Ursa's Singing Analysis

After her first show, she meets Mutt, her future ex-husband, for the first time. He calls her out and asks where she heard the songs she was singing during that performance. She explains to him that she wrote those songs herself. He comments that although she tries to “sing hard” (Jones 148), she is not a hard woman. When Ursa first writes and performs the songs she is not speaking from her own personal experience; however, this changes when she first hands experiences a tragic event. Mutt, her husband at the time, became frustrated with Ursa because she refused to stop singing. He was “looking drunk and evil” when they engaged in a verbal argument (Jones 3). During this verbal altercation, Mutt pushed Ursa down the stairs. Ursa was rushed
to the hospital after this physical incident. It was at the hospital where her womb was removed and her pregnancy ultimately terminated. This devastated Ursa because at a young age it was clear that her womanhood, or the ability to bore children, was the most important part of herself. Ursa was taught that her worth was determined on making new generations. Ursa was told several times that Corregidora’s women must make generations. Making generations was the art of creation that Ursa’s family took part in. It was their form of art as well as a way to ensure the memory of the brutality of slavery will continue to be told and lived. Ursa’s great-grandmother made this clear to her at the very young age of five by telling her, “I’m leaving evidence. And you got to leave evidence too. And your children got to leave evidence. And when it come time to hold up the evidence, we got to have evidence to hold up” (Jones 14). She later explained to Ursa that “they can burn the papers, but they can’t burn the conscious” (Jones 22). This task existed to ensure that the history of suffering and abuse did not get swept under the rug or burnt away like the evidence the government had destroyed. The primary role of the women in Ursa’s family was to make generations so they could fight against the powers who were trying to erase the records of the dehumanizing institution of slavery. With this mindset instilled early in Ursa’s life, it was clear to her that she had to reproduce. Her loss of ability to reproduce obviously affected Ursa.
This loss of womanhood changed Ursa and more importantly changed her voice. Ursa was not destroyed by the abuse of either man in her life who abused her; she instead let her hardships strengthen her spirit and her voice. She continued to sing about the troubles she has experience and her family history. Her voice now had a strain that “made it better, because you could tell what she’d been through. You could hear what she’d been through” (Jones 44). The type of hard voice she had was like callused hands- strong and hard” (Jones 96). A listener commented that it was “the kind of voice that can hurt you and make you still want to listen” (Jones 96). Her new voice strengthened her musical talents in the genre of blue. It allows her to sound hard and increase the emotion that her songs provoke. The songs, her creation, allowed her to express the trauma she experienced. Mutt, who stole her womanhood from her, would send a family member, Jim to spy on Ursa for him after the incident. Jim told Mutt that Ursa “you’ve [she] still got your [her] voice, that [she’s] still Ursa” (Jones 183). Although she was beaten and bruised, she was still herself. She was still singing which has always been the most important thing for her. The quote from Alice Walker perfectly describes this, “for her, so hindered and intruded upon in so many ways, being an artist has still been a part of her life. This ability to hold on, even in very simple ways, is work Black women have done for a very long time” (Walker 242). Her singing and song writing allowed her to create something tangible to spread to the world. This passion for her creation is what unfortunately led her to loss of womanhood, but it still stood strong.
Ursa, who remains single for the majority of her later life, uses her songs to not broadcast the tragedies of her familial past, but as a companion. Singing becomes a part of herself; it becomes more than a simple career. Mutt, who took away her womanhood but gave her the hardness to her voice, came back into her life towards the end of the novel. During this scene, Ursa realizes how to deal with the conflicting feelings of both love and hatred she had for Mutt. She uses both her body sexually and “song” to come to terms with her relationship with Mutt. They both sing a song about promising to no longer hurt one another.
Although Ursa could not bear new generations, she could still pass down the evidence that her great-grandmother told her to through singing.
This more effective strategy allows many others to relate to her songs and relive the memories of the ancestors before themselves. Ursa’s singing tells countless of crowds during multiple shows in a day over decades. That means that the experiences and memories of her ancestors and herself were shared to many more people and more rapid than if she had a few children. Alice Walker explains the notion that a daughter’s artistic work can extend back to her past generations. This provides another reason why Ursa is still able to let her family’s story to live, enduring past her own life. Ursa was “guided by my [her] heritage of a respect of strength- in search of my [her] mother’s garden- I [she] found her own” (Walker 243). Ursa’s garden may not by like her mothers, the ability to bear children, but she has the creation of song and the power of her hard voice has on the crowds of many. It is with her garden she can sort out her psychological scars of a lack of sexual pleasure and desire, a lack of long lasting emotional attachment, and a lack of self-worth. The powerful weapon of Art, especially in Black Feminism, allows Black women to channel their frustrations and despair into tangible things that people can see or hear daily in their everyday
lives.