African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison

University Press of Florida

Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
New College of Florida, Sarasota
University of Central Florida, Orlando
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of North Florida, Jacksonville
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of West Florida, Pensacola
African Spiritual Traditions in
the Novels of Toni Morrison

f
K. Zauditu-Selassie

University Press of Florida

Gainesville/Tallahassee/Tampa/Boca Raton
Pensacola/Orlando/Miami/Jacksonville/Ft. Myers/Sarasota
Copyright 2009 by Kokahvah Zauditu-Selassie
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zauditu-Selassie, K.
African spiritual traditions in the novels of Toni Morrison / K. Zauditu-Selassie.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8130-3328-0 (alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8130-4009-7 (e-book)
1. Morrison, Toni—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Morrison, Toni—Spirtualistic
interpretations. 3. Morrison, Toni—Knowledge—Africa. 4. American literature—
African influences. 5. Yoruba (African people) in literature. 6. African Americans in
literature. 7. Spirituality in literature. 8. Africa—In literature. I. Title.
PS3563.O8749Z97 2008
813'54—dc22 2008040296

The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State Univer-
sity System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University,
Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University,
New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University
of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.

University Press of Florida

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Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
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Parts of chapters 2 and 3 were published previously in “I Got a Home in Dat Rock:
Memory, Òrìsà, and Yoruba Spiritual Identity in African American Literature,” in Orisa:
Yoruba Gods and Spiritual Identity in Africa and the African Diaspora, edited by Toyin
Falola and Ann Genova. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2005.

Parts of chapters 1, 4, and 5 were published in “Women Who Know Things: African Epis-
temologies, Ecocriticism, and Female Spiritual Authority in the Novels of Toni Morrison.”
Journal of Pan African Studies 1, no.7 (March 2007): 38–57.
 Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Preface: Dancing between Two Realms ix
Introduction: There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart: Cultural
Concentricities and Enduring Identities 1

Part 1. Ancestral Echoes Positing a Spiritual Frame

1. I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in
The Bluest Eye 27
2. Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula 49

Part 2. Psychic Domains and Spiritual Locations

3. I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Ritual and the Construction of Family
History in Song of Solomon 69
4. Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of
Jadine in Tar Baby 97
5. In(her)iting the Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, and
Mediations of the Spiritual In-between in Paradise 119

Part 3. Remembrance Has Not Left Us: What the Record Shows

6. Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved 145
7. Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination of
the Òrìsà Ochossi in Jazz 168
8. If I’d a Knowed More, I Would a Loved More: Toni Morrison’s Love
and Spiritual Authorship 189

Glossary 201
Notes 211
Works Cited 225
Index 239
 Acknowledgments

This project was completed over many years of shifting jobs, attitudes, and
cities, and also old and new colleagues and friendships. Many people have
helped me along the way; I regret that I cannot thank each one individu-
ally. While in graduate school at Clark Atlanta University, I was blessed to
have dedicated professors, all intellectuals, who believed that it was im-
portant to be creative and to think thoughts outside the main of literary
criticism. I would like to thank them all. Additionally, I am grateful to Dr.
Jean Billingslea Brown, Dr. Ernestine Pickens Glass, Dr. Janice Liddell, Dr.
Charlyn Harper Browne, all colleagues of mine from the Atlanta University
Center.
To my former students at Morris Brown College, where I taught for
fourteen years, you inspired many of the formulations presented in this
book, especially members of my seminar course, the Novels of Toni Mor-
rison. To my former students at Bowie State University, I thank you for
bearing with me as I rehearsed my ideas with you in African American
Seminar. I am also indebted to members of the Toni Morrison Society, Dr.
Carolyn Denard, Dr. Marilyn Sanders Mobley, Dr. Deborah Barnes, Dr.
Angelyn Mitchell, and Dr. Adrienne Lanier Seward, for support over the
years including critiques of papers presented at society meetings. Some
extraordinary colleagues, Dr. Mario H. Beatty, Dr. Valethia Watkins, and
Dr. Marimba Ani have enriched my intellectual and personal life with their
strong and focused vision for the development of African people. Addi-
tional gratitude is extended to Ras Michael Brown, for sharing information
on Central African spirituality and its impact on African Americans in the
low country of South Carolina and Georgia. Thank you to Nobel laure-
ate Wole Soyinka, for encouraging me to pursue my ideas on Morrison’s
encoding of Yoruba Òrìsà and to Dr. Richard Schechner of New York Uni-
versity’s Tisch School of Performing Arts who asked the pivotal question:
“Why write an article on Morrison when you could write a book?”
I am thankful to my editor at the University of Florida Press, Amy Gore-
lick, for her patient and unwavering support for this project. Additionally,
a generous grant in 1993 from the National Endowment for the Humanities
contributed to some of the ideas foundational to this current study.
viii k Acknowledgments

Thank you to my mother Marcelite Dolores Landry-Evans, mother of

seven, who taught me the supremacy of belief in God, devotion to Ye-
monja, and faith in the ancestors. Thanks for supporting my need to dance.
Because you drove me from dance to dance and created unique dance out-
fits for me every week, I learned at an early age the value of soul free-
dom. I also express appreciation to my grandmother, Esther Dolores Rabb
(Moms) who continues to mentor me in the understanding of the spirit
world. While on earth, she taught me to consider that although everything
that exists is not visible, it still exists. To my husband, Mahseeyahu, for the
emotional and financial support to walk the African world, from Atlanta
to Addis Ababa, from Brooklyn to Brazil, from Memphis to Mali, and from
Los Angeles to Lomé in search of the manifestations of spirit, may you
always be blessed for the encouragement you have given me. To my son,
Angola, who has shown me the importance of doing things that honor a
commitment to happiness, as well as for sharing with me the importance
of having a dream, I offer my appreciation. To my twin, Isoke, and to my
other sisters, Rochelle, Stacie, and Thia, I appreciate your encouragement.
Much love and respect to my elders, my Ojubona, my godchildren, and
my daughters, Yaba, Ifetayo, and Titilayo. To my Iyalosa, Oseye Mchawi, I
express my gratitude for your having crowned me Omo Obatala. May all
the Òrìsà and spiritual forces of the universe sustain you and bless you.
Your spiritual brilliance and ethical resolve provide sturdy examples of how
to live in truth. Finally, I would like to thank my father, Lawrence J. Evans,
Abbasante Shabaka, who made his spiritual transition into the world of the
ancestors while I was completing this book. You taught me the beauty of
language, the value of humor, and the promise of knowledge. Continue to
walk in light and love on your journey.
 Preface
Dancing between Two Realms

That we the black people are one people we know. Destroyers

will travel long distances in their minds and out to deny you this
truth.
—Ayi Kwei Armah, Two Thousand Seasons

Make a drumbeat, Put it on a record, let it whirl, And while we

listen to it play, Dance with you till day—
—Langston Hughes, “Juke Box Love Song”

In one of my earliest recollections of myself, I am dancing. Yes, when I was

young, I was that little dancing girl. On various holiday occasions, when
my friends’ relatives would visit them, they would send for me, saying, “Go
get that little dancin’ gal.” Honoring their requests, I would perform dances
such as “Mickey’s Monkey,” accompanied by Smokey Robinson and the
Miracles as the 45 rpm record circled clockwise around the record player’s
turntable. Over the years, I danced Marvin Gaye’s “Hitchhike,” Archie Bell
and the Drells’ “Tighten Up,” The Capitols’ “Cool Jerk,” the Orlons’ “The
Wah Watutsi,” and the Knickerbockers’ “Twine Time.” I especially looked
forward to the imported dances my junior aunt would show me upon her
return to Los Angeles from her yearly summer trips to Chicago. Out on
the dance floor, even though most of the dances I did were performed
with one dance partner, there was a sense of community, because of the
collective performance of other dancers sharing the dance space. Wearing
our favorite dance “faces” (mine was hanging my tongue out of the side of
my mouth, while my sister’s was biting her bottom lip), we chanted dance
sounds, communicating a sense of well-being summoned from the energy
and force manifested by the unity of music and movement. I did not realize
until many years later that most of the dances we did were accompanied
by songs that oftentimes provided explicit instructions to ensure a uni-
x k Preface

form presentation of the dance. I also was unaware that having a particular
dance to do with a specific song was a unique cultural representation of
African people.1
Having come of age as a “Negro” in Compton, a suburb of Los Angeles,
California—also called “New Orleans West” because of the large numbers
of immigrants from the Crescent City—I never considered what other
people did. In my all-black part of the city, I was taught by the Sisters of
the Holy Family, an order of African American nuns from New Orleans,
went to school with other black Catholics, and tried to snatch the meaning
out of words spoken in Creole language when grown women were talking
amongst one another within ear shot of my friends and me. I ate gumbo,
savored red beans and rice with Pete’s Louisiana hot sausage, and devoured
hot monkey bread straight from the oven of Walker’s bakery. In this highly
segregated environment, I danced exclusively with other black people in
an all-black world of culture.
In this world, my favorite dance was, “The Bus Stop,” known by many
names, such as, “The Madison,” “The Hustle,” or “The Electric Slide,” de-
pending on the locale. We called it “The Caswell,” after my father added a
couple of new steps and renamed the dance after our street in Compton. In
our collective movements, dancing this re-codified ring dance, we claimed
the power emanating from the circle. Rooted in traditions characterized by
spiritual considerations whose provenances are anterior to the American
experience, this line dance is actually a circle dance performed only in a
community of dancers, never by a solo performer. The dancers trace the
Kongo cosmogram, the dikenga dia Kongo, a symbolic representation of
the soul’s movement in a counterclockwise fashion through the various
stages of life.2 Representing the cyclical journey of the soul as it moves
from birth to puberty, to maturity, to eldership, to begin the cycle of re-
births again, the dance is structured in four parts.
One of the key symbols representing Kongo beliefs, dikenga dia Kongo
is depicted as a circle intersected at the midpoint by two lines: one vertical
and the other horizontal. The space above the line is the upper world and
the physical world and below the line is the lower world or the spiritual
world, the abode of the ancestors. As a result of these two intersecting
lines, four quadrants are formed epitomizing the four suns constructing
the journey of a human being on earth. The participants begin the dance
at the midpoint of the cross on the horizontal line dissecting the circle
known as kalunga, the “balancing plane for all existence” (Fu-Kiau, African
Cosmology, 23).
 Dancing between Two Realms k xi

As they move three steps to the right on the kalunga line, they journey
toward, kala, corresponding to birth, symbolized by the color black. From
there, they trace the kalunga line three steps to the left arriving at the quad-
rant known as luvemba characterized by the color white and representing
the death of an individual. Executing this step prepares them to walk three
steps backwards toward the southern axis into the realm of the ancestors
to begin again at musoni, which represents beginnings, seeds, and the color
yellow. From there, the dancers move three beats consisting of a pause at
the kalunga line, one small step back retracing their steps toward musoni
and one down, which is actually the northern axis to collect the power at
the zenith of the circle or tukula, the sun of maturity, signified by the color
red.
Finally, the dancers make a counterclockwise turn to trace the circle
again. The circle will be traced four times until they arrive at the same point
again to complete/begin the dance’s symbolic journey. The dams of time
described in each of the cosmogram’s quadrants are delineations within
the cosmic realm. These mythic symbols hidden in dance steps of the ring
shout encircle and contain the spiritual ethos of Kongo derived beliefs.
From a Bantu perspective, Bunseki K. Fu-Kiau asserts that nothing exists
that does not follow the cosmogram (African Cosmology 27).
My introduction to the dance as a child and my initiation as a Mama
Nganga into the mysteries of the Kongo spiritual system as an adult, speak
to the ways in which sacred reenactment has the power to knit together
time and space in order to establish the self. From an African aesthetic,
Geneviève Fabre explains dancers not only communicate with spirits, but
also can impersonate and incorporate them through the repetition of spe-
cific body movements (“Slave Ship Dance” 33). Mircea Eliade explains that
sacred time is not only recoverable, it is also unchanging, and perpetual
(Sacred and the Profane 69). Performing the ritual dance through the re-
petitive movements of tracing and retracing the four quadrants of the
circle, I recovered sacred time and re-claimed my Kongo spiritual heri-
tage.
This ritualized return to forever allows for continuous time consistent
with the Bantu notion of hantu, which is time and space unified. Over time,
my body performed the dances my soul remembered, as I practiced how
to step between modernity and mythical time. Moreover, in my journeys
throughout the African world I have danced counterclockwise honoring
the ancestors (Egun) Òrìsà, the Vodun Gods (Loa), and the Minkisi (Bantu/
Kongo). The spiritual awareness I have gained concerning the power of
xii k Preface

dance and ritual has led me to the goal of this present study, which is to
locate spiritual traditions in the novels of Toni Morrison. My uncharacter-
istic approach, which straddles two realms, is at once divinatory and ana-
lytic, representing the duality of my critical trajectory in literary endeav-
ors. Speaking specifically about central African culture, Wyatt MacGaffey
notes that to discover trans-Atlantic connections one must recognize that
“each word, idea, or object is embedded in matrices of language and ritual
practice (“Twins, Simbi Spirits, and Lwas” 211). I extend that search in or-
ders to decode the embedded spiritual ideas from a variety of traditions.
The individual chapters in African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of
Toni Morrison affirm and demonstrate the power of Morrison’s prose to
re-codify these Central African beliefs along with other African-derived
belief systems and sacred memories. These spiritual ideas dance among
oral narratives, folklore, myth, and African derived spiritual principles.
Through close readings, I examine how her novelistic figurations impart
vital information and reinforce historical and spiritual consciousness.3
 Introduction

There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart

Cultural Concentricities and Enduring Identities

Kidnapped by bandits and transplanted to North America, they

became HooDoo men, maintaining the faith of the old religion.
—Ishmael Reed, “19 Necromancers from Now”

We have been believers believing in the black gods of an old

land, believing in the secrets of the seeress and the magic of the
charmers and the power of the devil’s evil ones.
—Margaret Walker, “We Have Been Believers”

Toni Morrison declares that the “forced transfer” of African people is the
“defining event of the modern world” (“Home” 10). The arrival of cap-
tive Africans to North America, their enslavement, and their continued
survival, represents a journey of remarkable resiliency. Besides enslaving
African people, the deliberate mission of Europeans included efforts to
destroy them by attempting to wipe out their traditions, substituting their
languages, and desecrating their cultures. To reiterate, this experience of
Africans in America has been a quintessential example of adaptation in the
face of adversity.1 That they managed to continue on with any measure of
psychic integrity is a tribute to the dynamic role that culture plays in the
lives of people.
A necessary element of life, culture is the medium through which hu-
mans exercise their humanity and express and affirm their view of reality.
For members of the African diaspora, culture surpassed its role to provide
self-definition and sustain the group ethos; it became a way to physically
survive. As a site of cosmic connection, identity, meaning, and values were
made and remade in order to resist. Through the tenacious practice of cul-
ture, Africans endured in America. This worldview bears witness to the
strength of the survivors of one of the cruelest systems of human oppres-
2 k Introduction

sion witnessed in human history. Because of this, African culture became

stronger as the group faced cultural extinction from external forces.
In “Theatre in African Traditional Cultures: Survival Patterns,” Wole
Soyinka explains the nature of this fortification. He argues, “The com-
mencement of resistance and self-liberation by the suppressed people is
not infrequently linked with the survival strategies of key cultural patterns
manifested through various art forms” (89). In The Afro-American Novel
and Its Tradition, Bernard Bell notes patterns of conditions and circum-
stances that produce the shared experience of culture, he says, “The net-
work of understanding that defines black American culture and informs
black American consciousness has evolved from the unique pattern of ex-
periences of Africa, the trans-Atlantic middle passage, slavery, Southern
plantation, tradition, emancipation, Reconstruction, Post Reconstruction,
northern migration, urbanization, and racism have produced a residue of
shared memories and frames of references for Black Americans” (5). In this
study, I am not attempting to present African culture as a monolithic idea.
Cheikh Anta Diop underscores this idea of unity across African cultures
in the introduction to his authoritative work, The Cultural Unity of Black
Africa. He writes, “I have tried to bring out the profound cultural unity still
alive beneath the deceptive appearance of cultural heterogeneity” (7).
As a response to challenges insisted on by the harsh environment, the
brutal physical abuse by their captors, and the psychological disintegration
produced by the chaos of the unfamiliar, Africans reached deep within
themselves where the roots of culture abide. This protracted struggle and
accompanying cultural resolve has allowed them to maintain the deep
structure of their cultural distinctiveness. Moreover, dynamic cultural
processes allowed enslaved Africans to establish familiar and intelligible
patterns through maintaining and preserving their identities and renew-
ing spiritual and ancestral forces. Many of the Africanisms were codified
in the folkways of African people, especially the expression of spirituality.
The intense need for the expression of spirituality reflected the continuity
of beliefs transported from Africa. This spiritual aspiration was encoded
in the folklore. In Puttin’ On Ole Massa Gilbert Osofsky affirms this adapt-
ability, stating, “If one is to ever know about their visions, their quests, their
mind, it is necessary to turn to the oral folktales that were collected in the
nineteenth century and remain alive at this very moment” (45).
Maintaining cultural continuity was difficult and fraught with many sac-
rifices and adaptations. It is well documented that the drum was outlawed,
names were changed, and many traditional practices had to be adapted
 There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart k 3

in such a way that their meaning was not recognizable by the enslavers.2
However, in many cases, domination demanded cultural denial and a mass
forgetting in order to achieve the self-serving objectives exacted by the
oppressive system. In his germinal text, The Falsification of Afrikan Con-
sciousness, the late Amos Wilson argues that social amnesia is the root
cause of many of the dynamic problems beleaguering the African Ameri-
can community. Defined as the repression of historical and cultural reali-
ties, ahistoricity compromises the present and hides individual and group
futures. In fact, as Wilson asserts, the fear and shame of memory signify
destructive forces that “open the personality up for self-alienation, self-
destruction” (36).
In concert with Wilson, I contend that loss of memory, as a result of harsh
assaults and cultural contestations, has challenged the ontogeneic agency
of the person and covered it with the shroud of self-constructed otherness.
Adding to this sense of bereavement is the internment of religious ideas,
at times so deep as to render them irretrievable and unrecognizable to the
conscious mind. M. A. Oduyoye comments that the identity crisis for Afri-
can people “may be attributed to the loss of a dynamic perspective on life,
which comes from knowing and living one’s religio-cultural history” (59).
Given this diagnosis of the traumatic effects of repressed memory, it would
follow that recovery of memory is an essential first step in the process of
recovering identity.
Morrison’s use of images, archetypes, and values are reflective of and
consistent with a compendium of African spiritual worldviews. With them,
she exhumes spiritual rudiments resurrecting and highlighting African
deities and mythic ideas, which lead her heroic characters to epic comple-
tion. Daniel P. Biebuyck says that because of various connections among
different groups, African heroic epic tradition, though diverse in many
ways, shared enough common elements to have facilitated transformation
under the appropriate circumstances (“African Heroic Epic” 28). Using the
performative ideas associated with ritual, Morrison ferries her readers to
archetypal spaces where “communality, coherence, connectedness, collec-
tive conscience, and efficacy characterize the social order” (Drewal xv).
In this introductory chapter, I examine the cultural agency informing
Toni Morrison’s artistic vision, explore the African worldview, and lay the
foundation for the subsequent examination of these cultural principles
within the text of the novels to be discussed in this study. For Morrison,
who employs the self-authenticating trope of the Black Arts Movement
writers, blackness and culture are not expendable, nor are they negotiable.
4 k Introduction

They are located in the subterranean structures of culture and must be dis-
cussed within the realm of spirituality and African components of the living
memory.3 Comparable to the mnemonic devices employed in traditional
African cultures such as the lukasa sculptures of the BaLuba (a subgroup
of the BaKongo) each of the novels is a commemorative site where readers
can participate in re-collecting buried knowledge to refortify and restore
a sense of identity and cultural connectivity to the village—the commu-
nity as Morrison expresses. To illustrate, in southeastern Congo, ancestor
societies rely on the use of hierarchical figures inscribed in the hand held
objects, which present a conceptual map of fundamental aspects of Luba
culture in order to trace memory and recall genealogies and arcane knowl-
edge to pass on to subsequent generations (Roberts and Roberts, Memory,
140). With her cataloging of memorates, myths, cosmologies and enduring
cultural ideas, Morrison revives a dynamic cultural and spiritual history
challenging the myth of being “stripped” and dispossessed of memory as a
result of the Middle Passage and subsequent traumas, an account repeat-
edly narrated by the larger American society.
Morrison is a memory keeper and an historian. As she remarks in an
essay titled, “Behind the Making of the Black Book,” “the artist is the true
historian who does not need to make new myths, but needs to re-discover
the old ones” (89). Defining myth as a concept of truth or reality that a
whole people has arrived at over years of observation, Morrison comments
that this myth has to be communally accepted by the group as truth (89).
Furthermore, in an essay titled, “Memory, Creation, and Writing,” Morri-
son discusses the cultural agency framing her literary agenda. She writes:
I simply wanted to write literature that was irrevocably, indisputably
Black, not because its characters were, or because I was, but because
it took as its creative task and sought as its credentials those recog-
nized and verifiable principles of Black Art. (389)
What are these verifiable principles? I believe the ideas correspond to a
compendium of culturally constructed deliberations imagined, sculpted,
and fashioned from the shared memory of spiritual culture.
Toni Morrison’s insistence on accompanying her nationalistic impulses
with panspiritual ideas helps to restore the respect and identity of a people
whose very existence in the western hemisphere has been threatened by
European hegemony, Christian imposition, and its accompanying spiri-
tual imperialism. I am using the term panspiritualism consistent with John
Henrik Clarke’s definition of pan as any movement by an ethnic group to
 There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart k 5

recover and reclaim their history, culture, and national identity, after slav-
ery, war, or migration, forced or otherwise (26). As Frantz Fanon explains
in The Wretched of the Earth, “The nation gathers together the various
indispensable elements necessary for the creation of a culture, those ele-
ments which alone can give it credibility, validity, life, and creative power”
(245). These elements that breathe life are available as Soyinka asserts,
“Within our African consciousness and at the horizon of our intellection
is the possibility to re-constitute ourselves.”4
African Americans or American Africans continue to demonstrate Af-
rica’s enduring power, its flexibility, and vitality. Whether this power is in-
scribed in dance movements, articulated in the oral tradition of the blues
or hip-hop music, or performed in a plethora of stylistic sensibilities, the
manifestation of this power in these aforementioned expressions are “le-
gitimate and important modes of comprehending and operating within a
universe perceived in sacred terms” (Levine 56). Fundamental to that sense
of sacredness is the idea that the material and phenomenal world is end-
lessly affected by unseen powers (93).
Toni Morrison, one of the ancient mothers described by Alice Walker,
helps the reader to find her own “garden” where haints, mojos, fixing folks,
and root-workers are significant features of the spiritual universe and are
considered requisite components of the cultural and spiritual arts. Affirm-
ing reality in culturally determined ways, Morrison authenticates histories
and traditions that are not available for participation and acceptance by
those who stand outside the culture. What do these spiritual universes look
like? What is contained within them? To consider the worldview, one must
also examine the accompanying ethos, as they are not separate, but repre-
sent the two halves of the primordial gourd of existence. Referencing more
than the consideration of nature, self, and society and the comprehensive
order of things, this worldview pertains to the moral and aesthetic nature
of life. All is contained within this frame and all elements mutually confirm
each other.
I argue that although Morrison uses the genre of the novel, her narra-
tives, like the epic, present one metanarrative in episodic installments. Her
prose reiterates that we have not stopped being what we have preserved in
cultural forms. I began this study asking one big question: To what extent
does Toni Morrison inscribe specific African spiritual ideas and traditions
in her novels? What I found was a complex and highly textured assemblage
of spiritual ideas and diverse forms demarcating and situating core cultural
representations and social interactions. Of particular interest are Morri-
6 k Introduction

son’s inscriptions of the ways in which oppression and belief interact to so-
lidify and strengthen spiritual practices. All of these cultural elements find
points of synthesis and emerge through the dynamics of language, which
sustain the deep-core values and cosmological structures. Subsequent in-
quiries guiding my exploration concern the ways in which African people
in North America redefined, restored, and reclaimed the African spiritual
personality and recovered identity. Finally, throughout this study I examine
the functions of women healers to keep the community’s spiritual circle
intact as they traverse spiritual landscapes emblematic of Yoruba, Kongo,
and other African spiritual systems.5 Testimony to this ancestral heritage
is observed, most notably, in the spiritual practices as well as music, dance,
and language.6 It is the continuity of African culture coupled with the ar-
duous experience of struggle in America that informs poems, prayers, and
groans of the African American. Heard in the work songs of laborers, the
conjures of root-workers, and sermons of the preachers, African culture
also makes its presence known in the written literature.
Although I volley back and forth from discussions grounded in Yo-
ruba ideas to Kongo traditions, to Dogon spiritual ideas to Bantu ideas,
my approach is not characterized by a mere cataloguing of ideas in a er-
ratic way, but is an encircling of the spiritual traditions that have coalesced
and reconciled with one another in the Americas to find common ground
in shared beliefs and African sensibilities. At times, the Bantu approach
dominates this fused identity. Joseph E. Holloway explains that the Bantu
of Central Africa possessed the largest homogeneous culture among the
captured Africans and had the most influence on African American cul-
ture and language (Introduction to Africanisms” xiii). Lawrence Grossberg
concurs that displacement challenges a culture’s equation with location or
place. He explains, “Politics of identity are synecdochal, taking the part (the
individual) to be representative of the whole (the social group) defined by
a common identity” (169). Through this process that Grossberg outlines, it
is logical that Bantu culture became the superstructure to house the mores
of various African nations that ultimately developed into contemporary
African cultural practices in America (Holloway 17). The potency of Bantu
culture is attributed to the strength of their mutually intelligible languages,
the homogeneity of their culture, and the fact that the Bantu who were field
hands had little contact with the European Americans. These continuities
were maintained in “religion, philosophy, culture, folklore, folkways, folk
beliefs, folktales, storytelling, naming practices, home economics, arts,
kinship, and music” (Holloway 17).
 There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart k 7

This deliberate act of remembrance of Africa in America also emerges in

the Yoruba example. Michael A. Gomez notes that with the Yoruba, “eth-
nicity was more consciously operative in the Americas than in Africa” (55).
Juxtaposing the loyalty the Yoruba had with towns and regions in Nigeria,
Gomez argues “within the context of New World enslavement, however,
their common language (with dialects), culture, and religion (featuring a
shared Oyo, Ile Ife centered cosmology) combined to erase former bound-
aries of locality” (55). In this way, the Yoruba were able to emerge as a “na-
tion” in North America, the Caribbean, and Brazil (55).
To understand the process of African American identity formation,
Gomez observes: “it is essential to recover the African cultural, political,
and social background recognizing that Africans came to the New World
with certain coherent perspectives and beliefs about the universe and their
place in it” (4). Furthermore, he argues that notwithstanding the Maafa,
the Yoruba nation emerged as a dominant force in conjunction with the
Bantu influence.7 Despite the distinction and uniqueness of individual tra-
ditions, originating in the respective source cultures, Africans have sus-
tained both awareness and appreciation by practicing these spiritual ideas
although thwarted by attacks and negative judgments relative to being Af-
rican heathens, devil worshippers, and conjurers. To illustrate further, hav-
ing been baptized and confirmed as a Catholic, I am a fully initiated priest
of Obatala in the Lukumi Yoruba spiritual tradition and a Mama Nganga
in the Kongo-derived tradition of Regla Congas or Palo Monte.8 Although,
I have a blood lineage connecting me to the Ba Kongo, I function ritually
in both systems.
I am not unique in my practice of the two systems. Having arrived from
Africa unwillingly from a variety of cultures to the western hemisphere,
African people have planted many different seeds to produce a variety of
collective identities. My understanding of how these mutually inclusive
identities cooperated and forged is situated beyond ideas of creolization as
I locate Africans and their descendants at the centers of their own histori-
cal narratives. I agree with James H. Sweet who argues:

The African impact in the diaspora went far beyond culturally diluted
“survivals”; Africa arrived in the various destinations of the colonial
world in all of its social and cultural richness, informing the institu-
tions that Africans created and providing them with a prism through
which to interpret and understand their condition as slaves [sic] and
as freed peoples. (2)
8 k Introduction

Resisting attempts to dispossess them of their spiritual and cultural identi-

ties and traditional ways of life, notwithstanding their removal from the
geopolitical homelands on the continent of Africa, African people contin-
ued to attach importance to communal values, family, and land, members
of fictive kin, ancestors, and neighborhood as the foundation for commu-
nity.
This interconnectedness of community depended upon the quality of
human relationships in association with shared knowledge located within
the traditional community identity and structures.9 For instance, the Af-
rican communal psyche is demonstrated by intersubjectivity, mutuality,
and interdependence illustrated by the core values expressed in the Bantu
expression umuntu umuntu nagabuntu, which translates as “a person is
a person because of people.” This corporate identity accompanied them
to the Americas. Collectively uprooted and removed, this living culture
maintained its integrity by forging new alliances consistent with these
worldviews. Ras M. Brown suggests that these alliances were “ultimately
expressed in the idioms of West-Central Kongo Culture (5).
Furnishing people with a design for living and a sense of group iden-
tity, worldviews offer shared meaning and collective consciousness, self-
authentication, and give a context and perspective for living. The goal of
enslavement was to divorce people from themselves, make them outcasts
to themselves, annihilate their ancestors, and remove them from the circle
of perpetuity. The pervading idea is that displaced from their homelands
and ancestral beliefs, customs and ritual enactment of those belief systems
would eventually die. I propose that displaced Africans maintained their
existing core values to ensure their psychic and spiritual integrity and cre-
ated a nation out of many people.
My position is suggested by what Sweet calls the revisionist school of
diaspora scholars who supplant the notion of the “Atlantic World” and ac-
companying conversations of creolization (8). Additionally, like Gomez, I
reposition Africa and her descendants at the center and look at specifici-
ties of homogeneous concepts, not survivals. The creolist argument that
Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price premised on the idea of fixed traditions
and the implausibility of direct transmission due to the heterogeneity of
Atlantic African cultures and the lack of prior contact, removes Africans
from the center and places them on the margins of reality (8).
To argue that a homogenous European culture served as the founda-
tional core of African culture removes the African ontological impulse
 There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart k 9

to re-create and birth culture from African people and empowers their
captors to be the parents of an established spiritual lineage. I assert while
not homogenous, the core ideas and spiritual manifestation resemble each
other with enough shared features to rule out European parentage. The
creolists’ stance suggests insubstantiality in African core beliefs that would
allow superimposed religious principles to supplant their spiritual centers.
Their argument removes the ontological agency necessary for self-regen-
eration.
By standing their spiritual ground, Africans maintained and created an
enduring identity instead of succumbing to a perishing personhood un-
der the dehumanizing system of chattel enslavement. Additionally, the as-
sumption that the essence of African American culture and identity dances
along the fault lines of American racial history in black/white terms is a
deeply ingrained yet limited view of the African’s American experience. In
order to emphasize the uniquely “American” experience of African people,
the African cultural background has been historically constructed as ei-
ther empty of meaning or irreparably severed during the Middle Passage,
ostensibly ushering in the creation of an identity fundamentally distinct
and new, albeit with feeble traces of cultural memory conceptualized as
retentions, syncretism, hybridity, creolization, and the like. In these nor-
mative readings of African American culture, I contend that the full past
and present significance of Africa is suppressed and rendered anomalous.
Contemporary scholars such as Sheila Walker and Teresa N. Washing-
ton have challenged these limited models of interpretation and have begun
the intricate process of formulating alternative ways to view the presence
and power of the cultural homogeneity of a composite African worldview
on the American landscape, taking into account the modifications and
elaborations occurring over time and space. While Washington invokes
the presence of the Yoruba concept of the Ajé, Walker introduces the con-
cept of “Afrogenic” to circumnavigate the consensus paradigm as a means
to allow African understandings to play a central, not a peripheral, role
as the proper framework of analysis for understanding African diasporic
experiences.10 Walker asserts:

Afrogenic simply means growing out of the histories, ways of being

and knowing, and interpretations and interpretive styles of African
and African Diasporic peoples. It refers to these communities’ expe-
riences, priorities, and styles, and their articulations of them while
10 k Introduction

acknowledging that most human behavior is not intellectually articu-

lated by the actors who perform it and that plural interpretations of
similar behaviors are obviously possible.(8)

In the case of Central Africans, core beliefs and practices include a reli-
gious cosmology based on the distinction between the world of the living
and the world of the spirits with particular emphasis on the importance of
ancestral spirits.11 Additionally, beliefs, which John Blassingame pejora-
tively refers to as superstitions, allowed the enslaved African to construct
“a psychological defense against total dependence on and submission to
their masters” (Blassingame 45).
Religion is a key constituent reinforcing these spiritual networks of rela-
tionships through its dynamic corporate structures and communal rituals
and sacrifices. My idea of religion is consistent with Margaret Washington
Creel’s notion of religion as the category of behavior and experiences pro-
viding belief systems, sacred symbols, and images of cosmic order and logic
framing human existence and processes (A Peculiar People 59). Employing
the terms spirituality, spiritual impulses, and spiritual traditions coter-
minously with religion, I account for the remembrance of one’s ancestors
and God, which have as their sacred agency practices and epistemological
considerations anterior to African people’s western hemispheric realities.
Creel notes that this idea of sacred extends to an explanation of behav-
ior, the nature of human relationships and communality. In speaking of the
Central African influence on corporate behavior and collective necessity of
inhabitants of the low country or Gullah region, she writes:

Traditional African spiritualism was an individual as well as col-

lective experience. It encompassed the total well-being of the com-
munity, but each person had a role in society, guided by spiritual
forces. . . . The sacred was not set apart from the temporal, indi-
vidual, communal, material, or even political concerns, and religion
assumed a meaning outside of the “holy” building, a “sacred” day of
the week, or a set of dogmas and creeds to be accepted at face value.
(A Peculiar People 59)

Extending Creel’s findings beyond the unique world of the Gullah com-
munities, it is not conceptual within an African ontological frame to live
separate from the sacred world.
African culture demonstrates that it is meaningless to talk about art di-
vorced from spiritual intent since it points to a meaning beyond the imme-
 There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart k 11

diate situation of culture. Toni Morrison’s novels speak to common cultural

and spiritual concerns as she constructs imaginative scaffolding of symbols
and codes consistent with African values. Like all artists, Morrison taps
into this intuition using symbols to point beyond her literary excursions to
a wider reality. My reading alongside ethnographic texts provides the nec-
essary cultural frame to understand her novels’ deeply embedded spiritual
ideas.

