This Child's Gonna Live by Sarah E. Wright
"This Child's Gonna Live" by Sarah E. Wright is a novel that explores the intertwined lives of Mariah and Jacob Upshur, a couple grappling with the challenges of poverty, racism, and the pressures of their community in Tangierneck. The narrative is primarily delivered through Mariah’s stream-of-consciousness perspective, which reflects her internal struggles and her desperate desire to ensure her child's survival amidst difficult circumstances. As Mariah navigates questions of motherhood, faith, and societal judgment, she confronts the painful realities of her past—including the loss of her first daughter—and the oppressive dynamics of her environment.
The story also delves into Jacob's plight as he faces the threat of losing their family's land to a local antagonist, Miss Bannie, further complicating their attempts to escape their dire situation. Themes of familial loyalty, betrayal, and the search for dignity in the face of systemic challenges permeate the novel. Despite its initial acclaim upon release in 1969, the book experienced a period of obscurity, only to be resurrected in the context of feminist discourse in the late 20th century. Wright's work resonates with contemporary readers, particularly women, as it addresses both racism and sexism through the lens of an African American woman's experience, drawing parallels with the broader narratives found in the works of other notable authors in the genre.
This Child's Gonna Live by Sarah E. Wright
First published: 1969
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Social criticism
Time of work: Late 1920’s
Locale: The eastern shore of Maryland
Principal Characters:
Mariah Upshur (Rah) , a young African American womanJacob Upshur , Mariah’s husbandPercy Upshur , Jacob’s fatherBertha Ann Upshur , Percy’s wife and an antagonist to MariahHorace Upshur (Rabbit) , Mariah’s son, who suffers from a harelip and who dies from roundworms and tuberculosisBardetta Tometta Upshur , Mariah’s daughter by Dr. Albert GreneBannie Upshire Dudley (Miss Bannie) , a mail carrier, white landowner, and lover of her relative, Percy UpshurVyella , Jacob’s adopted sister and mother to his child NedDr. Albert Grene , Percy and Miss Bannie’s son, a respected physician and father to Mariah’s Bardetta TomettaHaim Crawford , a red-faced, racist patriarch of a powerful family
The Novel
Although This Child’s Gonna Live consists of the stream-of-consciousness narrations of both Mariah and Jacob Upshur, the novel begins and ends with Mariah’s thoughts, conversations with God, and actions as seen from her perspective. Since most of the chapters belong to Mariah, it becomes her story, a tale of attempted flight from poverty, racism, and religious hypocrisy.
As the story begins, a distraught, pregnant Mariah worries about whose child—Dr. Albert Grene’s or Jacob’s—she will bear. She becomes determined to escape the poverty, racism, and religious hypocrisy of the African American community of Tangierneck. If “this child’s gonna live,” she believes that she must flee north, although she is aware that none of Jacob’s brothers has survived exodus to Baltimore. Since her thoughts flow by association, the present is inextricably related to the past as well as to the future. The loss of Mary, her first daughter, the scars on her father’s back, and Jacob’s exploitation by Miss Bannie all suggest the futility of life in Tangierneck. Jacob is equally upset, but his concerns involve the impending loss of land to Miss Bannie, whom he blames for his troubles.
Both Mariah and Jacob confront past and present humiliations. At a prayer meeting, the Committee of Judgment denounced Mariah for being pregnant out of wedlock, and Bertha Upshur protected Jacob’s reputation. Jacob learns about Bannie’s involvement in the death of Bard Tom, his grandfather; and Mariah hears that Aunt Cora Lou, who was going to get help for Mariah, has been run down by a carload of white teenagers. When Mariah meets Miss Bannie, who has been attacked by Percy, she sympathizes with her until Miss Bannie utters a string of racial insults. Mariah and Jacob, whose minds are preoccupied by death, both intend to kill Miss Bannie. Jacob is easily persuaded to go home, while Mariah succeeds in getting Miss Bannie to the Gut, where she plans to drown her. She cannot follow through, but when she accompanies Miss Bannie to her home, she gives her the pills that cause her death.
