Barbara Neely

• Born: November 30, 1941
• Birthplace: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Died: March 2, 2020
• Place of death: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Type of Plot: Amateur sleuth

Principal Series: Blanche White, 1992-

Contribution

Barbara Neely’s Blanche White mysteries help make a traditionally conservative genre a vehicle for exploring social ills—especially those with racial implications—and for analyzing American cultural attitudes and practices. Each book in this series focuses on a different social problem, beginning in Blanche on the Lam (1992) with the impact of racial stereotypes and class prejudices. Neely’s second book, Blanche Among the Talented Tenth (1994), explores the psychological and social impacts of Western standards of beauty, especially the color hierarchy among African Americans; the plot of her next book, Blanche Cleans Up (1998), concerns political corruption, homophobia, and environmental issues; the fourth, Blanche Passes Go (2000), exposes the frequency and emotional consequences of physical abuse of women. In all her works Neely shows the relatedness of race, class, and gender issues. Neely’s Blanche White was a landmark character when she first hit the scene: Not only was she one of the few female African American protagonists in a mystery series, but she also was one of the few sleuths who reflected a working-class perspective. Blanche’s persona as an outspoken, politically savvy lower-class black woman was an instant success with readers.

Biography

The daughter of Ann Neely and Bernard Neely, Barbara Neely grew up in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Although she lived in a neighborhood populated by loving members of her extended family, throughout her school years she was often the only African American child in her class. Both her grandmothers were important figures in Neely’s childhood, especially her maternal grandmother, a woman she describes as the matriarch of the family and who against all odds achieved financial success with her earnings as a domestic worker.

At the age of nineteen Neely moved to Philadelphia, where she began what was to become a lifetime of social activism. She became involved with the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History and helped organize the Philadelphia Tutorial Project. She came to believe that she could do more for her causes if she acquired a graduate degree. Although she had always enjoyed writing, it did not occur to her to enter a creative writing program, she later explained. Instead, she earned a master’s degree in urban studies from the University of Pittsburgh. Her thesis proposed integrating women’s prisons into suburbs; after graduating she was employed as director of a women’s correction center in Pittsburgh, where she was able to help establish a women’s residential prison as she had envisioned in her thesis.

Over the next decades Neely held a series of jobs across the country—in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, California, and Massachusetts. These included stints as a Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) director and at Head Start, being a consultant for nonprofit ventures, and working at the Institute for Social Research, the African News Service, and Southern Exposure Magazine. She has been a director of Women for Economic Justice and helped found Women of Color for Reproductive Freedom. Neely has won several awards for her efforts to address social ills. In the 1980’s she and her partner moved to Jamaica Plain, near Boston, where she became the host of the radio program Commonwealth Journal. During this time Neely also began writing short stories, which have been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Neely incorporates her experiences as a social activist and her knowledge of different parts of the country into her novels: Blanche on the Lam and Blanche Passes Go are set in North Carolina; Blanche Cleans Up is set in Boston.

Analysis

Barbara Neely’s Blanche White series, while not extensive, shows evolution of intent and scope. The first novel, Blanche on the Lam, introduces readers to Blanche, whose voice and persona set the tone for the series. A middle-aged domestic worker, Blanche quickly begins educating readers on the injustices and indignities that African Americans often experience in their daily lives. The book opens with Blanche’s appearance in court, a scene that suggests connections between race and poverty and that exposes hypocrisies in class structure in the United States. Soon, however, Neely begins to focus on racial stereotypes (especially that of the mammy), exposing how prevalent and how psychically damaging such perceptions of African Americans are. Throughout the novel Blanche comments on prejudices against dark-skinned persons (in both black and white communities) and the invisibility of lower-class service personnel.

Neely surprised reader expectations in her second novel, Blanche Among the Talented Tenth, by turning away from black/white relationships to examine color prejudice among African Americans, a prejudice that privileges light-skinned African Americans and has created a market for an array of beauty products designed to make black people look whiter. Throughout, Blanche comments on elitist attitudes among affluent African Americans and worries about her adopted daughter’s growing preoccupation with and acceptance of the white culture’s standards of beauty. Neely also uses this novel to show Blanche’s rejection of traditional Christianity in favor of an African-influenced spirituality that includes calling on the guidance of ancestors.

The plot in the third Blanche White novel, Blanche Cleans Up, is set against a backdrop of political corruption, urban environmental hazards, and Blanche’s worries about her children’s need to be smart about sexual choices. All these issues cross race lines, but Blanche knows that African Americans and the poor are often disproportionately affected by them.