Troublin’ the Waters: Critical Revisions and Theoretical Necessities

My exposition of African spiritual traditions in the novels of Toni Mor-

rison represents an endeavor to revise theory and re-align the trajectory
of criticism for reading African American women’s literature. Guiding my
approach—which I call “tracing memory”—is a consideration of African
spiritual ideas that engender community cohesion and collective remem-
bering. By collective remembering, I mean the relocation and reclamation
of the conscious spiritual, and historical, and cultural knowledge common
to African Americans informed by African spiritual ideas. This shared
knowledge transmitted intergenerationally through the use of traditional
oral forms reiterates identity and engenders the cultural integrity of the
group. Necessary to the revitalization of literary criticism, my endeavor
in this study, is to provide a matrix to read African American women’s
literature in novel ways.
Morrison’s corpus of work presents African spirituality with its accom-
panying ideas of deities, emphasis on nature, representations of ancestor
communication, and the importance of community responsibility—core
elements of spirituality and the backbone of African culture. Given the
historical experience of African people in this country, a significant way
to live in a world of change is to hold onto something that is a constant.
Spirituality provides that constant and is an active principle that influences
all aspects of daily life. African American literature testifies to belief in the
faithfulness of the spirit. I attempt to traverse new intellectual terrain and
make connections that rely on African spiritual traditions as the founda-
tion for critical endeavors relative to African American literature. More-
over, advancing African-centered ideas beyond the frame of structuralism,
poststructuralism, and postmodernism, which have preoccupied the in-
terpretation of African American literature, I seek to elevate African intel-
lectual thought that does not originate nor serve as a point of departure
from a European-constructed critical vantage point.
12 k Introduction

In addition to ferreting out the remembered idea of African deities and

sacred phenomena, I also explore ritual as the primary structure of plot
stressing the communal and performative nature as well as the spiritual
exclusivity of the belief systems highlighted in novelistic figurations. In an
interview with Thomas LeClair titled, “The Language Must Not Sweat: A
Conversation with Toni Morrison,” Morrison reminds us that these rituals
are grounded in the African traditions and have a level of cultural specific-
ity. Ralph Ellison records in Shadow and Act that myth and ritual are used
in literature “to give form and significance to the material” as they are true
portraits of how people function in everyday life (174). He continues this
analysis noting that the “rituals become social forms, and it is one of the
functions of the artist to recognize them and raise them to the level of art”
(174). This explanation not only accounts for myth as a basis for engaging
life, but also as a means to remove the yoke of cultural estrangement and
negation. Albert Murray echoes the importance of these restorative and
subversive elements as a means of psychic survival. He writes:
What must be remembered is that people live in terms of images,
which represent the fundamental conceptions embodied in their
rituals and myths. In the absence of adequate images they live in
terms of such compelling images (and hence rituals and myths) as
are abroad at that time. (Hero and the Blues 13)
Far from being easy reads, Toni Morrison’s novels are not accessible to
all readers; only to the initiated. By initiated, I am referring to those readers
who are willing to acknowledge the cultural and spiritual ideas originated
by African people. In most spiritual and religious practices, certain rituals
are restricted to priests or other adepts who have mastered the founda-
tional knowledge and spiritual insight to comprehend the significance of
the intended ceremonial activity. In Morrison’s novels, concepts of time
and space, alongside their association with the natural world and notions
of ancestral remembrance, are prominent cultural features that for some
readers may seem eccentric and out of the main of rationality. Morrison,
however, is quick to point out their location in contemporary African
American life.
In an essay titled, “The Site of Memory,” Morrison defends the cultural
legitimacy of this stance. She states: “The work that I do frequently falls in
the minds of most people, into that realm of fiction called the fantastic or
mythic, or magical, or unbelievable. I’m not comfortable with these labels”
(302). Morrison sees these events as everyday happenings and over time
 There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart k 13

has “taught readers to rediscover, reassess, and reclaim the human values
signified by folk community in Black fiction” (“Site of Memory” 129). This
encoding of messages to the village is the primary purpose for her writing.
What is in need of rediscovery is the cultural locations that characterize
and situate her novels—where gossip is “truth,” numbers are played accord-
ing to dreams, play names are given to children in order to protect them,
illness is viewed as a bad spirit to be rebuked, pain may be accompanied by
laughter, language is for conjuring, and where women would never fathom
buying a plant when all they have to do is get a cutting before leaving a
friend’s house in order to propagate life and the circle of community.
In an essay titled “Beyond Realism,” Keith Byerman says these African
penchants position Morrison’s writing “beyond realism,” in some fantasy-
land, or netherworld, as witnessed by the reporting of “extreme events”
(100). Byerman’s reductive comments are further illustrated in his obser-
vations of Morrison’s characters as being in “pursuit of some black folk
value, such as true community, true family name, or authentic black his-
tory” (100). Comfortable in dismissing the agency of cultural items such as
the quest for family, identity, irretrievable names, and history in the lives of
African people in America, his critical efforts work against the significance
of their retrieval and reclamation. For Byerman, this quest is realized only
after the “loosening of the control of logocentrism so as to achieve a black
selfhood that negates that control” (100). In this seemingly benign and ob-
jective literary statement, Byerman points out the Eurocentric intent of
his essay, that is, to move Morrison and, by association, African people,
out of the arena of logicality by claiming that the content of her work is
shaped by emotionalism. The assumption in his remarks is that inclusions
of culturally specific items that do not necessarily appear as motifs in the
European American literary canon are not logical, are not real, and are out
of control.
Cultural critic Marimba Ani suggests that rationality is the basis for
European cognitive behavior, which is based on lineality. In that model,
the knower of objectified facts is able to achieve the ultimate in European
culture. It follows, according to Ani, that the denial of spiritual reality is the
premise for the devaluation of the African self and beliefs, which in turn,
leads to exploitation and enslavement (xxix). For Ani and other African-
centered critics, African cosmologies and accompanying axiological ideas
that do not exist as values for Europeans are rendered ineffective in the
minds of critics. Carlyle Stewart discusses the threat to white (cultural)
supremacy arguing that “Black spirituality supplants the untruth embodied
14 k Introduction

in those systems of devaluation that preclude black [sic] ascendancy and

empowerment” (60).
Most critics suggest that ideas of the conjurer in literature belong solely
to the domain of folklore and therefore are not credible realities. The un-
derlying idea of European solipsistic thinking reinforces the hegemonic
notion that reality is solely a construction of European values and ideas and
accordingly relegates spiritual ideas of others to a liminal realm. Morrison’s
narratives re-situate these ideas beyond the limits of ordinary experiences,
into the cosmic realm where many of the Africanisms were codified in the
folkways, especially the expression of spirituality. Perhaps Morrison’s own
words express it best when she says, “When I wrote I wanted not to have to
explain. Somehow, when black writers wrote for themselves I understood
it better . . . when the locality is clear, fully realized, then it becomes uni-
versal” (Ruas 96). Pointing out this culturally proactive stance that governs
her artistry, she states:
We are the subjects of our own narrative, witnesses to and partici-
pants in our own experience, and, in no way coincidentally, in the
experiences of those with whom we have come in contact. . . . And to
read imaginative literature by and about us is to choose to examine
centers of self and to have the opportunity to compare these centers
with the “raceless” one with which we are, all of us most familiar.
(“Unspeakable Things” 9)
Toni Morrison’s careful placement of spiritually significant emblems is
suggested by W. Lawrence Hogue who explains the idea of literature be-
ing a textual system that “transposes one or more systems of signs into
another” (330). Like Hogue, I challenge universalism and read Morrison’s
texts within a cultural or ideological context. He argues that “literature is
a social institution which reproduces certain codified values, conventions,
or worldviews” (338).
Additionally, Morrison describes the exclusive audience for whom she
writes and to whom her language provides the requisite access codes, stat-
ing that “there is a level of appreciation that might be available only to
people who understand the context of that language” (LeClair 373–74).
Dismissing universalism as a term to apply to what she does, noting the
cultural impulse, she says, “Behind this question is the suggestion that to
write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my per-
spective, there are only black people. When I say, ‘people,’ that’s what I
mean” (LeClair 374). She sees universality as a burden for the black writer,
 There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart k 15

meaning they are writing for someone outside of themselves. Just as she is
clear that when she writes, she deliberately invokes Nommo (“Unspeakable
Things” 229). A Bantu concept, Nommo refers to the power of the spoken
word with all its vital essence to bring things into existence, accompanied
with the innervating force of ntu, which refers to being (Jahn 101).
Not limiting her cultural determination and ideas of cultural specific-
ity to her own production, Morrison extends this inclination to critical
endeavors. In an interview with Nellie McKay, she bemoans their failure
to match their critical impulses with her literary figurations. Morrison la-
ments:
Critics of my work have often left something to be desired, in my
mind, because they don’t always evolve out of the culture, the world,
the given quality out of which I write. Other kinds of structures are
imposed on my works, and therefore they are either praised or dis-
missed on the basis of something that I have no interest in whatever,
which is writing a novel according to some structure that comes out
of a different culture. (425–26)
For example, modern literature exemplifies African people’s deep rever-
ence for the power of nature. Jean Toomer’s novel Cane stands as a classic
ecological text, with its imagistic musings on pine needles, flowers, sugar-
cane, and golden sunsets representing the beauty of nature and its mythic
potential to save African people from the traumatic terrain of American
racial landscapes. He writes, “The sun is hammered to a band of gold. Pine
needles, like mazda, are brilliantly aglow. . . . Smoke curls up. Marvelous
web spun by the spider sawdust pile” (Cane 10). Additionally, Toomer takes
into account the connection between Africa and the South. He writes, “She
does not sing, her body is a song. She is in the forest, dancing. Torches
flare . . . juju men, gree gree, witch doctors . . . torches go out. . . . The Dixie
Pike has grown from a goat path in Africa” (10). In this significant literary
passage, Toomer links Africa with America intimating that Africa has ex-
tended to America through the mediating forces of African people and the
culture that they transported with them.
However, contemporary critical interpretations fall short of acknowl-
edging Africa as the foundation for both identity and culture of African
people. To illustrate further, Philip Page, a critic who has written numerous
critical essays on Morrison’s work, overlooks this connection in his book of
critical essays, Reclaiming Community in Contemporary African American
Fiction. He attributes the South as “the site of the birth of African Ameri-
16 k Introduction

can culture, the locale of one’s ancestors, and therefore the source of one’s
collective and individual identity” (7). This statement in the introduction
to his book, in a chapter ironically titled “At the Crossroads” (the vertical
and horizontal intersection, where a person’s contact with the divine takes
place), diminishes the possibility of the interspatial self and the collective
self. Implicit in his words is a dissection of cosmic continuity, which defines
African identity. His comment dismembers time, causes a cultural trunca-
tion, and severs the possibility of African deep thought with regard to his
literary analysis.
As a critic he is not alone; many have neither considered the idea of
African temporality, nor African identity. Because of Christian imposition
and its superimposed worldview that has asphyxiated African notions of
belief systems, what has been presented in literary analyses are fragments
of spiritual systems, usually reduced to the realm of superstition and/or
folklore.12 Morrison argues that these conflicts are spiritual at the core.
Bemoaning these critical practices, Morrison says she distrusts the “capac-
ity of the literature and the sociology of other people” to reveal the truth of
her own “cultural sources” (“Memory, Creation, and Writing” 386).
African American critics, also, are not exempt from missing the liter-
ary mark. Morrison notes that she learns most from the texts after the
critic enters it and comments on the African culture without resistance.
Conversely, she states: “I learn nothing from those who resist it, except of
course, the sometimes fascinating display of their struggle” (“Unspeakable
Things” 229). Morrison hopes that critics who do embark upon the journey
would respect the “already legitimatized” cultural “sources and predeces-
sors” (229–30). For example, when referring to folklore as a foundational
idea informing the African American literary tradition, Houston Baker as-
serts that one needs to gain more knowledge of folklore to better under-
stand the literature (Long Black Song 41). However, twenty years later in
Workings of the Spirit, Baker shifts his thesis to include a consideration of
African sacro-religious tradition informing the soul of the literature. He
advances the notion of spirit work as generic, tropological, and analytical.
That is, soul searching becomes a heuristic approach to understand African
American literature’s accretive textures and highly nuanced meaning. In an
attempt to locate folkloric and mythic elements in Toni Morrison’s novels
and to establish the relationship of these two components as extensions
of African American antecedents and African world thought, one must
look beyond the geophilosophical and geophysical boundaries of West-
ern culture. For when the connections are extended beyond their Western
 There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart k 17

frontiers and the sources of these African components are discussed, one
can render a more complete portrait of African spiritual archetypes and
images in not only Morrison’s works, but in the corpus of African Ameri-
can literature as well.
To achieve this clarity, there must be a departure from the realm of the
universal and a reorientation to the particular. To illustrate, most myth
critics usually skirt the issue of African cultural heritage and instead em-
phasize mythic foundations informed by a European worldview. They usu-
ally refer to Jungian classifications suggested by a European perspective
and bolstered by Greek and Judeo-Christian sensibilities. An example of
this culturally contextualized perspective guised as a universal truth can
be found in Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism. Based on Jungian prin-
ciples, his book is considered to be a stellar reference point for myth crit-
ics. In speaking on the theory of archetypal meaning, demonic images in
particular, Frye says, “In religion the spiritual world is a reality distant from
the physical world” (38). This statement, accepted a priori, guides the direc-
tion of criticism of many myth critics who proceed from this “truth” and
posit archetypal interpretations of literature based on these kinds of faulty
universal suppositions. In most African traditional religions, the delinea-
tion between the spiritual and material world is not arranged in such a
truncated and mutually exclusive framework.
Another illustration of Euro-solipsistic myth criticism in distinctions
made by Jung concerning the “primitive” and “civilized” orientation is evi-
denced in the following statement:
Primitive mentality differs from civilized chiefly in that the conscious
mind is far less developed in extent and intensity. Functions such as
thinking, willing etc. are not yet differentiated. . . . [The primitive]
is incapable of any conscious effort of will . . . owing to the chronic
twilight state of his conscious, it is often next to impossible to find
out whether he merely dreamed something or whether he really ex-
perienced it. (35)13
In Myth, Literature and the African World, Wole Soyinka notes this dif-
ferentiation in the nature of archetype between the primitive and civilized
mind misrepresents the universality of a collective consciousness, the
premise of Jung’s argument (35). Given the kind of hierarchical distinction
suggested by Jung’s statement, I would argue the need of reference points
for African-based literature to be drawn from the culture. The African cen-
tered focus that I am suggesting does not preclude the inclusion of mythic
18 k Introduction

ideas and ideas espoused by thinkers such as Jung or Frye, but instead situ-
ates these perspectives within the cultural frame of the African worldview
wherever appropriate and applicable.
This political critical stance works in consonance with Morrison’s liter-
ary polemics. For Morrison, there is no contradiction in the work’s being
political and artistic. To her, art is political. What makes it political is her
obstinacy in documenting the ethos of her own culture. As Fanon would
argue, Morrison’s novels represent “a literature of combat” as she molds
“the national consciousness, giving it form and contours, and flinging open
before it new and boundless horizons” (240). In an interview with Claudia
Tate in Black Women Writers at Work, Morrison expresses this cultural
vision, stating, “When I view the world, perceive it and write about it, it’s
the world of black people” (118). She continues her exploration of cultural
specificity in her interview with the late literary critic, Nellie McKay:
Because my books come out of those things and represent how they
function in the black cosmology . . . I am yearning for someone to see
such things—to see what the structures are, what the moorings are,
where the anchors are that support my writings. We have no system-
atic mode of criticism that has yet evolved from us, but it will. (426)
This clarion call for criticism from an African diasporic perspective
is reiterated in “Negotiations of Power: White Critics, Black Texts, and
the Self-Referential Impulse,” where Michael Awkward details the conse-
quences of not having African American constructed criticism. He also
notes the critical tendencies of “white-authored analyses” to be inconsis-
tent with the “interest of the discourse” (583). In order to ensure greater
cultural equity in the interpretation of African American literature, Awk-
ward asserts that “it is the responsibility of Afro-Americanist scholars to
examine and expose those consequences” (583). Moreover, he remarks:
Even in self-reflective white critical acts, racial privilege may create
interpretative obstacles or, more importantly, points of resistance
that color, in racially motivated ways—perhaps even in hegemony-
maintaining ways—the effects of an exploitation of blackness. In
other words, white reading can mean the adoption of a posture anti-
thetical to Afro-American interests. (583)
In the interest of African American representation, my goal in this book
is to define and interpret a few underlying spiritual realities that transcend
the written word and provide a context for the deeper meaning beyond lit-
 There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart k 19

erary events in the novels of Nobel laureate, Toni Morrison. Consequently,

my theoretical endeavor is born from the lack of authoritative exegesis
concerning the spiritual nature of African American literature in critical
circles. Having failed to establish that spiritual expression is an essential
principle in the lives of African people, critical models inbred from linear
worldviews are inadequate tools to examine African American literature.
As an African and a critic, I am exercising my prerogative to construe and
negotiate what signs are to be seen as spiritually symbolic within an Afri-
can frame.
I am not alone. Simon Bockie decries the Western world’s insistence
on explaining African existence. He asserts, “The time has come for Af-
ricans themselves to set forth their values and identities as only they are
capable of doing” (ix). Similarly, in Myth, Literature and the African World,
Wole Soyinka chides African people for accepting ideas originating from
cultural spaces outside of themselves. Providing the rubric for cultural in-
terpretation, Soyinka asserts that African people should check to see if
they can elicit those ideas from their own cultural frame (xii). Morrison
echoes Soyinka’s ideas, reclaiming African culture’s cogency. She states
in an interview with Christina Davis: “There’s a great deal of obfuscation
and distortion and erasure, so that the presence and the heartbeat of black
people has been systematically annihilated in many, many ways and the job
of recovery is ours” (142).
These determined critical trajectories juxtapose critic Sara Blackburn’s
limited idea of the magnitude of African thought. She writes, “Morrison
is far too talented to remain only a marvelous recorder of the black side
of provincial American life” (3). Her remarks seem to indicate that even
when gender corresponds, the default perspective for critics continues to
be issues of race informed by hegemony. In an essay titled “Home” Mor-
rison remarks, “I have never lived, nor has any of us, in a world in which
race did not matter. Such a world, one free of racial hierarchy, is usually
imagined or described as dreamscape—Edenesque, utopian, so remote are
the possibilities of its achievement” (3). Because Morrison’s adventure in
novel-writing has been “explorations of seemingly impenetrable, race-in-
flected, race-clotted topics” (“Home” 9), to not take into account race and
its accompanying signs and sentiments would be intellectually irrational
and academically dishonest. I am also unsympathetic to African cultural
critics and others who feel that any allegiance to African people serves to
thwart the possibilities of an objective critical stance, or a common hu-
manity, thereby damaging a presumed social progress amongst the races.
20 k Introduction

This intellectual supervision and suppression of memories guised as the

need to counter essentialisms, seeks to determine what can and should
count as valid. Additionally, these stances continue to justify the interven-
tion of those outside the circle of cultural production to determine and
control critical thought. In short, they become recodified judging “eyes”
simultaneously gazing and denying.
In addition to considerations of race, I submit that by not taking into
account the role of beliefs and spirituality as legitimate ways for groups of
people to sculpt identity, critics bent on renouncing the grand narratives
of the past have unwittingly displaced Africans further in their intractable
pursuit to maintain their dispassionate un-raced criticism, which eschews
the narrative of blackness. In my analyses, I am not willing to disengage
or compromise the integrity of cultural matrices on which traditional
ideas are formulated in order to be in accordance with current theoretical
trends. Coupled with her polemic sensibilities, Toni Morrison is clearly a
“representative of the tribe” who does not see any incongruence with an
artist having a “tribal or racial sensibility and an individual expression of
it” (“Rootedness” 339); I extend that perception to criticism of her work.
Writers create in this cultural stance, to both preserve culture and pro-
tect the group from cultural annihilation. This worldview provides the
group shared meaning and collective consciousness and gives the context
and perspectives for living, or as she remarks, “Black people take their
culture wherever they go” (Black Women Writers at Work 119). In her liter-
ary, as well as critical works, Morrison has employed a cultural-nationalist
agenda consistent with principles illustrated by Ngugi Wa Thiongo, ex-
pressed in Writers in Politics. He asserts, a nation’s literature reflects the
summative products of the individuals as well as the collective, and repre-
sents the “people’s collective reality, collective experience,” and “embodies
that community’s way of looking at the world and its place in the making
of that world” (Wa Thiongo 7). Morrison contends:

In the Third World cosmology as I perceive it, reality is not already

constituted by my literary predecessors in Western culture. If my
work is to confront a reality unlike that received reality of the West,
it must centralize and animate information discredited by the West—
discredited not because it is not true or useful or even of some ra-
cial value, but because it is information held by discredited people,
information dismissed as “lore” as gossip, or “magic” or “sentiment.”
(“Memory, Creation, and Writing” 388)
 There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart k 21

The present study is simultaneously theoretical and historical, attempt-

ing to explain the literary and the African spiritual bases for characters,
plot, symbol, and theme. Undergirding my theoretical approach is the no-
tion that African American literature—like dance, music, and other cul-
tural forms—houses the beliefs and values and challenges the reader to in-
terrogate his or her attitude about the nature of God, existence, the idea of
the person, the role of community, and the transformative power of ritual.
As Morrison remarks in “A Slow Walk of Trees,” African people are “suf-
fering from racial vertigo that can be cured by taking what one needs from
one’s ancestors” (152). Cosmological knowledge is augmented through
spiritual insight and communication with the ancestral words (language)
by which people construct identity and accompanying life philosophies
mediating the distance between African belief systems and western hemi-
spheric realities of Africans in America. A prominent way the Òrìsà were
remembered and celebrated in America has been through folkloric frames
and subsequently their inscription in literature.
The first critic to recognize the African origin of the trickster was Julien
Hall. In an 1897 essay titled “Negro Conjuring and Tricking,” appearing in
The Journal of American Folklore, Hall notes the tenacity of the trickster
idea in the cultural inventory of the enslaved African. He says these beliefs
were brought here from Africa by the first comers and continue in full force
to this day notwithstanding the Negro is a free man and living amongst
the white people of the United States of America” (241). As a modern lit-
erary study of the trickster, Henry Louis Gates’s The Signifying Monkey is
an important text, wherein he establishes a theory of African American
literary criticism based on the hermeneutical possibilities offered by the
Yoruba Òrìsà, Eshu. Gates asserts to the literary world that Eshu or Elegba
allows for a multiplicity of meanings out of which we find significance; he
is the master interpreter. It is appropriate that Eshu should represent the
first named incorporation of Yoruba belief into literary analysis, since all
communication with the Òrìsà must first pass through the master of divine
speech.
However, critics, including Gates, have not examined the trickster’s
spiritual dimensions; their literary essays have confined him to the cultural
boundaries of North America. For instance, H. Nigel Thomas argues that
the trickster is necessary for African American survival, but does not dis-
cuss his ancestry or draw parallels to Eshu, the Yoruba deity of randomness
and uncertainty. In Long Black Song, critic Houston Baker Jr. fails to discuss
the origins of the trickster; instead he advances that the trickster tales be-
22 k Introduction

gin to appear after the Civil War. Furthermore, when John Roberts does
acknowledge an African provenance for the trickster in From Trickster to
Badman, he is reluctant to explore the ideas with adequate depth. Moving
Elegba from Gates’s rhetorical consideration of him, a fundamental matter
that I address is the uncovering of and recognition of other Òrìsà to whom
Eshu or Elegba communicates on behalf of his devotees. My close read-
ings of Morrison’s novels extend Gates’s theoretical initiative that is locat-
ing other Òrìsà who rely on Elegba’s assistance to facilitate their devotee’s
spiritual balance.

The Journey

The chapters contained in part 1 introduce the concept of nature, the healer,
and other spiritual manifestations mediated through the ritual activities.
Essays in this section are titled “I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the
Descent into Madness in The Bluest Eye” and “Always: The Living Ancestor
and the Testimony of Will in Sula.” In my discussion of The Bluest Eye, I
consider the importance of the community in ensuring the wellness of its
individual members. Additionally, I discuss spiritual ideas such as malo-
chia or the “evil eye” and the role of ritual leaders in mediating life’s spiri-
tual dilemmas. My discussion of the Òrìsà, Oya, the concept of Egungun,
and the living ancestor are the foci for Morrison’s second novel, Sula.
Part 2, Psychic Domains and Spiritual Locations, focuses on the connec-
tion between identity and the concept of home. I begin with a chapter titled
“I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Ritual and the Construction of Family His-
tory in Song of Solomon,” where I examine the importance of family history
in aligning oneself and achieving his or her spiritual destiny. At the heart of
my interpretation of Song of Solomon is an examination of Morrison’s epic
reconstruction and invocation of the Kongo ritual specialist, the Nganga,
in the character Pilate Dead. Additionally, I examine Elegba, the divine
spokesperson of the Òrìsà relative to Milkman’s search for familial identity.
In “Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of
Jadine in Tar Baby,” I investigate the relationship of human beings to na-
ture, the divine mothers represented by the Ajé, and the trope of spiritual
transformation with an examination of Shango, the Òrìsà of redistributive
justice, and the Òrìsà of beauty and regeneration, Oshun. In “In(her)iting
the Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, and Mediations of the
Spiritual In-between in Paradise,” I discuss the nature of spiritual balance
by examining the Yoruba deities Ibeji—the primordial twins, representa-
 There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart k 23

tive of balance and spiritual abundance. Additionally, I examine the ways

in which Morrison structures the narrative according to the spiritual, aes-
thetic, and social principles of Yoruba belief and Dogon sensibilities in her
exploration of spiritual dualities.
Part 3, titled “Remembrance Has Not Left Us: What the Record Shows,”
addresses historical records and the need to trace and record memories
to ensure a viable future. The first two chapters are “Living with the Dead:
Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved” and “Tracing Wild’s Child Joe
and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination of the Òrìsà Ochossi in Jazz.” In
these essays I explore Morrison’s dogged insistence in countering Amer-
ica’s recurring bouts with memory loss regarding the spiritual, political,
and cultural realities of Africans in America. Morrison’s use of memory,
a phenomenon of primary importance in oral culture, helps to relocate
ancestral images and recollect African spiritual ideas. As Morrison depicts
the characters in the novel, a distinct picture of their allegiance to African
spiritual beliefs emerges reinforcing key cultural values and the necessity
of maintaining harmony. In my examination of Beloved, I begin with an
analysis of memory as the major conceit and then move to an examination
of the Yoruba Òrìsà Oya and Aganju, as I explore the ways in which char-
acters come to terms with remembering, healing, and recovering spiritual
balance. In Jazz, Morrison warns about stepping out of the tradition rep-
resented by Southern values represented by nature. I examine these eco-
critical and historical ideas with a focus on the Yoruba Òrìsà Ochossi, the
archetypal Òrìsà of the hunt, and his stalking accuracy illustrated by the
character Joe Trace described as the best “hunter in Vesper County” as he
searches for reconnections with his mother, nature, and family—a pursuit
that defines the major breaches that have had a deleterious effect on Af-
rican people in America. I conclude with a chapter titled “If I’d a Knowed
More, I Would a Loved More: Love and Spiritual Authorship,” a coda using
Love, Morrison’s eighth novel, to catalogue the spiritual ideas invoked in
her previous novels.
 I
f
Ancestral Echoes Positing a Spiritual Frame
 1

I’s Got the Blues

Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness
in The Bluest Eye

What shall I tell my dear one, fruit of my womb, of how beauti-

ful they are when everywhere they turn they are faced with
abhorrence of everything that is black?
—Margaret Burroughs, “What Shall I Tell My Children
Who Are Black?”

At the conclusion of Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), the
protagonist, Pecola Breedlove, has descended into a world of madness.1 In
this realm, her ruptured personality has not divided into the Duboisian no-
tion of “warring souls” but into an amicable split—a way to exist in a land
where the “soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers” (Bluest Eye 206). Key to
understanding Pecola’s dilemma is a consideration of the debilitating effect
of white supremacy and the negative aesthetic cast by its malevolent eye.
Before her descent into madness, Pecola’s de-centering primarily relates to
the transference of the aesthetic negation of blackness from her mother,
her other mothers, her age-mates, the community at-large, and the hostile
environment of a racialized America. Pecola Breedlove is shunned by her
community and is not given the protection of an individual consistent with
African cultural values. Since a person is not only an individual but also an
integral member of a community, the notion of this young girl not being
protected transgresses African morality and ethics. Claudia, a friend of
Pecola’s and witness to her destruction, narrates alternate stories. She and
her sister Frieda are saved a similar fate by a strong and supportive family
unit.
Culturally and spiritually there is no space for Pecola to exist alone, out-
side the circle of community support. In speaking of normative behavior
of the Ba Kongo, a Bantu people occupying most of what is known today
as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, Simon Bockie describes
28 k Chapter 1

the first level of many initiations that will occur in a child’s lifetime to bind
her or him as an individual to the circle of community. He notes that an
individual’s existence begins on the day of birth and moves from being
the property of the parents to being a part of the community through a
series of initiations into his or her new world. After being born, the child is
taken by the Nganga or the ceremonial priest who introduces the child to
the community. The process of the child’s development is to be guided by
every member of the community who helps to prepare the child for all the
collective expectation the community has for them (Bockie 32).
In traditional life, the individual does not and cannot exist alone. He or
she must exist corporately, constructing one’s existence through connec-
tions with other people, including one’s contemporaries and those of past
generations. Individuals are part of the whole. John S. Mbiti explains that
physical birth is not enough; the child must go through the rites of incor-
poration to become fully integrated into the entire society (108). Among
the Yoruba, a similar formal introduction to the community occurs at the
naming ceremony where blood sacrifices are offered to the ancestors, a
divinatory reading for the baby is performed, and the baby—along with
her or his name—is presented, completing the individual’s entrance as a
member of the community.
An African view of an individual demands a balance between the collec-
tive identity as a member of society and the personal identity as a unique
individual. In general, African philosophy tends to define persons in terms
of the social groups to which they belong. A person is thought of first as
a constituent of a particular community, for it is the community that de-
fines who he is and what he can become (Ray 132). In Pecola’s case, it is
not only the external white community of Lorain, Ohio, America, that has
determined who she is and who she could possibly be, but also the African
community that has limited her as well. Having internalized the aesthetic
view of white people themselves, the community has also prescribed the
contours of existence for Pecola.
Consequently, Pecola’s “step over into madness” (Bluest Eye 206) repre-
sents a way for her to be whole and allows her an alternate way of traversing
reality. Pecola still exists, but in a world more compatible with the internal-
ized messages forming her consciousness since her birth. Additionally, this
split in Pecola’s personality coheres to Bantu cosmological concepts, which
do not accommodate the notion of individuated things existing by them-
selves. Isolated from other witnesses, Pecola’s need for psychic alliance is
logical. Extending the discussion of what constitutes a person, Benjamin
 I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in The Bluest Eye k 29

C. Ray notes, “The African concept of the person never approximates the
Western notion of individualism—the idea that someone’s identity exists
as a private self essentially independent of family bonds and local roots”
(African Religions 92). These aforementioned philosophical ideas highlight
the value in maintaining socially harmonious relationships; that is, each
person must relate to each element in the concentric circles of life. In this
cyclically constructed novel, Morrison invites the reader to examine the
ways in which the ring/eye of community, vital to a people’s survival, has
been replaced with the axiological imperative to possess whiteness. The
desire for blue eyes is not only emblematic but also symptomatic of a de-
centered worldview.
In this omnisciently narrated chapter, which begins with the last of the
seven primer phrases, Morrison employs a double-voiced narrative to
illustrate the two discrete halves that now make up Pecola’s fragmented
mind. Reflecting upon the value as well as the validity of her eyes, one of
the voices queries, “Are they really nice?” The other voice responds, “Yes.
Very nice” (194). It is only the imagined self, created in the darkroom of
abnegation, that allows Pecola to find both voice and vision. For Pecola,
her “blue eyes” replace the center or nucleus of community. It is her eyes
that nurture her and affirm her. What has happened? Morrison observes
that silence is at the center of Pecola’s “unbeing” (215); I add that Pecola’s
invisibility is at the core of her “unraveling.”
However, Toni Morrison does not bait the reader into castigating Pecola
for any perceived individual weakness, instead she holds both communi-
ties, those without and within, responsible for their complicit actions. They
allowed Pecola to be vulnerable to their gazes. In the afterword to the 1994
Plume edition of the novel, attempting to expose the wrongdoers, Morri-
son raises the following questions: “Who told her? Who made her feel that
it was better to be a freak than who she was? Who had looked at her and
found her so wanting, so small a weight on the beauty scale?” (210). Mor-
rison interrogates the most essential ideas of white supremacy: aesthetic
and spiritual negation. Continuing, she remarks, “The novel pecks away at
the gaze that condemned her . . . the damaging internalization of assump-
tions of immutable inferiority originating in an outside gaze” (210). Not
only has this malignant viewing aesthetically displaced African people in
North America, but also the internalization of the gaze has created new
cosmologies—new ways to imagine self and to be in the world.
The concerted effort to negate the African self or personality has been
well documented. The judging eyes, defining gazes, malevolent eyes,
30 k Chapter 1

turned inward on Africans made them see themselves in the same manner
as their captors and armed them with the same soul-extinguishing aspira-
tions. Morrison raises the same question that Ayi Kwei Armah asks in his
novel Two Thousand Seasons. What does it look like in the mind to have
“our very colour turned into the predator’s name for evil?” (39). In part,
the answers are rooted in the historical practices reflected in the principal
narrative structure of the novel, the primer excerpts. Framing the novel’s
omniscient narration, as well as providing the categorical ideas that deviate
from the African constructed worldview, the words sting with a haunting
familiarity of worlds never imagined or seen by little African boys and girls
in North America. In her eulogistic poem “For My People,” Margaret Al-
exander Walker elucidates the role that the American educational system
plays in erasing the African personality. She writes, “For the boys and girls
who went to school to learn the place where and the people who, in re-
membrance of the times when we discovered we were black and poor and
nobody cared and nobody understood” (6–7). The primers used ostensibly
to coax literacy from emerging readers were replete with images of white
people, their world, their homes, their activities, and their values. In these
images of the insular, prototypical nuclear family, African children saw no
representations of themselves in the stories or in the situations highlighted
in the books. By presenting this alternate and unattainable world of “white-
ness” early in the introductory educational experience of African children,
the students learned very early, as Walker asserts, that their world was
marginal. And as a result, they as a people were either placed on the edge
or not considered at all.
However, there is a different way to look at the concept of the edge
and the demarcation of the seven central elements of the plot—the house,
the family, the cat, the mother, the father, the dog, and the friend. In an
African sense, these delineations cohere to the seven concentric circles
constructing the Bantu cosmology. Fu-Kiau notes that in the center of the
seven-ringed circle is the person (muntu), followed by the family (buta),
motherhood (moyo), extended motherhood (mwelo-nzo), community
(kanda), land (nsi), and the universe (nza) (African Cosmology 41). This
matrix describes the cosmic order of life that all human beings must con-
nect with in order to achieve balance. Moreover the demarcation of these
seven components corresponds to the thematic ideas of the novel: self-
awareness, self-knowledge, self-fulfillment, and self-love. Fu-Kiau explains
the idea of walking inward, or self-knowledge:
 I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in The Bluest Eye k 31

The Bantu people, in their teaching, believe that the human being
suffers mostly because of his lack of knowing how to walk towards
this seventh direction, the innerwards direction. Their own words
put it so perfectly well: kani ka bwe, kana lu lumoso-ku lubakala-
ku n’twala-ku nima-mu zulu evo mu nsi ukwenda, vutukisa va didi
i yand (No matter what you may walk leftwards, rightwards, for-
wards, backwards, upwards or downwards, you must come back to
the core/center. The human being is nothing unless he discovers how
to walk towards the seventh direction, the center [didi], the inner
world, which represents the essence of his being) (African Cosmol-
ogy 134–35).

