James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and the Rhetorics of Black Male Subjectivity by Aaron Ngozi Oforlea

Author:Aaron Ngozi Oforlea [Oforlea, Aaron Ngozi]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: 2017-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

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The griot symbolizes how all human ancestry goes back to some place, and some time where there was no writing. Then the memories and the mouths of ancient elders was the only way that early histories of government passed along . . . for all of us to know who we are.

—ALEX HALEY, ROOTS (1976)

The exchange of folklore in a community fosters intimacy. In communities, folklore circulates between characters and from other characters to and through Milkman, connecting him to his family, extended family, and his ancestors who are no longer living in the physical world, such as his deep emotional response to his aunt Pilate and cousins singing a folksong while sitting around a table separating blackberries from their branches. His deep emotional response is described in mythical/romantic language: “Milkman could hardly breathe. Hagar’s voice scooped up what little pieces of heart he had left to call his own. . . . He thought he was going to faint from the weight of what he was feeling” (Morrison 1977, 93). Folksongs connect Milkman to his African ancestors. Chimalum Nwankwo describes Morrison’s use of the African past and expressions as traffic between the ancestors and Milkman collapse time, space, and history in the physical and spiritual worlds. He writes, “in her works that time, history, and space are collapsed, but that is part of a gesture that affirms the existence of the kind of traffic between humans and spirits prevalent in African culture” (1996, 173).

In “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” Morrison describes the ancestor as “timeless people whose relationship to the characters are benevolent, instructive, and protective, and they provide a certain kind of wisdom” (2008b, 62). The ancestor is significant for bridging the divide between the North and South. Thus, northern culture is merely a reflection of southern culture and vice versa. Since this is the case, they are aware that there isn’t a single or ideal home for African Americans. Instead, for African Americans, home is wherever they decide to build a culture, and they thrive wherever they decide to live. While there are regional differences in terms of terrain and landscape, the ancestor speaks to the cultural similarities that unite African Americans regardless of class, gender, and sexuality. In this sense, the ancestor embodies a single culture composed of multiple rhetorical practices and represents the cultural practices that individuals carry with them as they travel throughout America and abroad. They understand that the products of culture and its capabilities (the capacity of folklore to transmit community values and beliefs) reign supreme in all instances and triumph the oppressive nature of the dominant culture.

The ancestor appears or has a presence in many forms in Song of Solomon. In Who Set You Flowin’?, Griffin writes that the ancestor is present in creative expressions such as song, “food, and performance” and “the oral tradition” (1995, 5). I want to emphasize that Morrison’s definition of ancestor encompasses the advice, warnings, and knowledge that is passed along in traditional conversations as well as songs and folktales.

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