The fourth book in the series, Blanche Passes Go, brings resolution to an incident alluded to in the first novel: the rape of Blanche by a white employer. More thematically focused than the previous book, this novel weaves together crimes that collectively show the scope of abuse against women—a societal pattern that crosses race and class lines. This work has a psychological dimension not always present in Neely’s work, as Blanche struggles to overcome the fear of her previous attacker and to vent her righteous anger without succumbing to a resentment and distrust of all men.

As these descriptions suggest, readers are more likely to recall each story’s social concern more than the plots and to enjoy Blanche’s personality and her interaction with her immediate circle of family and friends than to become engrossed in the whodunit aspect of the novels. The antagonists are not particularly memorable, but for most readers that will be forgivable. What keeps readers coming back for more is Blanche’s voice, with its no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is explanations of the ways of the world for African Americans and for female domestic workers of all ilks.

Blanche on the Lam

Blanche on the Lam introduces Neely’s protagonist Blanche White and opens with a scene that sets the tone for the series: Blanche is in court, waiting to be sentenced for writing a bad check, thinking about all her white clients who so often fall behind in paying her wages. Blanche is a domestic worker who supports herself and the two children she is raising by cooking and cleaning homes for white families. When Blanche realizes the judge is sending her to jail instead of letting her pay a fine, she panics and bolts. She hides out as a live-in maid for a white family and soon learns that they have secrets of their own. Blanche looks like a stereotypical mammy, but readers immediately perceive that she is anything but—instead, she is a feisty, opinionated woman with a keen sense of how intertwined race, class, and gender issues are. Blanche’s personality dominates the story, which is peppered with her comments to readers on the ways of white folks, on what is wrong with American culture, and on what it means to be black in the United States. Although the bulk of her criticisms are of whites and white culture, she also has plenty to say about blacks who buy into white values that demean blacks and black culture—a theme Neely returns to in her second book.

Blanche’s commentary is contained within a mystery plot, as Blanche tries to discover the family’s dark secrets—secrets, it turns out, that involve racial injustices. Set in Farleigh, North Carolina (a fictional rendering of Raleigh, where Neely briefly resided), the story addresses racial attitudes that are both steeped in Southern history and nationally ubiquitous. An interesting twist to the plot, largely peopled by one-dimensional villains, is the emotional complication Blanche experiences as she gets to know and like Mumford, whose affliction with Down syndrome, Blanche comes to realize, causes him to experience many of the same social rejections as African Americans. Neely ends this novel in a way that goes against reader’s expectations—and that perhaps uncovers readers’ own stereotypic assumptions about the relationships between mammies and their white charges. Blanche on the Lam won several awards designated for an author’s first novel: the Agatha, the Macavity, the Anthony, and the Go On Girl!

Blanche Among the Talented Tenth

The title of Neely’s second novel, Blanche Among the Talented Tenth, alludes to W. E. B. Du Bois’s use of the phrase “the talented tenth” to describe the well-educated, affluent, socially prominent African American elite that he felt would be the catalyst for racial uplifting. Blanche, however, does not find sisterhood among this elite; instead, when she goes on vacation to a ritzy black resort on the coast of Maine, she is ostracized because she is dark-skinned. Blanche, as usual, has plenty to say about the situation, and her comments provide a critique of the color hierarchy among African Americans and the self-loathing that this hierarchy instills in many blacks. Blanche fumes about the popularity of skin lighteners, hair straighteners, and other beauty products meant to help blacks conform to white America’s standards of beauty. Her anger is fueled by frustration: Her efforts to keep her daughter from accepting these values have been met with stubborn resistance. There is a mystery plot amid the commentary, and Blanche uncovers the truth about a death at the resort, but readers are more likely to be interested in Blanche’s critiques of the black community’s classism and color hierarchy, her rejection of “black” standards of beauty, and her personal quest for spiritual fulfillment—which involves spiritualist readings, invoking her ancestors, and rejection of any religion molded by white Western culture.