Pecola’s failure lies in her inability to meet her healthy “self.” What she
does meet is the societal constructed self, antithetical to her being. The
lack of punctuation of any kind in the last repetition of the primer indicates
the dissolve of the spiritual space in which to grow. Not having access to
the spiritual power that resides at the interstices diminishes the possibili-
ties of ritual contact with the realm where guardian spirits could assist her
to be well. Additionally, the primer categories adversely and inversely de-
fine Pecola’s reality—creating a world where black people are nothing and
white people are everything.
Toni Morrison is quite aware that African people in North America
reside in two separate antagonistic worlds, no matter the political rhetoric
used to bolster theocratic and democratic vistas, like “one God,” “one coun-
try,” and “one people” with liberty and justice for all. Written in turbulent
times when African people in America affirmed in strident voices, “Black
is Beautiful,” Morrison added her strident voice to the continuous narrative
of what it means to be black in racist America. In Visions of a Liberated
Future, Larry Neal describes this methodology. He states, “The main tenet
of Black Power is the necessity for black people to define the world in their
own terms. The black artist has made the same point in the context of aes-
thetics” (62). For Pecola, desperately trying to rid herself of the mantle of
“ugliness” imposed upon her by society, possessing blue eyes is the result of
having succumbed to the malochia or evil eye of white supremacy. With its
fixed gaze towering over her omnisciently, at once defining and delineat-
ing the lives of those whom it captures in its sight, the eye hypnotizes all
in its view, coaxing them from their own sense of center into the abyss of
annihilation.
32 k Chapter 1

Using the idea of the eye as the central metaphor—the mirror reflecting
a white supremacist aesthetic—Morrison challenges imposed definitions.
With its ideas of dualities, spiritual sites and in-sights, Morrison’s first novel
illustrates the ways in which the power of images outside the cosmological
frame of blackness disrupts and destroys the worldview of people, and the
people as well. My reading of The Bluest Eye is not an attempt to further
reprimand African people, but seeks to investigate the deep structure or
core processes facilitating this type of psychic decline for the Pecolas of the
world. These mental lapses are predictable, since “no sane society chooses
to build its future on foreign cultures, values, or systems” (xi).2
In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison presents the cosmology of otherness
alongside assemblages of African frames to highlight the process of psychic
destruction and to point out the deleterious effect of not maintaining bal-
ance. Her literary construction of this balance suggests the idea that some-
thing must bridge the ruptures and close the interstitial gaps between the
two polar realms of whiteness and blackness, ugliness and beauty. Alter-
natively, she illustrates that, notwithstanding similar social circumstances
and even when faced with cultural aggression, characters attain stability;
given similar social circumstances, balance is possible. Their accounts af-
firm the role of culture to protect against malochia and counter the nega-
tive effects of the malevolent eye.
Morrison suggests that one should fix a proactive gaze from one’s own
eye—whether the eye be worn around the neck as a talisman or wielded
through deliberate and cultural practices. Terry Otten notes that in order
for Morrison’s protagonist to survive, she must “somehow violate the rule
of the oppressive system, reject the values it venerates, and recover the
human potential denied to blacks” (3). The twin narrative accompanying
Pecola’s tale of destruction is a story of Africans who have insisted on re-
maining whole by adhering to traditional African culture as the blueprint
and primary source of information for a variety of political, gender, and so-
cial issues. Additionally, there are testimonies of African people who have
found agency and refashioned their identity from a wellspring of cultural
and spiritual items to help them navigate “the unheimlich terror of the
space or race of the other”—those denied “the comfort of social belonging”
(Bhabha 3).
Even though she has informed readers on the very first page what has
happened, Morrison invites them to participate in the novel through a
series of narrative flashbacks. Besides the use of doubling, the cyclical
cosmogram provides the structure for the novel, two groups of four: the
 I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in The Bluest Eye k 33

Breedloves and the Macteers. Another grouping of fours consists of the

three whores and Pecola. Using this number of cosmic completion, Mor-
rison is able to move the microcosmic individual story of Pecola to the level
of the macrocosm, leaving her reader with a sense of epic fulfillment and
reconnection.
The Bluest Eye begins in autumn, the season of dissolution, with its im-
ages of “dead grass in the field” and actions such as gleaning in urban coal
fields, juxtaposed with the cosmic event of the protagonist, Pecola Breed-
love, getting her first menses. The reader is primed to traverse the cosmo-
gram from maturity in a counterclockwise back/toward to the novel’s pro-
logue signifying the death of Pecola’s baby. Understanding the worldview
of a people is the basis for understanding their culture. And key to this
consideration of time is the language employed to navigate their respec-
tive environments. For example, the prologue to the novel begins, “Quiet
as kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.” Fu-Kiau says that when
African people speak in proverbs, a special and sacred language, they pre-
vent the “leak of very fundamental principles of the society” and thwart
outsiders from having access to its secrecies (93). There is a level of ap-
preciation that might be available only to people who understand what the
expression “quiet as kept” signifies within the context of African expressive
culture (Bluest Eye 215).
Toni Morrison states that she chose the opening line for the novel with
great care, preserving the speakerly quality of speech familiar to her. She
expresses her choice of anecdotes to make the reader lean into the story.
Morrison’s word choice reflects “black women conversing with one an-
other” (Bluest Eye 212). Additionally, the opening line signifies that African
people still believe in signs and the principles of causality relative to the
natural world. The epistemic idea that ethics and morality have a correla-
tion with natural phenomena is conveyed by Claudia and Frieda’s reading
of the earth and paying attention to its rhythms, patterns, and secret lan-
guage. The pair attributes the absence of marigolds to Pecola’s incestuous
impregnation. The significance of signs for African people from a historical
perspective must be considered. Mary Frances Berry and John Blassingame
note:

One of the major functions of the signs was to enable the slave to deal
with the ever present and always specter of death. Seeking control
over a harsh world where masters and overseers were capricious and
irrational, the slaves developed an unshakable belief in the infallibil-
34 k Chapter 1

ity of dreams and signs as predictors of future events on the planta-

tions. (250)

Another cultural idea useful to interpret both the narrative and the-
matic structure of The Bluest Eye is the Yoruba idea of complementary
opposition. The Yoruba argue that anything that does not contain an ele-
ment of opposition is incomplete, for God (Olodumare) is a combination
of opposites (Black Gods Mason and Edwards 3). Corresponding to this
spiritual rubric, the novel’s dedication page reads, “To the two who gave
me life and the one who made me free.” The Yoruba divide reality into two
parts: forces that build up and forces that tear down.
Morrison presents the following twin ideas to advance the idea of Amer-
ica’s negation of the African aesthetic. Her use of doubles includes positive
and negative maternal roles; positive values and negative values; two black
families; the white world/black world; Hollywood representations and re-
ality; Claudia and Frieda; Pecola and Sammy; Cholly and Pauline; the nar-
rative voices of Claudia and Frieda; and Pauline Breedlove’s twin siblings
Chicken and Pie. Additionally, Cholly and Pauline live in two rooms and
have two children, and Pauline’s cognomen, Polly, implies parroting or the
doubling of words.
Ultimately, the mirror that negates and affirms beauty represents an-
other type of doubling. For the Yoruba, the individual consists of comple-
mentary pairs of the exterior—what the Yoruba call ode and innu, referring
to exterior and interior (Drewal and Drewal 73). In Gelede: Art and Female
Power Among the Yoruba, Henry and Margaret Drewal note that the ex-
terior is just the outward physical appearance (ori odi), whereas the inner
head (ori inun) controls thoughts and actions, as well as the character, per-
sonality, and mind (73). In the case of Pecola’s internalization of the gaze,
the exterior world has replaced the interior and subverted any attempts to
recover her true self. A balance must be maintained between internal and
external to be “well.”
The imbalance, which has diminished Pecola’s vital life forces, leaves
her unbalanced. These dualities as philosophical ideas can be traced to the
kala and zima, or the notion of duality in the Kongo tradition. Giving and
receiving are not really opposites; they are reflective and reciprocal—the
balance of life. Like the Yoruba, the union of cosmic forces should serve to
unify the person with his or her destiny and life incarnation objective; in
short, they should allow the person to meet “self ” in the physical realm, in
order to have the same recognition in the spiritual world once they detach
 I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in The Bluest Eye k 35

from the physical body. Other dualities expressed in spiritual-religious

terms are the Yoruba notion of the two souls. The Yoruba believe that in-
dividuals have at least two souls: eleda (the ancestral guardian soul associ-
ated with the head) and emi (the breath, lungs, and chest), as well as a third
soul ojiji (the person’s shadow).
Dualities also exist as the Yoruba in the proverb—tibi tire (good and bad
luck together). Balance, the goal of life, is achieved by the recognition of
the elements of bad, which complement the elements of good to achieve
the idealized state of coolness. Joy and pain are the human experience as
the Yoruba name Ekundayo expresses. J. Omosade Awolalu states, “The
Yoruba world does not know of totally opposing forces—one representing
evil and the other good” (28). This balanced worldview allows the Yoruba
to find fulfillment. The Yoruba traditional belief system underscores the
importance of balance as a primary spiritual idea. To illustrate in nature,
the rainbow’s arc touching the earth represents completeness and the join-
ing of heaven (orun) with earth (aye). This union of cosmic forces also sym-
bolizes the cooperative and complementary nature of men and women as
the basis for family, community, and nationhood. As the poet/activist Ayi
Kwei Armah states in the prologue to Two Thousand Seasons, “All in life is
twinned, receiving and giving are one.”
The varying spiritual traditions of Africa attest to the unifying idea of
complementary pairs. Departure from this intimate balance splits the two
mutual halves that frame African ontology. Although the Dogon and Yo-
ruba are two autonomous cultural groups, I am extending the idea of “Afri-
can-European cultural confluence” used by Michael A. Gomez to describe
how one reconciles distinct spiritual traditions (Exchanging Our Country
Marks 3). I term my interpretative approach African global mutuality. This
idea allows for the interchange of cultural and spiritual ideas across geopo-
litical borders in order to enhance the potentiality of the person.
Consigned to the script of the world in which she was born, Pecola’s
mental descent leads the community, including the readers, to resolve their
own issues. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison presents the cosmology of other-
ness alongside an African frame to highlight the process of psychic de-
struction and to point to the deleterious effect of not maintaining balance.
Her literary construction of this balance advances the idea of interchange
between the interstices of the two polar realms of whiteness and black-
ness: ugliness and beauty. Alternatively, Morrison argues that finding a
balance is possible, even when faced with cultural aggression. In The Bluest
Eye there are testimonies of African people who have found agency and
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refashioned their identity from a wellspring of cultural items transported

with them: proverbs, religion, medicine, social organization, and ideas of
justice, morality, and ethics.
Toni Morrison’s inscription of ritual performance establishes continu-
ities in belief using a gathering of cultural symbols and invokes the spir-
its into the circle engendering mythic memory of belief revealed in Aunt
Jimmy, M’Dear, and Cholly Breedlove. Aunt Jimmy, Cholly Breedlove’s
great-aunt, belongs to a group of women easily identified in fiction as one
of the wise women tied to an African past. She is described as a woman
“eating collard greens with her fingers, sucking her four gold teeth,” and
wearing an “asafetida bag around her neck” (Bluest Eye 132). The wearing of
the asafetida bag is a visual signifier of her traditional orientation.3 Another
practice of Aunt Jimmy’s that indicates her African cultural orientation
is her remembrance of traditional naming practices. When Cholly asks
why he wasn’t named after his father, she replies, “Your mama didn’t name
you nothing. The nine days wasn’t up before she throwed you on the junk
heap. When I got you I named you myself on the ninth day” (133). Evident
in her response is that even though there was a disruption indicated by
his mother’s abandonment of him, traditional practices are still upheld in
naming practices and order can be restored through ritual and ceremony.
After having established Aunt Jimmy’s spiritual nature, Morrison sets
the stage for the intervention of a group of women to assist in her healing
when Aunt Jimmy takes ill. “Friends came to see about her. Some made her
camomile [sic] tea” and offered advice: “Don’t eat no whites of eggs,” “Drink
new milk,” “Chew on this root” (135–36). When none of these remedies
worked to alleviate her suffering, they send for M’Dear. Displaying the dy-
namism of African culture, Morrison employs the idea of the Iyalorisa or
female ritual officiant, reinforcing the idea of African spiritual continuities
in America.4
In The Bluest Eye, Morrison reinscribes the concept of female healer
illustrating how African women continue to remember and, as a result,
heal one another. Morrison advances how the power of African indigenous
culture, healing, and female authority combine to chart a course toward
new levels of liberation; hypnotized by the vibration of the “hum-song” and
the power of continuous spiritual journeys, characters traverse the past in
search of the meaning of the present. Linking the narrative to ritual is an
attempt to restore balance in both the visible and invisible realms through
the harnessing of spiritual energy. Reminding African people about the
power of believing, Morrison locates M’Dear as a woman connected to
 I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in The Bluest Eye k 37

the spiritual arts. Displaying the dynamism of African culture, Morrison

employs the idea of M’Dear as a Mama Nganga or female ritual officiant.
One of the timeless earth mothers, Morrison describes her as a “quiet
woman who lived in a shack near the woods” a clear sign of having the
ability to access the spiritual realm. As an abode for the invisible powers
consistent with West and Central African spiritual traditions, as a literary
trope, M’Dear’s proximity to the woods is identifiable spiritual indication
of her ability to access the spiritual realm. Morrison also inscribes her as a
midwife with a timeless presence to be summoned to perform healing that
could not be handled by “ordinary” means (136). In this description Mor-
rison depicts this ageless women as the repository of indigenous knowl-
edge. A competent midwife and healer, M’Dear is spiritual pillar of her
community. Able to cure any sickness “that could not be handled by ordi-
nary means—known cures, intuition, or endurance—the word was always,
“Fetch M’Dear” (136).
African cultural and spiritual resistance was deliberate and determined.
Beneath the façade of apparent assimilation, African people in America
sustained practices and beliefs using African spirituality as the vehicle for
validating and articulating a unique history and culture. These remem-
bered beliefs punctuated practice while publicly accommodating the
impositions of various Christian denominations. This knowledge is aug-
mented though spiritual insight and communication with the ancestral
world—including the ancestral words (language) and spiritual forces by
which people construct identity and accompanying life philosophies and
practices. These healers have maintained traditional knowledge, despite
the physical, psychic, cultural, political, economic, and spiritual censure of
European Americans. As spiritual and cultural providers, they protect the
community and officiate at a variety of community gatherings.
M’Dear’s physical description further confirms her identity: over six feet
tall with hair arranged in “four big white knots” (136). As a spiritual idea,
the four knots correspond to the cosmological idea of the Kongo number
of the cosmos and the Yoruba division of the world into four categories—
Òrìsà (deities), osain (plants), eniyan (human beings), and egun (ances-
tors). Additionally, the color white conveys the Yoruba concept of coolness
that “characterizes covert power and action as well as affirms ritual purity,
calmness, and patience—soothing feminine qualities” (Drewal and Drewal
74).
From a Kongo perspective, MacGaffey records whiteness as a spiritual
metaphor that conveys the clairvoyance associated with an Nganga who
38 k Chapter 1

is able to mediate between the worlds of the living and the dead (Kongo
Political Culture 85). Morrison opens up literary spaces where black be-
liefs and culture are the forms of influence. Conscious reflection on char-
acters and imperatives of Black experience helps readers to reclaim, rec-
oncile, renew, and recover cultural identity. Also, by pairing M’Dear with
the preacher who accompanies her, Morrison indicates the ways in which
African people move comfortably between African spiritual spaces and
Christianity without conflict. Morrison expresses the power of M’Dear as
a spiritual diagnostician consistent with her ritual posture and prognos-
tications, “Standing straight as a poker, she seemed to need her hickory
stick not for support but for communication. She tapped it lightly on the
floor, as she looked down at Aunt Jimmy’s wrinkled face. She stroked the
knob with the thumb of her right hand while she ran her left one over Aunt
Jimmy’s body (137).
With the spiritual stick, M’Dear is able to tap into the spiritual core of
memory and communicate with her ancestors much as current practitio-
ners of the Yoruba religion tap the egun (ancestor) stick on ancestor altars
when placing food and when ritually communicating with the deceased.
Drewal and Drewal note the dimensions of spectacle as a fleeting tran-
sitory phenomenon that may be a “display or performance for the gods,
ancestors, or the mothers; but it may also refer to mental images” (1). They
note that the Yoruba word for spectacle iron is coterminous with the words
for mystical vision—ojuu iron (remembrance), inuron (a mental recollec-
tion), and iruron (the act of seeing visions). By tapping into these spiritual
codes, M’Dear gains access to the root cause of Aunt Jimmy’s dis-ease and
immediately works toward the cure. Having pulled the information from
the spiritual realm, she leaves Aunt Jimmy in the hands of the women.
The women tending to Aunt Jimmy structure their lives using the Af-
rican concepts of intersubjectivity and mutual interdependence. This
description coincides with that of Ronald L. Grimes, who notes that the
ritual field is both “the locus of ritual practice and the totality of a ritual’s
structures and processes” (39). According to Grimes, “Ritualization is not
just a symbolic way of pursuing survival, but is a quest for a specific style
of being in our bodies and world” (57). Serving in the capacity of healers
under the guidance of M’Dear, these women had lived extraordinary lives
that taught them to lie on the edge. Morrison describes the transition from
being young when “their laughter was more touch than sound” to being
mature women. “Then they had grown. Edging in life from the back door.
Becoming” (138). These women had transcended from servility to a space
 I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in The Bluest Eye k 39

of spiritual elevation and had become the caretakers of the spiritual semi-
otics. I argue that the domain of the edge indicates their having access to
the spiritual power resident at the interstices between the kalunga line and
the world of the bakulu (ancestors), and their inclusion serves as a counter
to the spiritual assaults internalized by other characters.
This circle of women surrounding Aunt Jimmy and M’Dear proffering
gifts of the earth or aye portray village values that help protect the vil-
lage from spiritual threat. In ritual, human beings are able to transcend
themselves and communicate directly with the divine and petition or ef-
fect solutions with their proactive actions. Regarding the notion of com-
munitas, Richard Schechner argues that rituals are more than functional;
they are also experiences where people feel expanded in contact with oth-
ers (8). Having reached old age, the women are now situated to be spirit
workers—a way to be different in the world. Ritual action is a primary way
to denote difference as it is non-ordinary, done at special times in special
places taking place “betwixt and between” life stages serving as transforma-
tive bridges from one stage to the next. In these spaces between structure
and antistructure there is a dialectical space to access different identities,
meanings, values, behaviors and power.
This literary inscription of difference is usually a reference to possess-
ing the ability to see and to appreciate the value of signs. For instance,
after Aunt Jimmy dies, the women set out to reconstruct the signs that
should have provided foreknowledge of her “passing”: “‘What did she die
from?’ ‘Essie’s pie’” (140). In Self-Healing, Fu-Kiau takes into account that a
person’s vitality may be affected by “what we are taught, what we see, and
through what we eat” (80). In spiritual culture, adepts are particularly vul-
nerable to certain foods that may be prescribed as taboo. For example, in
the Yoruba traditional spiritual practices, most practitioners are generally
cautioned against eating pumpkin because it is a plant or ewe used to heal
a variety of illnesses. One woman recalls that when Aunt Jimmy had been
feeling better prior to her death, “She was doing fine, I saw her the very
day before. Said she wanted to bring me some black thread. . . . I should
of known just from her wanting black thread that was a sign” (141). For
these women, black thread was a sign of death that they should have paid
more attention to. They recall, “Just like Emma.” “Member? She kept asking
for thread. Dropped dead that very evening” (141). These women, much
like those in Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters, believe in the power of
signs. Bambara writes “Every event is preceded by a sign,” and Cora Rider,
“whose bed, kitchen table and porch swing were forever cluttered with
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three Wise Men, Red Devil, Lucky Seven, Black Cat, Three Witches, Aunt
Dinah’s Dream Book, and other incense-fragrant softback [sic] books that
sometimes resulted in a hit” (Salt Eaters 13).
Unsuccessful in their endeavors to heal Aunt Jimmy, the women enter
into the next phase of service: preparing for the funeral by cleaning the
house and sewing funeral clothes for Aunt Jimmy to wear. In this final
ceremony, the women attempt to restore order and close the spiritual rup-
tures caused by her passing. One of the ways in which the women begin to
cement Aunt Jimmy’s memory is to begin to tell stories about her testifying
to her life, such as how well she was liked and how she would be missed
by all.
k k k
“A whistling man and a cackling hen, both come to no good end.”
—African American proverb

Cholly Breedlove’s behavior contrasts with the positive energy exchanged

at the margins or edges of life, which the older women are able to access.
Abandoned by his mother on the junk heap by the railroad when he was
four days old, Cholly is described as the “whistling stranger.” Toni Morri-
son writes, “He came strutting right out of a Kentucky sun on the hottest
day of the year. He came big, he came strong, he came with yellow eyes,
flaring nostrils, and he came with his own music” (Bluest Eye 114). Pau-
line recounts, “He used to whistle and when I heerd him, shivers come on
my skin” (115). Added to his correspondence with Elegba, whose spiritual
sound is whistling, Cholly is also a person who walks on the margins in-
dicated by “his heavy lidded light-colored eyes” (116), a prefiguring of the
two-eyed male characters in Morrison’s subsequent novels.
Mentored by Blue Jack, who provides him with history, Cholly admires
Blue’s facility with language and storytelling. Blue tells ghost stories and
“about how he talked his way out of getting lynched once, and how others
hadn’t” (134). Similar to the Yoruba idea adahunse, “possessors of great
knowledge of things not known to ordinary people” (Awolalu 113), Blue’s
spiritual presence often referred to in the folkloric tradition as “root man,”
“conjure man,” or “two-headed snake doctors,” causes Cholly to wonder if
Blue could be God. Cholly’s physical description of God that follows his
musing doubly signs his personal construction of God and the deleterious
effects on self-esteem when African people incorporate the physical idea
 I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in The Bluest Eye k 41

of God separate from their own physical makeup. He thinks, “No, God was
a nice old white man, with long white hair, flowing white beard, and little
blue eyes” (134). Almost immediately, he modifies his perception that Blue
could not be god, but instead he remarks that Blue resembles the devil.
Here Morrison affirms that maybe an alternate view of God is needed,
one that aligns itself to the image of the person, one who reflects the image
in the mirror that would yield the self-acceptance to assist not only him,
but all African people. Providing the mental trauma and the deleterious ef-
fects of this self-destructive perception on the psyche, Frances Cress Wels-
ing states:
To be Black and accept consciously or unconsciously the image of
God as a white man is the highest possible form of self-negation and
lack of self-respect under the specific conditions of white domina-
tion. Such perception, emotional response, and thought are therefore
insane. This logic circuit ensures that Black people always will look
up to white people and, therefore, down on themselves. (172)
Consistent with this illogicality, Cholly would align himself with the devil
if the white man is what the world said God was. His rejection of the image
of God motivates him to search for his own father.
While on this search, Cholly experiences a sense of emptiness and an-
other rejection. Participating in a rebirthing ritual helps him to mend his
divided mind and restore order to the world. His rebirth takes place in “the
beginning of open space at the Ocmulgee River” where “Finding the deep-
est shadow under the pier, he crouched in it, behind one of the posts. He
remained knotted there in a fetal position, paralyzed, his fists covering his
eyes, for a long time” (157). At the river’s edge, through the rush of tears,
Cholly emerges, leaving his vulnerable side behind. He is now “dangerously
free. Cholly was truly free. He was alone with his own perceptions and ap-
petites, and they alone interested him” (160).
This godlike state of self-absorption, characteristic of Elegba, leads him
to Pauline. Cholly tricks her with his loud whistling and “yellow, heavy-lid-
ded eyes” that took away “the gloom of setting suns and lonely river banks”
(115–16). Once they move to the North, unlike Elegba, the Òrìsà of begin-
nings and openings, Cholly is not able to provide Pauline access to nature
or protection from the black folks who were meaner than white people.
Instead of recovering self with his new attitude of being free, he snares
himself in a trap of self-absorption, having internalized the oppressive view
of African people as antithetical to God. Being selfish and self-absorbed
42 k Chapter 1

like Cholly, and mean like the northern people, has no place in communal
structures where one’s continued existence is intimately connected to the
aforementioned concepts of mutuality and intersubjectivity.
Consideration of the interests and needs of others is important for
community stability and development. One of the first examples of this
breach takes place early in the novel when Pecola is temporarily placed in
the Macteer household because her father has burned down their house.
Even though Mrs. Macteer uses indirect speech, “Mama never named
anybody—just talked about folks and some people” (24), an African rhe-
torical practice of not directly aiming hurtful language at a person, the
intent of her words invariably demonstrates her lack of hospitality. Mrs.
Macteer’s refusal to be hospitable at a time of crises for Pecola destroys the
“communitarian purpose of the universe and is immoral” (Magesa 63). A
Yoruba proverb asserts, “The generous man meets amiable people.” This is
essentially a restatement of the Yoruba spiritual objective, which is the cul-
tivation of good character (iwa pele), an objective for all human existence.
Because there is no ritual redress for the harsh words spoken to Pecola, she
is removed from the circle of community.
Besides community abandonment, Morrison also explores the psychic
breach of having been looked upon with the evil eye. The African idea of
being spiritually vulnerable to the glance of the evil eye or malochia and the
accompanying protection from it is well documented in African culture.
The many talismans worn for this purpose demonstrate this phenomenon.
Laurenti Magesa explains that the eye frequently plays a part in the “de-
struction of the life force.” Quoting C. Maloney he mentions the seven
features:
(1) Power emanates from the eye (or mouth) and strikes some person
or object or person; (2) the stricken object is of value, and its destruc-
tion or injury is sudden; (3) the one casting the evil eye may not know
he has the power; (4) the one affected may not be able to identify the
source of power; (5) the evil eye can be deflected or its effects modi-
fied or cured by particular devices, rituals, and symbols; (6) the belief
helps to explain or rationalize sickness, misfortune, or loss of posses-
sion such as animals or crops; and (7) in at least some functioning of
the belief , everywhere, envy is a factor. (164–65)
During the Black is Beautiful movement of the late 1960s, all the prob-
lems were not solved; in North America, black had not always been beau-
tiful. This novel is about cultural beliefs, spiritual beliefs, as well as the
 I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in The Bluest Eye k 43

patterns and behaviors that have had a negative impact on African lives.
Having inherited the cosmology along with attendant aesthetic consider-
ations, the Breedloves of the world can only ride it out to its logical con-
clusion from Pauline Breedlove’s imitation of the women in the movie to
the fantasy of establishing order in the Fisher household, to Pecola’s quest
for blue eyes. Having blue eyes means having everything. Having blue eyes
is the metaphoric representation of having love, acceptance, friends, and
family illustrated by Pecola’s ritual request for blue eyes. The blue eyes be-
come a magical amulet for Pecola, who believes that if she had blue eyes,
the boys would not shout names at her.
Frieda employs another type of eye in order to defend Pecola from the
boys. She uses her own eyes; mirroring a look she had seen her mother
use to keep Cain at bay. Claudia notes that Frieda defends her with “set
lips” and “Mama’s eyes,” which explains why Woodrow Cain is frightened
into stopping. Claudia speculates, “Maybe he had lost because he saw her
eyes” (66). Here Toni Morrison employs the notion of eyes as also having
the ability to ward off the evil eye by returning it in kind. The casting of the
“evil” eye by the boys reflects white supremacist aesthetics turned inward
on African people. As a result, the target of the malevolent eye ends up
internalizing the gaze and projecting it on others with evil intent.
If not deflected, the gaze creates shame and ultimately the dissolution of
the personality. John Bradshaw describes the deleterious effect of shame:
Shame is the source of the most disturbing inner states, which deny
full human life. Depression, alienation, self-doubt, isolating loneli-
ness, paranoid and schizoid phenomena, compulsive disorders,
splitting of the self, perfectionism, a deep sense of inferiority, inad-
equacy or failure, the so-called borderline conditions and disorders
of narcissism, all results from shame. Shame is a kind of soul-murder.
Once shame is internalized, it is characterized by a kind of psychic
numbness, which becomes the foundation for a kind of death in life.
Forged in the matrix of our source relationships, shame conditions
every other relationship in our lives. Shame is total non-acceptance.
(Bradshaw on the Family 170–71)
The most damaging of these encounters with shame occurs with Pauline
Breedlove, Geraldine, and Mr. Yacobowski (representatives of the family,
community, and the society at large, respectively). Pecola is entrapped in a
web of shame and white supremacy. As a political idea, white supremacy is
the foundation for all America’s institutions and systems. Explaining white
44 k Chapter 1

supremacy as an ideological tool, Ani notes its systematic nature. She says,
“Europeans have constructed a system of institutions which depend on and
encourage a particular pattern of behavior” (Yurugu 459). These systematic
manifestations can be seen in the historic practices of enslavement, segre-
gation, and other forms of government-sanctioned oppression.
Ideas of beauty are also contextualized in culture and politics. In Black
Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon identifies how this epistemic violence
is internalized perceiving the self as the other. In this manner the other
only reflects its image on the object that receives the gaze. Clearly one is
subject, replete with power, and the other is object, to be dominated and
cut off from authenticity. For Pauline, white valuation is a function of the
popular media. The way we see things is affected by what we know or be-
lieve. How the Breedloves felt about themselves became the reason why
they lived in the storefront. Their ugliness encircled them even if they did
not generate it. Even though that ugliness did not belong to them and was
instead the ornamentation of racist assumptions, they donned it, accepted
it, and therefore became it. For Pauline, romance is substituted for love and
standards of white beauty for self-worth.
Since the source of their ugliness is mythic, constructed in the individ-
ual mythemes of the white supremacist cosmology, there is nothing to fig-
ure out. They internalize and accept this imposed reality “leaning at them
from every billboard, every movie, every glance” and wear the reality as a
“mantle” (Bluest Eye 39). Pecola employs her veil as a mask. The narrator
reports that Pecola “hid behind hers. Concealed, veiled, eclipsed—peeping
out from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn for return
of her mask” (39). Instead of finding the power and transcendence associ-
ated with a mask, from an African perspective, Pecola is content to employ
the mask for concealment—not of power but of shame. This indeterminate
identity and the accompanying spiritual and psychological liminality find
their origin in the external representations of whiteness presented as the
trope of ultimate value.
Pauline further negates her daughter’s blackness in her positive con-
sideration of the little white girl in the Fisher household. However, Pau-
line does not act alone in the destruction of Pecola’s psychic wholeness.
Other adult women or “other mothers” contribute to Pecola’s emotional
despair. The three prostitutes—China, Poland, and the Maginot Line (Miss
Marie)—are middle-aged women who supply the only nurturing models
of motherhood for Pecola. The composite character descriptions of the
women—Marie cooking and addressing Pecola with sweet epithets and
 I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in The Bluest Eye k 45

references to food, China making available representations of beauty com-

plete with information on grooming and hygiene, and Poland working and
singing—provide Pecola with motherly representations lacking in her own
home. As a composite or merged mother, the three prostitutes fulfill the
role of “other mother” necessary for the child to become whole in the so-
ciety. Morrison describes the connection of beauty with Oshun, the river
deity of laughter and beauty, and Yemonja, the Òrìsà of the sea and mother-
hood. She writes, “All three of the women laughed. Marie threw back her
head. From deep inside, her laughter came like the sound of many rivers,
freely, deeply, muddily, heading for the room of an open sea” (52). The
women take time to talk with Pecola, affirm through loving eyes her value:
they “did not despise her” (51). Countering the assaults that Pecola faced
daily, their affection toward her and their geniality made Pecola question
whether they actually existed.
The women are unlike the broader community who treat Pecola with
indifference, especially Mr. Yacobowski, the storeowner from whom Pecola
buys her Mary Jane candy. Unlike Mary Jane’s eyes, described as “petulant”
and “mischievous,” his eyes are unresponsive. The omniscient narrator as-
serts, “At some fixed point in time and space he senses that he need not
waste the effort of a glance. He does not see her because for him there is
nothing to see” (48). Mr. Yacobowski does not see Pecola as a person. The
narrator notes Pecola’s assessment of her “invisibility” in his eyes and de-
scribes his glance as “suspended” (49). The mirror of his eyes and those of
other white people become the inverted reflection through which Pecola
sees herself and the world. “She would never know her beauty. She would
only see what there was to see: the eyes of other people” (47). The natural
world, signified by the “clump of dandelions,” which she once thought could
be her allies would also conspire to reflect Pecola’s shame. After the visit
to the store, the dandelions reflect Mr. Yacobowski’s apathetic response to
her presence as she transfers her disdain for herself onto the dandelions.
This imposed contempt parallels the burden of bearing the white aes-
thetic projected as the source of all value, like the white baby dolls given as
Christmas gifts, which Claudia observes, were given to fulfill their “fondest
wish.” Claudia reveals her true feelings regarding this gift in her rejection of
its value. Claudia’s reaction to the doll represents her desire to determine
and control the contours of value. In her refusal to accept the doll’s beauty,
she notes the conspiratorial nature of the world to cast its gaze and for Af-
rican people to agree to their own devaluation. Her dismembering of the
doll is done to destroy not only the doll but also what the doll represents.
46 k Chapter 1

Her analysis takes into account the socialization of African people and
their willingness to adopt—or at least their willingness to surrender to—
the dominant discourse of whiteness.
What saves Claudia from these cultural impositions is her valuation of
blackness. She chides her parents for attempting to rob her of her “tribal”
identity. Having to take a bath, she laments, “Gone the ink marks from
legs and face, all my creations and accumulations of the day gone.” These
ink marks are recodified warrior marks and ethnic inscriptions attesting
to choices not given to her by society and her parents. She laments her
lack of choice and the resulting de-centering. Her choice would be one not
equated with an imposed material value characterized by the white dolls,
but relates to the African value of the social realm of human relations pos-
sessing the highest significance.
Claudia notes, “I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama’s kitchen
with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone”
(22). Claudia’s insistence on sitting on low stools is a metaphor for black
traditional beliefs. In The Salt Eaters, Bambara suggests that a belief in the
“reliability of stools” (6) is a way to connect with the eldest members of her
community, those who remember the old ways, like the women in Aunt
Jimmy’s community. The enumeration of cultural items such as food and
music coupled with the primal senses of olfaction and audition underscore
Claudia’s cultural appreciation. Otten notes that in order for Morrison’s
protagonists to survive, they must “somehow violate the rule of the oppres-
sive system, reject the values it venerates, and recover the human potential
denied to blacks” (3).
k k k
Magic mirror come and search my heart can you tell me what you see?
—Earth, Wind, and Fire

Against this backdrop of cultural despair, social inadequacy, and spiritual

sterility, Toni Morrison initiates a discussion of another cultural resource
in the form of magic, which Pecola seeks to help her with her dilemma of
being ignored by an indifferent “God.” After the rape, Pecola requests that
the town’s mystic or “root man,” Soaphead Church, give her the “blue” eyes
she needs to cope with her shattering life. Soaphead Church is a “Reader,
Adviser, and Interpreter of Dreams” whose clients find their way to request
services like “Keep my baby’s ghost off the stove. Break so and so’s fixing”
 I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in The Bluest Eye k 47

