"My Red Hand, My Black Hand" Analysis Essay Example

Author Dael Orlandersmith is a creative, born in 1959 in New York City’s East Harlem. This community served as a multicultural field as she was surrounded by various races and cultures intermingling. She would soon explore the world of acting, poetry, and playwrights. She has stated about her work, “There is a theme throughout the work that I write...about childhood and the sins of the father, the sins of the mother, and how people take on the very thing they don’t like about their parents and they become them.”

Within the play My Red Hand, My Black Hand by Dael Orlandersmith, we are encouraged to grasp a new understanding of problems affecting the multicultural community. In the play, we are introduced to three main characters: the daughter, the father, and also the mother. This work is a coming-of-age piece where the daughter is seeking an understanding of her own racial identity. We would see this in the dialogue between her parents, and herself. Despite not having much character development in terms of movement, as readers, we are asked to develop our understanding of the dilemma people of different races face; as we encounter the mother’s (African American) and the father’s (Native American) racial identity, perspective, and relation towards it. This would help the daughter build understanding to begin to forge her own cultural identity.

Within my initial reaction to the play, I felt as if I was submerged into a new world which enabled me to widen my understanding of racial issues. Like all children, the search for understanding in both self and communities is very difficult; through experiencing this play, I found that this would cut deeper in the search for people of the multiracial background of minority groups. I see this most vividly hinted at towards the beginning of the play.

Daughter: 

My Hands/Red/ Black

Dance to Rhythms

Different/ Various/ similar rhythms

This line introduces the play, setting the tone for the factors that will be addressed. Using the dilemmas facing the line between culture and race, Orlandersmith builds on the central focal point of the child gaining knowledge of their racial identities; while at the same time showing how society handles the intermingling of the two when posed with the inner turmoil of living one’s truth. We are exposed to the Native American and African American communities' struggle with having Identity and maintaining the culture which was stripped from them. One of the most pivotal known to us would be that to which we are capable of seeing the be passed down of generational trauma due to lack of self-understanding. We see this in the dialogue between the father and the daughter. 

Father:

His Father/ My Grandfather 

Spent 

Depleted 

American Dreams / Stomped into the 

Dirt of the Res/

Daughter:

His American 

Dream

Father:

to pick up

A Guitar

To be a Blues Man

To be a Red Man / Blues Man-

Daughter:

My Father’s Father / My Grandfather 

Father:

Ghost Dance Lakota Style

Daughter:

to

His father / my grandfather’s rhythm 

But he closed his eyes and also

Ghost Dances with

Embracing one’s racial identity which is both wounded with little understanding of it, is a hard task for a child in a world where adults prefer to see black and white; equally, we are seeing that in the piece embracing oneself in this identity poses even more difficult for her father. We are taken along this journey in a way in which we learn of the leaps a multiracial person has to go through to become comfortable within their skin, and are asked to reevaluate ourselves in the matter of what limitations or beliefs we carry from our trauma of pain that prevents us from living freely.

My Red Hand, My Black Hand shows us the price a person must pay within being a human searching for self-understanding. No matter the race, every racial group will come with its own set of issues that will affect the person’s ideas, thoughts, and understanding internally and externally. The daughter, being a person of multiracial descent, attempts to begin finding comfort with both sides, yet is not understood by her parents as they have emotional scarring from trying to live within their truth. This truth to which they live is subjective to us the audience, yet reality for the mother and father within the play. As they have grown to be set in their ways, it is shown to take effect on the daughter when it is said that:

Daughter: 

They-both-my Mother and Father

Try to Ghost Dance / Blues Dance

Drink away the 

Voices

Father:

-Western / Northern Red Voices /

Mother: 

Southern Black Voices

Daughter: 

They Dance

Snap their fingers

Guitar lick / try to 

Shoot it down

Father:

Vodka

Mother:

Tequila 

Daughter:

Bourbon

They try to shoot down the voices down /

Taking this stance, we can see that the play tells more about society than the child which is the focus during this point. Using alcohol as a coping mechanism to drown out voices worked originally, but would only do so in the dynamic without a child facing society in an attempt to live their truth. This is portrayed even further as a baby, where about the only thing she can do is feel.

Daughter:

… I Can’t speak

But I can hear

I can’t explain / I'm a baby

But I feel it

I feel them

Turning on themselves

Turning on each other

Not always with words

There looks

Mother: 

Shrugs

Father:

Silence

Mother / Father:

More silence /

Daughter:

I feel it /

I feel them

Shooting Themselves

-Down-

This turmoil felt by her parents would be felt by the Daughter throughout the piece as she understands their pain, and begins to emerge herself within both cultures. This would bring forward the confusion on how she should be; as her parents never fully were present with themselves despite society's expectations unsedated. This along with input from age mates would build her inner conflict where about at the end of the story she creates her path acknowledging the pain and individuality which everyone holds. 

Daughter: 

…Don’t tell me not to Ghost

Dance on the Res

Call on my ancestors

On the Res

Whisper Tingig secrets to my Grandmother /

Dance / Link Wray Style

Down at the Res

I will Rock the Res

I’ve Got

Father:

Red /

Mother:

Black 

Daughter:

Don’t anybody expect me to

Shoot it 

Shoot

Shoot

It

On it down

Learning the lesson from her parent’s stories, we can see that she was the embodiment of following oneself. Thus freeing all generations to come after her as long as they continue to be free within themselves. From an evolutionary point of view, it can be seen as similar to Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

Dael Orlandersmith is a very pivotal creative in the writing community expanding on what it means to gain self-understanding. Raised in East Harlem New York, we can't she was allotted various experiencesю.