Understanding Preston L. Allen/Understanding Hoochie Mama
Hoochie Mama: What's in a name?
Excerpt from the Essay "End of the Century Renaissance Men on Women; Birth of the Sex-Role Renegade"
by Buckner Pierre, Ph.D (ABD)
April 17, 2004,
Forida State University
Tallahassee, Florida
Another important American artist who comes to prominence during that fertile period is the Miami-based novelist Preston L. Allen, author of such seminal works as Hoochie Mama (2001) and Churchboys and Other Sinners (2003).
Allen, prior to the release of Hoochie Mama, a literary cloak and dagger gem, was noted mostly for his short fiction; in fact, his award-winning collection of short prose (Churchboys) was accepted for publication many months before Hoochie Mama but was delayed two years due to production problems.
Unlike his African American contemporaries, Preston L. Allen is difficult to categorize. Indeed, his artistic interest seemed loftier than the "limited and stifling oeuvre of the times," as he called it. "For me, everything has a twist. I write romance, yes, but it has a twist. I write detective fiction, but again, it has a twist. And by twist, I don't mean mere plot twist. By twist, I mean honest introspection. There are no pat questions or pat answers in my books."
Preston L. Allen was born in 1964 in Roatan, Honduras, then followed his immigrant parents in 1968 to the U.S. They lived in Staten Island, New York, first, and then moved to Boston, Massachusetts, which Allen came to accept as his "real" home. "I know I was born in Honduras, but I don't speak Spanish. I eat beans and rice, and plantains, and I have an accent, sort of, when I am with family. Technically, I am Hispanic, but I feel more Caribbean than anything. My experiences are more like immigrant Jamaicans and Bahamians than like Cubans or Puerto Ricans. Now Boston, I have always felt that Boston was my home. I was upset when we left and moved to Miami. For years, down here in Florida, I felt I didn't fit in. The people talked funny. Southern ways seemed strange to me. I would pretend that I was just biding my time until we moved back up to Boston."
As the firstborn of a hard-working middle class black family, Allen was encouraged to do well in school so as to set an example for his "race" (this was the late sixties) and his four younger brothers. This he did, and in 1983 he found himself at the University of Florida on an engineering scholarship. But Allen heard the call of the pen. "My freshman comp instructor would put A plus and A plus-plus and A plus-plus-plus on my essays. I was thinking, okay, so she likes my writing. One day she asked me what my major was. When I told her engineering, she said, 'I'm surprised. You write so well for an engineer.' I had no idea what she meant by that, but since I had a crush on her, I changed my major to English. The truth is I had been writing for years. Ever since I was a child I had been keeping journals, writing poetry, writing stories. All of that. I have always seen myself as a writer. The engineering thing I did because it was what my high school counselors had told me to do . . . to make money."
After college, Allen returned to Miami, where he worked as a college teacher while enrolled in the MFA program at Florida International University. FIU's MFA program was ranked in the top ten nationally. His professors were noted writers Les Standiford, James hall, Lynne Barrett, John Dufresne, and poet Cambell McGrath. Among his Classmates were future writing stars Vickie Hendricks, Barbara Jean Parker, Richard Blanco, and fellow Bostonian Dennis Lehane, he of Mystic River fame. Allen explains, " almost didn't apply to the program. I had already applied and been accepted into the University of Miami's Master's program in English with my mind set on later getting a Ph.D. An MFA in creative writing was what I wanted, but I wasn't sure that I was good enough. You had to submit your stories as part of the application process. I couldn't bear the thought of being rejected. My wife knew my heart. She kept encouraging me to apply to FIU, which I finally did. It was quite a big thrill when I got that acceptance phone call from Dr. Standiford."
It has been said that Preston L. Allen's work defies categories. Hoochie Mama is a murder mystery that reads with literary precision. It is as "repulsive and compelling as a movie directed by David Lynch based on a script by Raymond Carver." In the end, the reader is rooting for both the villain and the hero. To be sure, the book is quite an accomplishment, and like Allen's other work, it puts under a magnifying glass the father-son and sister-sister relationships.
For example, the father's name is Dake, the son, David. Together they are D. D., a syllabic utterance not too dissimilar from "da-da." The point is further emphasized when Dake forces David to recite the words of a popular Methodist hymn: "Father I stretch my hand to thee/ No other help I know."
The lumbering villain, Donovan Doe, another D.D., wages a doomed battle against “the father,” his heavenly father as well as earthly. His father fixation is paralleled, if quietly, by that of the foreign-born final brother of the trio, Tyrone Needlock. Though Needlock's name breaks the pattern of Da's, indicating his foreignness, his alienness, he too "stretches his hand" to the father in his art, his paintings. As the least loved and most foreign of father Dake's children, Needlock is the only one that he actually orders murdered. Needlock is also, ironically, the only one who gives Dake a grandson, extending the family line to another generation.
The detective's name is M Gantry, alluding to a famous iconic character from American literature, Sinclair Lewis's jackleg preacher Elmer Gantry. We are told that the M in her name stands for nothing--it is simply M (as in Mother? Motherless?).
Her sister's name is Sadie Gantry, alluding to Sadie Hawkins and the sex role reversal dance named for her, during which it was acceptable for the woman to invite the man to dance. The name "Sadie" is also dangerously close to sadistic, though in the book she is quite the masochist. This is a nice reversal, as the sadist becomes the masochist at the hands of "da-da" Dake. Note also that the sisters together become S and M Gantry.
But there is no Sadie Hawkins type reversal when M plays the masochist to Dake's sadism near the end of the book, or is there? Though she is named M (for masochist), M Gantry has been the one dishing out the punishment throughout the novel to criminal and cop alike.
There is, however, another way to regard the naming of names for these Gantry sisters. Instead of S and M, perhaps Allen would have us read them as M and S, or Ms, the Gloria Steinhem/feminist revolution invention of the sixties and seventies that allows a woman to be titled and addressed without indicating her marital affiliation with a man.
Allen says, "The naming of names is extremely important in this book, though I hope, you don't notice it so much the first time through . . . but we have to admit that we live in a culture where what people call you is important. We as black people are especially aware of this. Not so long ago, we were negroes, then colored, then black, then African-American. She is called a hoochie mama. Is she? Of course, not. Is she M Gantry? Is she Elmer Gantry? Is she Emelia Gantry? Is she Amelia Earhart? Now there was a strong woman. She was flying planes around the world way back when women, in most parts of the country, probably weren't even allowed to drive cars. So an important murder takes place at Amelia Earhart Park. So M's real name is Emelia, misspelled but close enough to make the point. So most of the novel takes place in a city founded by a famed aviator and rival of the Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss. The men are getting all of the credit, they are being called heroes, and the women who are accomplishing the same heroic feats are fighting to be more than just a footnote in the history books. They're doing it too, but if they're not careful, they'll be called sluts (if they like men) and dykes if we can't find a man to attach them to. It happened to Amelia Earhart. It happens to all strong women who dare to play with the boys. You don' think it happens everyday on the police force? The fire department? The military? So yes, they are the S and M sisters as well as the M and S sisters."
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$14.95 (Akashic Books)