(172). Having failed in her attempts at prayer, Pecola seeks his assistance
for the desired blue eyes. An ineffective charlatan, Soaphead cannot help
Pecola.
Claudia and Frieda’s ritual is more in keeping with ritual protocols and
is guided by the unselfish, caring intent to help her. In the prologue, Clau-
dia, the novel’s first narrator, discloses this concern: “we could think of
nothing but our own magic: if we planted the seeds, and said the right
words over them, they would blossom, and everything would be all right”
(prologue Bluest Eye). Claudia and Frieda, although not yet menstruat-
ing “women,” possess the ability to harness the forces of nature, as Bockie
explains: “Generally, any member of the community with unique qualities
may be considered ndoki, possessing the power to garner the forces of na-
ture and the spiritual world to do good or evil” (43). Claudia and Frieda’s
ritual planting of marigolds attempts to restore the cosmic harmony for the
group.5 Sacrificing the money saved up for the bicycle, they act on behalf
of a community that has no sympathy for Pecola’s situation. Claudia and
Frieda, confident in their ability to intervene, knew that prayer and being
good were not enough. They needed a more concrete exchange—the seeds
and two dollars.6
Providing the reader insight into their magic, they discuss their plan. The
sacrifice (ebo) is to bury the money and plant the seeds. In their explication
of the ritual, they detail the step-by-step process, including the diligence
needed. They also illustrate the way they will determine the ritual’s efficacy
by the blooming of the flowers. Their ritual is even accompanied by two
prominent features to ensure the ritual’s efficacy: ritual words and song.
Having initiated a ritual with the planting of seeds, burying two dollars in
the earth, and reciting special “magic” words, Claudia and Frieda demon-
strate their understanding of sacrifice in order to change outcomes.
Magesa notes that magic is the art of causing change in accordance with
the will and consciousness. Additionally, the imagination can be manipu-
lated to produce the desired results, whether physical, spiritual, or psy-
chological (46). Claudia and Frieda’s actions also correspond to the ideas
expressed in Yoruba rites. Awolalu asserts that a magical act has almost
always three elements: there are words to be uttered according to a formula
or set order, actions to be carried out, and the officiant should be spiritually
prepared (78–79).
Throughout the novel, the Macteer girls, Claudia and Frieda, demon-
strate their spiritual suitability to be the next generation of women who
“dreamed dreams that no one knew—not even themselves, in any coher-
48 k Chapter 1

ent fashion—and saw visions no one could understand. They wandered

or sat about the countryside crooning lullabies to ghosts, and drawing
the mother of Christ in charcoal on courthouse walls” (In Search of Our
Mothers’ Gardens 232). Like these women, Claudia and Frieda demonstrate
their awareness of nature. “We always responded to the slightest change
in weather, the most minute shifts in time of day. Long before seeds were
stirring, Frieda and I were scraping and pulling at the earth, swallowing air,
drinking rain” (Bluest Eye 64). Additionally, the ritual choice to construct
the ebo using seeds shows the girls' spiritual sophistication.
Seeds (ngina in Ki-Kongo) are archetypal symbols, sacred images, mod-
els of behavior, as well as modes of thought; all make up the traditional
universe mythic symbols and ritual acts expressing the genetic and histori-
cal lineage of a community. The death of Pecola’s baby and the subsequent
inability of the marigold seeds to blossom represent the spiritual and social
taboo associated with the breach created by the incestuous acts of Cholly
Breedlove. When the ritual does not work and Pecola’s baby dies, Claudia
accepts the blame that she planted the seeds too deeply. Similar to the
wise women who try to reconstruct the signs that foretold Aunt Jimmy’s
death, Claudia reconsiders her culpability and resigns herself to the fact
that something bigger than she caused the seeds to be unproductive—the
hostility of the land.
My examination of The Bluest Eye has been an exploration of African
cosmologies and the nature of spiritual power and beliefs, alongside axi-
ological ideas of beauty and value. Concerning the resultant environmental
inversions, I have come to the same conclusion as Toni Morrison, who
ends the novel explaining why Claudia and Frieda’s well-intentioned in-
tervention does not work. The “unyielding earth” to which Morrison’s nar-
rator refers is a metaphor for white supremacy. The inhospitable land is a
gaping hole too wide to vault over and surpasses the rupture caused by the
perversity of the rape. This unnatural racial structure has marginalized and
exiled African people and has thwarted the magic available in the natural
world. However, flanking the novel’s bleak end, there is hope that Claudia
and Frieda will become the next generation of African women who can
read and understand the significance of signs. They will continue to wield
the power of sacred words and perform sacred deeds to assist the commu-
nity in deflecting the harmful gaze of the white aesthetic and other assaults
to African people.
 2

Always
The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula

I have always been just me, with no frame of reference to any-

thing beyond myself.
—Bessie Head

Following the success of Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, her
second novel, Sula (1974) received considerable critical attention with ap-
proaches varying from dialogues concerning the nature of good and evil to
examinations of motherhood.1 However, the quest motif remains a major
critical feature that begs for exploration. The idea of the quest, an essential
component inherited from the epic tradition, makes a smooth transition in
Morrison’s novels.2 Morrison locates Sula’s heroic quest to a psychological
mindscape defined by interiority and revises male versions of the heroic
journey usually defined by slayings, rescues, and a valiant return to the
homeland laden with treasures. Although Sula does venture away from
the community, there is little mention of what has occurred on her jour-
ney because her heroic action is acted out within the frame of community
(Birenbaum 55).3
It is in the community where Sula’s psyche, spirit, and soul get explored.
Karen Stein proposes that the shift in focus by African American women
is a conscious attempt to subvert the patriarchal guises of male heroes,
creating a new definition of heroism that “encompasses the lives of Black
women” (146). One of these redefinitions of heroism is that heroes are not
always successful. This is evident in Sula where Morrison attributes Sula’s
failed quest to her detachment from community responsibility, her indif-
ference to guidance offered by archetypal characters, and her excommu-
nication from ancestral forces. Sula’s insistence on rugged individualism,
an American cultural trait that conflicts with the African communal em-
phasis, turns the quest into a contest of will and dooms her from the onset.
I contend that the thwarted quest that Morrison presents empowers the
50 k Chapter 2

reader to reverse the heroic character’s actions and subsequently obtain

a sense of fulfillment and an awareness of African spiritual and cultural
values by default.
In this chapter, I chronicle the eponymous character’s shortcomings by
examining her negligence of these African values. In keeping with Mor-
rison’s unyielding cultural perspective, I examine archetypes and symbols
that mark Sula’s definitions as well as her rejection of the living ancestor’s
presence and her departure from an understanding of African worldview.
In order to fully comprehend the implications of Sula’s self-centered ac-
tions, it is essential first to examine the community from which she devi-
ates, the archetypal guide whom she fails to heed, and the ancestor whom
she rejects.
One of Toni Morrison’s recurring literary concerns is the survival of
an authentic African American community. From a traditional perspec-
tive, Marcel Maus explains that community is the main agent of meaning
and that the role of the individual is to act out the life of the clan (5). The
importance of the community is evident in the prominence that it is given
within the structure of the narrative. Considering the community before
the formal introduction of the title character attests to the significance of
community as one of the concentric circles that define the individual’s exis-
tence. From an African perspective, individuals are born into communities
and derive their identities from these communities, which inscribe their
sense of values, notions of cultural decorum, and ideas of accountability.
At once, the name of the town and a metaphor for the foundation of the
ancestors on which healthy community is situated, the Bottom functions
as a reconfigured African village. Throughout the novel the community
functions as a barometer that gauges the moral actions of Sula, as well as
other characters.
The novel begins by introducing that community: “In that place, where
they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make
room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighbor-
hood” (Sula 4). Morrison’s invocation in the opening sentence indicates
the endurance of spiritual practices in this community. Giving the readers
a glimpse of the end, this ordering of story elements anachronistic to the
Western mind but coherent within an African model of time, the narrator
alerts readers that something catastrophic has occurred to warrant this de-
struction and prepares them for a series of flashbacks.4 Along with African
notions of temporality, the narrator advances the idea that members of this
community participated in working roots, since both of these plants are
 Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula k 51

used by spiritual adepts in the practice of ritual and the making of minkisi,
or spiritual packets.5
Following the introductory statement is a history of the origins of the
town. Then the narrator describes the types of places in the “used-to-be-
town.” There is the Time and a Half Pool Hall, Irene’s Palace of Cosmetol-
ogy, and Reba’s Grill. Finally, the types of people who inhabit the com-
munity are portrayed: men who wore “long tan shoes,” women who had
“Nu Nile lathered into their hair,” a woman who cooks “in her hat because
she couldn’t remember the ingredients without it,” and people who do the
“cakewalk,” sing, and laugh easily” (3–4). These descriptions sufficiently
define this as an African American community whose mundane façades
hint at the most extraordinary inner worlds. The inclusion of the Time and
a Half Pool Hall as a place of significance to the neighborhood invites the
reader to conjure up familiar scenes of African American men participat-
ing in the oral tradition of “big lies” and “signifying,” along with accom-
panying recollections of male-specific gathering places, like barber shops
and lodge halls that help define the social realm of men in the African
American tradition. In a similar way, Irene’s Palace of Cosmetology locates
the women in a particular domain designated as a place for the exchange of
gossip, the offering of advice, and ritual grooming similar to the kitchens
and basements in African American homes. Moreover, the inclusion of an
eccentric character who needs a hat to generate memory provides a locale
for the discussion of things of the spirit that may not make sense outside
the cultural confines of this neighborhood.
Having introduced the community, Morrison then narrows the focus
to a consideration of one individual. Shadrack who is shell-shocked from
his experiences with the horror of World War I, is one of the village’s ec-
centrics with wild eyes and “long matted hair” (15).6 One of Morrison’s
conventional river characters similar to Stamp Paid in Beloved, but just
a little stranger, Shadrack dared to walk about with his penis out, pee in
front of ladies and girl-children, curse white people and get away with it,
drink in the road from the mouth of the bottle, and shout and shake in the
streets. He also resembles the peculiar Soaphead Church in The Bluest Eye,
whose business was to “Overcome Spells, Bad Luck and Evil Influences”
(137), and he prefigures Robert Smith, the insurance agent who in Song of
Solomon jumps off the roof of Mercy Hospital in an attempt to fly. He has
similarities as well to Son in Tar Baby, whose overpowering hair, which
was “wild, aggressive, vicious hair that needed to be put to jail,” matched
his uncontrollable passion (113).7
52 k Chapter 2

Shadrack was not always this way, but as the story goes, because of his
inability to cope with the horrors of war, he ties “the loose cords in his
mind” and returns to a faraway time. This excursion through memory is an
ancestral flight that takes him “somewhere” where he collects the cultural
information needed to reintegrate his shattered psyche. The omniscient
narrator reports what Shadrack finds while in this trancelike state, which
consists of “more than a year, only eight days of which he fully recollected”
(11). During one of these eight days he sees a river and hears someone
“speaking softly just outside the door” (10). The river symbolically repre-
sents memory—in this sense, the memory of venerated ancestors or ba-
kulu in Ki-Kongo language.8 Furthermore, the memory of the river sub-
stantiates Shadrack’s identity as a person who has had a spiritual epiphany
concerning his role as a river devotee. The soft voices are the whispering of
the ancestors, and the door signifies a metaphysical separation between the
dimensions of spirit and matter, or what the Ba Kongo call mwela, a portal
for the soul that allows access from one dimension to another.
The description of his discharge from the hospital further advances the
idea of his being a river initiate, specifically a devotee of Oya, the Òrìsà who
controls the wind. His departure from the hospital is distinguished by an
accompanying wind that makes the “heads of trees toss” and thoughts of
making people disappear with “a good high wind” that would “pull them
up and away.” Furthermore, his first steps toward his new life are referred
to as taking “the plunge” and his journey is marked by the images of rebirth
and severing of his past life, pointing to another connection with Oya, the
guardian of death (10–11). Moreover, the enumeration of items that he does
not own include intangible items, such as language, source, and past, as
well as personal possessions, to emphasize his separation not only from the
military but also from the material world—a significant point that confirms
his liminality as an initiate. For example, at times the divination performed
after initiation prescribes the relinquishing of all former material posses-
sions to mark the transition from an earthly existence to one determined
by spirit. Moreover, his un-tethering from physical phenomena confirms
his allegiance with Oya the Yoruba Òrìsà who, like Shadrack, is perpetually
transitional—without a past, familial ties, or home. This connection with
Oya also relates to the ancestor, since the ontological existence of ancestors
in the realm of the invisible represents the idea of an absent presence.
After a short journey, beset by problems, Shadrack comes home to Me-
dallion, to his river. As a river priest ordained by the ancestors and enlight-
ened by discoveries made on the journey, he is free to assume his initiate
 Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula k 53

duties unobstructed by considerations of sanctions from the community.9

Estranged from others and living in a shack on the riverbank that had once
belonged to his “grandfather long time dead,” he fashions a way to ritually
deal with fear and with the ultimate manifestation of dread: the fear of
death.10 His formulation of National Suicide Day coheres to the function
of the egungun to remind people about the positive value of ancestors and
the circle of perpetuity.
Equipped with his ritual implements—bells, a rope, and a song—he re-
establishes the idea of collective rituals. Shadrack’s tools reacquaint the
people of Medallion with the relevance of ritual in their lives. The bell
functions in two important ways. First, it admonishes the townspeople to
attend to the spiritual aspects of their lives. Second, the bell spiritually
cleans the town of negative influences and restores a sense of balance. In
the Yoruba culture, bells are used to communicate with the Òrìsà and to
invoke spirit possession. The rope is symbolic of the binding or fastening
needed to engender community cohesion. And the song, referred to as
a dirge, invites the presence of the deities. By reinstating ritual into the
principle of village life, Shadrack binds the people of the community to a
set of beliefs that legitimatize their spiritual identities. In the novel, ritual
behavior is a manifestation of the will. Ritual is sometimes the only effec-
tive manifestation of willful reconciliation of one’s perception of reality.
Therefore, as a symbol of will, ritual functions as its expression.
His value as a genuine and contributing member of society is appar-
ent in the way Shadrack is accepted in the community. For example, even
though the people consider him to be crazy, they do not summarily dismiss
him. His peculiarity “did not mean that he didn’t have any sense, or even
more important, that he had no power” (15). Over time, the people fit him
into the scheme of their lives. “Once they understood the boundaries and
nature of his madness” (15–16), Shadrack’s fusion into the fabric of life is
so exhaustive that people in the town begin to record time by references to
these rituals. One character comments to another about the onset of labor
pains on Suicide Day. Others make plans with respect to the day: “Let’s do
it after New Year’s.” “OK, but make sure it ain’t on Suicide Day” (16). In ad-
dition, local lore begins to develop around the day. A grandmother reports
that her “hens always started laying of double yolks right after Suicide Day.”
In this manner, Suicide Day has become a part of community life.
The next significant member of the community that the narrator in-
troduces is Eva Peace, who symbolizes the living ancestral presence who
heads an earthy home where there “is a constant stream of boarders” (30;
54 k Chapter 2

emphasis added). This house “of many rooms,” where dreams coexist with
the mundane, is the home of the matriarch Eve—one of the trio of women
who are also occupants.11 As an ancestral figure, Eva’s power lies in her will
to survive, clearly seen in her decisive actions. When others in similar situ-
ations might have given up, by tapping into the power of the will Eva has
become a survivor who outlives all of her children. She is like Toni Mor-
rison’s own ancestor, her grandmother, Ardelia, whom Morrison describes
as having faith in the magic “that can be wrought by sheer effort of the will”
(“A Slow Walk of Trees” 152).
Eva Peace also represents the sacrificing mother. Abandoned by her
husband and left to provide for three children, when Eva is down to her
last three beets, she leaves her nine-month-old son and two daughters and
returns eighteen months later “with two crutches, a new black pocketbook,
and one leg” (34). Her homecoming is accompanied by rumors that she
stuck her leg under the railroad car in order to collect a monthly pension
check. That Eva could leave her three children with a neighbor and return
more than a year later to find them healthy and cared for attests to the vil-
lage values that Africans continue to maintain in the Bottom.
Her maternal sacrifices are not limited to this one act of willful behavior.
When Eva’s only son, Plum, becomes a drug addict, she sets him ablaze.12
But before she does, she anoints him in kerosene, rocks him, and loves him.
This highly ritualized sacrifice is done not out of anger or malice, but out of
Eva’s love for him. As Eva pours kerosene over him, the narrator suggests
that Eva’s actions are a blessing or a ritual to bring things back into balance.
Years later, when Hannah confronts Eva about Plum’s death, Eva explains
she did what she considered motherly by releasing him from his pain. Eva
rails, “He wanted to crawl back in my womb and well . . . I ain’t got the room
no more even if he could do it” (71).
Although some critics have commented on the incestuous nature of
Eva’s statement, I suggest that a mother’s despair, not incest, is her motive.
Because of the futility of Plum’s addiction, Eva decides to control the cir-
cumstances of his inevitable death consonant with the identity of Oya, who
is the guard of the cemetery and as such supervises ingresses and egresses
to and from the realm of the dead. Eva demonstrates another act of love
when she sees Hannah on fire and leaps out of the second floor to the yard
below in an attempt to save her daughter.
In addition to her will to survive and her strong sense of self-sacrifice,
Eva is also described as a woman who knows things. The omniscient nar-
rator describes Eva as a woman of two voices: “like two people were talking
 Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula k 55

at the same time, saying the same thing, one a fraction of a second behind
the other” (71). This description relates to Eva’s ability to access both realms
in the same manner as the two-headed snake doctors, a concept rooted
in the African American folkloric tradition. As such, Eva has the ability
to traverse and to spiritually negotiate both material and spiritual realms.
The lack of synchronicity of her voice suggests her coterminous presence
in both realms of existence.
Eva also has the ability to see things thought to be hidden. Toward the
end of the novel when Nell Wright goes to visit Eva in the nursing home,
Eva tells her that she saw what happened to Chicken Little. Nell is stunned
by Eva’s clarity because she has pushed her participation in the event into
the deep spaces of memory. Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi credits Eva’s
knowledge of this event not to her clairvoyance but to confession. He says,
“Apparently Sula makes a confession to Eva to explain her distraught state
after Chicken Little’s death and during the funeral” (131). I disagree. Eva is
capable of knowing things through dreams and visions. The importance of
her character will be made more evident in the following discussion of Sula
and the examination of her failure to endure the trials of her quest.
Jane Bakerman attributes Sula’s failed quest to her inability to learn the
lesson of true friendship, while others have argued that because of her
“evil” nature her quest was doomed (549). Additionally, many critics ex-
plain Sula’s failed quest for selfhood, with analyses focusing on her insis-
tence upon experimentation. I argue that the self Sula creates results in
the breaking of familial, community, and ancestral circles, all of which are
foundational to define a complete individual. Consisting of many constitu-
ents besides the individual, the circle includes spirit guides, the ancestors,
and the community. The relationship between the narrative elements that
deal directly with Sula and those that are peripheral is an expression of
the balance that must exist between the individual and the community in
order to maintain harmony. Sula’s departure from community responsibil-
ity illustrates this rift. She moves away from the harmony dictated by the
principles of community and resorts instead to her preoccupation with
physical pleasures, the exercise of an intractable will, and blatant disregard
for the community’s interests. Left unchecked, Sula’s hedonistic tendencies
render her incapable of assuming the social responsibility needed to per-
petuate the family and to sustain the community members of the Bottom.
Sula is the granddaughter of a woman who cut off her own leg in order
to collect a $23.00-a-month disability check and who also poured kerosene
on her only son and lit him on fire because she could not bear to see him
56 k Chapter 2

destroy himself. Sula is also the daughter of a woman known as the town
whore, whom she watched get burned alive. In short, Sula is fashioned out
of the composite merging of these two bold women. However, she appears
to be motivated by a sense of self or “me-ness” as a counter to the narrow
strictures that defined life for a colored girl in the early twentieth century.
The limitations, which constrained choices for women at the time outside
maternal roles, help to move Sula into the realm of marginality where she
is neither understood nor accepted.
Sula, a self-created woman, invents her own world defined by self-ab-
sorption. The female construct of the free or uninhibited self, Sula’s depic-
tion also characterizes Shadrach’s self-construction. The omniscient nar-
rator rationalizes:
Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings,
had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift
for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoc-
cupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she
yearned for. And like any artist with no art form, she became danger-
ous. (121)
In Cane, Jean Toomer describes Avey in a similar fashion:
I pointed out in lieu of proper channels, her emotions had overflowed
into paths that dissipated them. I talked, beautifully I thought, about
an art that would be born, an art that would open the way for women
the likes of her. (46)
These two mirror statements explain what is needed to make Sula whole.
The danger and experimentation begins after Sula overhears a conversa-
tion in which her mother says she does not like her. After this experience,
Sula is let loose, unmoored, and her lack of centeredness wreaks havoc on
those who surround her. Morrison’s depiction of Sula’s individuality and
free unrestrained self is not without consequence. Here, Morrison suggests
that death occurs when one perforates the circle of responsibility to one’s
lineage ancestors and ignores the principles of intermutuality foundational
to continuity and community.
Even though Sula is paired with Nell Wright, a best friend later to be-
come foe, this relationship still does not provide the necessary structure to
regulate Sula’s actions. The narrator describes them as inseparable with a
friendship that is intense and contained. She continues, “In the safe harbor
of each other’s company they could afford to abandon the ways of other
 Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula k 57

people” (55). It is only later on in the story that we actually become aware
that Toni Morrison has misled us. This friendship is severely limited by
Sula’s disproportionate taking of more than what she gives. Nell is the giver
who provides Sula with a sense of self that Sula is unable to fathom alone,
as she has “no compulsion to verify herself—be consistent with herself ”
(119).
In a New York Times Magazine interview, Morrison explains Sula’s self-
constructed personality stating, “And she had nothing to fall back on: not
maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the pro-
found desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself ”
(163). This self-centeredness is made clear upon Sula’s return to the Bot-
tom, when her lack of dependency is highlighted against the backdrop of
Nell’s world defined solely by responsibilities to husband and children. It
is only after seeing Sula after a ten-year absence that her ideal situation
begins to unravel. A major irony is that although Sula is unable to define
her own selfhood, she “helped others to define themselves” (95). Speaking
to Diane Cooper-Clark, Morrison says she “found Sula frightening.” Mor-
rison explains, “Her definition of freedom is to do anything one wishes, and
I personally would be frightened by this freedom” (195).
It is important at this juncture to spiritually identify this woman who
wants to make herself. Although this question may be answered from many
perspectives, the spiritual and cultural approach initiated earlier offers a
clear depiction of Sula’s nature. I propose that Sula, one of Toni Morrison’s
marked heroines represents the river Òrìsà Oya indicated by her physical
description, behavior, and her affinity with the archetypal manifestations
of this Òrìsà of the cemetery. There are few physical descriptions of Sula,
but the ones given provide insight and confirm her spiritual identification.
The first portrait rendered is a physical description of her with a birthmark
covering her eye, which was shaped like a “stemmed rose” (57). The eye
is Sula’s mark that designates her as one of Morrison’s marked heroes in
much the same way as Sethe’s back in Beloved and Pilate’s smooth stomach
in Song of Solomon. Sula’s eye is also a type of scarification indicating her
unyielding strength and courage, similar to the Yoruba notion of gbere,
where a black powder is inserted in incisions to mark identity and status.
In another sense, the eye, itself a circle, is symbolic of the many broken
circles: the friendship circle between Nell and Sula; between Sula and the
circle of community; and between Sula and the family circle represented
by the ancestor.
The eye is a fitting symbol for Sula because, like Oya who refuses defini-
58 k Chapter 2

tion, it defies description as well. Her emblematic eye represents a kind of

double sign; it sums up her deviation from the imposed definitions in the
eyes of the community and helps to define the character of the perceiver.
Teapot’s mother sees Hannah’s ashes symbolic of her own maternal defi-
ciency. Nell’s children see it as a “scary black thing,” which foreshadows the
chaos caused by their parent’s separation. Also, Jude sees the mark over
her eye as a rattlesnake revealing much about his fears and sexual attrac-
tion to her. Shortly after seeing Sula for the first time, Jude’s fears of being
dominated by Nell are resolved because he is empowered by his infidelity
with Sula to break free from the oppressive bonds of Nell’s dependent love.
Of primary significance is Shadrack’s perception of her eye as a “tadpole”:
a sure sign of her spiritual nature and connection to him that substantiates
her identity as potential spiritual initiate of the river Òrìsà, like himself. For
Shadrack, the marked eye (circle) connects her to the ancestors, rivers, and
death.
A dominant description of Sula that substantiates her spiritual identity
is the physical description of her upon her return to the village of Medal-
lion. Described as a brown woman wearing “a black crepe dress” and “a
black felt hat with the veil of net lowered over one eye,” Sula’s appearance
is congruous with the description of Oya, the benefactor and mentor of the
egungun or masked ancestral spirits who parade through town reminding
the villagers of the permanency of life as well as reminding them to at-
tend to their own individual ancestors. Henry Drewal notes that the Odun
egungun are “commemorative funeral rites where the living dead appear
and are honored though the mediation of the mask” (Drewal, Pemberton,
and Abiodun 175). The egungun convey the essence of the ancestors to the
living, the relationship of the living to each other, and reflect the nature
of social relationships (175). Judith Gleason’s description of the Egungun
illuminates the deeper meaning of Sula’s promenade through town. She
writes, “The function of the Egungun cult is to bring the Ancestor back to
life in masquerade form in order to “legitimate reigning authority”; this is
done at the annual festival for the dead (Gleason 70).
The significance of Sula’s black dress is suggested by Gleason’s descrip-
tion of the cloth as a protective gesture of Oya. According to Gleason,
the black cloth “tears social reality to shreds. Like a glandular secretion,
it touches us at the instinctual level of defense” (50). Sula’s arrival prefig-
ures the social reality to be shred in the community, and the housewives
respond to the sign by “throwing buckets of water on their sidewalks”
(Sula 91).
 Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula k 59

Another characteristic that authenticates Sula’s association with Oya is

the phenomenon of death. The novel’s prologue and epilogue both refer
to death; and death abounds in the novel and serves as the dominant im-
age informing both structure and content. Barbara Christian notes that
each death “gives way to a new view of life” (154). Christian’s observation
can be explained by Oya’s enigmatic identity, as substantiated by Gleason,
who explains: “Oya is a conundrum. She is a double goddess: not here
but there, not there but here; on the side of death, on the side of life” (50).
This doubling effect can be seen in the symbolic deaths such as the demise
of Nell and Sula’s friendship, the dissolution of Nell and Jude’s marriage,
the separation between Eva and Sula, and the revised image of Sula at the
novel’s end following Eva’s disclosure to Nell. Moreover, there are actual
deaths many of which are connected to Sula in significant ways: Hannah
and Plum both die by burnings; Chicken Little drowns; Mr. Finley chokes
on a chicken bone; and many of the townspeople are killed in a culminating
ritual at the end of the novel following Sula’s death.
Notwithstanding the prevalence of death, the circles that recur as a leit-
motif and encompass the actual deaths symbolize the permanence of life.
The circling serves to unite both the presence of the Òrìsà and the idea
of the intransience of life. In the novel, right before Hannah’s death, the
circling motif appears when she is preparing green beans for dinner: “She
swirled them about with her fingers, poured the water off and repeated
the process” (72). In addition to this image of circling, Hannah’s death
represents another kind of circle: Eva’s love and Sula’s indifference. Sula
is intimated in her mother’s death since she calmly watches her mother’s
fire dance “because she was interested” (78). This woman—daughter, town
whore, and mother—is dead, and it is left up to the reader to reach a con-
clusion as to the cause(s) of her death. Again, an analysis of Oya helps to
explain Eva and Sula’s possible participation in this deadly alliance. Gleason
explains that Oya, as the deity of women who lead “intense, erotic lives,” is
the essence of fire in motion represented by one of her major symbols—
lightning (291). Hannah’s lightning-swift death by fire occurs immediately
after she questions Eva’s love and after Sula overhears her saying that she
does not like her. These actions cannot be overlooked as contributing fac-
tors to her demise.
The third ritualized death in the novel—the death of Chicken Little—
illustrates Sula’s spiritual vocation. Prior to Chicken Little’s death, Sula is
at an emotional crossroads in her life signified by both puberty and her
indifferent mother’s lack of maternal affection. She heads down to the
60 k Chapter 2

river accompanied by her “dark thoughts” (57). Toni Morrison carefully

crafts the scene leading up to Chicken Little’s death with subtle prose that
prepares the reader for the ritual sacrifice. In the preparatory stage of
the ritual, before the river is fed, Elegba is invoked as customary in his
capacity as a mediator.13 His invocation is manifested by the activity en-
gaged in by Sula and Nell immediately prior to Chicken Little’s appearance,
which consists of feeding the earth a variety of organic materials: “rooted
grass, “stripped twigs,” “cigarette butts” (58–59). After this ritual of strip-
ping symbolic of the preparatory activities to prepare osain (herbal fluids)
and the feeding of the hole, Sula sees Chicken Little “coming up from the
lower bank of the river” and coaxes him to climb the tree with her, and they
look out over the “far side of the river” (59).14 This sacrificial feeding of the
bird to Oya at the river also propitiates the ancestors located at the bottom
of the river in the realm of the bakulu. Additionally, the circular ripples in
the river and Chicken Little’s having been swung in circles replicate the
concentric circles of the living and the dead and the symbiotic relationship
and exchange between the two realms from an African spiritual perspec-
tive.
Having performed the ritual intentionally or not, Sula is forever changed
and heads deliberately toward her own beginning/end. Moreover, entering
Shadrack’s house binds her to him as she is the only person who has ever
crossed his threshold. Additionally, the purple belt she leaves behind is
also emblematic of that connection. Later in the novel, Shadrack would
confirm that connection speaking his one-word mantra “always” when he
encounters her in the street. However, Sula does not heed his exhortation
and heads in another direction re-routing her destiny.
As dramatic as the other deaths are, Sula’s death and the circumstances
that prefigure it point to its primary significance in the novel. The attend-
ing details create a surreal atmosphere:
It would be here, only here, held by this blind window high above the
elm tree, that she might draw her legs up to her chest, close her eyes,
put her thumb in her mouth and float over and down the tunnels,
just missing the dark walls, down, down until she met a rain scent
and would know the water was near, and she would curl into its heavy
softness and it would envelop her, carry her, and wash her tired flesh
always. Always. (149)
“Always,” this word spoken on her deathbed recalls the guidance given her
by Shadrack concerning the permanence of life. Moreover the water im-
 Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula k 61

agery substantiates the locus of bakulu or ancestral realties in the Kongo

tradition and reiterates the notion of perpetuity.
Finally, the words spoken after her “death”—“Wait till I tell Nell”
(149)—attests to her ability to communicate between worlds and demon-
strates the possibilities of a future, even at the end, confirming her spiritual
affinity to Oya, who is able to transcend death. Sula’s death, associated with
her rejection of the ancestor, is further explained by the metaphysical cause
of illness. It is held that an illness can be symptomatic of an outraged ances-
tor. Also, illness can be caused by failure to render service and to offer the
requisite sacrifices, afford the reverence, and to give the expected offerings.
Morrison says, “When you kill the ancestor you kill yourself ” (“Rooted-
ness” 344). This ancestral transgression of Sula’s can be examined by both
her transgression against the ancestral presence represented by A. Jacks's
(Ajax’s) knowledge of traditional spiritual practices and the rejection of Eva
as a familial ancestor.
Because of Sula’s failure to recognize the spiritual nature of Ajax, this
earthy man with skin of “black loam,” she is doomed. Introduced early in
the novel as the “twenty-one-year-old pool haunt of sinister beauty” with
the most imaginative foul mouth in the town (50), he re-enters her life fol-
lowing her sexual escapade with Jude. For Sula, the memory of his “lemon-
yellow” pants, which had caused her sexual excitement some years earlier,
ignites the relationship. To Ajax, Sula represents the only other woman
who is interesting “other than his mother who sat in her shack with six
younger sons working roots” (126). He comes often bringing her various
gifts, of which the blackberries are the most significant because of their use
in fixing a person.
Once Ajax begins coming regularly, Sula becomes dependent and things
begin to change. Suspecting that Sula has put roots on him—this “flying
man” and “seventh son of a seventh son” (137) starts to think more and
more about “air shows,” “planes,” and flying with regularity to counter Sula’s
newly acquired domesticity and the building of a nest (134). This idea of be-
ing the seventh son of a seventh son is a recurring trope in African Ameri-
can literature signifying one whose life is charmed. Fearing domination,
Ajax seeks help.
The following passage, which describes his mother, indicates Ajax’s ac-
cess to the resources to secure his release:

She was an evil conjure woman, blessed with seven adoring chil-
dren whose joy it was to bring her the plants, hair, underclothing,
62 k Chapter 2

fingernail parings, white hens, blood, camphor, pictures, kerosene

and footstep dust that she needed, as well as to order Van Van, High
John the Conqueror, Little John to Chew, Devil’s Shoe String, Chi-
nese Wash, Mustard Seed and the Nine Herbs from Cincinnati. She
knew about the weather, omens, the living, the dead, dreams and all
illnesses and made a modest living with her skills. (126)

