Erna Brodber's Louisiana: Moving Beyond Borders to Understand Transnational Slavery

EHFA 137

Fieldwork is the foundation of anthropological research, for it provides the text (and subtext) of stories and histories that see the light of day sometimes for the first time. Some fieldwork gets turn into tremendous fictional accounts of those stories and histories. Perhaps the most extensive and well recognized example of fieldwork was conducted during the Great Depression with the Works Progress Administration and the Federal Writers' Project. This arm of the larger governmental agency interviewed more than 2000 former enslaved, narrating their lives and cataloging their experiences during and after emancipation. Many writers have used this fieldwork as the basis for their art. One such work is Erna Brodber's 1994 novel Louisiana. This book fictionalizes WPA fieldwork about a formerly enslaved woman labeled as Mammy. On one level, the novel instructs readers about the complications and the rewards of such fieldwork. On another level, the novel goes beyond this lesson because it demonstrates the connections between the US South and Jamaica. Designed as a series of rediscovered transcripts from WPA interview, Brodber resurrects the lives of Mammy and her interviewer Ella. The novel presents supernatural, psychic connections between the two. This paper will explore how the novel positions fieldwork within the text and how it transcends various borders between the United States and the Caribbean, between reality and imagination, and between memory and history. Milller argues the novel values the psychic, spiritual truths more than its factual concerns, which offers a new lesson to be learned from fieldwork.