Week 15 Readings and Responses

Red Velvet Dress, by Naomi Shihab Nye

Response to Naomi Shihab Nye

Red Velvet Dress, by Naomi Shihab Nye, is something of a blunt instrument--it reads like (and I imagine and hope that it is) a children’s story.  While there is undeniable subtext, certain subtleties, and a certain complexity in spots, the story is pretty “in-your-face” in its presentation of a “moral.”  That moral is, of course, the idea that people are people, not to be defined solely on the basis of their race, culture, or ethnicity; as well as the idea that such divisions as race, culture, and ethnicity are characterizations that may also be rich sources of beauty and wisdom.  By finding a balance between seeing past cultural divisions and understanding different cultures, Nye seems to be saying, we can find a peaceful and open way of dealing with those around us.    

For the young narrator, her manner of describing the neighborhood children emphasizes individual characteristics and “quirks,” rather than any sort of broader cultural category.  “The Collins boys and the Parker boys,” for example, are simply boys with whom Lena picks berries, who have a “lizard collection” and a “turquoise stone . . . in a pouch inside an egg carton with old pennies worth ten dollars each and the rusted key . . . dug out of the ground.”  They are not “black” children, but rather simply children.  

This particular “lesson,” while seemingly already a naturally understood one, is brought into relief with the arrival at the door to Lena’s house of two children asking (innocently enough, it seems) to see “the Arab.”  While Lena knows that they are speaking of her father, she informs them that they “don’t have one.”  This experience of denial serves as a sort of existential moment of epiphany and guilt.  Lena feels guilty for having denied her father’s presence, yet struggles against the idea that her father is an “Arab,” for she defines him not by his “Arabness,” but rather by the role that he fills in her life--father, man who burns brush in the backyard even though it might get him in trouble, catcher of balls with her brother, speaker to bats, etc.  

Her father, however, sees this event not as one to be taken seriously, but rather as the innocent gesture that it appears to be.  He is good-natured in his reaction, and even tells her that he should have exaggerated his own “Arabness” in order to make the intruding children happy.  “‘I could have put on my headdress for them! You could have pretended I didn’t speak English.  Maybe they’ll come back and we can make them happy.’”

Lena’s father’s own nonchalance about the episode, paired with the arrival from the Middle East of a gift of a dress that has been made by Lena’s family, lead her to embrace her Arab heritage and proudly show it off at school, telling people that, “It is my Arab dress from my Arab relatives far across the sea.”  She learns that she can both embrace her father’s culture and American culture (as well as her mother’s German ancestry and the ancestry and cultures of all of those around her): “It meant they were connected, just as she felt connected to all the people on her block and her friends lining their lunch sacks up beside her own.  Now when she pledged allegiance, it was secretly to everywhere.”

Notes:

* As Sharif S. Elmusa points out in an interview with the author, she has “achieved a veteran status, working for thirty years . . . on children and young readers’ poetry.”  Perhaps if I keep this in mind, the story seems somewhat better.

* I’m confused, I admit, by the scene in the grocery store, in which “Lena’s mother stared” at a woman in the grocery store, and says, “I should have been her.”  I really have no idea what is going on here.  I’m very interested to hear the opinions and ideas of others on this matter.

* One part of the story that I do indeed like is Lena’s conversation with her father, which reminds me (in its tone) of the speaker’s conversation with her father in Nye’s poem Blood.  His response to her in this story that “All the questions have more than one good answer,” is really nice, and adds some hint of complexity to this story.

Works Cited

Nye, Naomi Shihab. Interview by Sharif S. Elmusa. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics , No. 27, Childhood: Creativity and Representation  (2007), pp. 107-113