Whether acting alone or in collusion with his mother, Ajax is able to free
himself from Sula’s influence. Shortly after he leaves, Sula dies.
Sula’s death at such an early age and without reference to a previous
illness alerts the reader that a major spiritual transgression has occurred
to cause her death. Margaret Washington Creel notes that in traditional
African societies, “Punishments and retribution for breaches in morals and
ethics were not the province of a future world judge but were dealt with on
earth” (“Gullah Attitudes” 72). In African culture, it is not uncommon to
examine a series of events precipitating the death of a person who prede-
ceases her elders. In these instances there is a search for the signs, not the
cause.
The next transgression that Sula commits is directed at Eva. Sula exhib-
its blatant disrespect for Eva by word and deed. Sula’s verbal misbehavior
indicates her incapacity to grasp the hierarchy of the relationship that situ-
ates Eva before her as a representation of the ancestor to be duly honored
and revered. Sula’s cursing of Eva is a misuse of the spoken word (nommo)
or verbal asé that tears down any spiritual protection and power Sula might
have had. One of the profound aspects of Oya’s personality is her sharp
tongue symbolized by the machetes—Oya’s major symbol. The following
conversation highlights the rupture in this intergenerational relationship
caused by the sharpness of Sula’s double-edged weapon. When questioned
about getting married, Sula responds, “I don’t want to make somebody else.
I want to make myself ” (93). The notion of “make” is significant used in this
context. The Yoruba refer to initiation as making a person. The fact that
Sula does not refer to initiation or re-connection to her spiritual personal-
ity, but to separation, cuts herself off from the ancestor. Eva cannot depend
on Sula to call her name into eternity, and Sula will leave no offspring to call
her name either.
Soon after, Sula, devoid of familial loyalty, puts the matriarch of the
Peace family in a senior citizen home. This serves as her final breech with
the ancestor. In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, Victor
Turner identifies the ancestors and the consequences of not duly honoring
 Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula k 63

them: “These ancestors are always the spirits of those who played a promi-
nent part in the lifetime of the persons they are troubling” (10). Turner
submits that the reason these ancestors trouble the person(s) is because
they have been forgotten. What is paradoxical about Sula’s behavior, how-
ever, is that she is the person who is punished for neglect of her ancestral
duties, and she is also the person who is chosen to be the intermediary in
future rituals that would connect the living with the dead. She earns this
distinction because she represents spiritual strength in the same manner
as Eva. In fact, Sula could have been as strong as Eva and a replacement for
her had she the ability to sacrifice for others.
For instance, like her grandmother, Sula amputates a piece of herself
when she cuts off part of her forefinger to frighten the white boys who
torment her on her way home from school. Her self-mutilation acts as an
initiation rite establishing her courage much in the same way as her grand-
mother’s amputation of her own leg. However, Sula fails because she has
no ancestor to invoke and no one to intercede on her behalf to ensure her
fulfillment. Properly invoked, the ancestor secures spiritual and psychic
protection for a person. Because of Sula’s excommunication from the an-
cestor, she cannot fulfill her heroic mission—and the community is further
disintegrated.
The group integrates individuals. And in turn, the individual members
must submit to the will of the group in order to have integrity. In African
world thought, the needs and concerns of groups surpass those of indi-
viduals. The individual who breaches this order by placing personal advan-
tages at the expense of others may cause others to experience misfortune,
disease, and death. Denial of her ancestor and community accountability
makes Sula a scapegoat and a misfit in the community. This judgment is
rendered from a traditional group of people who do not “believe doctors
could heal” or that “death was accidental” (90). Morrison does not let their
assessments of Sula become dismissed as small-town meddling: Sula is dif-
ferent. Sula’s independence is not seen as a desirable trait to possess in the
mid-twentieth century as evidenced by other character’s reactions to her.
Similarly, as with Shadrack, a body of lore develops around Sula. In this
way they incorporate her into the community. When Mr. Finley chokes on
a chicken bone and dies, this too, is attributed to Sula—more specifically to
her using the evil eye. Likewise, when a woman gets a sty on her eye after
Sula looks at her, Sula is blamed (117). Moreover, similar to Baby Suggs who
is judged by the community in Beloved, Sula is considered to have powers
superior to mortals, which places her under the highest suspicion. The
64 k Chapter 2

townsfolk note that she is impervious to insect bites, had “no childhood
diseases,” and it is said that “when Sula drank beer she never belched” (115).
Here the idea of an individual person distinguishing herself and exceeding
the allowable community norms is seen as a potential to destabilize the
collective’s balance.
In keeping with the inherent contradictions espoused by the idea that
the “dead are alive,” Toni Morrison presents another equally conflicting
one; Sula has both a destructive and a constructive presence. While Sula’s
behavior upon her return to the Bottom outrages her community, making
her a pariah, ironically, her presence generally has a beneficial effect on
the Bottom. Sula’s malevolence highlights the community’s munificence.
Her influence is not totally evil as the people of Medallion re-direct their
scattered energies and reinvest it into family matters using Sula’s lack of
familial concerns as catalyst. Without Sula as a scapegoat they are free to
revert to their previous indifferences and slackness.
After her death, even though the community assumes its former shape,
the village is troubled. This trouble is attributed to many things, but more
specifically to the cultural ruptures that have occurred in the novel. These
ruptures are represented by events such as people going to white folk’s
hospitals or placing elders in nursing homes, and seers not attending to
the importance of dreams. What the community needs is the harnessing
of forces to balance the negative influences in the form of ritual acts. Since
ritual is designed to keep the believers spiritually clean, renewed, and cen-
tered they appeal to the voices of nature. They are compelled to act in a
communal way to fashion a proper burial for Sula to create harmony and
repair the disjunction. When something happens to one member of the
community, a comprehensive redress of these abnormal circumstances is
indicated.
The need to propitiate the forces responsible for the malaise that causes
a “restless irritability” is of chief importance in the minds of the commu-
nity members. The townspeople misinterpret the signs that appear after
Sula’s death. The first sign indicates life represented by the construction of
the New River Road tunnel. The second sign suggests the death of cultural
values indicated by the building of a senior citizen home to place the elders
of the community. The third sign is the “freezing rain” emblematic of stasis
or stillness. The narrator explains the obfuscation of the signs: “Still it was
not those illnesses or even the ice that marked the beginning of the trouble
that self-fulfilled prophecy that Shadrack carried on his tongue . . . there
was something wrong” (153). I submit that because there is no rebirth in
 Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula k 65

the community, one of the prerequisites for eternity and continuation of

the ancestral line, this collective ritual provides the renewal necessary to
re-establish harmony, since the central purpose of ritual is to impose pat-
terns of behavior upon the individual in the interest of the whole group.
Benjamin C. Ray notes that restitution needs to be made to compensate
for diminution of vital force by means of propitiatory offerings and ritual
purification of the village and its inhabitants (referred to by the BaLuba as
koyija kibundi [washing the village])(Ray 149). Having no other resources
except National Suicide Day to deal with the evil visited upon the town by
the harsh winter, they shape their exigency into this established ritual. The
purpose of the ritual is not only to pacify the spirits for relief for the winter;
it is also a ritual sacrifice or ebo for Oya.
As a spiritual officiate, Shadrack is called upon to adjudicate the impro-
prieties of the community. He recognizes that although Sula has crossed
over into “a sleep of water always,” there is still need for a culminating
ritual. Funerals as culminating events are equally as important for the liv-
ing as well as the dead. Sula was not funeralized properly; there was no
wake-keeping and other ritual activities. The community overlooks this
important activity. They do not participate by sending “yellow cakes” for
the funeral repast, nor do they “leave their quilt patches in disarray to run
to the house” (172). Additionally, there were those who said when they
heard she was dying, “She ain’t dead yet?” (172). Not contributing to the rit-
ual meal after the burial constitutes a major cultural and spiritual breach.
Moreover, turning her body over to a white funeral home where she has a
closed coffin funeral signifies the harshest of all spiritual trespasses. From
an African American standpoint, the dressing of the body is a skill that can
be only done by black morticians, who know how to ready the person’s
body for viewing. The ultimate compliment to honor the deceased is to
remark, “She looks just like herself.” Additionally, having a closed casket
does not provide the cultural closure needed to substantiate the death.15
The importance of rites for the dead relate not only to the deceased
individual, but to the community as well. The funeral is attended by a few
who are brave enough “to witness the burial of a witch” and sing “Shall
We Gather at the River?” for politeness’s sake (150). The song, “Shall We
Gather at the River?,” had become a question no longer linked to the spiri-
tual realm associated with ritual and the former worship of the bisimbi
or water spirits, but instead prefigures the ritual at the mouth of the cave
where members are sacrificially killed in the baptism of water. Also, the
song’s inquiry is a question of vital importance. Shall Africans, as a people,
66 k Chapter 2

gather/collect the continuous flow of spiritual-cultural ideas represented

by the river, the ancestors?
So, Shadrack accompanied by Tar Baby and the Deweys who represent
the lesser spirits—the intermediaries that give “assurance of human perpe-
tuity beyond the grave”—send Sula off in traditional fashion (Creel, “Gul-
lah Attitudes” 73).16 However, he is not able to persuade those “who un-
derstood the spirits touch which made them dance, who understood whole
families bending their backs in a field while singing as from one throat,
who understood the ecstasy of river baptisms under suns just like this one”
(160). Those that went meet their end while Shadrack stands there ringing
his bell. Robert Farris Thompson explains this idea from a Kongo perspec-
tive: “The death of an important person occasions a split within the com-
munity. The crown of bells militates against this possibility: I am the bell
that sounds within the town. I sound for unity. You have to remain united
even as I remain here forever bound to you” (Thompson and Cornet 147).
Shadrack’s bell attempts to engender this accord. However, having forgot-
ten the other ritual implements, it does not have the efficacy needed to be
successful.
Toni Morrison leaves readers with a formidable picture of cultural and
physical death by reiterating the true powers available to African people if
they listen to ancestral voices, practice their cultural traditions, and accept
responsibility for one another. At the novel’s end, half the town is dead,
there is limited hope for the future, and Eva’s life has been rendered finite
as the sole survivor of the Peace family. Because Sula has failed to fulfill
her destiny there is no one to call Eva’s name into eternity. Moreover, Sula’s
excommunication from the community, the ancestor—and her inability
to understand the concept of intermutuality—leave behind “circles and
circles of sorrow” (174).
 II
f
Psychic Domains and Spiritual Locations
 3

I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock

Ritual and the Construction of Family History
in Song of Solomon

I’ve got a home in a that rock

Don’t you see? Don’t you see?
—Traditional spiritual, “Got a Home in That Rock”

When I die, my spirit shall return

to its place of birth
Africa is my home
This mortal, fragile body
will roam no more
Lifted and free
of earthly ties and bonds
Transported back to my land for eternity
Africa is my Home.
—Abbasante Shabaka (Lawrence J. Evans), “Injustice Reversed”

Ontological Considerations

On the page following the dedicatory inscription to her father, Toni Morri-
son writes, “The fathers may soar and the children may know their names.”
In these prefatory annotations, Morrison informs her readers of the novel’s
twin themes: freedom and identity. For Morrison, identity continues to
be indispensable to the integrated cultural and spiritual personality and
it is connected to knowing one’s name.1 The protagonist has two names—
Macon Dead III and Milkman—one of which is his given name and the
other a nickname that socially establishes him. At the end of Morrison’s
third novel, Song of Solomon (1977), Milkman comes to the end/beginning
of his protracted search, enlivened by the discovery of his great-grand-
father’s name and identity.2 A symbolic healing of the trauma associated
70 k Chapter 3

with the assignment of names by European Americans during enslavement

that disconnected African people from the souls of their ancestors and
caused great spiritual distress, the discovery of his ancestor’s name helps
Milkman to regain a sense of self beyond his individual representation of
self and the limitations associated with the meaningless names given by
the oppressors.
Ralph Ellison reminds us that names are “our masks and our shields and
the containers of all those values and traditions” that we learn and/or imag-
ine as being the meaning of our familial past (Shadow and Act 148). And in
an interview with LeClair, Morrison iterates the importance of names and
their connection to the ancestors, stating, “If you come from Africa, your
name is gone. It is particularly problematic because it is not just your name
but your family, your tribe. When you die, how can you connect with your
ancestors if you have lost your name? (LeClair 126). In the Bantu philoso-
phy the first criterion is the name.
Ostensibly, on a search for gold, Milkman exchanges the material object
of his quest for knowledge of his family history, despite his indoctrination
by his father, Macon Dead. Tutored on the preeminent value of the mate-
rial world with advice such as “Money is freedom,” Milkman achieves cos-
mic wholeness on his epic journey through his connection with his African
ancestors and the recovery of their names and family narratives. Rejoicing
in Solomon’s transcendence from enslavement to flying home to Africa,
Milkman shouts, “The son of a bitch could fly! You hear me, Sweet? That
motherfucker could fly!” (332). On his spiritual trek, a series of concentric
circles of rituals reconnect Milkman, just as Solomon’s individual remem-
brance of Africa links him with the larger group of African people who
made promises in the putrid holds of ships to return home to Africa.3
In this chapter, through a close reading, I trace Milkman’s reiterated self
to African provenances, as he becomes an heir to continuous historical
and spiritual consciousness.4 I examine African symbolic codes that guide
Milkman toward his destiny and explore the role of archetypal helpers,
principally the Kongo spiritual officiant or Nganga ritual expert character-
ized by Pilate and the Yoruba Òrìsà Elegba depicted in Guitar Bains, both
of whom assist Milkman in his epic quest. Additionally, I consider the ways
in which ritual engenders Milkman’s new corporate identity, values, and
behaviors. To frame my analysis of Milkman’s quest I employ the structure
of the Middle Passage conceived as: departure, passage, arrival, depriva-
tion, and transformation.5
In Song of Solomon Toni Morrison argues that ruptures of time and iden-
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 71

tity can be repaired and recovered respectively through willed memory. As

Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Carl Pedersen remind us, “The
Middle Passage emerges not as a clean break between past and present but
as a spatial continuum between Africa and the Americas, the ship’s deck
and the hold, the Great house and the slave quarters, the town and the out-
lying region” (Black Imagination 8). In Song of Solomon, Morrison affirms
that this topography not only extends from “the interior of Africa across
the Atlantic and into the interior of the Americas” (Black Imagination 8),
but also maps the spiritual terrain of African people in their imagination of
freedom in the course of their experiences under the yoke of oppression.6
This historical continuity undermines statements by literary critics such
as Houston A. Baker Jr. who asserts, “Black folklore and the black American
literary tradition that grew out of it are the products of a people who began
in slavery and who, to a large extent remain in slavery” (Long Black Song 11).
Although the Middle Passage was a space of indeterminacy, resistance and
spiritual resoluteness created a reconfigured African identity whose spiri-
tual equation can be re-inscribed as passage, reclamation, and recovery.

Epic Topoi

Ideas of identity and nationhood are important ideas on which to reflect,

especially as they relate to the epic. Epic is particular and cosmic is univer-
sal. Particular cultural nuances team up with ritual performance as the nar-
rative achieves “cosmic entirety” (Soyinka, Myth 2). Wole Soyinka further
states that the epic celebrates the victory of the human spirit over forces
inimical to self-extension concretizing in the “form of action the arduous
birth of the individual or communal entity” (2). This self-extension is re-
lated not solely to the individual but also to corporate interests allowing for
the type of efficacious healing transcending both liminal and spatial time.
In Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison’s literary considerations are modi-
fications of the genre of African epics and as such accomplish the recla-
mation of African heritage including features such as ancestor worship,
the invisible world, and African spiritual traditions. These epic factors,
thought to be lost en route to America via the Middle Passage, are recov-
ered through Morrison’s revision of epic realities, which incorporate the
cornerstone of the African tradition with the enlivened annexation of New
World and womanist concepts. Her reconstruction is seen in her addition
of a female hero to accompany the male hero, typical in both African and
European epics.
72 k Chapter 3

In Song of Solomon, the interplay between ancestral and living spheres

is highlighted by performance elements with respect to epic ideas, African
archetypal deities, and Pan-African spiritual traditions. These elements
characterize the mending of breaches and ruptures at the micro level rep-
resented by the narrative and at the macro level represented by the larger
historical narrative of the African Diaspora. This change also indicates a
shift in public to private considerations of the heroic quest. The village
setting is translated into the community or neighborhoods, the supernatu-
ral forces are supplanted by their syncretic manifestations, and the battles
shift from physical to psychological and are not confined to the home (the
Western world’s construction of a woman’s domain). Epic fulfillment is
achieved when the heroine acknowledges her identity complete with a past
and unites herself with other members of the community. In this transfor-
mation of self, gained through the challenges of the journey, the veil, which
had separated the hero from cosmic wholeness, is lifted.
In the novel, this resolution is accomplished in various ways through
healing and/or transition or transformation of the individual and/or com-
munity. The achievement of heroic completion of the characters during the
“return” phase is usually accompanied by a highly stylized ritual, which re-
consolidates the psychological with the social dimension of being.7 Genev-
iève Fabre argues that the celebratory spirit of Africans accompanied them
to the Americas, and the Africans reinvented both ritual and forms “to
alter the time space framework prescribed or suggested by whites” (72).
Preserving “historical truth” rooted in cultural landscapes, primarily
archetypes, allows both the hero and reader to find their way on their re-
spective journeys. Since traditional expression can be interpreted through
a variety of cultural vehicles and ideas, it is significant that the novel opens/
closes with the classic metaphor of flight signifying freedom.8 Addition-
ally, epic ideas of circularity structure Song of Solomon as Morrison begins
and ends the novel with flight and song. I read the flight of Robert Smith
from the roof of Mercy hospital and Milkman’s flight at the novel’s close
as recovery of African ontology: “At 3:00pm on Wednesday the 18th of
February, 1931, I will take off from Mercy and fly away on my own wings.
Please forgive me. I love you all” (3).9 Signaling a departure from the trope
of Christian salvation in her inversion of Phillis Wheatley’s thesis about
the redemptive value of Christian mercy illustrated in her poem, “On Be-
ing Brought from Africa to America,” Morrison prepares the reader for
a flight from America to Africa.10 Moreover, Smith’s final words concern
the primacy of love as a universal force, both human and cosmic. Sharing
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 73

the same name as the biblical book, “Song of Solomon,” an anthology of

Hebrew love poems allegorical to God’s relationship with the soul, Pilate
will echo Smith’s legacy of love at the novel’s end when she speaks of love’s
enduring legacy.
Toni Morrison communicates this epic theme, as well as others, us-
ing one of the epics’ primary resources, the bard. Providing space for the
employment of call and response, the narrator encourages the reader’s
involvement. In an interview with Nellie McKay, Morrison explains this
participatory approach asserting that “readers who wish to read my books
will know that it is not I who do it, it is they who do (403). Besides eliciting
participation from the audience, Isidore Okpewho notes that one of the
bard’s most prolific skills is the “flexible technique of improvisation” (The
Epic in Africa 40). Most assuredly, Morrison echoes this epic imperative
in language that mirrors musical improvisation as “she performs words”
(LeClair 369).
In Song of Solomon Morrison inscribes excursions mimetic of jazz:
He knew her face better than he knew his own. Singing now, her face
would be a mask; all emotion and passion would have left her features
and entered her voice. But he knew that when she was neither singing
nor talking her face was animated by her constantly moving lips. She
chewed things. As a baby, as a very young girl, she kept things in her
mouth—straw from brooms, gristle, buttons, seeds, leaves, string,
and her favorite, when he could find some for her, rubber bands and
India rubber eraser. (30)
The narrator starts with the idea of Pilate’s face then moves to her lips, then
to specific movements of her lips, then continues on to a more focused
look:
Her lips were alive with small movements. If you were close to her,
you wondered if she was about to smile or if she was merely shift-
ing a straw from the base line of her gums to her tongue. Perhaps
she was dislodging a curl of rubber band from inside her cheek, or
was she smiling? From a distance she appeared to be whispering to
herself, when she was only nibbling or spitting tiny seeds with her
front teeth. (30)
Morrison ends the foray, this variation on a theme, with a return to the
beginning in much the same manner of a jazz musician who rejoins the
melody after a protracted wandering up and down the scales and beyond
74 k Chapter 3

in search for that new combination of sounds. The reader’s attention, once
again, is directed to a consideration of the mask: “Her lips were darker than
her skin, wine stained, blue-berry-dyed, so her face had a cosmetic look—
as though she had applied a very dark lipstick neatly and blotted away its
shine on a scrap of newspaper” (30).
The ideas of masking and music represent prominent epic elements.
In traditional cultures of Africa, masks are used ceremonially to promote
well-being and community. This motif is usually employed as an ironic
device, and clearly the heroes of the African epics Sundiata and Mwindo
begin their heroic adventures as masked heroes. For example, Sundiata’s
late physical development and the accompanying derision masks the pos-
sibility of him emerging as a great conqueror whose name is destined to be
remembered in perpetuity. In a similar fashion, Mwindo is a baby when he
undertakes his heroic journey; a baby is hardly the heroic idea of author-
ity.
In Morrison’s revised epic, she introduces the idea of marking as a cor-
relate of masking. Her protagonists Milkman—who walks with a limp be-
cause one leg is shorter than the other—and Pilate—who has a smooth
stomach sans navel—are both physically marked, helping to substantiate
their positions as heroes. Pilate’s face illustrates Morrison’s use of mask-
ing. When Pilate’s face is in motion she is safe like the Dogon masks, which
come alive when they are being danced. Lifeless masks are taboo. At vari-
ous times in the novel, Pilate’s immobile face expresses notions of uncon-
cealed danger, such as when Milkman returns home to Michigan after dis-
covering his family history. Pilate is angry because of Milkman’s culpability
in Hagar’s recent death, and her face is described as “still” (337). Informed
later that day that the bag of bones she has been carrying around for many
years belongs to her father and not to the white man that her brother had
killed, the narrator says, “She seemed happy now. Her lips [were] mobile
again” (338).
In addition to the unique function of the epic bard and the concept of
masking in the African epics, there are also differences in the heroic at-
tributes that serve to further distance them from their European cognates.
Although African epics contain rudiments of the basic epic formula—aus-
picious births, a sense of the quest, and engagements in battles—possessing
these universal elements does not diminish the uniqueness of the African
epic tradition.11
Equally characteristic of the African epic is the prominence of music.
Christiane Seydou notes, “Music is an essential feature common to all ep-
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 75

ics in West Africa” (312). And Isidore Okpewho recognizes that along with
formulae, epithets, topoi, repetition, call and response, and digression, an
intersection of songs throughout the narrative define the African epic. To
this list, Daniel Biebuyck adds the emphasis on performance, the preva-
lence of occult forces and heroic manipulation of these forces, an amalgam
of music and dance, the audience’s interaction with the bard, and the use
of a rich and highly poetic language (Hero and Chief 23–25).12 As the novel
begins with Pilate singing a song heralding the birth of Milkman, the novel
ends with Milkman becoming a singing man. Following the song he joins
eternity, or as the Zulu elders express, he becomes “a song which is sung
again and again” (Mutwa 185).
Another essential feature of the African epic is the type of characters
depicted in the narratives. According to Biebuyck, the following types of
characters are found in the Nyanga epic Mwindo: heroes; people in special
roles, such as ritual experts; divinities that live in the air and subterranean
worlds; spirits of the dead, extraordinary beings who live in the forest, sky
and caves; animals, birds, and insects; and the fabulous (Hero and Chief
28–32). Of these characters, the hero is of primary importance. In both
epics, Sundiata and Mwindo, the heroes share similar traits. For example,
they are both born to suffering women, their fathers are chiefs, and the he-
roic sons are destined to become chiefs as well, which provides a source of
tension to their enemies. Similarly, in Song of Solomon, Milkman is born to
a suffering mother who grieves for the affection of her deceased father and
entrusts all of her attention to her son Milkman whom she nurses until his
“legs dangled to the floor,” which recalls the eponymous hero of the Malian
epic Sundiata, who did not walk until nearly his adulthood. Additionally,
Milkman’s father, an owner of multiple properties and a luxury automobile,
is the modern equivalent of a chief.
Toni Morrison recovers these features, thought to be lost en route to
America via the Middle Passage, through her revision of epic realities, in-
corporating the cornerstone of the African tradition with the enlivened
annexation of the New World symbols. As models for behavior, archetypal
symbols represent the sacred symbols of a group or groups of people, in-
cluding an assemblage of deities, ancestors, spirits, and other phenom-
ena constructing the sacred world. Symbols also inform myth and rituals
through a web of representation. This network of symbolic forms repre-
sentative of specific cultural systems bind together beliefs about the nature
of social relations, ecological interactions, and the manner in which char-
acters recognize and categorize patterns and events to meet their present
76 k Chapter 3

needs. Symbol and myth are complimentary ideas. For instance, myths
primarily influence spiritual archetypes, which in turn form the basis of
myth. For African Americans, both symbol and myth continue to advance
African belief systems, because of their shared agency. Rodney Needham
notes the importance of symbolism as being necessary to “mark what is so-
cially important, and to induce men to conform in recognizing the values
by which they should live” (5).
In Song of Solomon, the primary motif in the novel concerns the ability
of Africans to fly. The preservation of this mytheme is significant chiefly
because of the political freedom that has eluded Africans in America since
their arrival. Flight becomes a significant statement about spiritual power
and the endurance of African belief systems. In his recounting of the story
of his great grandfather’s flight, Milkman comments that flying is a form
of resistance against hegemony and its socially reductive roles for Africans
in America. He exclaims, “No more orders! No more shit!” (332). In Song
of Solomon, Morrison develops this idea of flight and its constituent goal,
spiritual transcendence, using the symbols of gleam and language as major
conceits.

Birth of the Hero

Milkman’s arduous birth and the prebirth rituals prepare the reader for
his spiritual distinction. Wyatt MacGaffey notes that among the BaKongo
a child that is born abnormally is referred to as baana ba nlongo and has
precocious spiritual sensibilities (“Twins, Simbi Spirits” 213). As a child,
Milkman was called “deep” and “mysterious,” which makes the women ask,
“Did he come with a caul?” They tell Ruth, “You should have dried it and
made him some tea from it to drink. If you don’t he’ll see ghosts.” The abil-
ity of the women to maintain tradition through ancestral speech consistent
with what the old people believe, while purporting to have Christian beliefs
distinct from these folk ideas, is reminiscent of the type of dissimilitude
recorded throughout African American literature from the enslavement
or captivity narratives to the present.13
The conversation about the caul being a spiritual mark is consistent with
folkloric ideas expressed in African American literature. In an interview
with inhabitants of White Bluff, a community of four hundred African
Americans located southeast of Savannah, researchers with the Georgia
Federal Writers Project queried the oldest citizen, Sophie Davis, who was
eight at the end of the Civil War. When asked if she saw spirits, she replied,
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 77

“I caahn see spirits cuz I ain bawn with a caul” (Drums and Shadows 76). In
the appendix to Drums and Shadows the authors record various attributes
for babies born with a caul. The foremost trait is being able to see spirits
and to not be harmed by them.
Pilate understands the presence of kimyumba or deceased spirits echo-
ing the perception of the Kongo subgroup, the Ba Manianga. For example,
both Pilate and Macon Dead II see Macon Dead I after his death. Once
they saw him on a stump, as well as in various locations including at the
entrance to a cave. His appearance at the cave—a symbolic womb—is em-
blematic of the deceased’s ability to be reborn. In addition to a visual pres-
ence, the spirits also have the ability to communicate with the living. For
example, having made his transition, Macon Dead I appears to Pilate and
informs her about responsibilities to the dead. His name is a metaphor
for the spiritual regeneration of the ancestor, which is to make the dead
significant in the lives of the living.
In Death and the Invisible Powers, Simon Bockie explains the Bantu-
Kongo philosophy about the nature of the human being, which consists
of three basic elements: nitu (the physical body); kini (the invisible body);
and mwela (the soul) (129). When the nitu or physical body dies, the other
two components exit and begin their journey to the other world. The kini
and the mwela join and become the “life body” that continues to live as
opposed to the death body nitu, which has been left behind by its former
occupant (131). It is important to point out that the invisible body or kini,
which is a shade or reflection of the physical body, looks identical. Since
kini has eternal life, the soul never leaves it; actually, kini is the “visible
body of the other world” (129). Mary Frances Berry and John Blassingame
discuss the significance of these beliefs within an African American con-
text, noting, “The slaves believed that a person’s soul remained on earth
three days after death, visiting friends and enemies, and that the ghosts
remained near graveyards, communicated with and could harm or help the
living, and might return to claim property which had belonged to them”
(“Africa, Slavery” 248).
According to Bockie, belief in the existence of the invisible realm sup-
ports the notion of survival of the community or kanda. The Bantu com-
munity consists of the individual, the total living community, the recent
dead, those who are in the process of becoming ancestors, those who have
achieved the status of ancestors, and good spirits. This community of the
dead is called Mpemba and its residents are called bakulu (Bockie 131).
Death is not a permanent separation: “From time to time the deceased
78 k Chapter 3

return home to warn, inform, or give instructions to the kanda or an indi-

vidual member regarding an upcoming event looming large (lwengisa), or
to reprimand or punish (semba)” (83). Additionally, the Yoruba believe that
the deceased can appear in dreams or trances, where they impart valuable
information, explanation, or instruction. The dead are reborn as ancestors
who guide the living to help them remember the nature of their respective
destinies and the power of their names.
Through his interaction with Guitar and Pilate, Milkman is taught the
power of reclaiming his name along with the power of spiritual awareness.
His predilection for looking skyward also marks him as a person in search
of his spiritual lineage connecting him with the flying African. When he
learned at four “that only birds and airplanes could fly—he lost all interest
in himself ” (9). Learning early lessons about the limitations of the physical
world, Milkman begins his search for the spiritual realm in order to garner
more meaning beyond his individual self, which is limited by space, time,
and earthly boundaries. Milkman must be initiated to undertake his mis-
sion as a spiritual being and recover himself and his familial past.
k k k

One Bright morning when my work is over,

I’m going to fly away home.
—Bob Marley, “Rasta Man Chant”

The spirits summon Pilate to facilitate Milkman’s birth. As a prelude to his

birth, the ritual she performs prepares him for subsequent rituals enacted
on his journey toward epic completion. Pilate represents the continuation
and resonance of African culture, imagination of homelands, a sense of
tradition, and history. Toni Morrison constructs her, not as a private self or
individual, but as a symbol of the community in which Milkman needs to
reconnect. Bunseki K. Fu-Kiau discusses the symbolic idea of community
consisting of both living and dead:
The community is a channel: people go (die); people come (are born).
The community renews perpetually its members and its principles
accordingly to its (fu) systems, conforming to the natural laws that of
birth and death, the theory of (makwendamakwiza), what goes will
come back, the perpetual process of change through (dingo-dingo),
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 79

the constant back and forth flow of (ngolo zanzingila) living energy.
(African Cosmology 100)
Wielding the power of ritual to harness spiritual energy, Pilate is the
matrix for purposeful existence and the archetypal help essential to the
success of Milkman’s quest. As Milkman’s spiritual guide and double, Pilate
teaches him how to soar utilizing the three processes of cultural trans-
mission suggested by Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson, which
are: (1) the generation of representation, (2) the retention of those repre-
sentations, and, (3) the communication of those representations (45). In
her narratives of the past, Pilate illuminates the shared patterns of familial
history and supplies the fundamental stability for Milkman’s unbalanced
psyche. Only with a true knowledge of the past can he re-create the con-
sciousness and sense of community needed to imagine a future. In fact,
Milkman’s penchant for “riding backwards” and “flying blind” (32), and his
habit of concentrating “on things behind him” (35), signals his bond with
Pilate, who will connect him to the past and deliver him from his spiritual
dilemma.
After having his first conversation with Pilate, Milkman is primed with
enough background information about his family to elicit a story from his
father. Finding out that Milkman has spent the afternoon at Pilate’s house,
Macon begins to tell him things about their ancestors. Reuniting him with
the stories of his ancestors and reconnecting him with his living relatives
bridges the gap in Milkman’s familial narrative and introduces him to a
larger community of people to whom he has a collective responsibility.
Using this formulation, one can see that ancestors are not just past con-
structions but, as Nkira Nzegwu reminds us, they are also aspects of future
generations (182).
Pilate is his ndoki and the author of those essential lessons. Fu-Kiau
discusses the notion of ndoki as one who knows man’s higher principles or
knowledge. The manipulation of knowledge is “to assist one to become a
winged person, a flier” (African Cosmology 33). As an archetypal compan-
ion, Pilate helps to coordinate the experiences and spiritual opportunities
that Milkman agreed to before his physical birth. For the Yoruba, destiny
refers to the “pre-ordained portion of life wound and sealed up” in an ori—
or bearer of destiny. However, a person arrives at a destiny whether it is
received or chosen; destiny “determines the general course of life” (Gbade-
gesin 47).
80 k Chapter 3

Born to the Dead

Some I know were lovers of the moon who would

pierce their ears on full moons.
—Robert Hayden, “Full Moon”

I was born in the Congo

—Nikki Giovanni, “Ego-Tripping (There May Be a Reason Why)”

Toni Morrison depicts Pilate as having an aura of spirituality and estab-

lishes her as a pilot for Milkman’s flight to self-hood and social incorpora-
tion. Remembered by the people of Danville for her closeness to nature,
they recall Pilate as a “pretty woods-wild girl that couldn’t nobody put
shoes on” (236).14 Macon comments on her earthiness. “Seeing the pine
trees started him thinking about her mouth; how she loved, as a girl, to
chew pine needles and as a result smelled even then like a forest” (27).
Additionally, a description of Pilate’s blackness is highlighted. Macon
tells Milkman that Pilate looks and acts like an African. While in Shalimar,
Milkman reflects that Pilate must have looked like the young girls—with
“wide sleepy eyes that tilted up at the corners, high cheekbones, full lips
blacker than their skin, berry-stained, and long long necks” (266). Dis-
rupting the meaning of black as being bereft of light, Pilate’s blackness
leads Milkman into the light of self-realization. The Ki-Kongo term kala is
associated with blackness. Furthermore, the idea of spiritual Nganga con-
nects with this force of blackness expressed in the following expressions
that define Pilate’s character: Kala/ba muntu (be a human being, a help-
ful being); kala/ba n’kisi a kanda (be the community’s medicine); kala/ba
nganga (be a specialist, a true knower, a master, a doer); kala/ba n’kingu a
kanda (be the principle of the community); Kala/ba lembabzau kia kanda
(be the strongest of the community) (African Cosmology 27).
Furthermore, Bockie corroborates this identity, employing the concept
of Nganga or bridge between the communities of the dead and the living.
He expounds on the idea of the Nganga:
As used by BaManianga, [a subgroup of Kongo people], the term
nganga denotes a physician or medical man, pharmacist, prophet,
seer, visionary, fortune-teller, priest, and ndoki. He uses his kindoki
to provide help rather than harm. . . . Working closely with an an-
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 81

cestral spirit, he sits above any imaginable kind of human power. He

thereby becomes the factotum and guardian of the community se-
crets. To some degree he lives in a world of his own. He is the last
hope to whom the individual and the entire community turn in the
time of despair. (67)
Fundamental to Pilate’s spiritual identity as an Nganga are the circum-
stances attending her birth. Macon’s description of Pilate’s unusual birth
illustrates her spiritual distinction. Not only was Pilate born to a dead
woman, but also she birthed herself. Further substantiation of this spiri-
tual inclination is Pilate’s being physically marked. The unmarked stomach
is a type of scarification conveying the spiritual significance of Pilate be-
ing “otherworldly.” Henry John Drewal and Margaret Thompson Drewal
remark that the cutting of the umbilical cords “gives us life apart from
our mothers” (349). Even though Pilate does not know her mother or her
mother’s name, she remains attached to her in the ancestral realm signi-
fied by her unmarked stomach. Her mother’s name, Sing, becomes the pri-
mary and most efficacious means to facilitate ritual outcomes, evidenced
by singing Milkman to life and Hagar onward to the afterlife. Furthermore,
the piercing of her own ear affirms her spiritual courage. She confirms
herself at age twelve by piercing her ear, putting the slip of paper bearing
her name in a brass box, and hanging the brass box in her lobe. Beyond
being an accessory, by wearing the container bearing her name, Pilate
marks a critical stage of life. This self-confirmation occurs after her fa-
ther’s murder. The idea of courage is an essential feature of an Nganga,
who is expected to be courageous in order to protect the family as well
as the community.
Another verification of Pilate’s spiritual status occurs when Guitar first
brings Milkman to her house. She is described as having “one foot pointed
east and one pointed west” (36). In many Bantu cultures the concept of
spirituality manifests in one’s ability to dwell concomitantly in both the
material realm and the spiritual realm. This duality is expressed in Afri-
can American culture as being “two-headed.” The description of Pilate’s
feet going in two distinct directions is indicative of her two-headedness.
According to the Zulu of South Africa, the description of a sangoma or
female spiritual healer is a person whose feet turn backwards.15 The Akan
concept of sankofa is the spiritual metaphor representing the fluidity of
past and present, translating to the imperative to return to the past to fetch
the cultural and spiritual memorates and bring them forward to the pres-
82 k Chapter 3

ent. Symbolized by a bird whose feet are facing forward and whose head is
turned looking behind him, the description of the Sankofa bird is similar
to Pilate’s feet, pointing forward and backward and establishing her ability
to assist people in their spiritual and cultural recovery.
Additionally, this spiritual/material orientation finds fusion in Pilate’s
attraction to rocks. She states, “Everyplace I went I got me a rock” (142). J.
Omosade Awolalu explains the significance of such a connection: “Rocks
are witnesses; they were there from the beginning.” Moreover, the Yoruba
have a proverb, Ota o ki iku (the rock never dies). In South Africa, the
Bantu describe stones as the living bones of the earth and people are initi-
ated into the spirit of the stones. The geography book that she carries with
her for most of her life confirms Pilate’s role as earth mother. Representing
spiritual topography and her connection with the feminine principle of the
earth and natural forces, the geography book is a metaphor for the earthy
woman whose voice “made Milkman think of pebbles” (40).
Pilate has been rejected and marginalized by the community at large
because of the absence of a navel. In fact, it is Pilate’s remoteness and sepa-
ration from others that facilitates the symbolic sight and self-mastery that
she possesses. Additionally, this spiritual partition has allowed her access
to the archetypal language needed to understand herself along with the
spiritual clarity needed to access the ancestral realms. Unhampered by any
responsibility to please others, she can devote her physical energies to lis-
tening to the voices of her spiritual guides, the Ajé or earth mothers and the
ancestors. In previous novels, Toni Morrison establishes the significance of
liminality in defining the space to access spiritual phenomena.
Pilate’s liminality is facilitated by her initiation. Preparing her head, she
cuts off her hair. Her next steps are to determine the contours of her life and
to continue communication with the dead. Having been trained by a root-
worker, she is a natural healer and a midwife. In Africa, the female healers
were also midwives. Midwifery was one of the few spiritual roles permitted
and reinforced during slavery. While African people were moving in the
direction of individualism consistent with the values of American (white)
cultural identity, Pilate remains linked with other black people through a
deep and abiding love and sense of hospitality—twin values indicating an
intact sense of African morality and ethical consciousness. Pilate’s happi-
ness in Virginia comes from being in the company of so many Black people.
Later on his journey, Milkman will come to the same conclusion about the
level of African generosity, hospitality, and genuine concern for the wel-
fare of others. For example, while in Shalimar, with the absence of white
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 83

