"Black love is Black wealth"

Part of an epigraph of Richard Wright's White Man, Listen! reads:

"...men who carry their frail but indefatigable shoulders

the best of two worlds -- and who, 

amidst confusion and stagnation, 

seek desperately for a home for their hearts: 

a home which, if found,

could be a home for the hearts of all men"

Reading this, I was drawn back to my first impression of Bigger's aimless restlessness in Native Son. I remember perceiving the "red hot iron" Bigger feels, as comparable to a chronic illness without a cure, with an ever-present unarticulated fear that cannot stay at the forefront of one's mind in order for one to maintain their sanity in just getting out of bed every morning and going about daily life. This constriction that Bigger feels reminds me of Paul D's doubts of his own "manhood" and his sealed tobacco tin in Beloved. What Wright suggests in his epigraph however, is a constancy that transcends a daily routine, a truer, deeper constancy people yearn for (or at least believe themselves to).

In my initial perception of Bigger's aimless constriction, I had thought that perhaps Bigger would be "freer" if he knew better how to articulate who the "somebody" pushing the iron down his throat is, who to fear, or who to hold accountable (perhaps even God). This awareness of hate or fear -- which Max is able to articulate to an extent -- is surely a form of constancy and sense of stability; evident in how Paul D is made confused about his own worth and how he should actually feel about Mr. Garner. As in Wright's poem, however, Morrison seems also to suggest that articulating what or who to love and fully believe in is more powerful. Sethe speaks of the beauty of having milk for all her children and this Paul D understands; the freedom of having unlimited love to spare, stronger than his aspen tree. This sentiment is reflected in "Nikki Rosa" by Nikki Giovanni -- which Athena discussed in class on Friday -- in the line that reads, "Black love is Black wealth." In this way, we see how love can be affected by but is by no means defined by circumstance. Circumstance can make someone like Paul D guard his love carefully or it can make someone like Sethe commit to its transcendent power in a dangerous manner.

It is the greatest constancy yearned for by all the characters in the novel and yet  there seems to be the implication that this source of stability may be impossible to achieve. In fact, love seems to be one of the most unstable concepts of the novel thus far. Denver waits for a father she doesn't know has gone crazy. Paul D, after moving from place to place with his aspen tree of love was moved by Sethe, thought himself to have finally found a home for his heart only to begin to fall apart; to have his tobacco tin opened. Perhaps, ultimately, at least in  the setting of  what I have read so far in Beloved -- I'm inclined to believe my conclusion will change -- love cannot conquer all. As evident in Stamp Paid's contemplation, Baby Suggs threw herself into using her heart to heal others, preaching "the word," only to find that "they still came into her yard." Love does not seem to be enough to combat circumstance and the constricting chronic fear that tires their marrow until they can take no more.

At this point, I'm not sure what the conclusion of the book will ultimately suggest, however. The dangerous love between Sethe, Beloved, and Denver, in which they each seem to find a part of themselves in each other may prove Baby Suggs wrong.

Mine

The sense of self-possession -- the inner freedom, power, and sense of control -- involved in what the narrator of Invisible Man's ultimate laughter represents and Bigger's ownership of his murders as a manifestation of part of his identity resonates with the significance of Sethe's claim to her actions in Toni Morrison's Beloved. 

Sethe believes her actions -- killing her daughter and attempting to kill her sons -- manifest the power of her love in the way Bigger considers what he killed for "must've been good" because although he cannot articulate what it is exactly, he felt something hard enough to do it. It is the evident power of Sethe's full-fledged belief in her perception of love that scares Paul D, thinking, "This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw...more important than what Sethe had done was what she claimed"; much like how Bigger's perception of what constitutes his identity intimidates Max. 

This suggestion of finding an inner power or freedom in fully embracing or submitting to a truth or "reality" is depicted again through Stamp Paid's contemplation of Baby Suggs' weariness and ultimate rejection of "the word,": "..and she could not approve or condemn Sethe's rough choice. One or the other might have saved her, but beaten up by the claims of both, she went to bed."

Stamp Paid's thoughts get at the inextricable difficulty of Bigger's near-enlightenment, or any philosophy and belief system; the idea that we can never really know if we are close to the truth or simply better at coping as Stamp Paid implies when he says that either approving or disproving of Sethe -- but fully embracing one or the other -- would have "saved" Baby Suggs. To Stamp Paid, being"saved" seems to signify the ability to stay sane despite circumstance.

While there is a certain inner freedom in this self-possession, as it makes Bigger readier to die, Sethe able to live with the ghost, I think it is pretty evident that Sethe is still far from free as Bigger is similarly unable to be completely free. Sethe remains haunted by her past; perhaps never able to truly embrace her interpretation of love. However, when she realizes who Beloved is, the exhilaration she feels and freedom from part of what has haunted her is derived from the affirmation of her motivations she receives; as she thinks, "Beloved...she mine." In this way, the role of freedom in fully claiming something, or the power of the belief behind it manifests itself, especially considering the circumstance Sethe lives under, having been considered property of others for most of her life; still in many ways claimed by them. She begins to fantasize about all her children coming back to her and most significantly, their understanding; being misunderstood a significant fear of all the protagonists of the novels we have read so far this semester. I wonder then to what extent this inner freedom comes with claiming a reality or if one ever fully claims one at all.

This isn't a completely developed idea however because I was also thinking about how the feeling that Sethe articulates -- which Bigger would describe as what she felt "awful hard" enough to kill -- is love, carrying the implications of a haunting investment in the potential of life (even if it's on the "other side") and  people, why she still holds on to her past; as she thinks of herself as belonging to Beloved as well, thinking, "I wouldn't draw breath without my children." Perhaps that is why Bigger seems less haunted, more free; although still not completely. I'm not sure how I would articulate exactly what Bigger felt hard enough to kill but his murders are less influenced by human connection and  seem to resonate more with a nihilistic motivation which paradoxically is what gives his acts meaning. 

