Appreciating Toni Morrison

[mountaingal]

last month i read Beloved for the first time. mi dawta had to read it for a school assignment, and mi wanted to discuss it with her.

mind-blowing book. i felt humbled after reading it, because she made that time in American history (slavery days) come alive for me.

I then read The Bluest Eye. after which i decided to give Toni a rest (i had intended to re-read Song of Solomon). this book was so painful to me.

then, in blu's thread about the black man in the mammy image, vannie's response about black women wetnursing white children, and even cew's comment about me being on a roll - it hit me. I'm still dealing with what i read in those two novels.

almighty.

[Wahalla]

Re: Appreciating Toni Morrison

Now to set the cat amongt the pidgeons.... Last week I was listening to the Reith Lectures.. They are a nanual series of lectures on subjects of world interest... by the great and the not so good.. (Mcain I beleive gave a set some time ago).. This year was the series on China.. A number of surprises (including there was chinese soldiers on both sides of the US civil war)... Now this is the idea, not that I total agree with it....

One idea that the lecturer came out with that may be relevant is the fact too long Chinese goverment, peoples and acedemias have defined the courtries relationship with the west based on the Opium War.... He postulated that thsi was wrong, given the at best moral ambiguity of western / british behaviour and the fact that this was the lowest denominator in Chinese personal history... While he said this he also added the point that these should not be ignored but rather these should be studied, this should not be the starting point of the definition... (The analogy is that Jews are not simply defined by the Holocaust rather by the state of isreal).. Tainos are not simply defined by genocide or Germans by being the perpetuatoirs of holocaust...)

should black art and history see its self definition based on negatives of slavery and prejuduice...???? Given that Garvey even made the gesture of looking beyond the negative of these events to a earlier history for self definition.. (He however expressed contempt for Jazz saying Negros only produced this music as they dont know better).. It seems that a lot of art and literature out of the US comes based on this premis...Watch alot of the movies and the definition of black characters has this subtext... (I am Legend did not).

[Nunya]

Re: Appreciating Toni Morrison

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Wahalla</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
should black art and history see its self definition based on negatives of slavery and prejuduice...???? Given that Garvey even made the gesture of looking beyond the negative of these events to a earlier history for self definition..
</div></div>

This has long been my own personal mantra: I do let the fact that <span style="font-style: italic">some</span> of my ancestors were slaves define me, nor do I want to be <span style="text-decoration: underline">solely</span> identified as a product of slave(ry). I prefer to see my fore-bearers <span style="font-style: italic">before</span> they were slaves, how they lived, how they built, how they loved etc. Not just how they withstood institutionalized physical and psychological degradations...

It is a fact that many of the 'great' black American writers tend to have their work coloured by slavery. It's importance in how we've been shaped cannot be denied, it's true, but they oftentimes seem hellbent on hanging onto it as an identifier, their <span style="font-style: italic">only</span> definition.

I have read Toni Morrison's Beloved, The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon (the last being my favourite) and though I appreciated the works and their not so subtle subtexts, I think I <span style="font-style: italic">chose</span> not to be inflicted with the same hang-ups.

But then again, I have been accused of being delusional and acting white cause I choose not to be a perpetual victim...