people, he discovers the comfortableness and ease in which the community

members functioned with each other and the sense of intermutuality that
defines their lives. He even wonders why they ever left the South in the first
place.
Described as having palm oil flowing in her veins and being generous,
Pilate retains the African traditions of offering food “before one word of
conversation—business or social began” (150). Regarding generosity, a
Kongo proverb states, “He who holds out his hands does not die.” African
sensibilities are further illustrated in the smell of ginger associated with
her presence and indicated by her preparation of hot nut soup, a dish of
West African origin. Musing on her openhandedness, Milkman notes, she
has “cooked him his first perfect egg,” has “shown him the sky,” has told
him stories,” “sang him songs,” “fed him bananas and cornbread,” and “hot
nut soup” (211). Offering him an egg is a spiritual gesture suggestive of the
incomplete nature of his life at that time. Since Pilate is Milkman’s spiritual
double, the symbolic gesture of offering him an egg is significant. For the
Dogon, Amma, the Creator, originally created eight human beings. He cre-
ated four pairs of twins—female and male. These Nommo or twins refer to
mythological ancestors and to one’s own lineage. In this offering of an egg,
Pilate underscores the necsssity of balance and communication between
the living and the dead—a metaphor for his initiation on the journey.
The description of Pilate’s house gives additional insight into her role
as a healer. Morrison writes in Song of Solomon, “Her house sat eighty feet
from the sidewalk and was backed by four huge pine trees, from which she
got the needles she stuck into her mattress” and “whose basement seemed
to be rising from rather than settling onto the ground” (27).16 In Pilate’s
world, materialism and modernity represent exoticisms. Occupying a limi-
nal space, Pilate lives in her un-numbered house with no modern appli-
ances such as a telephone. Guitar describes Pilate’s house as “shiny,” “shiny
and brown. With a smell” (35).
Pilate’s house in the Ki-Kongo language is a kanda diamoyo dimbu
yemba (a house open to others) and a symbol of spiritual vitality (African
Cosmology 104). Additionally, similar to the house situated between heaven
and earth, aye and orun, Pilate has the ability to move between realms and
shift-shape, demonstrated when she retrieves Milkman and Guitar at the
police station.17 Having been trained in the spiritual arts while in Virginia,
her fluency in reading the spirit helps her to understand not only her life’s
mission, but also gives her the ability to assist Milkman through his cycle of
rebirth/birth/rebirth. In the novel, various characters remark on her capac-
84 k Chapter 3

ity to know things in the spiritual realm. Macon tells Milkman to stay away
from her, saying, “Pilate can’t teach you a thing to use in this world, maybe
the next, but not this one” (55).
Pilate’s insight is evident upon her arrival in Michigan to reunite with
her brother and to supposedly heal their fractured relationship. Shortly af-
ter her arrival, Pilate’s “real” mission is revealed. She returns to usher in the
birth of Macon Dead III. According to Patrice Malidoma Somé, a birth is
the arrival of someone, usually an ancestor that somebody already knows,
who has important tasks to do here” (Of Water and the Spirit 20). Somé
speaks of a prebirth ritual where a hearing with the fetus is convened to
determine who the soul is, the nature of his or her life mission, and whether
some object is needed to assist the “becoming” child. The living must know
who is being reborn.
Pilate helps Ruth to become pregnant by giving her an herbal prepara-
tion to drink that not only increases her fertility, but also brings Macon
to Ruth’s bed as if under a spell. Next Pilate conducts a ritual as a prelude
to the arrival of “a little bird.” In the novel’s first ceremony, Pilate sings a
blues riff, opening the spaces for the call-and-response format necessary
for group participation similar to an oriki praise chant. The particular type
of oriki called orile, stresses the accomplishment of family members and
lineage ancestors (183). She sings “Sugarman done fly away.” Wearing “a
pair of four button ladies’ galoshes” (5), symbolic of the Kongo cosmogram,
Ruth accompanies Pilate in this ceremony by spilling the red petals.18 This
is the first reference to Ruth, not by her name, but as the “dead doctor’s
daughter” (3). This appellation extends Ruth’s identity beyond herself to
ancestral relations.
Toni Morrison will develop Ruth’s ancestral proclivity throughout the
novel. Ruth’s participation in Robert Smith’s ritual flight prefigures his
physical transition; her spilling of the red petals, corresponds to the blood
offering or sacrifice in a propitiatory offering. In exchange for the life of
the child she is preparing to deliver, she offers this ebo or physical sacrifice
of an inauthentic flying man, who needs “wings” to execute his flight, for
the life of her son, Milkman, who will not need wings to launch his own
flight.19 Mr. Smith reads the ritual sign, which signals his taking flight.
Soyinka discusses the connection between sacrifice and music from a
Yoruba perspective, stating, “Music is the intensive language of transition
and its communicant means, the catalyst and solvent of the regenerative
hoard. The actor dares not venture into the world unprepared, without
the symbolic sacrifices and the invocation of eudaemonic guardians of
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 85

the abyss” (Myth 36). Additionally, using the device of repetition, which
Drewal speaks of as critical to African performance, the songs advanced
the “transformational” and “generative” processes directing their quests for
liberation (xiii). Although Pilate has had only limited access to her spiritual
charge after his birth, she is able to sing him a song.
In Kongo culture the individual’s existence begins on the day of birth
and moves from being the property of the parents to being a part of the
community through a series of initiations into his new world. After being
born the child is taken by the Nganga or the ceremonial priest who intro-
duces the child to the community. This first initiation, which occurs when
the child is about one month old, is accompanied by presentation of gifts
and food. The community sings, “Seer show me the way. Seer show me the
way. Seer help me see” (Bockie 32).
After Macon bans Pilate from the house, she is able to fix Milkman
with a look, ensuring that he will eventually find his way to her door. Cut
off from family, Milkman is caught in a spiritual crossroads represented
by a clash of cultures. Because Milkman does not have a fully constructed
African value system, he is not able to negotiate the in-between space and
access spiritual power. In order for Milkman to be successful, Pilate must
relocate him to a space of mythic consciousness to repair the cosmic rup-
tures in the material and ancestral realm. The stories Pilate tells Milkman
take on a religious sensibility as spiritual revelations. Pilate helps to con-
struct new beliefs as she helps him believe or imagine the possibilities of
himself. Although Milkman does not understand Pilate’s role in assisting
him on his journey, her stories plant the seeds that ultimately assist him to
distinguish authentic desires from the distractions of the material world.
k k k
I implore you Eshu
to plant in my mouth
your verbal ashe
restoring to me the language
that was mine
and was stolen from me.
—Abdias do Nascimento, “Pade de Exu Libertador”

Once delivered by Pilate, Milkman begins the next phase of his journey as-
sisted by Guitar. A correlate of the Òrìsà Elegba, Guitar like the Òrìsà, rep-
resents a link between the past and the future. Because Milkman’s depriva-
86 k Chapter 3

tion lies in his disconnect not only from his family, but also from African
people in a communal sense, his spiritual separation must be mediated by
Guitar. Guitar first appears at the interstices between life and death when
Robert Smith, who is at a spiritual crossroads, leaps from Mercy hospi-
tal. Elegba has the ability “to bring life and death into clear focus, thereby
giving people a clear view of reality” (Mason and Edwards, Black Gods
13). Similar to Elegba, who is the lord of the in-between, the readers meet
Guitar at the crossroads (the locus of departed spirits or water egress for
departing spirits four ways), between Robert Smith’s leap from the roof of
(No) Mercy Hospital and Pilate’s singing the death/life song.
In Song of Solomon, Guitar transports Milkman through American his-
tory as he documents a series of racial atrocities occurring over a broad
sweep of time. His words convey more than the stories. He expresses the
terror experienced by African people in an oppressive racist society. Given
Milkman’s sheltered and privileged life, these lessons were a revelation to
him. The newly arrived southerner—now northerner—is indeterminately
described as “a cat-eyed boy about five or six years old” (7). The dialectical
direction of being partly up and partly down as well as the juxtaposition
of cultivated farms and abandoned fields clearly establishes the identity of
Elegba within the Yoruba spiritual frames.
Morrison provides the reader with numerous clues to establish Guitar’s
archetypal identity and affinity to Elegba. The first is his presence to wit-
ness Smith’s sacrifice, since Elegba oversees all sacrifices, prescribes all rit-
ual acts, and bears all sacrifices to Olofi—the Supreme God. Elegba’s usual
function and primary role is that of an intermediary between God and
humanity: between the Òrìsà and God and between human beings and the
Òrìsà. Originating in the Yoruba culture of Nigeria, Elegba is also found in
the cultures of the Fon, the Ewe, and others throughout global Africa. For
the Yoruba, Elegba is a paradox. Two of his names relate to his duality or
dialectical contradiction. He is called Elegba—“the powerful one” or Eshu
Odara—“Eshu is not good.” According to the apataki or stories that make
up the sacred literary corpus know as Ifa, he is the keeper of Asé—the es-
sence of God. Asé has various meanings including ability, skill, power, and
aptitude.
The second clue is Guitar’s role as the first male character to speak in the
novel. One of Elegba’s strongest aptitudes is talking. Elegba owns speech,
and his verbal attributes include the ability to talk with great innuendo,
to carp, to cajole, to needle, and to reverse situations. His ability to speak
all languages and act as the ultimate mediator is reflected in his names:
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 87

Alaroye (owner of talkativeness) and Oloofofo (bearer of tales). Yoruba

devotees chant Ago laroye (make way for the owner of talkativeness) to
induce spiritual possession by Elegba.
As the keeper of Asé, which also corresponds to the power of the spoken
word that brings phenomena into existence, there is a clear correlation
between him and Morrison’s Guitar. For instance, Milkman meets Guitar
when Guitar beats up four boys who were teasing him. Later, Guitar takes
off his baseball cap and hands it to Milkman, telling him to wipe the blood
from his nose. Milkman bloodies the cap and returns it, and Guitar slaps it
back on his head. This action of sacrificial blood feeding the head of Guitar
corresponds to the offering of a blood sacrifice to Elegba. While in Shali-
mar when Milkman thinks about that incident, “a black rooster strutted by,
its blood-red comb draped forward like a wicked brow” (268). In describ-
ing elements of sacrificial rites, Awolalu refers to all sacrifices as ebo. In the
category of birds, oromadie (roosters) are two-legged who are sacrificed to
Elegba as propitiary sacrifices. Awolalu notes that Elegba (Esu) “is fond of
black fowls” (163).
Anthony Ferreira remarks that Elegba also employs the power of the
Iyami, the earth mothers who morph into the birds of the night. As they
head to Pilate’s house to get the “gold,” Milkman “saw a white peacock.”
Morrison reiterates this connection with birds and sacrifice in the excur-
sions at Feather’s pool hall “in the middle of the Blood Bank area” (56). In
addition, Guitar’s revelation that he is “a natural-born hunter” (85) con-
firms the association of Elegba with Ogun and Ochossi—both hunter Òrìsà
and spiritual forces in the triadic construction called the warriors. Guitar
also provides Milkman with a link to his destiny by introducing him to his
aunt, Pilate Dead “who had as much to do with his future as she did his
past” (35).
Additionally, Elegba shapes culture, advances history and civilization,
and reveals the sacredness of life. The actions of Guitar are compatible
with these ideas. Through language, Guitar reveals the sacred passages to
Milkman making him privy to the cultural and political history of African
people, which Milkman considers “racial problems” (108). There is an apa-
taki or spiritual parable that speaks to Elegba’s ability to disrupt as well as
cement human relationships. When Elegba heard that two friends never
quarreled, he made a two-colored cap. One side was white and the other
black. (In some stories, the colors are red and black.) He passed between
two friends and later they quarreled about the color of his hat, since each of
them had seen only the side closest to him. The spiritual lesson in the apa-
88 k Chapter 3

taki speaks to the duality of nature: that two things can be true at the same
time. Throughout this novel, Morrison challenges the linear construction
of either/or and posits a cyclical reality where, the concepts coexist.
Elegba also serves as the enforcer of the universe, as a type of cosmic
police, ensuring that a person lives a moral life. Morrison draws Guitar as
a person who keeps the balance when he confronts Milkman about caus-
ing Hagar’s distress. Furthermore, Guitar directs him to give up the things
that weigh him down in order to achieve spiritual transformation. Mason
states, “Elegba was the idea that it was possible for man to fly, he ushered
in this new ability and thereby set up new rules concerning flight” (Mason
and Edwards, Black Gods 11). In trying to assist Milkman to understand
some things concerning African people—of which Milkman at this point
in time has been oblivious—he says, “Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit
that weighs you down” (Song 180). Elegba is the Òrìsà who represents the
concept of choice and freewill assisting a person in deciding his or her own
destiny through the manipulation of forces and phenomena. Ferreira notes
that Elegba “puts us in a state opposite to the one we are in until we discern
the real purposes of life” and “to establish harmony between the visible and
invisible worlds” (1-A).
Guitar’s association with Elegba as being a protector is further substan-
tiated when he reveals to Milkman that he is a “Sunday man.” Explaining
the meaning of his name, he states that if someone kills a black person on
a Sunday he balances the death of a white person on Sunday. Guitar’s day
corresponds to the Akan day name of Kwesi. According to the Akan, each
day has its own controlling spirit force or energy associated with it; the
Sunday-born person is considered a protector.
When Milkman goes on his journey without including Guitar, he gains
his ire, causing Guitar to conclude that Milkman has duplicitous intentions
concerning the fortune of gold. Yoruba believe that one must propitiate
Elegba at the beginning of all activities in order to ensure success of the
endeavor. Additionally, if this placation does not occur, there will be ob-
stacles. Guitar has been looking for Milkman since his arrival in Shalimar.
The Yoruba proverb, ko se I duro de, ko si se isa fun (one neither flees from
him nor waits for him), speaks of the slipperiness of this Òrìsà who cannot
be constrained. When he least expects him, Milkman encounters Guitar
leaning against a tree.
For the Yoruba, Elegba’s mission on earth is to establish the foundation
for human beings’ perception of nature and reality. He negates existing
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 89

conceptions of reality and forces the establishment of new ones. One of his
praise songs illustrates this idea:
Bara suwa yo omo yalawa na
Keni irawo
Bara suwa yo omo yalawa na
Keni irawo bara wa yo Eke e Esu Odara
omo yalawa na keni irawo e

Vital force who far and wide appears;

Child that separates, splits and divides the road
Do not cut the initiate’s mat of goodness; Vital force will come to deliver
[us]
Forked stick,
Esu performer of wonders
Child that separates, splits and divides the road
Do not cut the initiates mat of goodness. (Orin Òrìsà 69)
Guitar helps Milkman to separate the two distinct halves of his one per-
sonality. After Milkman decides to rob Pilate’s house, he feels “a self in-
side himself emerge, a clean-lined definite self—a self that could join the
chorus at Railroad Tommy’s with more than laughter” (184). The narrator
describes how Guitar’s persuasive words not only help to define Milkman,
but also give the idea “a crisp concreteness” (184). Concrete is one of the
components in the symbolic recreation of the Òrìsà Elegba. In fact, Mason
notes that Elegba is the “cement that holds society together” (Orin Òrìsà
63). Through stories, Guitar, like Elegba, helps to gather the various in-
dispensable elements necessary for the creation of an authentic spiritual
culture, giving it credibility, validity, life, and creative power.
k k k
This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.
—Traditional Spiritual

Who was the first one to wear shiny clothes? That was me, Baby.
I started that. You remember that burgundy jacket I had with
the bolt of lightning on the back. The lightning was in glitter.
Glitter is shiny, Baby.
—James “Thunder” Early, “Dream Girls”
90 k Chapter 3

Toni Morrison uses the Kongo concept of vezima (flash) as the major con-
ceit in the novel to indicate spiritual presence. The idea of vezima relates
to spiritual interaction between the material and spiritual realms. Mani-
festations of light assist one to recognize his or her destiny or to have a
moment of spiritual remembrance from past incarnations. Robert Farris
Thompson notes that the flash can arouse the spirit (Face of the Gods 57).
In Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison employs a variety of words to represent
this impulse of spirit such as shiny, glitter, gleam, and gold. For example,
Milkman’s quest for gold symbolizes his intense need for spiritual fulfill-
ment, which he realizes through his reunion with his family and his con-
nection with the land. A Ghanaian maxim describes Milkman’s ultimate
realization:
It is the human being that counts;
I call upon gold, it answers not;
I call upon cloth it answers not;
It is the human being that counts. (Gyekye 25)
The Kongo idea that human beings are representations bringing radiance
in the form of light from the spirit world substantiates the symbolic signifi-
cance of mirrors and iridescence. Thompson reports that before the impor-
tation of mirrors, Kongo ritual experts used wing-case charms constructed
from the iridescent wings of a beetle. These charms were “something full
of light, like water, that you can see through to the other world” (Faces of
the Gods 175). He adds, “The idea of the glitter of the spirit fused with the
notion of second sight through symbolized flight in order to expand the
beyond—vila mu bangula bweno a ku mpemba” (174). Glittering objects
and the embedding of spirit became fundamental to African cosmos since
the shine “arrests the spirit with its light and hints of movement—to the
other world” (175).
In an interview of the Georgia Federal Writers’ Project recorded in
Drums and Shadows, George Boddison of Tin City states that the cop-
per wires strung with charms around his wrists and mirrors worn at his
temples, which “flashed and glittered when he moved his head,” were worn
to keep evil forces from hurting him. He states, “Du debil caahn dwell on
me. It hab tuh pass on.” The interviewers state as they drive away, “The last
glimpse we had was of the fragments of mirror bound to his head glittering
in the sun” (22).
The terms glitter and gleam are used to describe a range of characters
and their spiritual reactions and inclinations throughout the novel. Guitar
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 91

describes Pilate as having “silvery-brown skin of her ankles” (38). Addition-

ally, as Pilate relates the story of her father being shot “five feet into the air.”
Guitar’s eyes are described as “too shiny” (42). His shiny eyes relate to his
spiritual connection with the horror Pilate recounts as she tells the story
of how and when white people murdered African people with impunity.
Emblematic of his mission to balance the score, when asking about who
shot her father, his eyes were “glittering with lights (41). Glitter can also
represent Milkman’s contentment with his evolved sense of “self ” after the
physical confrontation with Macon. He reconsiders its impact measuring
it for his worthiness against “the kind of story that stirred the glitter up in
the eyes of the old men in Tommy’s” (85). Again as he relates his stories to
Reverend Cooper in Danville, “He glittered in the light of their adoration
and grew fierce with pride” (238).
Finally, the term silvery describes spiritual encounters and transforma-
tions. Following Circe’s direction to the cave’s location, Milkman falls into
the water and is submerged completely. He gets a glimpse of small “silvery
translucent fish” (251). The silvery gleam of the fish according to Kongo
belief is a reflection of the simbi (water spirits) who inhabit rivers and
other freshwater estuaries. Thompson notes that, as such, “rivers mark the
boundary between two realms” (Face 49); Milkman experiences a symbolic
death having crossed the kalunga line into the world beyond. Fu-Kiau notes
that fish and other amphibians deliver messages to the ancestors on behalf
of their descendants (quoted in Thompson, “Kongo Influences” 152).
Milkman’s ritual space for this preliminary ritual is in the woods, the
realm where the demarcation between spirit and the physical are blurred.
In Milkman’s journey to the cave, he is able to connect with nature via the
stream, the earth, trees, and elements typifying both the natural world and
ritual spaces. This ritual that introduces Milkman to the shared rhythms of
patterns of nature is an overture for his comprehension of future spiritual
events. As in all ritual space, boundaries and thresholds are clearly delin-
eated to mark the ingress and egress from ritual activity. Milkman’s ingress
was through the “parted bush.” From there, he “wades in water,” climbs
“twenty feet of steep rock,” and enters a cave (251–55). He egresses through
the cave and walks across a bridge indicating his spiritual evolution.
Within an African frame, rituals culminate with a meal corresponding
to the cool-down phase of spiritual performance. As Milkman emerges, he
begins to shake with hunger. Milkman’s intense hunger is a desire for an
authentic life. Moreover, his feeling that he is going to pass out suggests
that he is in a state of spiritual possession/transformation. His behaviors
92 k Chapter 3

following his emergence from the cave are inconsistent with previous ac-
tions. Furthermore, his eating of leaves is what the Yoruba would refer to
as a type of spiritual osain (herbal infusion) readying him for another phase
of the ritual.
After Milkman leaves the bush and heads back to “civilization,” he notes
the time. He observes the position of the sun, which is “a quarter of the
way down from what even he knew was high noon” (256). The time “quar-
ter of the way down” corresponds to a position on the dikenga dia Kongo
called luvemba (death) denoted by the color white prefigures Milkman’s
death.20

Maneno ya Melele

The people in Danville are also a key to the web of community for which
Milkman is searching/not searching.21 When Milkman first arrives in
Shalimar, he walks past the men on the porch, enters the store, and asks for
a drink without speaking or introducing himself. A major cultural breach
of not speaking or bringing the good word identifies Milkman as someone
who lacks the social values of African people. In this preliminary stage of
the ritual, the men teach Milkman the power of language through a verbal
ritual. One of the formulary insults referring to sexual inadequacy begins
the round, which indicates the utmost disrespect and to what length the
contest will escalate.
Milkman has no other option but to participate after the first challenge.
Soundin’ and signifyin’ are both valued social behaviors among African
males and considered a type of cultural initiation. After the verbal ex-
change, a physical fight ensues with a man wielding a “glittering” knife,
and Milkman is cut with a broken bottle. In that fight, Milkman gets a cut
on his face described as a slit. I read the mark as a cultural signifier, fore-
shadowing his acquisition of a new identity, as a flying African. Drewal and
Mason note that certain incisions or gbere in Yoruba language are protec-
tive, signaling the “invisible transformations of persons” (Henry Drewal
and Mason 332).
k k k
I got a black cat bone I got a mojo too I got the John the Con-
queror root I’m going to mess with you.
—Willie Dixon, “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man”
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 93

After Milkman engages in these verbal and physical exchanges and holds
his own, his provisional acceptance as a member of the community is sig-
naled by his invitation to hunt. Attired in the ritual gear of the hunter and
situated in the ritual space of the woods, his personality dissolves. In the
woods—a space of social deprivation away from his father’s money, his
own clothes, and other material possessions—Milkman learns the power
of language and is able to gain the information he needs to survive Guitar’s
attack against him.
The Zulu healer, Credo Mutwa, explains the significance of hunting a
bobcat as a rite of passage. Called Izilo ze Nkosi (Beasts of the King), bob-
cats were often used to test the courage of men who were to be promoted
to the next level (Mutwa 188). Milkman is able to begin his “new” life by
performing a once imponderable activity: hunting. Doing so, he emerges
from the woods with self-confidence and self-acceptance.
Similar to rites of passage, the ritual hunting advances Milkman to the
next phase of his soul journey. Milkman’s ability to be exhilarated by simply
walking the earth is an indication of his new status. His walking is analo-
gous to his being part of the earth, like a tree “his legs were stalks, tree
trunks, a part of his body that extended down down down into the rock
and soil, and were comfortable there” (284). Walking the earth, Milkman
regains the spiritual balance indicated by being able to walk upright with-
out a limp. This is similar to the ese or story of Babaluaiye, or Omolu, Lord
of the earth, the curative Òrìsà who has dominion over illness and health.
The ese explains how Babaluaiye developed a club foot after Nana Buruku
cast him into an abyss. Milkman has also been in a cultural abyss and has
now achieved the balance necessary to walk strong on the earth.
The Dogon describe the earth as the soil where man lives and walks
(Griaule and Dieterlen, Pale Fox 64). In this stage of his life, Milkman heads
toward his true self. Although he does not help the men catch the bobcat,
the hearty joke they enjoy at his expense engenders an acceptance of Milk-
man, especially after he acquiesces to become the subject of the joke. After
the sacrifice of the animal, the next phase of the ritual is the skinning of the
animal. Milkman takes part in the ritual vivisection and pulls out the heart,
which is symbolic of Hagar’s impending death from a broken heart and in
accordance with the theme of love consistent with all of Morison’s novels.
As the men ritually skin the cat, Guitar’s words mediate the incisions
the men make. Using a call-and-response motif, Toni Morrison re-creates
a litany or liturgical homily reminding the reader that a portion of all sac-
94 k Chapter 3

rifices is given to Elegba to make certain that the message is sent to Olofi.
The textual description of the vivisection punctuated by Guitar’s words
signifies the presence of Elegba—the interlocutor who carries the message
from the horizontal earth to the vertical heaven. The ritual meal following
the sacrifice returns the men to a normal state of social interaction after
their heightened state of excitement. Milkman finishes the ritual experi-
ence with a bath given to him by Sweet. In this act of washing, he learns the
idea of reciprocity and the true exchange of love that he has not been able
to share with Hagar. Through water imagery, an archetypal idea, Milkman
is transported from his singular life and is initiated into his new status as a
member of the African collective.

k k k

This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine. Let it shine, let
it shine, let it shine.
—Traditional African American Spiritual

Milkman also begins to feel linked through “some cord or pulse of infor-
mation” (296). He begins to make other connections about his “people”
after hearing the children sing a round game. Milkman tries to make the
link concerning who begat whom and the nature of his kin relationships.
Additionally, their singing reminds him of the cultural breaches in his own
childhood where he never was allowed to join in any of these ring games.
This round is what Olatunde O. Olatunji refers to as an oriki (praise poem)
in the Yoruba oral tradition. Olatunji notes that the result of chanting this
type of oriki is to create a sense of solidarity with one’s ancestors and to
gain pride and confidence in the self (183). Moreover, because he has no
pen, Milkman has to tap into the oral tradition, the primary way in which
culturally relevant information is exchanged intergenerationally. With
his back against a tree, a sudden tiredness overcomes him, and Milkman
curls into a fetal position. As his awareness of language heightens, he is
able to understand his family heritage, which ushers in a rebirth of spirit.
Overhearing the children singing he listens to the round. He commits the
song—described as consisting of “some nonsense words”—to memory.
Toni Morrison’s inscription of words derived from various African lan-
guages is taken from Drums and Shadows. White Bluff community mem-
ber Prince Sneed recounts a story told to him by his grandfather:
 I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Family History in Song of Solomon k 95

Muh gran say ole an Waldburg down on St. Catherine own some
slaves wut wuzn climatize an he wuk um hahd an one dey dey wuz
hoein in duh fiel and duh dribuh come out an two ub em wuz unuh a
tree in duh shade, an duh hoes wuz wukin by demself. Duh dribuh say
“Wut dis?” An dey say, “Kum buba yali kum buba tambe, Kum kunka
yali kum k’unka tambe,” quick like. Den dey rise off duh ground an fly
away. Nobody ebuh see um no mo. Some say dey fly back tuh Africa.
Muh gran see dat wid he own eye. (Drums and Shadow 79)

Using Lorenzo Dow Turner’s Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect, I trans-

lated these “nonsense words” and came up with the following phonetic
variations and their accompanying semantic values. For the word booba, I
found bubu, which in Mandingo means “to fly.” Additionally, booba yielded
the Yoruba buba, which means “to ambush” or “to hide.” The same word in
Ki-Kongo language means “to strike” and in Kimbundu from Angola “to
run out.” In the Vai language of Liberia and Sierra Leone, the word bubu
is a term imitative of the noise made by a fowl when about to fly.22 For the
word tambee, I make the correlation with tambi or ntambi from Ki-Kongo
meaning “footmark” (202). For yalle the closest equivalent is in Umbundu
language of Angola, yala, which means “to spread” (184). In Yoruba ya is a
verb meaning “to make way.” Finally, ka means “to rise” in Vai (206). Kan
also means “to be dropped” in Djerma of French West Africa (196).
The meanings of the words are consistent with the basis of the song and
the stories narrated about Solomon flying away and dropping the baby in
flight. Morrison’s imaginative prose assumes a greater cultural legitimacy
and links Milkman’s heroic quest to the millions of other Africans who
have fashioned their own heroic stories and maintained an unbroken circle
of language and narratives refuting the erasure of culture in the Americas.
Milkman’s epiphany is twofold consisting of the reclamation of his name
and the surrender of his self-centeredness.

Arrival

In this cautionary tale about balancing community interest with individual

objectives, Toni Morrison reiterates the values of heritage, history, and
heroism. Through Milkman’s transformation and discovery and Pilate’s
selfless example of spiritual integrity, readers are challenged to reflect and
reevaluate their own principles, reclaim their names and family stories,
96 k Chapter 3

and challenge historic hegemony, cultural erasure, and spiritual stasis. At

the novel’s end, having returned with Pilate to bury the bones of his de-
ceased grandfather, Pilate restates the power of love to sustain.23 She says,
“I would have loved ’em all. If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more”
(340).
Simon Bockie reports that before an important person dies, they address
the community, saying: “I loved everybody. I am not troubled to join my
ancestors” (98). Becoming a singer of the song in this inversion, Milkman
sings Pilate’s transition to the status of ancestor as she had sung him into
his birth. Her death adds one more element to the story of the flying Afri-
cans, those who could fly “without ever leaving the ground” (340). Prior to
his leap of flight/faith, Milkman achieves apotheosis. He shouts, “Guitar,
Here I am.” “You want my life?” (341). Afterwards, the hills respond, echo-
ing tar, am, and life three times each (341). Milkman realizes that Tar am
(is) Life—or he comes to an understanding of the tree of life—a metaphor
for self-realization. At last, he realizes his relationship to all that is and all
that will ever be. His connection to his ancestors is the source of power.
The power he now senses in that ancestral connection and with na-
ture supplants the material wealth he once sought. Accordingly, he be-
comes a “mud father,” the male correlate to Pilate’s “mud motherliness.”
With this revelation, Milkman can finally relieve himself of the thing that
has weighed him down—his singular, individual life. Leaping as “fleet and
bright as a lodestar” Milkman’s sun has “wheeled” toward completion and
he has become eternal.24 Now the round sung by the children in the circle/
ring will expand, adding Milkman’s name to the Song of Solomon.
 4

Dancing with Trees and Dreaming

of Yellow Dresses
The Dilemma of Jadine in Tar Baby

There is a spirit of nature, the spirit of the river, the spirit of the
mountain. There is the spirit of the animals, of the water, the
spirit of the ancestors.
—African Oral Tradition

They have a road they follow, and something called a god they
worship—not the living spirit that is in everything but a crea-
ture separate raised above all surrounding things.
—Ayi Kwei Armah, Two Thousand Seasons

In her third novel, Tar Baby (1981), Toni Morrison inscribes indigenous
knowledge, representing physical and cultural landscapes as sites of power
to balance individuals and restore community cohesion.1 Using patterns
of African traditional beliefs where nature is revered and deified, Mor-
rison enlarges the spiritual territory of the literary canon by linking her
narrative with eco-critical considerations of the natural world. Morrison’s
choice of epigrams for Tar Baby reiterates the idea of spiritual contentions
and contested identities. Quoting the Bible’s book of 1 Corinthians, “For
it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of
the house of Chloe, that here are contentions among you,” Morrison ar-
gues throughout the novel that these conflicts are spiritual at the core. My
analysis of Tar Baby concerns the ways in which the natural environment
interacts with characters and reflects their respective values, spiritual eth-
ics, or spiritual paucity.
I also consider the role and symbolic representation of the Yoruba spiri-
tual force Iyami Osoronga or Ajé. Highlighting my analysis of the Iyami,
or mothers of the earth, is an exploration of two Yoruba Òrìsà, Oshun and
Shango as leitmotifs of beauty and sacred medicine and justice, respec-
98 k Chapter 4

tively. As spiritual forces, Oshun and Shango, like the Ajé, represent the
potential for self-realization as well as for ecological and spiritual balance.
For that reason, an examination of the tensions between the un-natural
and the natural will direct the discussion of transgression and reintegra-
tion, taking into consideration two of the characters: Jadine Childs and Son
Green.
In Tar Baby, Morrison makes it apparent that she plans for her readers
to walk away with knowledge of their true and “ancient properties”(305).
For example, on her dedication page she affirms her allegiance to a circle of
ancestral women, as well as concentric circles of Iyami, or other mothers,
in the African American tradition of Ma Dear or Big Mommas, begin-
ning with her maternal great-great-grandmother Mrs. Caroline Smith, her
maternal great-grandmother Mrs. Millie McTyeire, her maternal grand-
mother Mrs. Ardelia Willis (for whom she is named), her mother Mrs.
Ramah Wofford, her sister Lois Brooks, as well as all of their “sisters.” In-
cluded in this sphere are other mud mothers who may not be related to her
by blood, but are connected through shared spiritual inclinations. These
qualities sacred and fluid are rooted in the creative imagination and are
reflected in the natural realm.
Morrison’s depiction of Isle des Chevaliers, the primary setting for the
novel, illustrates an African-derived idea of the natural world as a primary
dwelling for the divine. Under the canopy of the natural world, one has ac-
cess to God and to the source of one’s ancient properties. Consistent with
Morrison’s previous novelistic endeavors, when tradition is violated her di-
dactic narrative opens up spiritual/cultural spaces to bring the world back
to its equilibrium. Subverting the hegemonic attempt to separate African
people from sacred communion with nature, Morrison’s insistent prose
reestablishes nature’s prominence.
Formerly, as well as presently, hegemony has supported this partitioning
as a prerequisite to being civilized and to being converted from African
“heathenism.” Laurenti Magesa advances the depth of this connection for
African people:

Sustaining the universe by maintaining harmony or balance between

its two spheres and among all beings is the most important ethical
responsibility for humanity and it forms the basis of any individual’s
moral character. Even more significantly, however, it determines the
quality of the universe itself. It requires commitment in upholding
the sanctity of the creation in everyday life, because as Sindima has
Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of Jadine in Tar Baby k 99

emphasized, “All life—that of people, plants and animals, and the

earth—originates and therefore shares an intimate relationship of
bondedness with divine life; all life is divine life” (73).
For the most part, African people have maintained this relationship with
the land. Being in a place where they were not only physically different, but
were also environmental and philosophical aliens, they have maintained
many attitudes, customs, and cultural characteristics that can be traced
indirectly to Africa (Blues People 7). These ecological ethics, intrinsic to
African spiritual traditions, correspond to the Africans’ need to live in har-
monious ways with their environments and are intimately connected with
the broader framework of worldviews concerning physical landscapes.
The prevailing practice of revering nature and understanding that peo-
ple and land are never separate caused great tension between them and
their white captors. From earliest contact with African people, Europeans
posited that the African’s closeness to nature meant distance from God. To
tame, domesticate, civilize, de-nature, and de-spirit Africans became the
mission of American plantation owners and the process to affect control
over an African population, which in many southern states outnumbered
European-American enslavers. Concomitant with these Christian teach-
ings is a rejection of nature explained by Eve and Adam’s expulsion from
the Garden of Eden. Having access to the natural world is having access to
the source of one’s ancient properties and to God.
E. Bolaji Idowu explains that natural sites such as trees, rivers, hills,
“primordial divinities and the deified ancestors,” are places to petition God
(45). In Tar Baby Morrison gives primacy to the power resident in trees.
As a literary trope, trees must be considered in any exploration of nature
owing to their special significance in African culture. Janheinz Jahn notes,
“In them [trees] the water of the depths, the primal Nommo, the word of
the ancestors, surges up spontaneously; they are the road traveled by the
dead, the loas, to living men; they are the repository of the deified” (102).
As with her previous narrative figurations, Toni Morrison represents
disruptions of nature as metaphors for the spiritual displacement of Af-
rican people. Chronicling the characteristics of spiritual collapse—when
the natural order is disrupted by those who do not know the language of
nature, or its signs— Morrison writes:
The men had already folded the earth where there has been no fold
and hollowed her where there had been no hollow, which explains
what happened to the river. It crested, then lost its course, and finally
100 k Chapter 4

its head. Evicted from the place where it had lived, and forced into
unknown turf, it could not form pools or waterfalls and ran every
which way. (9)

