BOOK REVIEW

_Stories from the Heart: Missouri's African American Heritage_. Compiled by
Gladys Caines Coggswell. University of Missouri Press, Missouri Heritage
Readers Series, 2009. Pp. 160, 35 illustrations, bibliography, index. Paper,
6" x 9". $15.95. ISBN 978-0-8262-1844-5.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Mary Leah Christmas

Copyright (c) 2011 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.


Any Mark Twain Forum members, and others, attending the inaugural Mark
Twain's Hannibal: The Clemens Conference, August 11-13, 2011, sponsored by
the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum, are in for a treat. Award-winning
master storyteller Gladys Caines Coggswell's dramatic performance of Mark
Twain's "A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It," scheduled for
Friday, August 12, will be a highlight. Coggswell's performances are
recommend highly and often, as is her 2009 book, _Stories from the Heart:
Missouri's African American Heritage_.

Gladys Caines Coggswell is described as an inspirational speaker nationally
known for expertise in areas of inner-healing, humor and story-based
seminars. Coggswell's reading of Mark Twain's "A True Story" is presented at
the Hannibal Mark Twain museum several times per week now as the museum
strives to further awareness of northeast Missouri's slave-holding history.

Much knowledge is imparted through the medium of storytelling: "Stories are
entertainment, but they can also be history, life lessons, oral literature,
and myth" (125). Coggswell provides some interesting details of her own life
and background and those of her family members. For instance:

"Uncle Pete often boasted about the Indian and African blood that flowed
through his veins. I was proud to know of that and dreamed of one day
visiting Africa. He never delved deeply into his heritage. He just wanted
the world and anybody in the world who would listen to know that he knew who
and what he was" (8).

Many of the _Stories from the Heart_ unfold right in Mark Twain's
backyard--not only in Missouri, but elsewhere. The grandfather of
Coggswell's husband was born in 1867 in Kent, Connecticut, about 50 miles
from Mark Twain's Nook Farm estate in West Hartford. Coggswell's grandfather
was subsequently "raised on the Schaghticoke Indian Reservation about
fifteen miles north of New Milford" (9-10), and her husband, Truman, was
born in Bridgeport, Connecticut (9). These cities are approximately 22 miles
and 15 miles, respectively, from Mark Twain's Redding, Connecticut.

_Stories from the Heart_ contains eight major sections designated by number,
but the non-numbered sections contain valuable information as well. Most of
the major sections correspond to a geographical place or region of Missouri:
Frankford (13 pages), Hannibal (16 pages), Bowling Green (9 pages), St.
Louis (20 pages), the Bootheel area (25 pages), "Country Schools, City
Schools" (15 pages of St. Louis reminiscences), "Why We Tell Stories" (12
pages), and "Change and Continuity in Missouri Storytelling" (5 pages).

The eloquent Foreword by Lisa L. Higgins, Director of the Missouri Folk Arts
Program, gives us insights into the motivations and intentions of the
compiler of these oral histories:

"In the early 1990s Gladys emerged as a fully bloomed storyteller, with
strong and well-established roots in the oral tradition. A true griot, she
does not simply access a catalogue of stories for performances. She has that
unerring knack for picking the most relevant piece for any occasion. She
excels when she uses stories to teach, to heal, and to enlighten. She is now
one of Missouri's foremost storytellers, teaching artists, and community
scholars. She has worked tirelessly to preserve, document, teach, and
present the artistic, historical, and contemporary cultural significance of
the African American story in Missouri" (xiii). ("Griot" is the term used to
designate African American storytellers and oral historians.)

The stories compiled in Coggswell's book run the gamut of emotion--from the
serious account of the "terrible time" of school integration (87) to the
amusing description of the odiferous, medicinal "asfidity bag" (47)--but all
are compelling. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of Coggswell's own writings
in _Stories from the Heart_ contain flashes of Twainy wit:

"My memories of my own family's storytelling reach back to my
great-grandparents. Both told me many stories. My great-grandmother Marie
Wallace Cofer disciplined me with stories. If I behaved in a manner that was
unacceptable to God and to her, she had a story about a sinful person (or
sometimes it was an animal) that had behaved in the same dastardly way I
had, and who, of course, came to an extremely bad end. I did not want to
come to a bad end, so there were times when I tried very hard to behave"
(1).

In a line two pages later, after Coggswell was told an allegory against the
sin of not telling the truth (the word "lie" was forbidden in the
household), again shades of Mark Twain: "I was so afraid my head might turn
to stone that I told the truth for a long time after that--at least a week.
I still try to tell the truth most of the time" (3). Here, a different
Twainy parallel: "Unlike my great-grandmother, my great-grandfather wasn't
religious and didn't tell us stories to discipline us. His stories were very
entertaining, but in the process of being entertained I learned many lessons
from the man who, I believed, knew all there was to know about everything"
(6). For omniscience, Coggswell had her great-grandfather; Mark Twain had
Rudyard Kipling.

On p. 123 of _Stories from the Heart_ is an image of Coggswell and her
family posed in Hannibal with the Mark Twain Riverboat's "Welcome Aboard"
lifesaving ring, a device familiar to tourists who have taken the cruise and
seen this arrangement.

"When Hannibal emerged as a destination for tourism in the late 1940s, the
central historical symbol in local tourism sites, and until recently public
memorials, centered on the life of Samuel Clemens, otherwise known as Mark
Twain, who lived in Hannibal as a boy" (29).

Hannibal has since grown to boast another center: African American history.
The Coggswell family photo neatly illustrates both loci. Those who visited
Hannibal in the past may have missed hearing or seeing the museum's new
programs related to slavery or racism. A return visit is warranted.

According to the Museum's website, its role in preserving Mark Twain's
legacy includes explaining how a boy from a slave-holding home and community
could "unlearn" beliefs instilled during childhood and grow up to write
_Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_, Twain's anti-racism, anti-slavery treatise
and generally regarded as his masterpiece.

Mark Twain has done us a service by opening that dialogue, and _Stories from
the Heart_ furthers that dialogue through the powerful, one-on-one
engagement of oral history.

"As generations have found, stories validate our experience, preserve our
history, teach valuable life lessons, nurture us, and enrich our creative
vision ... All those whose stories are recorded here are African Americans,
and their stories reflect not only the struggles endured but the resilience,
creative spirit, mother wit, strong sense of family and tradition, hard-won
wisdom, and humor in both victory and defeat that distinguish their people"
(xvi).

_____

ABOUT THE REVIEWER: M. L. Christmas, M.S., is a writer/editor/communications
professional whose Hannibal-centered Master's thesis involved tourism,
marketing, business and economic development, and world cultures. This is
her tenth review for the Mark Twain Forum.