deux “magots” or “maggots”?

In Éloge de la Créolité, Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant explains that, “‘Creoleness is not monolingual. Nor is it multilingualism divided into isolated compartments. Its field is language. Its appetite: all the languages of the world'”. They continue to explain how, “…the multilingualism of the poetics of Relation brings languages together without blending them, which is precisely what Shange does in A Daughter’s Geography; hence Glissant’s emphasis on creaolization as distinct from creoleness helps us to understand Shange’s shying away from actual New World creoles” (Spyra 789). I am interested in this idea of “bringing languages together without blending them” as we have been taught to think of America as a “melting pot”.

The French, Spanish, African American Vernacular English, and her own language Shange uses in her work is not just supportive but necessary to communicate her ideas, history, etc.

In a poem from A Daughter’s Geography, “Okra to Greens Again (Special Delivery)”, Shange critiques the limitations of language (“what language is it in”) and words to describe her feelings and memories (“my synapses remember where yr lips” and “sometimes you are angolan freedom songs”). In the second stanza she begins to explore the different senses she can use to describe feelings and memories, almost as if using a different language (“how many colors is the sound of you”). But she remains frustrated with how limited we can express love and affection (“what language fits our needs/ we are so far gone”) especially because we have clear channels in understanding and communicating violence and pain (“you’d know pearl harbor day/ bastille day/ the day they invaded cambodia/ is known to you/ all that death/ all the bleedin and screams/ are clear”).

She ends the poem with “deux maggots / i say simply/ darling/ give me yr tongue”. In the cadence and movement of this poem, “deux maggots” seems to be the climax and the momentary answer to the limitations she was describing. “deux maggots” could be referring to the famous French restaurant “Les Deux Magots” that many intellectuals used to frequent. The name “Les Deux Magots” comes from a fabric shop that had these small orientalist figurines, called “magots”. Magots literally means “stocky figurine from the Far East”. But Shange includes an additional “g” to “maggots”, a play on words that brings you back to English. “Maggots” are larvae that can be found in decaying matter therefore it is interesting to juxtapose this definition with “magots” that refers to the fancy restaurant. The bringing together of French and English in this moment is effective and playful at the same time. Shange is both going between the languages of French and English but also intellectual and vernacular.

Okra to Greens Again (Special Delivery)

what language is it in

when my bed is/ too big cuz yr not in it

how cd i say

my synapses remember where yr lips

linger/ unaccompanied bac/ sometimes you

are angolan freedom songs/ we take all

confusions & raggae it/ tosh marley & wailer/ it

we stroll in our own convers all-stars/ in

london & são paulo/ but what language is it

big enough/ to say yr name

 

how many colors is the sound of you put to

coral skies/ dusk/ in amber & reds/

from everyone’s mouth/ what language fits our needs

we are so far gone/ we don’t know sanskrit

i dont want a saxophone/ i like greens

say how to reach you so i am clear/

you’d know pearl harbor day/ bastille day/ the

day they invaded cambodia/ is known to you/

all that death/ all the bleedin and screams/ are clear/

say how to reach you with love/ i am like air

now/ everywhere/speakin/whispers behind yr back

around the corner/ talkin abt you/upstairs

in hushes/ yr bane/ i stop you outside

deux maggots / i say simply/

darling/ give me yr tongue

This technique of bringing together two languages without blending brings me to Diana Mai’s zine, musings of a jook sing. Her zine is about Chinese Americans navigating American life with their Chinese upbringing. There are many slightly different definitions of “jook sing” but it is mainly used by older Chinese immigrants or Chinese people living in Asia to describe Chinese people who have grown up outside of their mother country. Many times it is meant to be derogative, indicating that the person just looks Chinese but does not carry the language, traditions, or values due to westernization. Interestingly, the characters “jook” and “sing” literally mean hollow bamboo – “bamboo is hollow and compartmentalized, thus water poured in one end does not flow out of the other end. The metaphor is that Jook Sings are not part of either culture: water within the jook sing does not flow and connect to either end”. “Jook Sing” has now become a popular and reclaimed term by the younger generations (2nd and 3rd) of Chinese immigrants and can be heard being used in English sentences. Like “Deux maggots” in Shange’s poem, “jook sing” is used to bring together two languages and cultures without blending because the weight of the term lies heavily in Chinese and is not lost when used in an English sentence. Blending implies the losing of both things in order to create a new thing with characteristics of both. As Spyra concludes,”Shange calls for ‘forging the new language of the hemisphere’, a hopeful move away from ‘this country’ to the American hemisphere as a whole as a place that can offer new possibilities of wholeness and home-ness”, “jook sing” plays a role in creating a new wholeness and home-ness for second and younger generations of Chinese Americans (Spyra 792).

Diana Mai’s begins her zine critiquing the limitations of the English language as Shange does;

listen- i can name all the parts of a flower outside of your cold scientific terminology. i can tell you a hundred different ways to love someone using a hundred different words. i can tell you about the land and the sun and the soil. your english is a bitter thing, it gets stuck in my throat, it gets in the way of everything I want to say. how do you say love besides love? how have you boiled loved down to a single four letter, one syllable word?

english is economical, perhaps. it is sufficient, it is just good enough. the language of the world, the language of trade and capital. but what language do we speak in? those of us who carry the world economy on our back? those of us who are migrant and foreign and poor? who pave roads and build stadiums and watch your children?

what language do we bleed in, what language do we slave in, do we work in, do we die in? we do not speak english, we do not think english. we do not dream in your english, we do not dream in your dollars.

there is a word for the moon at midnight, there is a word for a woman in her second term of her pregnancy, there is a word for a woman 40 days after birth. there is a word for the dead, for the living, for the sick. there is a word for fresh milk, for old milk, for a cow with heavy teats, for a cow without a calf. your english barely scratches the surface, but our words, our words can break the world open.

– Nomad Manifesto

http://dianamai.storenvy.com/products/9065491-musings-of-a-jook-sing [Also will be available in Barnard Library soon!]