“Well Then, Carry On”: Piercing Recalcitrant History in LaShonda Katrice Barnett’sJam on the Vine

Abstract

AbstractIn her 2015 novel, Jam on the Vine, LaShonda Katrice Barnett dramatizes the opposed but intertwined histories of African American modernity and US racial revanchism during the Jim Crow era. While the trajectory of her female protagonist, Ivoe Williams, can be understood as a progress narrative, Barnett explores the corrosive nature of deepening American segregation and the pervasiveness of anti-black racism through the plight of her black male characters, particularly Ivoe’s father and brother. Through these men’s experiences, we see the persistent exploitation of black male bodies, which has continued from slavery through Jim Crow and on to the twenty-first-century prison-industrial complex. This essay attends to Barnett’s development of two inverse narrative arcs: first, Ivoe’s growth, which embodies the rising consciousness and agency of the African American activists and journalists who challenged racial segregation domestically and internationally, and second, the African American male characters, who must endure the ever-increasing pressures of Jim Crow during the same period. Ultimately, Barnett connects these narrative arcs by drawing on two literary-historical forebears, Ida B. Wells and Ernest Hemingway, to create a protagonist who learns how to “carry on” and thrive during the seemingly unending era of legal inequality.