"Mobile Images": Myth and Resistance in Nikky Finney's Rice

Abstract

Nikky Finney, a native of Carolina and a professor of English at University of Kentucky, is a founding member of Affrilachian Poets, a collective of Appalachian poets of African descent who incorporate into their work themes of regional as well as transnational identities, local as well as global communities. Although she hails from Carolina and not geographical region traditionally associated with Appalachia, Finney, along with other members of group, including writer Gurney Norman and adopted member Nikki Giovanni, focus on intersection of history and culture that is central to vast region called Appalachia. Finney's perspective on being Affrilachian is a global one. In Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers, Finney writes of the geographical evolutionary theory, which contends that, at one point in time, all land masses were one. She explains that if one were to pull all countries of world in together one would discover Appalachian mountain range melds perfectly into long green valleys of Africa like one single sacred ground. Finney sees same connection between coastal Palmetto State of her birth and continent of her ancestors. However, she laments in her Introduction to collection Rice (1995) that South Carolina has disregarded much of its African heritage. Through her poetry, Finney seeks to remedy that neglect by examining what melds sandy land of Carolina to continent of Africa--the tradition of planting and harvesting rice. (1) Rice combines poems and photographs. The photographs appear to be family pictures, some taken professionally, some by amateurs. There is an elegant studio portrait of a woman, her high-collared blouse trimmed and tucked in lace, tied neatly at neck, and fastened with an ornate brooch. There is a photo of a man and a woman, a couple in their sixties perhaps, standing in a dirt field. There are miscellaneous family photos: a mother and a son, two pairs of women--in first, an older woman poses before a car alongside a younger woman. The second pair is young girls, sisters perhaps, in a professional photo from last century. There are handsome men: a teen in knickers, a headshot that could be a graduation photo. A beautiful young woman holds a bouquet. A couple kisses before backdrop of a seaside resort in one of those shots solicited by photographers who prowl boardwalks for vacationers. None of pictures has captions. We have no sense of who these people are or where and how they fit into Finney's narrative. They seem to tell a story--are they parents and children, second, third, even fourth generation? Are they Finney's mother, father, grandparents? In Rice, shadows of Africa and of slavery in Finney's poems undercut seeming innocence of family photos. Family photographs, however, are far from innocent. They are instrumental in constructing what Marianne Hirsch defines as gaze--that is, the ideology, mythology, of family as an institution. The power of this myth is evident in Hirsch's description of familial gaze as hegemonic (8). Family photographs create an image of unity, a moment of cohesion, a protection from discord that most families cannot uphold. Here Hirsch echoes Roland Barthes, who also recognizes disturbing, insidious, and astonishing power of photograph. (2) In his discussion of signifying function of photography, Barthes tells us, on one level, photographic image is full of meaning. On another, it is form, emptied of meaning and waiting for context, all in service of myth. Family photographs, such as those that appear in Rice, reproduce dominant mythology of family. Claude Levi-Strauss describes purpose of myth as provid[ing] a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction (Levi-Strauss 229). Myths, in other words, make a fragmented world understandable and habitable. …