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figure 2.5.RoadsidefoodstandinAlabamawithbananas(1930s).
LibraryofCongress.
tropical people. In 1925, the nineteen-year-old Baker performed in La Re-
vueNegrewhoserepertoireincludedthe''DanseSauvage,''anumbersetin
an African jungle. The following year, during a performance at the Folies
Bergére, she danced the Charleston wearing a G-string adorned with ba-
nanas, a costume with which Baker would be identified long after she
struggled to transcend the roles that white producers generally assigned
to black women performers in Europe and the United States.
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Other early-twentieth-century writers used bananas as symbols of
societaltransformationstakingplaceintheUnitedStates.In1929William
Faulkner publishedAsILayDying,a novel centered around the Bundren
family's sorrowful journey from their rural southern home to Faulkner's
mythicalSoutherncityofJefferson,wherethedeceasedMrs.Bundrenisto
be buried. The novel's closing scene depicts the Bundren children eating
bananaswhiletheywaitfortheirfatherinthefamily'smule-drawnwagon.
WhenVardaman,theyoungestmemberofthefamily,triestoleadhisolder
sister past a storefront featuring an electric model train, she responds,
''Wouldn't you rather have a banana?''
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Faulkner's unexpected insertion
of bananas into the novel's closing scene reflects both the fruit's ubiquity
