MJJG 24-33

[Becky Lindroos]

In the book, Berbalang is the head of the “Mu’tafikah”which is busily trying to liberate cultural artifacts from museums and centres of “Art Detention” in order to return them to their originating cultures.

Best I can think is that Mu’tafikah is a slang deterioration of “mutha-f’ker.”  

Apparently within Mu’tafikah, Berbelang represents the Black race, Thor Wintergreen represents the White race , Yellow Jack is a Chinese American and Jose Fuentes is a Mayan seaman.  They are all part of Mu’tafikah.  (More references are coming up.) 

Becky 



> On Nov 19, 2020, at 1:47 AM, Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks, Bekah and Cagliostro, for background on the gangsters.
> 
> numbers racket - later taken over by the state in many jurisdictions - a criminal enterprise that in many people’s thoughts was “victimless” (although hard-core moralists continue to disagree) so is this changeover of power a benevolent manifestation of Jes Grew?
> 
> Imho, no - like the Nation of Islam, & African-American communism, a-and maybe even the Mira-filths, black gangsterism is peripheral, not central to Jes Grew
> 
> 24 - again the grapevine telegraph, and mention of Booker T Washington at the 1895 Cotton States Exposition. That was the famous “cast down your bucket where you are” speech.
> With which he “bewitched” the first mixed-race audience for a speech given by an African-American in the South. Bewitched?
> Sounds like Reed is linking BTW’s self-help message with the magic of Jes Grew.
> 
> 25 does “Picture the 1920s as a drag race” owe something to Donald Barthelme?
> Maybe a bit, but it develops differently, imho. Mixing the metaphor with a dog show.
> Actually pretty cool, I didn’t notice the transition (and back again with “hound mongrel of a struggle-buggy”) till writing about it.
> Author has a way with words, film at 11...yeah, ok, but still, pretty deft imho.
> 
> “Gros ben age” is supposed to be a pun on Haitian “gros bon ange” (“big good angel”?) which is like zeitgeist?
> 
> 
> 28 & forward - invasion of Haiti
> 
> So Harding was only President from 1921 to 1923. Under Wilson’s orders, US factotums invaded and occupied it in 1915; Roosevelt Admin finally ended it in 1934.
> 
> James Weldon Johnson, who was, like, a very major poet who also wrote “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” journeyed there & wrote about it for the NAACP and in the Nation - Reed puts him at the rent party that PaPa LaBas attends
> 
> 
> 30 “A little boy kicked his Newfoundland HooDoo 3 cents and spent a night squirming and gnashing his teeth.”
> 
> Didn’t make sense to me until a later chapter, 3 cents is the name of LaBas’s dog.
> 
> 
> 31 & forward - Earline is introduced as his assistant therapist but then many times he calls her daughter.
> 
> Who is this Berbelang cat?
> 
> --
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