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Entitles: Booker T. Washington's Signs of Play by Susanna Ashton "The first thing that came in my way of book learning was the number 18," wrote Booker T. Washington in his memoir Up From Slavery. He goes on to explain that in the darkness of the salt furnaces where he and his stepfather worked, the boss would go around and mark each barrel with an identifying number. Washington's stepfather was always "18," and Washington recalls that "after a while I got to the point where I could make that figure, though I knew nothing about any other figures or letters" (18). While Washington spends much time extolling his own hard work in mastering book learning in his later years, the ambiguity of his initial phrasing is telling--that something "came in my way." The phrasing opens up the interpretative possibilities that this essay seeks to explore--by the way of what things did he encounter book learning? And, equally, how were those same things obstacles? A complex exchange of signification and power underlying the ambiguity of this phrase can be seen in Washington's memoir, especially in the scenes that illustrate the mastery of literacy. These scenes use troubled terms quite
The Southern Literary Journal – University of North Carolina Press
Published: Jul 23, 2007
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