Understanding Suzan-Lori Parks by Larson Jennifer;

Author:Larson, Jennifer;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press

For Lucy the extent to which Brazil has put on (or has yet to put on) copies of his father's clothes represents the extent of his transformation into a celebrated faker. She knows that the clothes do not represent a transition into greatness, but rather a transition away from reality. Lucy thus abides by her manifesto, declared at the beginning of act 2, to seek “tuh know thuh real thing from thuh echo. Thuh truth from thuh hersay” (175).

According to Foster, this issue “of distinguishing the ‘truth' of history from the ‘hearsay,’ that pertains in The America Play” also creates “the uncertainty of Booth's inheritance.”21 In Topdog/Underdog, this inheritance—an undergarment, the mother's money-filled (perhaps) stocking—shows that “Booth exists in a kind of sexual and economic limbo,”22 and it becomes the fragile thread by which Booth's sanity, and perhaps his entire identity, hangs.

In the Ma and Pa play, Booth plays the mother role, as he obviously identifies more with the mother in his family since she leaves him the inheritance despite the fact that he is the younger brother. Even at the beginning of the play, Booth threatens to gamble with this inheritance. However, Lincoln knows—at least at this point—that his brother is joking, and he tells him, “Thats like saying you dont got no money cause you aint never gonna do nothing with it so its like you dont got it”—to which Booth retorts, “At least I still gots mines. You blew yrs” (17). Though on the surface the brothers are speaking of economic responsibility, they are also more subtly speaking of family ties. Lincoln, in spending his paternal inheritance, has at least started the process of dissociating himself from his father's legacy. Booth, in keeping the mother's money-filled(?) stocking, unsure of the monetary value of its contents, still defines himself in connection with this inheritance and, subsequently, his mother's abandonment.

Therefore, when the brothers return to the subject a few pages later, Booth is again on the defensive as he describes the day his mother left and gave him the stocking: “She was putting her stuff in bags. She had all them nice suitcases but she was putting her stuff in bags. /(Rest) / Packing up her shit. She told me to look out for you. I told her I was the little brother and the big brother should look out after the little brother. She just said it again. That I should look out for you. Yeah” (21). Thus Booth's bequest from the mother is not exclusively economic. This maternal inheritance also gives him license to feel superior to Lincoln, for despite the fact that he is “the little brother,” the mother designates him as the Topdog. Also, in the lines immediately following this description, Booth attempts to emasculate Lincoln by calling him a “shiteating motherfucking pathetic limpdick uncle tom,” and he screams, “Here I am trying to earn a living and you standing in my way. YOU STANDING IN MY WAY, LINK!” (21). Contrary to any hopes that

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