Tell Me Your Story, Share Your History

My great-grandmama told my grandma the part she lived through that my grandma didn't live through and my grandma told my mama what they both didn't live through and my mama told me.

Think with me, for a minute. How has history been passed down; how have we remembered the past? Some may say textbooks, archives, things of that nature. But what about word of mouth? It is human nature to tell stories and share with others the events of our life. Through the oral traditions, history has been passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth.

Looking at Corregidora by Gayl Jones, word of mouth seems to be the main source of passing down the stories of the past. Throughout the novel, we see Ursa getting her history, for lack of a better idiom, straight from the horse’s mouth. Her earliest memories revolve around her being told the terrible history of her great-grandmother and grandmother who were enslaved, repeatedly raped, and forced into prostitution by the Brazilian slave owner Corregidora. While their tales are nothing short of wretched and reeking of disgust, they are authentic. There is no one else that can tell these stories the ways these women can; no one who can make them come to life. No one else can tell it first-hand. That’s the big difference between reading about history and hearing history. Having history passed down by word of mouth made for a much more enriched novel. If Ursa would’ve been reading these stories in books, after they’ve been rewritten a couple of times, would they have had the same effect on her? Would the book on you?