For instance, many African indigenous spiritual systems share a common

corpus of knowledge and complex belief systems relative to river systems.
The river’s disappearance is significant given its location where communi-
cation takes place between human and spiritual worlds. As the essence of
both spiritual and physical life, rivers are regarded as the ultimate source of
such life-sustaining powers with potential to transform an individual from
one spiritual state to another.
For the Yoruba, places where land and trees converge with water are
thought to be sites of great spiritual energy, as is any place where two natu-
ral forces come together. This natural dilemma foreshadows the meeting
between Jadine and Son as a cosmic attempt to restore the equilibrium of
the natural world. Additionally, at the symbolic level, Mircea Eliade points
out that a river, a stone, a star, an animal can be transformed into some-
thing greater than self. These images of God in nature are extensions of re-
ality that go beyond representation and demonstrate the primary spiritual
edict—of living in balance with the surrounding forces of nature as well
as establishing sacred space in the natural environment (Sacred and the
Profane 12).
The establishment of sacred space in the natural environment coincides
with Yoruba thought as eco-spiritual emblems represent phenomena that
humans can draw on to access ASE (vital life force) that leads to transfor-
mation. The river also connects the Iyami or Ajé with the manifestation of
Oshun, whose name translates as spring or source (Mason, Orin Òrìsà 315).
Oshun is the owner of all fresh waters in the Yoruba thought. Other names
attributed to Oshun—Ololodi (the stream is the owner of fortification) and
Oshun Ikolé (the stream that builds the house)—are double significations
of Oshun and the Iyami. Mason notes that Oshun Ibukolé who drags her-
self through the mud at the bottom of the river is the friend of the Ajé (Orin
Òrìsà 316). Even the diamondback snakes that are annoyed by the mut-
tering trees are recodified pythons, associated with the Iyami as signs of
immortality and transformation (T. Washington 43). On Isle de Chevaliers,
an inverted world, nature has succumbed to the terror of men; houses grew
instead of orchids and the “poor insulted, brokenhearted river,” no longer
having access to its source, became a swamp and “sat in one place like a
grandmother” (Tar Baby 10).
Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of Jadine in Tar Baby k 101

Becoming a swamp because of its lost memory, the river, called Sein
de Vielles or literally old women’s breast by the Haitians, is now “a shriv-
eled fogbound oval seeping with a thick black substance” (10). However
grim the destiny of the river has become, Toni Morrison’s prose opens up
the space for renewal. All is not lost; the river’s transformation becomes
the sacred location for the Ajé or Great Mothers. Recovering its ancient
properties or primordial rememory, the river turns into tar. As Henry John
Drewal and Margaret Thompson Drewal describe, “Darkness is the natural
abode of mothers and the creatures most associated with them, such as
birds, bats, rats, and reptiles” (11). Transforming its identity, the river rep-
resents the power resident in old women to traverse both the physical and
spiritual realms. Noting this spiritual capacity, Drewal and Drewal assert
that “the mothers by definition, also have this ability; they are mortals who
have access to the otherworld. It is in their supernatural capacity, reflected
in the power of transformation, that women are considered ‘owners of two
bodies’ (abara meji) and the ‘owners of the world’ (oni l’oni aiye)” (Gelede
11).
Situated against the backdrop of this spiritually charged environment—
the domain of earth mothers and blind horsemen who ride the night—is
Jadine Childs a potential mud mother, who drinks hot chocolate in the
tropics and has knowledge enough of Paris to make reference to the Tu-
ileries in casual conversation with her relatives. Although Jadine can boast
about having knowledge of that neatly sculpted and controlled green space
located in the middle of a city teeming with people, she is uncomfortable
and dislocated amidst the natural beauty of the tropics. Valerian Street,
the retired candy manufacturer who neglects the beauty remaining on the
island to grow foreign species such as peonies, dahlias, anemones, and hy-
drangeas in a greenhouse, introduces Jadine (Jade) by invoking her name
as someone “as honest as they come” (18). Margaret’s description of her as
“having the world” is consistent with the description of the Ajé, oni l’oni
aiye (owners of the world).
In his interpretation of the Ifa odu, Osetua, David O. Ogunbile notes
that Oshun has an expansive knowledge of the origins of the world and
participates in its maintenance as the leader of the Ajé who manipulate
human and divine endeavors (Eerindilogun 205). Finally, Ondine, Jadine’s
aunt, portrays her in terms of her physical beauty. Referring to her be-
ing “in every magazine in Paris” she boasts, “Prettiest thing I ever saw”
(40). Considered the essence of female beauty and sexuality, Oshun is the
touchstone for feminine charm and motherhood. These early descriptions
102 k Chapter 4

foreshadow the challenges Jadine faces when she encounters the tar-black
woman in Paris and later on the island when she meets the Ajé in the
woods.
Haunted by the vision of the woman she encounters in a Paris super-
market “with skin like tar” in a “canary yellow dress” and “two upside-down
V’s” scored into each of her cheeks, Jadine retreats to the island to recover
from the disquieting thoughts caused by the woman holding three eggs in
“tar-black fingers” (45). By internalizing her discomfort, Jadine begins to
engage in the type of introspection that could lead her to the knowledge
of deeper things. Heading for Dominique, she confesses to herself that the
“woman in the yellow dress who had run her out of Paris” had made her
“feel lonely and inauthentic” (48). The source of the woman’s power is sym-
bolized, not only by the yellow of her dress, but in the description of the
“two upside down V’s” on her cheeks.
Bunseki K. Fu-Kiau calls the concept of V the “basis of all realities” and
“the foundation of the Bantu system of thought as well their cosmologies”
(African Cosmology 129). Because all things emanate from V, it is crucial
to explore its meaning as a cosmological concept. Not only is V biological,
but also it is ideological forming at the musoni level of the cosmological
process. Fu-Kiau asserts, “It is the process [dingo dingo] to all changes,
social and institutional; natural and unnatural, seen and unseen” (African
Cosmology 139).
The dissonance in Jadine is connected to the idea that inside the V
stands the master teacher, the Nganga, also a priest and emblem of spiri-
tual power. If Jadine had walked in the direction of the discomfort she felt
when encountering the woman, she would have had to evolve into a new
person. For example, each of the woman’s four V’s etched on her tar-col-
ored skin represents the four main demarcation points of the Kongo cos-
mogram, dikenga dia Kongo, which also represents the vitality of life inside
the circle of community. The first level, V1 or Vangama, is the formation
of the person; V1 is the “most fertile garden.” The next level, V2 or Vaika,
represents the existence stage: to be, to exist, to rise. The third level, V3 or
Vanga, means to perform or do. And the last level, V4 or Vunda, represents
death both natural and unnatural (African Cosmology 130).
Like her tar blackness, the eggs the woman carries are elemental to the
understanding of life and the primordial reality undergirding its founda-
tions relating to the Ba Kongo notion of the physical world, which com-
prises three basic forces “whose power lies in the balance between them”
(African Cosmology 31). This upper world is widely known in the Kongo
Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of Jadine in Tar Baby k 103

traditional symbolizing system as makuku matatu (three firestones). The

three firestones, which uphold the social Kongo structural motor, kinzu,
are linked with the Kongo worldview through its presence in the Kongo
cosmogram. Traversing the doorway toward ku mpemba into the realm
of the ancestors, a person is reborn at the musoni stage. Fu-Kiau explains
that at this level a person should “become a true knower of what is marked
on one’s mind and body” (destiny) in order to become “a winged person,
a flier” (129). Furthermore, the color yellow, symbolic of the musoni stage,
is associated with knowledge that leads to the “deepest things.” Musoni re-
minds the Nganga or spiritual officiate that things should be done in their
natural order (African Cosmology 33).
Despite all of her perceived accomplishments, Jadine is powerless when
confronted with the spiritual presence of the woman in yellow. Potentially,
a representative of Oshun Ibukolé, whose only clothes are a yellow dress
that has turned white from all the washing (Mason, Orin Òrìsà 316), Jadine
is the yellow-skinned woman who has been white-washed and seduced by
European cultural values. In her acculturation, she has become something
other than herself, casting aside her own personality. However, Jadine
is both attracted to and repulsed by the woman in the yellow dress who
represents her spiritual double. The narrator’s description of the woman’s
multi­referential identity as “woman—that mother/sister/she; that unphoto­-
graphable beauty” (Tar Baby 46) juxtaposes with Jadine’s singular super-
ficial reality. That is, Jadine had recently been selected to be on the cover
of Elle magazine and had considered this to be one of the “happiest days
of her life” (44). It is interesting to note that elle is the French word for the
pronoun she. However, the woman in the canary-yellow dress with her
unphotographable beauty displaced Jadine’s photographed beauty. After
seeing the woman, Jadine yearns for real power and authenticity, not the
plastic world of advertising where a woman had to camouflage and pass
herself off as a “nineteen-year-old face” (45) in order to be employable.
While still in Paris, Jadine takes stock of her inauthenticity and admits
her comfort in being the type of black woman who does not like jazz, does
not wear hoop earrings, and longs to be an individual free from racial bur-
dens/boundaries. For example, her falling asleep listening to Charles Min-
gus signifies her inability to understand the cultural complexities of sound
at the second level, V2. At this level one learns how to code and decode
and to feed the ears with “our waves” (Fu-Kiau 139). These sounds, accord-
ing to Fu-Kiau, are “genetically coded/printed [sonwa] inside one’s inner
darkroom” (139). The notion of sound corresponds to the demarcation of
104 k Chapter 4

kala whose representative color is black. Jadine’s failure to appreciate black

sounds leaves her in a cultural void and cuts her off from the process of
being and becoming within the circle.
Moreover, her dislike for hoop earrings indicates the linear contours of
her worldview. The wearing of hoop earrings by African women is not just
a fashion style, but also a cultural signifier glossing the power of the circle
to be the central organizing principle of the world, an index of memory
relating to the cyclical worldview that continues to inscribe the body as
cosmological statement and a mnemonic reference. Jadine also expresses
her willingness to step outside the circle of the blackness and the commu-
nity and to be an individual. From a Kongo spiritual perspective, the closer
a person is to the center of the community, the more powerful; conversely,
the more distant the less powerful. Jadine’s anxiety of not measuring up to
the standards of blackness is motivated not by the circle of black people but
by her need to be accepted by the white men who have proposed to her. In-
stead of accepting the woman in yellow as the Nganga to teach her, or as an
opportunity for self-awareness, she moves away from the uncomfortable
feelings and tries to put “the woman in yellow out of her mind” (49). Her
individuality thwarts the creative objective of the Iyami realized through
cooperation of women in the circle of community (T. Washington 68).
The dream/vision of the woman in the yellow dress represents Jadine’s
private mythology of who she can/ought to be in her deeper being. Eliade
says the symbols that re-present themselves to a person’s subconscious
transmit a particular message linked to that person’s destiny and are pre-
sented to awaken the person to a metaphysical understanding of that world
and their relationship to it (Sacred 211). Key to this awakening is contem-
plation and ultimately acceptance of the spiritual information. Jadine’s reti-
cence about her spiritual inclinations resigns her to cable old relatives and
head to the island of Dominique. Jadine’s traversing of physical boundaries
is insufficient for healing and transcendence. The threat of sacrilization
keeps Jadine from heeding the message presented by the woman in yellow.
That is to say she is content with the secular image of herself as the sole
agent of her destiny and refuses to heed any information that could pos-
sibly liberate her. She must kill the god within to proceed on the worldly
path she has chosen for herself (Sacred 203).
In order for Jadine to traverse the boundaries separating the imagined
self from her real self, she would have to open up the possibilities of time to
include a succession of eternities. Kongo spiritual culture iterates the no-
Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of Jadine in Tar Baby k 105

tion of the human being as consisting of two selves: collective and private.
Any breakdown between the two produces a personal and social crisis. By
choosing flight from Europe to the Caribbean, she has not alleviated her
discomfort with herself and her blackness.
Musing about her resignation to separate herself from the wider African
American community, Jadine reveals that the Street’s only child, Michael
had accused her of abandoning her people. However, Michael’s assessment
of her has no effect on her consciousness to perhaps reconsider the direc-
tion in which she is heading. Additionally, the desire to become or be-
have like something else finds agency in her over-identification with white
people. Even when Valerian makes an off-color remark in Jadine’s presence
about Michael’s idea of racial progress being “All Voodoo to the People,”
Jadine agrees and replies, “I think he wanted me to string cowrie beads or
sell Afro combs” (73). Not offended at all, by either Valerian’s comment
indicated by her own response, Jadine alerts Valerian of the cultural void
in which she makes choices.
Jadine’s rejection of African culture and her acceptance and valoriza-
tion of the white aesthetic is uneven. Her insistence that Pablo Picasso,
who duplicated and merely imitated African masks, has more value than
the originator represents her shallow understanding of the trope of black
creative genius and its allegiance to autonomous black values. For instance,
in Africa, masking is a tradition that represents the spiritual and cultural
worldview and the relationship African people have with different realms
of experience and representation. For African people, spirituality forms
the basis for all cultural representations. When the masks are prepared
ceremonially, worn, and danced—celestial, ancestral human, and organic
forces (wood) converge to provide a sense of well-being for the community.
A mask is never danced alone without social interactions. Picasso’s work
does not signify the same things. His replication of the masks unattended
by the culture that supports and breathes the ontological agency into their
fashioning is insignificant from an African perspective.
Jadine asserts that the conversation with Michael was difficult but pro-
ductive, since it forces her to consider his propositions. However, in the
final analysis, she makes the choice to free herself from being bound by
the cultural mores of black people. The choices Jadine makes are based
on her desire to rise above her former life on Morgan Street in Baltimore
and not for the spiritual transcendence that she will need to be whole and
a productive member of a community. Prior to meeting Son, she has tried
106 k Chapter 4

to think of other possibilities. She tries to visualize them, wave after wave
of chevaliers, but somehow that makes her think of the woman in yellow
who had run her out of Paris.

k k k

She does not sing, her body is a song. She is in the forest,
dancing. Torches flare . . . juju men, gree gree, witch doc-
tors . . . torches go out. . . . The Dixie Pike has grown from a goat
path in Africa
—Jean Toomer, Cane

Another indication of Jadine’s spiritual personality and destiny occurs in

her interaction with the Ajé in the woods. Instead of the panic that she has
initially thought was an option, Jadine grabs the waist of the tree and the
women looking down from the trees misread the sign and think that she
wants to dance. The drawing pad with “Son’s face badly sketched looked up
at her and the women hanging in the trees looked down at her” (182). The
trees communicate that Son is one of the horsemen and that Jadine is one
of them. Their message also confirms that Son is her spirit partner. More-
over, the women advise her that Son is the one who can rescue her from
the rot/rut of her life. This ritual act with the tree reveals Jadine’s current
condition and indicates the effort she will have to put forth to get in touch
with herself, her spirit, and her ancestors. Jadine’s communion with the
trees opens up the possibilities that she can return to nature, partner with
the trees, and whittle away false perceptions of her physical self that belie
her spiritual personality. Her dance prefigures not only her potentiality, but
also her relationship with Son.
The trees have claimed Jadine as a runaway child returning to them.
Jadine is not their runaway daughter, but a runway model. The trees “won-
dered at the girl’s desperate struggle down to be free, to be something other
than they were” (183). Morrison writes, “The women hanging from the
trees were quiet now, but arrogant—mindful as they were of their value,
their exceptional femaleness, knowing as they did that the first world of
the world had been built with their sacred properties” (183). Eliade remarks
on the idea of the tree to remind a person of their deeper self and soul’s
inclination, available if they would only tap into their subconscious mind
or to their dreams. For Eliade, trees have the potential to communicate that
knowledge to humans (Sacred 212).
Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of Jadine in Tar Baby k 107

Trees represent a major trope in Morrison’s other novels. In Beloved, for

example, from the connection Sixo makes about going to the trees at night
where he danced “to keep his bloodlines open” (25) to the chokecherry
tree on Sethe’s back carved from the lasher’s whip, Morrison re-enshrines
the tree’s spiritual prominence, revealing this sacred connection between
humans and trees. Paul D’s testimony on the nature of trees iterates their
status. Commenting on Sethe’s scarred back; he refutes its identity as a
tree contrasting the terror of her keloidal flesh with his tree, Brother. He
says, “Trees were inviting; things you could trust and be near, talk to if
you wanted to” (Beloved 21). In Song of Solomon, Milkman has his defini-
tive moment of self-realization leaning on the back of a tree listening to
the children repeatedly sing the song of Solomon, the flying African. In
another encounter with a tree, Milkman feels the tree’s roots cradle him
“like the rough but maternal hands of a grandfather” (Song 282). Within
a Bantu cosmological frame, trees are one element of the natural world
that does not need the command of a Muntu (human being). This special
status given to trees in African philosophy explains why they are given
primacy as a motif in the fiction of African Americans. In some novels for
instance, they are given status as minor characters; such is the case in The
Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, written by Ernest J. Gaines, where
the title character comments about how the indigenous people of America
worshipped the river and shared her beliefs concerning talking to trees.
Jadine fails to understand the value of the communication from the Ajé
who have selected her to join them, indicated by the earth that has marked
the hem of her dress with “a deep dark and sticky” substance (Tar Baby
183). Later when Margaret sees her, she says it “Looked like pitch” (185).
Jadine does not acknowledge or consider what has happened to her be-
yond getting her clothes soiled and being inconvenienced. But for spiritual
people, nature is never only natural. Eliade notes, “Only the religious vi-
sion of life makes it possible to decipher other meanings in the rhythm of
vegetation, first of all the ideas of regeneration, of eternal youth, of health,
of immortality” (Sacred 149). Failing to see the connection, Jadine misses
the opportunity to probe her relationship to the land, to other people, and
herself. Among the Nguni people of South Africa, particularly, the Xhosa
and the Zulu believe that future sangomas (female priests) receive their
calling by being submerged under bodies of water or a river pool for many
hours, days, or years. This indicates their “calling” to be a diviner and a tra-
ditional healer. This summoning can also occur in a dream state indicating
their having been “called.” After they accept this spiritual beckoning, they
108 k Chapter 4

are trained in various healing capacities including knowledge of the sacred,

psychic abilities and understanding concerning herbal pharmacopoeia.
Being marked in this river of concentrated tar signals Jadine’s connec-
tion to her spiritual personality as a child of Oshun who controls the ajé
and the rivers that bind the nation. This connection is extended to relation-
ships with the ancestors. Kamalu Chukwunyere remarks that the concept
of tar “is the complete world,” which includes the body, soul, all temporal
realities; it is also connected to the ancestors (164). Since the word tar is
etymologically related to tree, the connection with the land and the ca-
pacity for endless regeneration, the significance of Jadine’s inability to pay
attention to her anointing by the earth and dancing with the trees must be
underscored. This is not the first time that she has ignored the implication
of tar, first revealed to her by the tar-skinned woman in the yellow dress.
Now as a yellow woman with a tar-stained dress, Jadine fails to see the mir-
ror pointing her toward self-realization. For Jadine the signs have ceased to
signify. Prefiguring self-rejection, the rejection of Son and her family, her
refusal to recognize the signs is analogous to her own cosmic death and the
improbability of future offspring.
k k k
No power can stay the mojo
when the obi is purple
and the voodoo is green
and Shango is whispering,
Bathe me in Blood.
I am not clean
—Henry Dumas, “Rite”

Juxtaposed with Jadine’s experience, Son’s relationship with nature and

the trees reveals his acceptance of his connection with Shango, the Òrìsà
of lightning and redistributive justice. The description of his “beard hair,”
which “crackled like lightning,” and his hair, which looked like “the crown
of a deciduous tree” (132), are consistent with his symbolic representation
as lightning and his royal office of kingship. As a correlate of the Òrìsà,
whose earthly representation is wood, the trees interact with Son as he
walks, taking on a human presence “muttering in their sleep” (134), “part-
ing their wide leaves,” and “touching his cheek” (135). Like Shango, one of
the exalted sons of Olodumare, Son, the figurative representation of the
natural world, has multiple names and multiple identities. But Son “was
Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of Jadine in Tar Baby k 109

the name that called forth the true him. The him that he never lied to, to
the one he tucked in at night and the one he did not want to die. The other
selves were like the words he spoke—fabrications of the moment, misin-
formation required to protect Son from harm and to secure that one reality
at least” (39). Because Shango represents the power of truth to transform a
person, one of the mandates of Shango is to never lie.
Magesa discusses the significance of names to represent destiny:
More than merely symbolic or for the purposes of identification, real
re-presentation (making present again) takes place in the act of nam-
ing. Naming involves the incarnation or actualization of a person
(ancestor); certain desired moral quality or value, a physical trait or
power, or an occasion or event. To confer a name is therefore to con-
fer personality status, destiny, or express a wish or circumstances in
which the bearer of the name was born. (89)
Son’s name integrates him with his personality. Like his solar correlate that
remains unchangeable, the name “gives expression to the religious values
of autonomy and power, of sovereignty, of intelligence consistent with the
solarization of the supreme beings in various cultures” (Sacred 157). When
Son visits the island where Therèse and Gideon live, they parade him
through the “streets of town like a king” (Tar Baby 149). The comfort with
which Son wears his name is consistent with a devotee of Shango. Shango
is at once literal, mystical, archetypal, and historical. Benjamin C. Ray as-
serts, “The Òrìsà is thus a magnified symbol of his or her own personality.
It enables the devotee to express certain unconscious aspects of the self
and to channel and integrate his or her total personality” (38).
Toni Morrison’s inscription of Shango and his accompanying thematic
idea of redistributive justice is an appropriate novelistic figuration: simul-
taneously semiotic and political representing the ideology and the values
recognized by the group. Shango, a deified warrior-king is considered a
moral force and a champion of justice. As a human being, he is the fourth
alaafin (king) of the Oyo Empire, the former political capital of the Yoruba.
As the most recognized Òrìsà of African people in the western hemisphere,
Shango makes a smooth transition across the Atlantic Ocean.
Shango’s sense of justice is evident in Son’s thoughts in response to
Therèse and Gideon being fired for stealing apples. Son is incensed that the
people who have been summarily dismissed are the denizens of the very
land that has yielded the raw materials for people like the Streets to create
wealth and privilege. Son judges those who tear up the land and exploit it
110 k Chapter 4

(Tar Baby 203). Besides, he reflects on the idea that the sole purpose of the
exploiter is “to make waste,” and he surmises that Valerian Street was one
of the “killers of the world” (204).
Valerian recognizes Son’s spiritual identity when Son challenges him
for having fired Gideon and Therèse for allegedly stealing apples. In Valer-
ian’s mind his actions are correct, and he contemplates vindication for his
decision represented by the cavalry coming to his defense. The horses that
Valerian envisions do not belong to the French chevaliers; the evocation of
equestrian soldiers is the presence of the African riders invoked by Son’s
bold actions. What is interesting to note is Son’s assessment of the signs:
“Somewhere in the back of Son’s mind one hundred black men on one
hundred unshod horses rode blind and naked through the hills and had
done so for a hundred years” (206).
Son’s version is consistent with his destiny objective and explains his
being positioned on this island when he has no conscious intention of be-
ing there. Morrison repeats the phrase, “He had not followed the women”
(133–37), along with its variants—“for he was not following the women”
(135) and “because he was not following the women” (138)—a total of eight
times to reiterate his trancelike arrival on the island. What follows are the
circumstances that precipitate Son’s advent to the island as well as the
sense of destiny relative to Jadine as an analogue of Oshun.
In the opening pages of the novel, the reader meets the yet unnamed
man, Son Green, on the railing of a boat named Stor Konigsgaarten, which
literally translates into star king’s garden. The naming of the ship corre-
sponds to one of Shango’s accolades: “King of the earth.” Also, the concept
of star and a “heart pounding in sweet expectation” represents the Òrìsà
of the sweet waters, Oshun, one of Shango’s three “wives,” whose physical
correlate is the heart and one of whose cosmic emblems is the five-pointed
star.2 Additionally, Oshun’s description of being a coquette who uses her
wiles to gain the power needed to save the world is revealed in Morri-
son’s careful prose personifying the schooner Queen of France as a flirt
that “blushed a little in the lessening light and lowered her lashes before
his gaze” (3). Furthermore, this same reference represents Jadine, who is
on the Isle des Chevaliers vacationing from Paris, and foreshadows Son’s
subsequent relationship with her.
Other descriptions of Oshun substantiating her literary presence are
Morrison’s cataloguing of Oshun’s symbols: the butterfly, the heart, blood,
and teardrops. The narrator reports, “When he’d rested he decided to swim
butterfly and protect his feet. . . . All he saw was water, blood-tinted by a sun
Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of Jadine in Tar Baby k 111

sliding into it like a fresh heart. . . . Queen of France was already showing
lights like teardrops from a sky pierced to weeping by the blade tip of an
early star” (4–5; emphasis added). For the Yoruba, Oshun represents the
blood that flows through the veins and speaks of relationships both famil-
ial and amorous. Moreover, in this one passage Toni Morrison condenses
Oshun’s key symbols related to her exclusively from a Yoruba traditional
perspective, such as the butterfly, the heart (okan), teardrops (crying), and
the star (irawo). During his relationship with Jadine, Son tries to instruct
her about her identity and destiny as a star.
Son’s initiating ritual occurs when he leaves the ship and swims toward
an unknown shore. Like Sula’s Shadrack, Son’s lack of material possessions
indicates his status as a spiritual individual, a man with “no book of post-
age stamps, no razor blades, or keys to any door” (3). This enumeration of
items tells the reader he exists in a liminal space, “A man without human
rites: unbaptized, uncircumcised, minus puberty rites or the formal rites of
manhood. Unmarried and undivorced. He had attended no funeral, mar-
ried in no church, raised no child. Propertyless, homeless, sought for but
not after. There were no grades given in his school, so how could he know
when he had passed?” (166). The school to which Morrison is referring has
to do with a type of spiritual training for a person “who wanted another
way to be in the world” (167).
With the inclusion of this brief list, Morrison primes the reader to antic-
ipate his spiritual mission. With his “knees to his chest,” his assumption of a
fetal position symbolizes his re-birth in the primordial ocean—represented
by Yemonja the mother of Òrìsà, the mother of humankind and the mother
of all things on earth. Son’s leaving the ship is a way for him to reconnect
to himself after years of running away after committing a crime due to his
“hot-headedness,” which is one of Shango’s principal flaws. He swam in
the “soft” and “warm” water “where a bracelet of water circled” him and
“yanked him in a wide empty tunnel” (4). In this rebirthing in the ocean,
Yemonja, the mother of life allows Son access to a new life and identity.
Yemonja represents the tendency of all things in nature to regenerate with
the determination to survive, to nurture their own kind and to promote
growth. As the Mother of all she is the idea of growth and fertility and her
principal stories are of the raising of Shango (Weaver and Egbelade xvi).3
As Son gives himself to the water, “whirling in a vortex” . . . he thought
of nothing except, “I am going counterclockwise” (4). This directional ori-
entation signals his journey toward the recovery of self. Moreover, the tug-
ging underwater indicates a ritual cleansing by the Yoruba Òrìsà Olokun
112 k Chapter 4

representing the bottom of the ocean, described in his going “down.” In the
western hemisphere, Olokun becomes an Òrìsà of salvation for Africans
helping to restore spiritual unity breached by the Middle Passage and the
emotional and physical brutality experienced in the crossing into Ameri-
can captivity. Lloyd Weaver notes Olokun is “the dark and unknowable
bottom of the sea” and “collective unconsciousness of mankind” (xxviii).
Weaver says that because of the millions of bones lying at the bottom of
the ocean as a result of the Middle Passage, Olokun becomes a sympathetic
messenger on behalf of the “spiritual collective” interred in his domain
(xxviii). Son’s being pulled down expiates him from the mistakes of the past
and situates him to reenter life restored.
Once ashore and discovered, Son’s presence as an authentic black man
appears to rescue Jadine from spiritual nihilism. The first question she asks
him about having been in Sein de Vielles is, “Did you see any ghosts while
you were there?” His reply informs Jadine—and all in the room—that he
believes in the ideas associated with the spiritual realm. In her question,
Jadine probes the prospects of him leading her to an authentic life replete
with the powers available in the invisible world. His presence stirs up both
nature and Jadine. Both have a heightened awareness of Son’s presence:
“The heavy clouds grouped themselves behind the hills as though for a pa-
rade. You could almost see the herd assemble, but the man swinging in the
hammock was not aware of them. He was dwelling on his solitude, rocking
in the wind, adrift” (165). Even with her emotional constraints, Jadine’s
imagination is also charged with ideas of spiritual subjugation denoted by
the presence of the gleam and shine of his presence.
The recognition of his spiritual connection to her is revealed in the im-
age in the mirror, which seizes her attention. She has to struggle “to pull
herself away from his image in the mirror” and resist drowning in the “riv-
erbed darkness of his face” (114). Oshun, the queen of sweet waters and
rivers, represents the first mirror where human beings meet images and
imagination. Oshun is the Òrìsà of beauty allure: the appeal, the attraction,
and ultimately, the burning love between man and woman that makes for
procreation. Son is equally invested in his estimation of her identity. Using
imagery emblematic of Oshun, such as the mirror, Morrison points out
Jadine’s link to the Òrìsà with the description of the dress she is wearing
in the fashion magazine, “Natural raw silk . . . honey-colored. . .” and her
adornment with “heaps of gold necklaces above the honey-colored silk”
that cost “$32,000” (117). Honey, gold, and the number five (3+2) are all
designations for Oshun.
Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of Jadine in Tar Baby k 113

Similar to the Yoruba stories where Shango is obsessed with Oshun, Son
is obsessed with the idea of Jadine revealed in his first encounters with her.
By breathing the smell of tar into Jadine, he attempts to re-fashion Jadine
to be one of the earthy women of Eloe, his all-black hometown, and the “tar
black” woman lingering in Jadine’s conscious and subconscious memory.
He also tries to activate her suppressed earthiness preparing her to be his
spiritual counterpart. Apataki testify to Shango’s unrelenting pursuit of
Oshun. Son will remark later in the novel “She crowned me, that girl did.
No matter what went wrong or how tired I was, she was my crown” (193).
When the narrative setting shifts to New York, Jadine easily exchanges
the island for islands in the middle of Broadway: Isle des Chevalier’s “avo-
cado trees” for the “smart thin trees on Fifty-Third Street, juxtaposed with
Son’s sense of being abandoned by his memory, which recalled that there
“used to be trees” (221). With competition in the “wilds” of the metropolis,
Son “thought he would have to stamp the ground, paw it and butt horns
with every male they came in contact with, but he didn’t” (223). All of the
aforementioned verbs are references to zoomorphic representations of
Shango. For example, “stamping the ground” refers to a horse, a primary
association with Shango, while “pawing” relates to a leopard, another fa-
miliar, and “butting horns” conveys the idea of a ram, the primary animal
used in propitiary offerings to the thunder deity.
Similar to Milkman’s comment in Song of Solomon about the security
of being in the company of all black people, Son wants to return to Eloe,
where “segregation was honest” and where “no white people live” (172).
Eloe is a Garden of Eden, where African people can practice African cul-
ture, live close to the earth, and maintain earthy values and their own spiri-
tual ethos. If New York is a test for Son’s ability to adapt to Jadine’s world,
Eloe poses a more difficult challenge for Jadine’s city sensibilities. Going
through the formalities, Jadine is introduced to an assemblage of down-
home folks. While at Aunt Rosa’s house, which is rich in spirits and egun
(ancestors), Jadine experiences her haunting denoted by being confronted
with the “blackest nothing she had ever seen” (252). Jadine encounters this
formless blackness, which allows neither “shadows,” “outlines,” nor a “line
between earth and sky.” In fact, the “place where the sky ought to be, was
starless” (252). The erased boundaries between heaven and earth repre-
sent the state of spiritual activity where a convergence or an exchange of
energies could result in Jadine’s transformation, while the absence of stars
in the celestial realm is a metaphor for her dispossessed self, her spiritual
paucity and failed destiny.
114 k Chapter 4

Characteristic of her spiritual bereftness, Toni Morrison replicates the

scene in the woods where Jadine first encounters the tree mothers with a
few variations. Jadine’s going out the back door and her encounter with
an airless darkness is a metaphor for the abode of the ancestors and an
opportunity to participate in a type of rebirth in order to cultivate a spiri-
tual personality worthy of Son. In the Yoruba divination system of Ifa, the
pattern known as oyeku meji concerns the relationship of dark spaces and
individual actions and their ultimate connection to spiritual elevation. In-
stead of going down into a hole, this time Jadine experiences a glimpse of
the darkness, emblematic of the spiritual void in which she dwells. Realized
in her mind as a “cave,” a “grave,” the “dark womb of the earth, suffocating
with the sound of plant life moving, but deprived of its sight” (252), this
fleeting glimpse at darkness juxtaposes the notion of the flash of the spirit,
apprehended as light and indicates the type of internal spiritual work that
Jadine will have to do to acquire the necessary power to envision her au-
thentic spiritual self.
In that darkness, the novel’s African women, including her deceased
mother and even the woman in the yellow dress, reveal their breasts (258),
reminding her that to be female is to be able to mature, propagate life,
die, regenerate, and continue. However, Jadine’s sense of being competi-
tive, a value learned in the worlds of fashion and white folks, thwart her
understanding of their intentions. Similar to when she first encounters the
woman in yellow, the apparition reiterates the importance of nature and
the idea of the human life cycle. Jadine decides that she can no longer
endure the possibility of more “plant sounds in the cave and the certainty
of the night women” (259). Instead of moving in the direction of her ances-
tors, she backs away from them, going in the opposite direction toward
regression, claiming it to be progress.
The Ajé intervene one last time. When asking herself what went wrong,
Jadine says that she got “the same sixteen answers” (290). This reference
to the merindilogun or sixteen cowries used to divine in the Yoruba spiri-
tual tradition signifies the Ajé. Teresa N. Washington notes that the “cross-
roads sixteen or sixteen roads” is one of the spiritual locations of the Ajé.
Additionally, this crossroads is situated at the interstices where spirit and
material meet (Our Mothers, Our Powers 19). Jadine heads for Paris to her
past (the material realm) that she thinks is her future, not to the domain of
spirit. Accompanied by her material possessions, five pieces of luggage and
her seal coat, Jadine returns to a life where there is no time for dreaming.
Unable to answer the call of destiny, she flies, not like the Ajé who are as-
Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of Jadine in Tar Baby k 115

sociated with their spirit familiars, birds, but in first-class accommodations

on an airplane, back to the material world to be an individual.
Son has tried to persuade Jadine to tap into the spiritual side of her
personality. He has taught her how to see/be a star when she closes her
eyes, as a way to get in touch with her inner self. The omniscient narrator
describes Jadine using avian imagery; “she was like a bird in the crook of
his arm” (210), and later Son remembers the “bird-like defenselessness” he
had loved (220). At the core of their spiritual union is his recognition of
her as a star. In the Dogon spiritual system, stars are considered to be in-
spirited components of a dynamic whole, among which there is a constant
exchange of energies representing the metaphysical and physical realities
of the universe (Griaule and Dieterlen 15) Furthermore, he endeavors to
show her that she is the lady in the yellow dress. Both of these attempts, if
successful, would have empowered her spiritually. Failing to see the con-
nection, Jadine misses the opportunity to explore her relationship to the
land, to other people, and to herself. At this point, Son has no other re-
course but to engender his own spiritual destiny indicated by his return to
Isle des Chevaliers.

k k k

Remember this: against all that destruction some yet remained

among us unforgetful of origins, dreaming secret dreams, see-
ing secret visions, hearing secret voices of our purpose.
—Ayi Kwei Armah, Two Thousand Seasons