Miss Bannie’s death is followed by Mariah’s giving birth to a light-skinned daughter. Her father asks, “Well, what in the name of God has the Master sent us here?” Mariah links the death and the birth when she bargains with God about dying for her sins but allowing her child to live. Although she considers suicide, she resolves to live when the “Messenger” absolves her of guilt in Miss Bannie’s death. Even in death, Miss Bannie precipitates trouble. Her will poses problems for the white power structure. Jacob’s queries about the will cause more violence, including visits by the Paddy Rollers (a white vigilante group), a beating, the burning of the local school, and the arrest and subsequent lynching of Percy Upshur, who had revealed the truth about Dr. Grene and Bannie. When Mr. Nelson lays claim to the Upshur land, Jacob has to leave Tangierneck to “seek his fortune” and regain the land.
Jacob moves his family to Chance. Here Wright abandons her practice of modifying real place-names to take advantage of the irony in “Chance,” a “real” Eastern Shore town where the family lives in squalid quarters. In this part of the novel, Wright focuses on the exploitation that migrant laborers suffered, whether working in a canning factory in Chance or picking strawberries on Kyle’s Island, where Rabbit gets tuberculosis and dies. During its migrant odyssey, the family returns three times to Tangierneck to attend funerals. These returns suggest that the Upshur family cannot escape from Tangierneck and that death ties it to the land.
The funeral of Vyella, Jacob’s adopted sister and Mariah’s best friend, is the most significant of the three because Mariah has to confront her feelings about her best friend, her family, and her fate. Mariah, who was putting money aside for her escape from Tangierneck, had entrusted her savings to Vyella. Shortly before her death from cancer, Vyella had written to Mariah and revealed that Jacob was the father of Little Ned. At the funeral, Mariah, the last one to speak, is torn between exposing the preacher woman and remaining silent and true to her friend. Ultimately she decides not to exact revenge. Instead, she takes on the responsibility for Vyella’s children and those of Aunt Cora Lou, for whom Vyella had been caring. She even gives Jacob her savings so that he can purchase the twenty acres of land he needs for a fresh start. The pressures of caring for her extended family and the realization that escape is now impossible are almost too much for her, and she returns to the Gut, wading in and almost yielding to the desire to drown. Her decision to live represents affirmations of self, of life, and of commitment to family.
The Characters
Wright reveals Mariah’s character through the stream-of-consciousness technique, which involves Mariah’s thoughts, her conversations with God, and her reactions to and evaluations of the events that unfold before her. Because she has been judged, she herself judges; she is harsh on white society, Jacob, African American men, and herself. Unlike the other characters, with the possible exception of Jacob, Mariah develops, changes, and emerges as a complex human being. She is religious, but her chatty God-talk suggests that her concern is with the present, with the survival of her children, rather than with an afterlife. Her superstitions put her at odds with the religious women of the community. Her statements to others, particularly Jacob and her children, are usually at odds with her thoughts and behavior. Unable to express her love verbally, she vents her frustrations and anger but immediately regrets her words and actions and then blames herself, as with Rabbit’s death.
With the exception of Vyella, who seeks Mariah’s forgiveness, the other women in the novel tend to be flat, one-dimensional characters who serve as background to the action. Aunt Saro Jane is more interested in avoiding trouble at the funeral than in discovering the truth; Bertha Upshur is devoted to protecting the public image of her husband and son; Miss Bannie is a cowering pathetic racist alone in the woods; and Mrs. Cranston at the welfare office is a smug, officious white bureaucrat. There is little “sisterhood” in this novel.
The African American men are the target of some scathing comments in the novel, but Wright allows Jacob, through his stream-of-consciousness chapters, to defend himself. Vyella states, “ain’t none of our men worth enough to worry yourself over,” and Mariah describes Jacob as “a wind-beaten, life-beaten going-nowhere man” who is “always hiding behind the Lord.” Jacob has been conditioned by his father, much as he influences his sons, and he dreams of being “master of all I survey,” the land his ancestors owned. His power is limited, however, as he discovers when the Paddy Rollers invade his house and terrorize his family. Jacob wants to answer his son Skeeter’s question in the affirmative: “Ain’t I something, Daddy?” Land is Jacob’s answer, but he cannot have it without Mariah’s money.