My Art is Barren

I want to start off by saying that I'm not nearly familiar enough with hip hop. I guess a small part of it is because I didn't grow up in an environment where music and its history were valued all that much, especially because my parents both moved to the U.S after college. I remember a few singers from Taiwan my mom was particularly fond of when I was little and sometimes I'll hear my dad blasting opera but beyond that I didn't start listening to music with any preexisting knowledge or interest exactly. It made me a blank slate in a way that's proved to be a double-edged sword (although a lot of it is probably just my character); I'm easily persuaded to see the validity in all sorts of music; force me to listen to something I think I dislike and tell me to at least try to take it seriously, even if just for pretend, for awhile and you will have me convinced, emotional, mentally dumbfounded in much less time than expected. Say, listen to this song, and I'll probably like it (to various extents), because I like you. In a way, this is a good thing because there is indubitably beauty and validity in all art -- as long as it's created out of some genuine purpose and meaning -- and being able to see where it comes from and how it's present in everything gives you a beneficial open-mindedness. On the other hand, I sometimes feel like the narrator in Invisible Man after he's eaten the yams, unable to even articulate what he likes and dislikes. Each time I think I've found a "reality" that resonates with me, I find that I'm able to accept, reject, and accept again another and another because all of them have obvious elements of "realness" in them. Furthermore, I've realized just how ignorant I am of each reality, I'm still blind in the way the narrator is even as he immerses himself in each one, so I"m hesitant to ever fully immerse myself in one I'm starting to really get into because not only might there be a better one out there, but I'm blind to this reality as well. I know that music is different, you can like all sorts of music and still have one reality but when I can't articulate and argue why I like what I like over what I reject strongly enough, I begin to feel lost --  because it also means I don't love my reality strongly enough -- and it goes beyond music and art, because like religion and so many other things, they are mechanisms to understand and express reality, making you able to get out of bed in the morning, keeping you living off of the strength of it's truth.

I've gone off on a bit of a tangent but this brings me to what I want to discuss about hip hop, the poetry in White Boy Shuffle and two related ideas from the spoken word poems "Diary of the Reformed" by Will "Da Real One" Bell and "Dead Man Walking" by Amir Sulaiman:

In White Boy Shuffle, poetry bears significance to Gunnar's ultimately nihilistic attitude. During the LA riots, Gunnar says, "I learned that it meant nothing to be a poet. One had to be a poet and a farmer, a poet and a roustabout, a poet and a soon-to-be revolutionary." Maybe the critics of Ellison are coming from a similar place; one can try to explore, express, and understand reality all they want but the evidence of the difference it makes seems so subtle and lost or inferior to what is going on right this second. Before performing "Dead Man Walking," Sulaiman mentions that the purpose of his poem is to remind and inform. At one point in the poem, he says:

"But my balance is off
My talent is lost
I've married my art, but
She's barren of course
And I hear in her voice that
We're headin' divorce"

And a lot of Gunnar's feeling of meaninglessness in his poetry is his powerlessness over how people interpret his words (for example, the  students at BU), representing this fear of being misunderstood and unseen that has been a strong theme in every single book we have read this semester. Numbers and words are paradoxes: all we have, wonderful when it allows us to communicate and connect but never allowing us to fully do so.

Sulaiman's poem is built very much around the theme of an invisible man. In one stanza, he brings hip hop into it, saying, "They don't see our music as musing / Merely amusing amusement." Similarly, in the poem I presented in class (performance linked at the bottom), I interpreted the same desecration of hip hop in how Patterson says:

"now this damn near sound like a hip-hop song,
but it's slavery at its peak,
a circus for all the freaks"

Along the lines of being misinterpreted and feeling powerless in art because of peoples' (perhaps specifically/ mostly non-black people's) blind approach to it, in his poem, Will "Da Real One" Bell says

"And maybe it all went down at...Or maybe it was at North Miami Senior High..
When they studied my poems for 'black history'
Or maybe it was in that letter from my inmate in Raiford Penitentiary
Stating that now
Through my poetry
He could be free
But nevertheless I'm sitting in a strut with a fully loaded Glock to represent the man in me
And someway, somehow, this has to stop."

There's the significant contrast of someone sitting in jail believing himself to have inner freedom and enlightenment and Bell sitting with a loaded gun thinking feeling his poetry is ultimately powerless because there are still obviously unresolved issues and struggles in the tangible world.

I feel a little bit absurd discussing his poem, with the line about his poems being studied in black history. It's a bit ridiculous, in a way, the privileged setting in which I am studying "African American Literature," However, at the very least, we're thinking about art in a way that goes beyond taking it as "amusement." I want badly to believe that art ultimately matters. I think it's clear that it has a profound effect on the creator and audience but it is communication as well as a kind of religion/philosophy/reality that brings you to inner freedom. And it comes down to having enough faith in "art" as communication (like Ellison/ the narrator) and as a reality, to achieve complete freedom. My fear is that, like Gunnar seems to ultimately believe, it's a distraction from pain, necessary and potent, but meaningless coping. I'm inclined to think however, that Gunnar's discovery of how his poetry represents more desire than fulfillment is what gives it meaning, in the same way he believes death or the desire it represents gives life meaning. Perhaps, in Beloved, the significance of Sethe's past to the present through the desire involved with haunting fits along these  lines.

P.S
I know this was an especially long and rant-like post
Sunni Patterson's performance of "We Made It":