루티의 "침실 블루스" 「거리」에서의 흑인 여성 노래, 노동, 섹슈얼리티

Abstract

This paper reads Ann Petrys novel, The Street, as a blues novel which inherits, as well as complicates, the classic bedroom blues of the 1920s. Female blues singers of the 1920s have been hailed by many critics as the pioneers who freely explored and expressed Black female sexuality, subverting the conventional racist and misogynist stereotypes and powerfully reclaiming the erotic desires of Black women. This paper focuses particularly on the Black feminist literary discourse on classic blues, in which Black womens blues and novel are compared against each other as distinctly classed artistic genres regarding Black female sexuality, and locates Petrys novel within such discourse. The Street, published in 1949 when jazz was pivotal compared to the waning classic blues, centers around Lutie Johnsons failed quest to escape Harlem street. Lutie, a working single mother, hopes to earn income through singing and escape the menacing street with her son, but such dream collapses. For Black women, Harlems stage is less an artistic space of autonomous creativity than a dangerous working environment that entails tacit sexual labor, thus making the pursuit for a safe bedroom of her own an urgent and desperate matter. By closely examining the scenes that simultaneously demonstrate the artistic potential and precarity of Luties singing, I argue that the novel highlights the racialized and sexualized working conditions of Black women in the urban space, in which Black music becomes commodified by a white, male-centered entertainment market and the Black female body is coerced to become a purchasable and tradable commodity. Like the classic blues of 1920s, The Street probes into the erotic desire and sexuality of Black women, but recontextualizes these themes within the historical and material conditions of labor, residence, and livelihood. Ultimately, the novel transforms such consciousness into a voice of radical social critique and resistance through Luties deadly tune.