Like his father, Jacob has committed adultery and fathered an illegitimate son, but, unlike his father, Jacob is tormented by guilt and loves his wife. Percy’s transgression also has more grievous results—his relationship with Miss Bannie costs the Upshurs their land. When Mariah confronts him, he becomes physically abusive. Patriarchal, abusive, morally flawed, and weak, Percy is a negative stereotype, but when he asserts his rights to the white establishment, he dies as his father, Bard Tom, did. Bard Tom is a legendary rebel whose memory Mariah perpetuates in Bardetta Tometta, but the legendary rebel himself and those who emulate him die.
Critical Context
When This Child’s Gonna Live appeared in 1969, it was hailed as an impressive achievement. The reviewer for The New York Times wrote, “The canon of the American folk-epic is enriched by this small masterpiece.” Its initial success was a result of two factors: its stylistic brilliance, including handling of stream of consciousness, dialect, and speech rhythms, and its indictment of a racist society. Despite its promising debut, the novel eventually lapsed into relative obscurity and was out of print until 1986, when the Feminist Press reissued it. Its later popularity was, in part, a result of the women’s movement. Mariah’s determination to maintain her dignity and humanity in a world hostile to women and their causes speaks to contemporary women who face the same problems.
Feminists have called attention to the relevance of Wright’s themes and noted the importance of gender in the telling of stories. Although Jacob has his say, this is Mariah’s story, a familiar but seldom-told story of both racism and sexism. Contemporary African American novels are, in large part, written by women who employ women as storytellers who use folktales, superstition, dialect, and humor to express their perspectives on life.
In a sense, Wright’s novel is mainstream, similar in style and content to the works of Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Paule Marshall. All these writers use folk culture and folk heritage, but their works surely transcend the canon of the American folk epic, a genre identified with African American literature.
Bibliography
Davis, Thulani. Foreword to This Child’s Gonna Live, by Sara E. Wright. 2d ed. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2002. Noted African American scholar Davis discusses the place of Wright’s novel in both African American and feminist literary history. This edition also includes an afterword by Jennifer Campbell and an “appreciation” by John Oliver Killens.
Harris, Trudier. “Three Black Women Writers and Humanism.” In Black American Literature and Humanism, edited by Baxter Miller. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1981. Contrasts the hypocritical Christianity practiced in Mariah’s African American community with the humanistic, individualistic values of African American folk culture and folk heritage. Sees the novel as the tale of Mariah’s evaluation and rejection of Christianity, her struggle to retain her humanity, and her ultimate acceptance of her own folk heritage.
Hollis, Burney J. “The Race and the Runner: Female Fugitives in the Novels of Waters Turpin and Sarah Wright.” In Amid Visions and Revisions: Poetry and Criticism on Literature and the Arts. Baltimore: Morgan State University Press, 1985. Discusses Mariah as a “runner” who rejects and flees from the injustice to which her birth and environment subject her. In her primarily mental flight, she is hindered by her paranoia and by the African American men whose romanticized definitions of themselves keep them bound to their circumstances.
Howe, Irving. “New Black Writers.” Harper’s Magazine 239 (December, 1969): 130-131. Reviews several African American novels, among them This Child’s Gonna Live. Considers Mariah not only the central character but also the surrogate voice for Wright. Praises local color but faults characterization, suggesting that Wright needs “disciplined removal from her materials.”
Schraufnagel, Noel. From Apology to Protest: The Black American Novel. Deland, Fla.: Everett/Edwards, 1973. Considers the novel part of the “apologetic protest” in the 1960’s for its focus on exposing the effects of white racism. Calls attention to the sexual aspects of racism as reflected in the economic exploitation of African Americans by their white relatives. Praises the novel’s stream-of-consciousness narrative and asserts that the novel does not revert to pure propaganda.
Whitlow, Roger. Black American Literature: A Critical History. Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams, 1974. Compares Wright favorably to Zora Neale Hurston in terms of style, citing Wright’s use of dialect, her merger of humor and seriousness, and her diction. Also calls attention to Wright’s criticism of the vicious behavior of self-righteous African Americans who punish social “sins” and encourage conformity to “white” Christianity.