On Saturday, April 29, Ellen presented an academic paper entitled, “Having Her Say, Having Her Way: Blanche White, Justice, and Reparations” at Resistance to Tyranny: Representing the Struggle for Human Rights in Literature, the New York College English Association (NYCEA) Spring 2006 Conference, held April 28 and 29 at Marymount College of Fordham University, Tarrytown, New York.

In her mystery series, Barbara Neely has her central character Blanche White face the triple oppression of race, gender, and class. Blanche must negotiate a culture in which her only crime is being black, female, and poor in a social and judicial system that exploits, abuses, and tries to silence her.

At the beginning of the first novel, Blanche on the Lam, Neely has Blanche standing in front of a wealthy, white male judge who has already prejudged her. He dispenses “justice” by sentencing Blanche to jail for repeatedly bouncing checks that were not good because her rich white employers didn’t pay her soon enough. After haranguing her about being irresponsible, the judge asks, “Have you anything to say for yourself?” The question is purely rhetorical for he briskly sentences her and she is whisked off to jail without an opportunity to speak in her own defense.

Neely however, sets the book and indeed the whole series as Blanche’s answer–Blanche is having her say about justice and having her way with reparations. In this first scene with Blanche before a white justice, the power conflicts become clear: black versus white, female versus male, poor versus rich, disenfranchised versus enfranchised. It is obvious that there are different standards of justice and reparations, and that “criminal justice” in America, as Blanche observes, usually “meant there were too many innocent black people who’d gone to jail and never got out” (Lam 135). White America is indeed “enemy territory,” territory Blanche is forced to negotiate in order to make a living as an African American and a domestic.

By being the central character of Neely’s mystery series, Blanche challenges the traditional notion of the detective hero, the most celebrated sleuths being white males and professional crime solvers. Blanche however brings a unique perspective and position from which to detect, and uses those as well as great observational and psychological skills to uncover and solve several crimes.