They who shall not be named...

We all know the power of a name, like the power of one who knows a name but will not tell and whose power is destroyed when the name is known, like Rumpelstiltskin. And there's the one whose name is spoken and he gains power thereby, like “He who shall not be named.”

In Bone Black, it seems mostly that names work mostly in the second way. For example, hooks' father is in the second category. hooks often leaves him unnamed, not even identified as her father, so that the reader has to figure it out by context and other clues. It's as if to name him would give him even more power than he already has. For example, in Chapter 5, hooks writes, “He had an old car.” We know only that it's “his” car as hooks describes she and her siblings playing in it. It's only in the third paragraph, when she says her father's mother came to take care of them when her mother was in the hospital, where we understand that the car is in their own yard and that it must be their father's.

There are also many unspecified “they”s in this book, some of whom are also in the category of better not to be named. Early on, in Chapter 3, after the “they” of pigs to whom she feeds coal and lottery tickets, “they” are unnamed parental or authority figures (we knew who the pigs were but we don't actually know who the second “they” are!). She doesn't want to identify this second “they.” This may be because she so deeply disagrees with them: “They tell me that I am lucky to be lighter skinned, not black black . . . otherwise I would not be so lucky.” (p. 9) She clearly does not consider herself “lucky” to be lighter and therefore in the school play. But the lack of naming or identification of “they” could also be to deny them greater power. When she thinks she has an out, “they” won't allow it. “They” think it's a favor to her to keep her in the play, even when she does not want to be in it. (This chapter ends with a deep and painful insight: “… a woman's heart must break silently and in secret.”)

Characters who have a strong impact on hooks tend to be named. Some characters who have a positive impact have names, like Mrs. Mayes and the books she offers (put in the trash but retrieved and cherished by hooks). The piano teacher towards whom hooks has great ambivalence, Miss/Mrs. Ruth Tandy, gets a name. The discussion of her title – Miss or Mrs. - is interesting because “Mrs.” has greater status in the community. People usually forget that she is a Mrs. because of how scarce her Mr. is. She gets the status only when she acts out the role, not just because she is legally married.

It sometimes seems as if to be named in this book gives a character some greater dignity or protection, but this is not true for Saru's chickens. She raises the chickens to eat and, even though she has named them and some of them are special, she still kills them for food. Hooks doesn't understand “how it is she can bear to destroy something that she has given a name, that she has come to have feeling for.” (p. 59) Saru responds that “the feeling is real but does not get in the way of destiny.” Here even a name, which provides intimacy, is not enough to spare a creature from its fate, death. hooks, too, despite her name, is not fully spared from her destiny to be socialized as a woman and all that means in her culture.

Oh, there's so much more to say but no more time: how she calls Sarah Saru in her head because she likes it better and includes “names” like “Miss White Lady” (p. 90), a.k.a. “a ghost,” how she'll go into super formal third person and call her parents “the father” (p. 18) and “the mother,” how her parents' parents get names but her parents and siblings don't. I look forward to talking about it all!