Blanche Cleans Up

Set in Boston, where Blanche and her family have relocated, Blanche Cleans Up is the most urban of the Blanche mysteries. As usual, Neely’s plot focuses on specific social issues, and her tone is set by Blanche’s personality. Political corruption, teen pregnancy, pornography, homophobia, and urban environmental issues—specifically, lead poisoning—all get their share of the spotlight here. This novel also highlights more than others the struggles black mothers have in raising children healthy in both body and spirit in urban America. Blanche struggles to cope with her son’s new preadolescent machismo and her daughter’s self-esteem issues, all the while trying to decide how to deal with the fact that both children are now young adults who will soon be making sexual decisions that could alter their lives. Meanwhile she becomes aware—as she had in Blanche on the Lam—of how much common ground working-class African Americans have with other marginalized persons, from gays to immigrants. The plot exposes the depth and scope of corruption in local politics, but it also suggests the possibility of getting results through working within the system—a lesson Blanche’s son learns as he ventures for the first time into social activism.

Blanche Passes Go

Blanche Passes Go is Neely’s most feminist novel and Blanche’s most self-reflective story. Readers learned in the first novel in the series that years ago Blanche had been raped. She had kept quiet about the incident and thought she had coped fairly well with the crime’s psychological aftermath. In this novel, though, Blanche moves back to Farleigh, North Carolina, to become a partner in her friend Ardell’s catering business and begins to reexperience her old terrors when she sees her rapist again. Her feeling that danger surrounds her is heightened as she begins to notice other acts of violence against women—a local young woman is killed, and a neighbor, she suspects, is being abused by her husband. Blanche soon realizes that her lack of closure is affecting her ability to trust any man—even the seemingly very nice man she has begun dating—and she resolves to deal with her feelings in a more open and honest way. She finally does so—and not only discovers the young woman’s murderer but also confronts her neighbor’s abuser and conquers her fears of her rapist.

Blanche’s crisis illustrates the lifelong effects of being a victim of violence. Because previous books so consistently portray Blanche as an assertive, in-your-face, no-holds-barred woman, this story provides a surprising—yet believable—new dimension to her character. Blanche’s vulnerability seems all the more poignant because it goes against readers’ expectations, and it makes her final triumph all the more satisfying.

Principal Series Character:

• Blanche White , an African American maid who works for wealthy white families, uses the invisibility of her race and station as an opportunity to gather clues. Her dark skin, age, occupation, gender, and weight all suggest a “mammy” stereotype, but her keen awareness of social injustices, which she vocalizes in sharp critiques of white characters and culture, not only makes clear that she is no mammy but also deconstructs the stereotype itself. Blanche is an entertaining, astute, and outspoken sleuth who educates readers about racial and social issues as she solves her crimes.

Bibliography

Bailey, Frankie Y. “Blanche on the Lam, or The Invisible Woman Speaks.” In Diversity and Detective Fiction, edited by Kathleen Gregory Klein. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1999. This study of Blanche on the Lam demonstrates how Neely adapts the mystery genre to accommodate her analyses of social problems.

Beaulier, Elizabeth Ann, ed. Writing African American Women: An Encyclopedia of Literature by and About Women of Color. 2 vols. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. This encyclopedia contains entries on Neely and on each of her four Blanche White novels, with an emphasis on the author’s feminist themes.

English, Daylanne K. “The Modern in the Postmodern: Walter Mosley, Barbara Neely and the Politics of Contemporary African-American Detective Fiction.” American Literary History 18 (2006): 772-796. This comparison of Neely’s novels with Mosley’s more “hard-boiled” stories focuses on Mosley’s Easy Rawlins’s successful and Neely’s Blanche White’s unsuccessful search for emotionally sustaining black communities.

Geiger, Shirley Tolliver, and Natalie Hevener Kaufman. “Barbara Neely’s Blanche White Series.” Clues: A Journal of Detective Fiction 22, no. 2 (2001): 95-108. The author analyzes how Neely uses Blanche to challenge stereotypes about African Americans. Geiger focuses largely on Blanche on the Lam.

Plummer, Bonnie. “Subverting the Voice: Barbara Neely’s African American Detective.” Clues: A Journal of Detection 20, no. 1 (1999): 77-88. Plummer demonstrates how well Neely’s novels illustrate the traits that Stephen Soitos argues are common in African American detective fiction and that Kathleen Klein identifies as basic to feminocentric detective literature.

Witt, Doris. “Detecting Bodies: Barbara Neely’s Domestic Sleuth and the Trope of the (In)visible Woman.” In Recovering the Black Female Body: Self-Representations by African American Women, edited by Carla L. Peterson. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Looks at the invisibility of African American domestic servants in the greater community and Neely’s portrayal of Blanche.