{"id":3887,"date":"2020-04-03T21:49:34","date_gmt":"2020-04-04T01:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/?p=3887"},"modified":"2020-05-13T10:16:05","modified_gmt":"2020-05-13T14:16:05","slug":"stolen-narratives-and-an-invented-alphabet-paratext-and-exploitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/2020\/04\/03\/stolen-narratives-and-an-invented-alphabet-paratext-and-exploitation\/","title":{"rendered":"Stolen Narratives and an Invented Alphabet: Paratext and Exploitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cornelius Wilson Larison, M.D.\u2019s book <\/span>Sylvia Dubois (Now 116 Years Old): A Biografy of The Slav who Whipt her Mistres and Gand her Fredom <\/span><\/i>includes several examples of paratext that offer insight to the publishing history of the book. Notably, the book includes no chapters nor does it list a table of contents. The book does, however, have several divisions. It is comprised of a marked preface that lays out the concepts of orthoepy and brief notes about Sylvia Dubois, a section titled \u201cThe Biografy\u201d that recounts the narrative, supposedly as Dubois told it (more to come on this), and a \u201cWorks Published\u201d afterword that discusses more about Larison\u2019s work and offers several ways to buy books.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aside from flyleaves, there is little to no unused space on any of the paper used in the book. The book\u2019s text is small, and although spacing is adequate, it is clear that the book was designed to be produced without indulgences that would create additional expense. This makes sense given that the books Larison published were made on his personal press, which was stored in an offshoot of his school and would have lacked the resources to execute a more elaborate printing that would result in more specialized paratext.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Introdctory page after a blank flyleaf<\/p>\n

The one significant exception to this trend is Larison\u2019s inclusion of a phonetic alphabet in the book\u2019s preface. The alphabet, part or Larison\u2019s work on spelling reform and orthoepy, offers an explanation of the way Larison spells words throughout the remainder of the text and makes use of standard English conventions to explain his nuanced revisions of the language. The primary audience for Silvia<\/em><\/span>\u00a0Dubois (Now 116 Years Old): A Biografy of The Slav who Whipt her Mistres and Gand her Fredom <\/span><\/i>was the cohort of primarily white, male scholars interested in orthoepy at the time of the book\u2019s writing. This is outlined by an afterword written in standard English rather than phonetics that states that the book was produced “to be used as a textbook” at Larison’s school. This intended audience and the prerequisite of fluency in reading, specifically reading academic jargon. Considering this begins to reveal racism and the exploitative side of Larison\u2019s work, particularly as it pertains to Sylvia Dubois, the owner of the narrative Larison tells.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Larison’s Phonetic Alphabet<\/p>\n

Supposedly, the value of spelling reform and orthoepy was to expand opportunities around literacy and to make the social power and agency available through literacy in the nineteenth century more accessible to a wider group of people. However, Larison\u2019s academic introduction does not align with this aim, suggesting, as Michael C. Berthold postulates in <\/span>“The Peals of Her Terrific Language”: The Control of Representation in Silvia Dubois, a Biografy of the Slav Who Whipt Her Mistres and Gand Her Fredom,<\/span><\/i><\/a> that the work was strictly an abstract, cerebral construction meant to establish Larison as a pioneer in his field of study and co-opting Dubois\u2019 experience as collateral damage in the process. The article points to the “great hegemonic divide between an unlettered black woman and a professional white man” as evidence (Berthold, 4). Furhter evidence in support of this suggestion comes from the presence of the phonetic alphabet, which frames the purpose of the narrative in a very specific way. By placing it before the text, Larison foregrounds his own consideration of orthoepy above the telling of Sylvia Dubois\u2019 personal narrative. Although the title of the book suggests it is a biography, the preface about the study of orthoepy and the inclusion of the key to the alphabet that Larison presents dominates as the primary focus of the text. In doing so, he reduces Dubois\u2019 account to an example of his theory. By writing his personal sentiments in the afterword in standard English while converting Dubois\u2019 story into phonetics, Larison commands control of her narrative and the manner through which it is told, processing it in a way that disrupts Dubois\u2019 original telling of the story and leaves this telling to the mercy of interpretation of Larison\u2019s invented language. <\/span><\/p>\n

Although the foreward is written in phonetics, Larison does not privilege Dubois’ telling of her story over his own take on it. He apologizes, in his explanation of the alphabet, for the way Dubois tells her story and the language she uses, thus controlling and invalidating her voice. This is illustrated in the following example:\u00a0<\/span>“The narativ abounds in profanity, an element that is foren to me, and wun that I most eordyaly despis and sincerly deprecat. But Silvia is a profan negres.” Larison demonstrates no concern that the expression of Dubois\u2019 voice may be disrupted, but is overtly invested in ensuring that his personal initiative and intentions are not misconstrued as demonstrated by his decision to express Dubois’ story in a certain way.<\/p>\n

One might still make the argument that, although influenced by manipulative practices, Larison\u2019s book still provides a platform to publish an account of a story told by one of the abhorrently underrepresented voices of black women in the later nineteenth century. This brings us to perhaps the most egregious transgression of the book, which is that Sylvia Dubois never fully consented to being the subject of her biography (Berthold, 8). Dubois shared her story with Larison, but she never intended for it to be published. This demonstrates that Larison prioritized the opportunity to use a story he thought of as sensational enough to draw an wide, interested audience to present his theories of orthoepy, and he did not respect the wishes or the ownership of Dubois, effectively stealing her story to market his own agenda. Dubois even said that publishing her story “‘T’wont do me no good,'” but Larison still went through with the creation of the book (Berthold, 8).<\/span><\/p>\n

It is also important to know that both Dubois and Larison were acutely aware of the power of literacy. Allegedly, it was the purpose behind Larison\u2019s passion for spelling reform. However, after sharing her narrative with Larison, Dubois never learned to read or write, meaning she did not even receive compensation for sharing her narrative, she did not even benefit from the social or intellectual capital of obtaining literacy from her own narrative that was engineered to supposedly improve access to literacy. Larison and his orthoepic alphabet effectively used his privilege and power to silence Dubois on multiple levels–first by failing to obtain her consent to share her story, second by distorting her narrative with his orthoepic experiment, third by controlling her voice by apologizing for the way she expresses herself in the narrative he domineers, and finally by using her narrative without compensation and without ensuring that she was endowed with the means to develop her voice through writing and literacy. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
\nSylvia Dubois as portrayed in the front of the biography<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cornelius Wilson Larison, M.D.\u2019s book Sylvia Dubois (Now 116 Years Old): A Biografy of The Slav who Whipt her Mistres and Gand her Fredom includes several examples of paratext that offer insight to the publishing history of the book. Notably, the book includes no chapters nor does it list a table of contents. The book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8020,"featured_media":3889,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3887"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4241,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3887\/revisions\/4241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bookhistory2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}