Skip to main content

I'm not original

By
Image result for beloved images toni morrison


CN: historical trauma
.
.
.
.
descriptions of conditions on trans-Atlantic slave trading ships


I know it's not an original reference by any means. I know everyone has had to read this book at some point in their post-high school academic lives if their universities had any humanities requirement. I know it's super basic to mention it, but this passage from this book so perfectly fits the prompt and reminds me so much of our readings that I have to mention it.

Of course, I'm thinking of the trans-Atlantic slave trading ship passage from the great Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved. 

When I first read Beloved, this passage struck me and totally disoriented me. I had no idea what was going on. I had to read and re-read it several times before I felt somewhat confident that I knew what I was reading and what it meant. However, it wasn't until I read the readings for this week that I understood how it fit into the rest of the novel.

 I have only read the book once, and it was a year or so ago, so please forgive me if I miss anything or slightly misrepresent some details. The passage is a sort of discursive, terrified mix of stream-of-consciousness first-person narration and stomach-churning description. The text abruptly switches between describing the agony of sickness, physical oppression, darkness, and fear to talking about the ship itself, the journey that was being taken, flashbacks to where they narrator had come from and rumors they had heard about what was to come. 

 The passage (of text) erupts in the middle of the book, seemingly incongruous with the rest of the plot. While the slave ship passage presumably takes place before the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1807*, the rest of the novel takes place in the early Jim Crow era (late 19th century) in Ohio. The passage never mentions any names, dates, or any other kinds of anchor points which one could use to place it in time or in the context of any given person or family. 

 Up until this week, I appreciated the beauty of Morrison's writing and the horrendous pain she described in this passage, but I never understood how this floating bit of information fit in with the rest of the novel. Having read Heather Russell's introduction to Critical Paradigms in Race, Nation, and Narratology, I now see this passage in a new light. I can't speculate what was in Morrison's mind when she wrote the slave ship scene, but I can't help but notice how the style of narration she wielded knocked me out of my rigid notions of how stories are supposed to unfold. I almost feel as though she relays this scene as a flash of intra-generational trauma, perhaps a memory from one of Sethe's own ancestors, or even an agonizing memory dredged up from the collective unconscious. In any case, I tentatively put forward the notion that this passage represents what Russell refers to as an opening for ashé to enter through the power of the crossways deity Legba. Surely, it upset the binding notions of sequentiality and linearity that often dominate the epistemological and narratological worlds I inhabit.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Melanie and Melanie: Growing up with Separated Lesbian Moms in the South

By Anonymous
I came from a sperm bank, well I came from a vagina, but first I came from a sperm bank. That’s not generally my opener, but we need to make it clear. My moms discovered their sexuality long before I came along in 1992. When I was three, they separated. Gay marriage had not been legalized up to this point, so there was no divorce process involved. However, my mama, Sharon, she gave birth to me, and she wanted full custody of me. My other mom, Sylvia, worked tirelessly to pay for my existence and Sharon’s pregnancy care; she loved me, and I was her child no matter what. They went to court, and Sylvia became one of the first lesbian parents in the state of Texas to receive shared custody of a child that was not biologically hers. In some cases, this still doesn’t always happen, particularly in cases with gay and lesbian parents, regardless of how involved the parent is in their child’s life. “Who do you want to live with?” Flash forward seven years or so, and I’m being given more...
Post a Comment
Read more

Queer Time is Filled With Sewing and Dying

By
“Everyone I knew was dead, dying, or caring for someone who was dying. Our friends died, we made new friends, they died, we made new friends, and they died, and it just went on and on.”  - AIDS Activist Cleve Jones There's this idea that queer folx don't experience time the same way as straight, cis people. In her article " Queer Time: The Alternative to 'Adulting, '"queer novelist and scholar Sarah Jaffe suggested that "Queer lives follow their own temporal logic." As a queer person, I'd have to agree. We've never been given the opportunity to live time like the majority.  How could we when we had to spend so much time sewing quilt squares because we weren't allowed to have funerals? We spent so much time stitching and stitching and stitching our friends' names, our lovers' names, our colleagues' names, and even our own names' into pieces of fabrics.  In 1985, queer activist Cleve Jones came up with ...
Post a Comment
Read more

No Calling, No Problem

By
I have no calling in a world where we all wonder what we're meant to do, who we're supposed to be. My mom called me the other day to tell me one of my childhood friends would be moving to my hometown soon because her husband had accepted a job with the Baptist church next door to her Methodist church. I don’t know why she thinks I give a shit about small town gossip or any news that concerns the church seeing as how she’s very aware of how I feel about organized religion. Nevertheless, she has nothing else to tell me because her world is much smaller than mine. “He used to be an airplane pilot,” she says. “Then why is he going to be a youth minister? How will they survive? Where will the money come from?” I ask, appalled. I know from my instagram that his wife is a stay-at-home mom of three. “It doesn’t matter, they’ll figure it out,” she brushes it off. “He has a calling to work for the Lord.” A calling. A goddamn calling. Half of my life, I waited for some fucking ca...
Post a Comment
Read more