The Palace Blues

• Other Authors: Wilson, Brandy T. (authoraut)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: English literature; English language
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-7255

The 1920's blues scene is a time and scene often depicted in books, plays, film, and music. However much the time and place have been popular for artistic exploration, the story of the lesbian and lesbian existence in this time and place has been largely forgotten, overlooked, ignored or erased. I wish to change that. I wish also to pay tribute to the female blues singers of the 1920s, a group of women who have in a large part been disinherited in their position as being at the forefront of the blues and jazz tradition. They have been ignored and replaced in popular culture and history with the men of the same time period. I wish to give them their due in fiction, as they were an inspiration for this project. The novel pivots on the moment when Frankie, a young white girl meets Jean Bailey, an African American woman blues singer. With the novel I investigate Frankie's struggle with her place, or lack of place, in a society that is complicated by issues of sexuality, gender, and race. The voice of particular identities is often erased, ignored, and rendered invisible, especially the lesbian and transgendered voice in literary history. I am interested in recreating these stories and voices. My novel is the dramatization of that hot rush of discovery of self intermingled with what can sometimes be the cold stillness of living on the margins of society. Through the setting of The Palace Blues I intend to reflect loss and dislocation as the narrative moves backwards through the chronological progression of the blues scene. Rather than beginning in New Orleans and moving through the South and ending in Chicago or New York, I take my characters on the opposite path. One of the things I do with the novel is trace the beginnings of the blues to small communities in the South. During these beginnings the first women blues singers were making their mark, and I aim to pay tribute (through fictional characters based loosely on Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith) to the groundwork that these women laid. The early women blues singers asserted their independence in business and in their personal lives some fifty years before the second wave of the women's movement, a fact I wish to illustrate in the novel. === A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. === Spring Semester, 2008. === April 4, 2008. === Includes bibliographical references. === Robert Olen Butler, Professor Directing Dissertation; Donna Marie Nudd, Outside Committee Member; Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Committee Member; Joann Gardner, Committee Member.