Saturday, September 28, 2013

Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon"

I've read this book many times and it is my favorite book of fiction. I re-read it often because of the magic realism that pervades the story, the casual cruelty of the more privileged (read wealthy) Black characters against those less fortunate, the issues of internalized racism that it raises, and the fierce yearning for family and connection that guides the whole plot. And the names, names of meaning and significance, are names which inform my own fiction as I seek character names that emanate from ancestry, or internal strife, or serendipity.

I've just finished my latest re-reading, and the story touches me as powerfully as ever. The character of Macon Dead reminds me of my father--Black men who "transcend" the tyranny of race and view acquiring wealth as life's mission and thereby warp their sense of family and ability to love themselves and others fully.  The character of Hagar is very compelling--she's a woman, made mad by love as she wraps herself up around Milkman Dead, a man who can't love because he doesn't understand the value of it until very late in the novel.  Again, an alienation of the family dynamic as these Black people who live in the early 60's, descendants of slaves one or two generations back, people who were born and lived their early lives in rural poverty and absolute familial love and devotion, lose themselves as a reaction to racism.

And then there is Pilate. Aunt of the protagonist, Milkman, and sister of Macon Dead, she retains the magic and devotion of her father who dies horrifically when she is 11. She is "like a wild thing", who grows up knowing the value of love, family, and and nature and is the moral center of the book.  She can't read or write, and yet she knows how to live, how to treat people with respect, how to listen to their stories. And she is the grandmother of Hagar, and so must deal with the messiness, the tragedy of her nephew having "killed" her granddaughter through lack of love and respect.

I've always been drawn to Black women with this earthy sense of a wider world, some highly educated women who still maintain a link to the earth, some women who didn't get a high school diploma and sit next to me on the bus and tell me their stories of faith, some of the students I come in contact with who live in the paradox, or perhaps it's the conundrum of this stubbornly racist society and yet still open their hearts, hug others to their bosoms, and are determined to meld the good of the natural world with the knowledge they've acquired through higher education. There is knowledge, and then there is knowing.

So this is why I'll read this book, this fable, this teaching again and again. This is why I'll recommend it to friends. In the face of lack of education about Black history, and the desire for some understanding of the racial divide, the quest to find our way back to each other, this magic book at the least provides an insight, and at the most lights the world with its author's appreciation of the power of transformation and the value of connection.

1 comment:

Smapdi said...

Interesting. Never read any Toni Morrison other than Beloved. I'll definitely put this on my list.