between Jefferson and Hemings. Up until the publication of the novel, Hemings was considered nothing but a filthy slave, a slave who could not possibly be loved by our third president. In the afterword to her book, Chase-Riboud describes her attempt "to elevate a member of the most despised caste in America to the level of the most exalted" (351). By doing so, Chase-Riboud captures the essence of a master-slave relationship and the differing meanings of love for each of its members. In order to persuade readers of the mutual love between the pair, Chase-Riboud claims that Jefferson "was bound to [Sally]. She owned him just as surely as he owned her, the only difference being that her possession of him was a gift while his was a theft" (Rushdy 763). According to Chase-Riboud, there was a love -- a twisted, confusing love between slave and master, but a love nonetheless -- and this is just what she hopes will come across in Sally Hemings.
[5] While Chase-Riboud wrote for herself and for Sally Hemings, she also hoped to highlight America's tendency to hide from its dark racial history. There is a reason why Hemings was not given a voice prior to this novel. Americans are ashamed of miscegenation. Today, they are ashamed of the racial prejudices that continue to exist, but nothing is done about it. Through her novel, Chase-Riboud wanted readers to face the facts of racism and stop hiding from it. In her afterword, she considers the "particular reluctance to publish a unified family tree of the complete Jefferson-Randolph-Hemings family" (356). How is it that American citizens, who claim to grant equality to all people, cannot even stomach the idea of an integrated marriage? In writing Sally Hemings, Chase-Riboud "wanted to illuminate our overweening and irrational obsession with race and color in this country" (350). Jefferson's affair with Hemings was denied not because of his immense seniority to the young girl but because of the fact that she was black. According to Chase-Riboud, Sally represents all of America's problems with racism and "stands there like our anxiety and our shame" (363). To make Hemings visible in her novel was to unearth the feelings of guilt and shame that Americans have been suppressing throughout history.
[6] Sally Hemings may be, on the surface, a depiction of the Jefferson-Hemings affair through the eyes of its mistress. However, upon bringing Sally Hemings to life, Chase-Riboud brings justice to those ignored people in history and creates a path for herself and future women to have a voice. She wants to convince readers that love between master and slave was not impossible, to make them believe in this forbidden love affair. On a broader level, Chase-Riboud writes Sally Hemings in order to expose the undying discomfort that America has with miscegenation. Chase-Riboud challenges America's pride for the sake of all "invisible" women in history. The hard work has been done for us: Sally Hemings has been given a voice. Our job is easy. All we have to do is listen.