In Tar Baby, Toni Morrison crafts Marie Thérèse Foucault as the female
healer who demonstrates the power of interacting with the natural, non-
human world and the necessity of spiritual return. Described as a member
of the “blind race” (152), “Thérèse had her own views of understanding
that had nothing to do with the world’s views” (151). Subverting the role of
the colonizer to be the “source of all value judgment, “beauty, manhood,
good, evil, justice, her value does not come from the interlopers to the is-
land who “elevate themselves to God-like stature to be revered, awed and
feared by the colonized people” (Memmi 149), Thérèse’s identity comes
from a deep reverence and connection to the land and not from aspiring
to be like her employers, who, like others before, have historically exploited
her people. Using the aesthetic strategy of masking, Morrison blurs the
value of the sign, ensuring that in order to apprehend the core message her
116 k Chapter 4

readers will have to work diligently to understand the culturally nuanced

information—similar to an initiation. This act of containment symbolized
by Thérèse’s mask also encodes knowledge such as family histories, myths,
and morality to those who practice the culture.
Since masks are the mediators between God and humans, masking is
the medium by which the human and the spiritual world may interact. In
the traditional sense masks are birthed, ritually fed, and activated to be-
come powerful spiritual sites of power. As such, masquerading is not only
evocative, but also invocative to spiritually teach/learn, reveal/conceal/, in-
struct/learn. Purifying the community and chasing away evil, some masks
chase away souls who have overstayed their welcome in the living world.
Additionally, masks honor the deities and spirits of nature, thereby spiri-
tually renewing communities and ensuring prosperity and fertility. Half-
blind, but able to see spiritually, she wears the disguise as one of the many
“Marys” who come to L’Arbre de la Croix to wash clothes for Valerian and
Margaret Street and the assemblage of black folk in their employment and
under their patronage. Marie Thérèse Foucault is an Ajé. And like the Ajé,
Thérèse is powerful and has the ability to transform. Wearing the mask of
an ignorant washwoman, one of the many “Marys,” Thérèse is situated to
meet Son—William Green—and lead him to his destiny as one of the blind
galloping horsemen, just as the washwoman from Valerian’s childhood, the
“birdlike colored woman” (140) made Valerian feel “limitless” and helped
him “tread the black water in the bucket that had no bottom” (141).
Thérèse, a woman with “magic breasts” who has the ability to read signs,
is akin to the epistemic sensibilities of other women who know things in
Morrison’s other novels. For example, she has known of Son’s presence
twelve days before any other residents of L’Arbre de la Croix and before he
leaves the trail of chocolate papers. In the Yoruba divination system of the
merindilogun, the number twelve represents the odu, ejila shebora, whose
refrain is “the soldier never sleeps,” referring to an attribute of Shango, the
owner of cosmic justice. Morrison reiterates this idea of ejila as the narra-
tor reports: “She caught the scent twelve days ago: the smell of a fasting,
or starving man, as the case might be, human” (105). Moreover, the oc-
cupants of the house hear “no tramp of soldier ants marching toward the
greenhouse” (103), but Thérèse has “seen him in a dream smiling at her as
he rode away wet and naked on a stallion” (104).
Thérèse’s deep reverence for the land—the primordial ayé—connects
her to the Ajé who are the spirit guardians of the earth. Equally she is con-
nected to the waters, and, like the Ajé, “knows the water just like the fish-
Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma of Jadine in Tar Baby k 117

ermen” (153).4 When Son returns to the island in search of Jadine, Thérèse
consents to ferry Son across the ocean to Isle des Chevaliers—but not for
the reason he thinks. She is not accommodating him, but obeying the spiri-
tual mandates as one of the blind race. She tells him, “I see better in the
dark and I know the crossing too well” (302). “I’ll take you when it’s time”
(302). The time to which Thérèse is referring is not the chronological time,
but the cosmic moment when Son can meet his true self, consistent with
his destiny. She navigates across the foggy expanse of water feeling the
current. His eyes begin to change and his vision begins to fade, limited to
shadows and outlines (303–4). This diminished physical vision prepares
him to regain his “in” sight. Consulting with the fish for directions, Thérèse
appears as a faint outline of herself to Son’s eyes as he disengages from the
material world heading to his spiritual destiny.
Son’s passage across the water is a birthing ritual “rocking on baby
waves,” comparable to when he first arrives to the island. But this time he
is on top of the water instead of being in the water; this time he arrives to
the back of the island contrasting his first arrival to the front of the island,
indicating the completion of his journey. When they reach the back of the
island, emblematic for the ancestors who stand behind their descendants
and support their activities in the world of the living, Thérèse teaches Son
to use his spiritual eyes. She says, “Don’t see feel.” She delivers him to the
far side of the island, where he can make the choice to be free and whole,
juxtaposing the fragmented Jadine whom Thérèse admonishes him to for-
get. Thérèse says, “There is nothing in her parts for you. She has forgotten
her ancient properties” (305).
Thérèse’s commentary concerning Jadine’s spiritual fragmentation is
emphasized by her loss of those traditional spiritual values that can lead to
her resurrected spiritual personality. Bereft of spiritual form and the ability
to spiritually perform, Jadine is not a fitting companion for Son. Shape-
shifting from the personality of Son to one of the riders, he “felt the sister
rock at his fingertips. According to Dogon tradition, for reasons of ritual
and initiation, raised stones or stacked boulders near water or on steep
slopes represent the idea of spiritual challenge, transcendence and reenact-
ments of mythical events (Griaule and Dieterlen 65). Thérèse informs Son
that he has a choice; he can get free from Jadine. The narrator describes
Son’s rebirthing after crossing the water “rocking on baby waves”:

Then he grabbed with both hands the surface of the rock and heaved
himself onto it. He lay there for a bit, then stretched his arm again
118 k Chapter 4

and like a baby, “First he crawled the rocks one by one, one by one, till
his hands touched shore and the nursing sound of the sea was behind
him. He then took a few tentative steps” like a toddler walking for the
first time. Then he ran. (306; emphasis added)5
After being ferried across the primordial waters, Son goes through the de-
velopmental stages of crawling, taking tentative steps, and then running,
which allow him to transcend from Son Green to one of the galloping
horsemen of Isle des Chevaliers. Unlike Jadine, Son makes the choice to
be true to his destiny, thereby creating a divine and enduring existence for
himself. His return as one of the horsemen intimates that another solu-
tion, a spiritual one, can deliver nature from the incursions of those who
fail to see a connection with the land. In making his decision, Son creates
an opportunity for the rivers to return and reflect his true and ancient
properties.
 5

In(her)iting the Divine

(Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, and Mediations
of the Spiritual In-between in Paradise

We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that

makes it livable.
—Lao Tzu

Receiving, giving, giving, receiving,

all that lives is twin. Who would cast the spell of death, let him
separate the two.
—Ayi Kwei Armah, Two Thousand Seasons

Invocation

Morrison structures her seventh novel, Paradise (1999), beyond the liter-
ary doppelganger or a re-fashioning of the oft-cited Duboisian concept of
“Double Consciousness.”1 Instead, as I argue, she inscribes the negotiation
of spiritual tensions in her use of spiritual amplification represented by the
Yoruba Òrìsà known as Ibeji and the Dogon concept of twinning referred
to as Nommo.2 The main goal of this chapter is to examine the distin-
guishing elements in this conceptual paradigm. Drawing upon the shared
intersections of ecology and spiritual traditions, I explore the notion of
spiritual balance, the re-construction/resurrection of the matriarch, and
the nature of spiritual transcendence. A fundamental query guiding my
eco-critical investigation is the nature of female spiritual traditions and the
manner in which African women have redefined, restored, reclaimed, and
recovered identity through a symbiotic relationship between themselves
and the land. Additionally, I examine the ways in which women healers
engage in African spiritual practices to engender those relationships to
extend and regenerate life.
120 k Chapter 5

Advancing the novel’s theme of complementarity, Morrison relies on

assemblages of dialectical unities in her consideration of the spiritual and
material, male and female, heaven and earth, propriety and impropriety.
Moreover, Morrison insists that in order to be whole, African people need
to know their story through inquiry and contemplation iterated by Con-
nie’s comment to Mavis, “Scary things not always outside. Most scary
things inside” (Paradise 39). To achieve a similar sense of this interiority,
Morrison acquaints her readers with those spiritual principles that have
endured despite disruptions along the way.
Re-enacting beliefs and spiritual values over geographical space and
time, African people have picked up new items correlating to those left be-
hind and discarded excessive items. Moving beyond the pattern of bifurca-
tion and “missing contents” attributed to modernism and postmodernism
by Jean-Francois Lyotard, Africans have supplemented missing contents
and recovered meanings in those spaces or breaches (244). The tensions
created by missing information and other caesura along with dislocations,
distortions, ambiguities, and unreliable information, challenges both char-
acters and readers. From the beginning line, “They shoot the white girl
first,” readers are lured into a world where nothing is what it seems either
on the surface or at the core. Immediately, readers are engaged; they have
to keep a keen eye open to be able to identify the “white girl” with limited
clues. If they have read anything that Morrison has written, there is much
work ahead; and they must actively participate to gain any meaning they
hope to create.3
Exemplified in the next paragraph after the opening statement, Mor-
rison’s omniscient narrator gives misleading information in the form of a
miscalculation revealing that there are nine members in the posse, “over
twice the number of the women they are obliged to stampede or kill” (3).
However, there are five women in the convent—the math is wrong. This
aporia or logical disjunction will not be the last to occur. For example, the
narrator recalls the “one hundred fifty-eight freedmen who left Louisiana
and Mississippi” (13). But Deacon Morgan and his twin brother Steward,
who are recognized as having “powerful memories” (13), who “between
them they (could) remember the details of everything that ever hap-
pened—things they witnessed and things they have not,” and who “have
never forgotten the message or the specifics of any story” (13), offer a dif-
ferent account. The number 158 is twice the number reported by Steward
in the chapter titled “Seneca”—he reports the number of ancestors as be-
ing “seventy-nine” (95). This is not the last time the truth will reside in two
 In(her)iting Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, Mediations in Paradise k 121

distinct domains. There will be many versions of the story regarding what
happened to the Convent women and about how the “raid” went down.
Perhaps, multiple examples of doubling prepare readers to rely not on
the assigned value of words—but to look beyond words to the mythic lay-
ers, which render the words as feeble approximations. What I am suggest-
ing here is that in order to enter the literary experience of Toni Morrison’s
Paradise, readers must not suspend disbelief; they must have the willing-
ness to suspend their beliefs and to freely imagine. Additionally, readers
must be capable of encountering meaning in the indeterminate space be-
tween the realms and consider alternate ways of believing and being. Ritual
provides the space to expand meaning and time and helps to deliver char-
acters and readers alike to spaces of renewal.
As Catherine Bell notes, ritual space creates eternity through an end-
less stream of signifiers (104–5). Moreover, examining these presumed
variances from the vantage point of African spiritual culture also helps to
diminish these ambiguities. Accordingly, ritual enactment helps us come
to terms with these perceived discrepancies. In these performances, the
experience of coherence generates opposites affording the experience of
order as well as the fit, harmonizing into what Jacques Derrida would call
the space of “difference” or “free play.” For instance, a common denomi-
nator in African spiritual systems, the concept of twinning presents the
world as a balanced whole where opposition is seen as one of the twinned
elements. Here core meaning resides in the interstices between comple-
mentary opposites. Consideration of interstitial realities is an important
critical approach to extend meaning. As Nkira Nzegwu argues, this idea
of transspatiality allows us to know things in different ways and suggests
that a new framework needs to be developed to allow these formerly “pre-
theoretical” and “primitive” ideas to become a new heuristic technology,
an innovative way to conceptualize reality (182).
Corresponding with Morrison’s imaginative bricolage, with no abso-
lutes, no fixed meaning, I utilize the concept of doubling to interrogate the
spaces in-between the usual binaries investigated by literary critics. In Na-
tion and Narration, Homi Bhabha suggests a similar methodological ap-
proach, which I refer to as conscious indeterminacy “generating other sites
of meaning” (3). Bhabha’s idea of the center or between is the nucleus of
meaning, which shares information between the binaries, can be applied to
the concept of the Middle Passage. Employing this view, one can argue that
nothing was lost, just altered, suggesting the possibility of return and the
idea of an enduring memory. For this study, I consider the idea of passage
122 k Chapter 5

as situating or passing information at the middle to create triadic struc-

tures of emancipation from the two given ideas.4 This biodynamic process
imparts new life at the intersection where oppression and resistance in-
teract in order to strengthen sacred functioning. The Yoruba express this
tripartite structure in their concept of Ibeji illustrated in the proverb, “two
who are one who cannot walk alone who needs another to walk with them.”
Idowu, the oldest of them and a triplet in the twin structure consisting of
Taiwo and Kehinde, comes to cool the house and restore balance between
the two.
In the same way, twinning relates to the various realms as it is said that
twins exist in three worlds at one time: the bush, the spirit world, and
the world of human beings. African identity in North America reiterates
this premise. In America, bolstered by deep-core values and cosmological
structures, the African’s insistent practice of culture in the forms of spiri-
tual traditions has produced a dynamic range of expressions in language,
myth, music, dance, and material representations that continue to inspire
survival amidst the soul-extinguishing effects of racism and its attend-
ing spiritual paucity. Thus Africans have taken the experience in North
America and have created the third new identity as Africans in America or
African Americans.
The Yoruba concept of Ibeji, based on the idea of one spirit residing in
two identical bodies, emphasizes the dualism of life described as being
constructive and destructive— representative of both divinity and heri-
tage. John Mason describes them as:
Thunder children, wonder made visible
Divine twins, male and female
Left and right, up and down
Hard and Soft
Day and night
Fire and wood
The governing principle of existence (Idana Fun Òrìsà 105).
Furthermore, Ibeji symbolize the spirits that connect all things, conceived
as different, but which in reality are the same things—such as life and death
(existence), man and woman (human life), et cetera. By inscribing twin his-
tories (the history of Haven and the history of Ruby), literal twins (Deacon
and Steward, [Zechariah] Coffee and Tea, Merle and Pearl), two stories
(one story of the inhabitants of Ruby and the other story of the women
in the convent), two ovens, two mottos (that become three), and a host of
 In(her)iting Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, Mediations in Paradise k 123

other doubles or twins (including literary tropes, figurative language, situ-

ational juxtapositions, and symbols such as mirrors), Morrison prepares
the reader to imagine a world where the dualities of spirit connect. Here, in
the in-between, a space of exchange and mediation, healing and regenera-
tion occur. Like her literary and spiritual foremothers who encoded sacred
knowledge in culturally resolute ways, Morrison re-establishes these tradi-
tions accessible to those who stand within the circle of culture.

The Hunt

The women of the convent live and die in a space whose geographical lo-
cation is one of alterity described as being, “seventeen miles from a town
which has ninety miles between it and any other” (3). That is, they reside
in an indeterminate, unnamed space, a place in-between another: posi-
tioned and un-positioned at the same time. At the outset, Toni Morrison
establishes a paradox—a type of linguistic twinning that offers two realities
that are logically exclusive of each other. The double entendre located in
the phrase “God at their side, the men take aim for Ruby” (18), is one of
the novel’s many instances of doubling. This suggests two things that are
actually the same thing. First, the men have hunted the women of the con-
vent to preserve the notion of African womanhood exemplified by Ruby.
Second, this action has been carried out to preserve Ruby, the “all-black
town worth the pain” (5).
Similar to the idea of hunting down a defenseless female, a taboo that
Morrison introduces in Jazz, Morrison begins her novel, Paradise, with
the men from Ruby night-hunting women accompanied by the “noctur-
nal odor of righteousness” (18). Preceding the slaughter of the women, the
men have worked their tongues against the women for over a year, accu-
mulating “outrages” that have taken “shape as evidence” (11) about “aban-
doned women with no belongings” (14), “slack . . . members of some other
cult” (11), and “un-natural” women without men. Also, analogous to the
scapegoating in Sula, the convent women are blamed when “a mother was
knocked down the stairs by her cold-eyed daughter,” when “four damaged
infants were born in one family,” and when “Two brothers shot each other
on New Year’s day” (11).5 Moreover, the nature of the women’s character is
also castigated as they are judged as “bodacious black Eves, unredeemed
by Mary” (18).
The convent’s inhabitants and the space described as “out there,” situ-
ated seventeen miles away are both condemned for being unconventionally
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free from male-defined authority and domination. In The Bluest Eye, Mor-
rison initiated the discussion of the concept of outdoors as synonymous
with being in the open, away from home, in a transient state. Being “out
there” was a predicament to be avoided at any cost. Morrison writes: “Out-
doors, we knew, was the real terror of life. The threat of being outdoors
surfaced frequently in those days. Outdoors was the end of something, an
irrevocable, physical fact, defining and complementing our metaphysical
condition” (Bluest Eye 17–18). It does not have to be this way. When the
women enter Ruby days before the hunt, their presence could have been
liberating for all the inhabitants of Ruby.
Prefigured by a variety of signs—including the appearance of the de-
ceased Scout and Easter to Soane, feathers lying in the sink, and the “pairs
and pairs of buzzards” that flew over town—the women arrive in Ruby.
Manifestations of the feathers and buzzards confirm the power of the
women as bird women or Iyami Osoronga. Their presence represents their
potential to save the townspeople from the hubris, which not only isolates
them from other black people, but also threatens their physical extinc-
tion through inbreeding and sterility, the results of endogamy. Unlike the
Yoruba apataki where Oshun Ibukole, symbolized by the buzzard, saves
everyone in the city of Ile Ife from death, this highly ritualized behavior
of hunting reflects the learned exclusivity of their insular society and en-
compasses their idea of normative behaviors, religious beliefs, concepts of
virtue, and mirrors European aggression and violence acted out on African
people.
What follows in the novel is a description of the hunt. The men arrive
“Out there where the entrance to hell is wide” (114). The hunt first begins
with the idea of blackness as a trope of barbarism and illogicality, sup-
planting “whiteness” as a marker of racial superiority. Next the women
are metonymically displaced; their difference is so peculiar the men refer
to them in zoomorphic terms, calling them “panicked does” (18). Just as
Pat Best thought earlier—or at another point in the cyclical narrative—
“everything that worries them must come from women” (217). Arriving
at the convent prepared to participate in the ritual murder of the women,
the men are armed with a variety of weapons: “a rope, a palm leaf cross,
handcuffs, Mace and sunglasses, along with clean handsome guns” (3). The
inclusion of the rope and handcuffs intimates that either capture and or
torture are both possibilities, while the mace matches their imaginative
musings on the wild nature of the women. The palm-leaf cross suggests a
 In(her)iting Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, Mediations in Paradise k 125

type of spiritual implement to wield in case the guns do not work. The ad-
dition of the sunglasses implies that their dark deeds will meet abundant
light as spiritual counterpoint.
Descendants of former enslaved Africans who sought to negotiate “safe
spaces” away from the terror of the Klan and other anxieties associated
with the South, they established a heaven/haven where they as African
people could be free to be themselves. Ironically, they are driven by the
need to judge and destroy. This mirrors the cult of human sacrifice and
mob violence committed against black people by the Ku Klux Klan. For the
members of the Klan, the ultimate form of blood sacrifice is the sacrifice of
a human being. In his anaylsis of Ku Klux Klan behavior, Orlando Patterson
reframes the formulaic analysis of ritual described by Marcel Maus and
Henri Hubert acknowledging, “There were always certain ideas about the
victim(s). That is the victim(s) mediated against the sacred and the profane,
symbolic of good or evil” (182).
The violence perpetrated on the convent women protects the men from
the perceived horrors of external influences considered a threat to their
imagination. For example, after the Disallowing, consistent with their pa-
triarchal orientation, the men build an iron stove as a site to commemorate
the shared experience of the journey, leading them to Haven.6 Here they
sacrifice roasted animals, bake their bread, gather to disseminate informa-
tion, hold meetings, and perform other collective ceremonies. The oven
marks the town’s sacred space, even before a church was built. Situated
in the middle of the town, this symbol of maleness takes on the religious
significance of a shrine, an iron shrine. The oven’s motto, “Beware the Fur-
row of his Brow” serves as a statement of God’s judgment and a guiding
principle to inspire the men to assume a vaulted moral stance.7
Before moving again to the place they will eventually name Ruby, the
men dismantle the town’s symbol of maleness even before they attend to
packing their own possessions. When they move in 1950 and establish the
town of Ruby, their second settlement, the oven is re-installed. This oven
re-codifies the Yoruba deity of iron, Ogun, who represents both creative
and destructive forces of metal. Harper Jury’s appearance after the wom-
en’s massacre as a “bloodied but unbowed warrior against evil” (299), is
similar to the description narrated in a Yoruba apataki, where the Òrìsà
Ogun comes out of the woods covered with blood after a slaughter.
Unlike the story following Big Papa’s proclamation, “This is our place”
(98), where the group sacrifices a male guinea, this desacralized murder
126 k Chapter 5

of the women does not ensure the group’s well-being. In the former story,
the appearance of the male guinea and its subsequent sacrifice establishes
their new beginning by symbolically cleaning the group from the epistemic
violence experienced prior to arriving to this place they would name
Haven. For instance, after the matanza, the ritual sacrifice of four-legged
animals and an assortment of birds, performed to initiate a priest in the
Lukumi Yoruba tradition, a fifeto ritual is performed to spiritually clean
and cool down the energy engendered from the bloodshed of the sacri-
fices. Passing a guinea over the head of the participants in the ritual space,
the fluttering feathers clear the hot energy from the person’s aura and pre-
pare the ritual participants to rejoin the normal realm of human interac-
tion free from aggression. Moving from the denunciation of enslavement,
through the duplicity of reconstruction, and beyond the intragroup hos-
tility of the “Disallowing” to the “safety of brutal work,” the violence per-
petrated on the women is enacted to protect the residents of Ruby from
the imagined horrors of external influences considered a threat to their
survival.
Relocated from Haven to Ruby, the original families continue their self-
imposed isolation. A Yoruba song lyric about twins corresponds to the
historical mission of the founding fathers: “Famo beji. Beji so ndo. Beji so
ndo” (Cling as twins. Twins produce the building of settlements; twins pro-
duce the building of settlements) (Mason and Edwards, Orin Òrìsà 183).
According to the Dogon, a twin pair of heavenly agents of creation called
Nommo created the earth. The Dogon predecessors were four pairs of hu-
man ancestors representing each of the four cardinal directions. Similarly,
the Dogon people have a noncontradictory holistic cosmology, whose ideas
are mirrored in the social order, in the building of a house, and the design
of everyday reality. Instead of the twins bridging the gap between the world
of the gods and the world of humans consistent with the Dogon cosmology,
Deacon and Steward deviate from this purpose through their participation
in the slaughter.
For the Dogon, twinship dominates Dogon thinking, and in their ar-
chitecture the physical arrangement of each Dogon village consists of two
sections: an upper and a lower area.8 Morrison’s imaginative layout of the
town of Ruby organized as a cross recalls the cosmic principle of Amma’s
egg, called “the womb of all world signs” (Griaule and Dieterlen 84). For
example, the town of Ruby consists of four streets to the east named after
the gospels, Saint Matthew, Saint Mark, Saint Luke, and Saint John, flanked
Central Avenue. And four streets were laid on the west side of Central,
 In(her)iting Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, Mediations in Paradise k 127

where they acquired secondary names Cross Matthew, Cross Mark, Cross
Luke, and Cross John (Paradise 114). This relates to the Dogon idea of two
axes or collateral directions, North and South, which create the number
eight and intersect the four points. When multiplied 8 {x} 8 {x} 4 yields
two hundred and fifty-six outlines or signs referred to as the complete
“signs of the world” (Griaule and Dieterlen 84). These signs give all things
color, form, and substance or an understanding of everything that exists in
the world. An interesting correlation, the number 256 also corresponds to
the sacred number of Yoruba odu, which also defines and cosmologically
structures the narrative of phenomena.
The town’s layout also characterizes the myths held by the “8-rocks,”
such as the number of original ancestors or families that in turn are rein-
forced by the strategic positioning of landmarks just as the oven occupies
the place where the Hogon or spiritual head of the Dogon village would
reside.9 Where they live and walk in the world represents where they re-
side spiritually in the narrow inscription of the four Christian gospels—
where there is no space for any other belief system to reside without be-
ing thought of as evil. Within this framework of intolerance, the people of
Ruby establish their settlement and include land regulations where one can
neither buy nor sell land where an ancestor of the tribe or clan lineage has
settled, similar to the Dogon system of systematic unity that ensures the
insular ideas of the group (Griaule and Dieterlen 39).
Paradise has the potential to become an etiological tale, complete with
an accompanying morality to assign blame and explain the disastrous re-
sults of evil in the midst after the norm of womanhood is breached. Save-
Marie’s death was Ruby’s first: a “town full of immortals” where now the
“reaper was no longer barred entry” (296). This was accompanied by “Two
editions of the official story of what happened to the convent women”
(296). One story was that the nine men requested them “to leave or mend
their ways; there had been a fight; the women took other shapes and dis-
appeared into thin air” (297). The other story was that five men had gone
to evict the women; that four others—the authors—had gone to restrain
them. These four were attacked by the women but succeeded in driving
them out, and they took off in their Cadillac; but unfortunately had lost
their heads and killed the old woman. There is an in-between story as well:
“that nine 8-rocks murdered five harmless women (a) because the women
were impure (not 8-rock); (b) because the women were unholy (fornicators
at the least, abortionists at most); and (c) because they could—which was
what being an 8-rock meant and what the ‘deal’ required” (296–97).
128 k Chapter 5

At this point one has to ask, what deal? The deal made with whom?
The deal they struck with each other in each generation subsequent to the
Disallowing? The deal was actually struck when “Ruby was buried, with-
out benefit of a mortuary” (113). Another contradiction in this slippery
narrative is that Ruby was not a town where death was a stranger. In fact,
despite the dynamic abundance associated with twins, there are significant
deaths in the novel that threaten the continuation of Ruby. From an African
perspective both Deacon and Steward are abiku destined to die, without
offspring to call their names into the future.10 By the novel’s end, K.D. is
the only one left to ensure continuation of the Morgan family line. Even at
that, K.D. is not a Morgan; that is, his seed would call forth a resurrection
of the matrilineal heritage of the twins’ deceased sister, Ruby.
It seems as if the deal is for them to have life on the material plane and
thereby forego future perpetuity in the form of offspring, which ensures
eternal life from an African spiritual perspective. The Yoruba idea of abiku
works well with the concept of twins, because like the Ibeji, who have the
ability to move in-between realms, the abiku are timeless, ageless, and are
not limited by boundaries. Additionally, the correlate idea of ogbanje, an
Igbo spiritual reality as a transitory being relates to the men of Ruby. Chik-
wenye Okonjo Ogunyemi writes:
As a mobile site, the ogbanje is the trope of migrations, thereby dis-
quietingly scrutinizing the lack of social mobility of her constituency
in the living world. She is the bridge between the call and its response,
the prayer and the fulfillment of desire. As a people’s nostalgia rein-
forces their resentment at being displaced, the promiscuous trans-
migrations and fugitive status of ogbanje become a given. Itinerancy,
with its perennial search for another place for security, is the destiny
of ogbanje, as it is of black peoples, if West African restlessness and
the makings of a diaspora are proof of the desire for survival. (666)
The men of Ruby are still in a transitory space: between the stable resi-
dences where they will have the security they need to no longer fear the
threat of the other to displace them from their uncertain security, and the
place where they have previously been disallowed. A metaphor for the
continued unease of exile characteristic of the African American experi-
ences in America, this netherworld of Ruby becomes a space to act out
the violence on each other, instead of confronting the seed of dread, white
supremacy.
 In(her)iting Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, Mediations in Paradise k 129

Let us Prey/Pray

Toni Morrison also employs the leitmotif of twinning in her inclusion of

the women in the Convent. For example, after the Mother Superior’s death
and at the time of their own death, there are five women living in the con-
vent: Consolata (called Connie), Mavis, Grace (called Gigi), Pallas (called
Divine), and Seneca. This number corresponds to the definitive delineation
of the Yoruba Ibeji. Although they are only two beings—the Ibeji concept
consists of five beings comprising the original two twins and the three chil-
dren born to the mother after the birth of twins. The names of the Ibeji are
Taiwo (taste the world); Kehinde (the last to come or second child); Idowu
(the third child); Alaba (the fourth child) comes after Idowu; and Idogbe
(the next child) comes after Alaba. The women—injured physically and
emotionally—appear at the door of the convent as if summoned by a cos-
mic force. Connie receives and accepts them all. The women have come to
the convent by coincidence and have stayed seeking consoling. First, Mavis
appears—the mother of twins accidentally smothered when she left them
in a car unattended. Then there are Gigi, a promiscuous woman looking for
love, Seneca who carves crosses all over her body, and Pallas who has been
betrayed. The identities of the convent women are characterized as being
between the women of Ruby and the women of the Brazilian Candomblé.
Morrison employs situational irony, another type of twinning, to bring
the two communities together. For instance, when the families move to
Ruby, they no longer use the oven to make bread; instead they begin buying
bread from the women in the convent. Marcel Griaule notes in Conversa-
tions with Ogotemmeli that trade and commerce began with twins (199).
However, the people of Ruby compromise some of their independence and
become reliant on the produce grown by the women of the convent. Their
actions invert the opening line of the Lord’s Prayer, which requests, “Our
Father who art in heaven, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us
our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” and instead
becomes, “Our Mother, who art on earth, sell us today our daily bread.”
Additionally, there is not a plea for forgiving trespasses—only judgments
and betrayals. Moreover, Morrison uses the subterfuge of buying food—
“man does not live by bread alone”—to represent the spiritual nurturance
available at the convent, “a big stone house in the middle of nothing,” an
environment where elements of nature are constructed as sites of power
attracting the people of Ruby for healing. Potentially a place to restore
130 k Chapter 5

community cohesion, the convent is instead seen as the abode of the resi-
dent evil.
The convent and the women who live there are parallel to the Brazilian
Candomblé structure.11 In The City of Women, based on her experiences
with female ritual specialists, Ruth Landes records her observations of
spiritual practices, rites, and ceremonies in Rio de Janeiro. In her ethno-
graphic research, she notes that in the Yoruba Candomblé of Bahia, these
spiritual leaders are individuals who have inherited their title and who are
highly trained in African religious knowledge and ritual. Like the terreiro
or Ile structure of Brazil, the convent is presided over by a Yalorixa or Iyalo-
risa, Mother Mary Magna. While Mary Magna was living, Consolata acts
in the role of little mother—Mae pequena or Iya Kekere (Yoruba). Landes
explains the role of the Mae pequena, the next in authority to inherit the
authority of the terreiro, as being responsible for the initiates to carry out
their ritual obligations. She also makes the food for the propitiary offer-
ings (City of Women xi). Another responsibility of the Iya Kekere (Mae
pequena) is the supervision of the initiations, which last six months or a
year. As a part of the initiation preparation there are restrictions in food
and drink, sex taboos, hair cutting, and instruction in the rituals and songs
of the orixa (Òrìsà), usually in the Yoruba language (xi).
The women of the Candomblé and their children who live in the ter-
reiros operate as a collective mutual aid society providing a basis for female
solidarity. The women have ritual autonomy; their social and economic
lives are female-centered and autonomous as well (Landes xii). Corre-
spondingly, the Ba Kongo have a community structure where women come
together to share and learn from one another called the Kikombe woman-
hood school. Young women come right after menstruation to begin their
training as women. Interesting to note is the similarity between the words
Kikombe and Candomblé. In Ki-Kongo and Kimbundu, the languages spo-
ken in the kingdoms of Kongo and Angola respectively, the word Candom-
blé means house of initiation, from ka, a diminutive, ndumbe (initiate) and
mbele (house).12 In Morrison’s narrative, however, the women are of vari-
ous ages, but connected through the common experience of emotional or
spiritual distress. Ultimately, as a result of living in the convent and receiv-
ing spiritual instruction, each of the women will transform herself through
an initiation process.
 In(her)iting Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, Mediations in Paradise k 131

The Change

In one of the apataki or Yoruba narratives, Oshun, the mother of the Ibeji,
delivered the twins to Yemonja in order to protect them from Sango, who
could potentially send them off to war. She keeps Idowu with her, but
dresses him up as a girl to ensure his not going off to war with Sango.13 The
notion of Yemonja having protective custody over the children of another
woman is consistent with the role of supreme mother and speaks to the
correlative role of “other mother” in African American culture. Accord-
ingly, Connie as Iya Kekere or Mae pequena takes in the women who come
to the convent, provides them with a home environment, and facilitates
their ultimate healing.
In her transformation, Consolata Sosa achieves another state of con-
sciousness, which reconnects her twinned self/body and spirit—the tem-
plate for soul evolution. There are twin stories of how Connie came to be
in Mary Magna’s custody. One story is that she was kidnapped; the other
is that Sister Mary rescues Consolata from Brazil, where her nine-year-
old body had been a victim of sexual abuse.14 Then the instruction begins:
“body is nothing . . . spirit is everything” (263). After having been indoc-
trinated into the Catholic idea of being a bride only to Christ, but raven-
ous for earthly desires and hungry for male companionship, Connie turns
to the living man, and thus begins her womanhood and the unity of the
two discrete aspects of her existence. Morrison writes, “Those thirty years
cracked like a pullet’s egg when she met the living man” (225), who caused
“the wing of a feathered thing, undead, fluttered in her stomach” (226). By
presenting spirit and body as separate ideas, Morrison intimates that some
balance of the two will have to be restored in order for Connie to evolve
into Consolata. Through the use of egg imagery, Morrison signifies the
Dogon concept of the egg of creation that brings forth life.
Moreover, the concept of twinning associated with Dogon cosmology
is depicted in language emblematic of the relationship between Deacon
and Connie. Henry John Drewal notes that the paired male and female are
venerated as one existence (Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought 39).
The metaphor of the “two fig trees growing into each other” (230) evokes
the idea of two mirrors placed opposite each other, which keep reiterating
the image. Morrison’s use of mirror imagery deals with the representations
of consciousness and reflection. Moreover, Connie’s subsequent spiritual
contemplation is enhanced after perceiving the notion of the self through
an acquaintance with her own face in the reflection of Deacon. In his face,
132 k Chapter 5

she glimpses the destiny that she will ultimately face. To explain, mirrors
clearly connect us with our own consciousness reflecting both reality and
illusion. They are a significant idea of duality since, as reflective surfaces,
they have no meaning without an observer. When Deacon asks Connie,
“Do you know how beautiful you are? Have you looked at yourself?” (231)
she responds, “I’m looking now” (231). Like two mirrors placed opposite
each other, which keep repeating the image, the two are able to visualize
the potential of eternity realized as completion. Additionally, the trope of
mirrors is analogous to Connie’s eyes, which will become mirrors to visual-
ize ideas in spiritual proximity as well as to forecast future events as sites
of potential truth. Her eyes are like the mirrors in fairy tales—places where
one may go and ask questions and make assessments.
Mirrors also provide multilayered visual information. Connie thinks,
“He and I are the same” (241). Even the sound that Deacon’s spirit speaks to
Connie is doubled as “Sha sha sha, Sha sha sha” (241). For Deacon, Connie’s
mirrored reflection provides an opportunity for imaginative musings and
narcissistic predilections. It is also helps him to distinguish himself from
his twin brother, Steward. When Deacon tells Connie that he has a twin,
Connie asks, “There are two of you?” To which he replies, “No . . . there’s
just one of me” (232). He has begun the process of differentiation, forg-
ing an identity separate from Steward in order to pursue his relationship
with Connie, which will eventually lead him to feel “Exotic to a twin—an
incompleteness” (300). This inversion is notable, because Steward has told
Anna that being a twin makes him feel “more complete” (116). Later in the
narrative, this fracture between the twins causes him to expose his feet,
like his grandfather “who walked barefoot two hundred miles” (301). His
naked feet become the distinctive feature needed to separate himself from
his twin in order to walk in the direction of his own forgiveness. Connie, on
the other hand, begins after the split with Deacon to fuse her identity, even
though one of the things that she discovers is that Deacon is her twinned
soul.15 When he breaks off the relationship, the mirror is shattered, he can
no longer see Connie again, and she becomes an illusion of something
fleeting and transitory that threatens to fix his gaze beyond the commit-
ment he intends to make. Like A. Jacks/Ajax in Sula, Deacon takes flight.
Ultimately, Connie’s eyes will become mirrors to “fix” or forecast future
events. After the affair is over, Connie begins the next phase of her journey:
“Consolata had been spoken to.” The sign that marks the change is the sun
shot that seared her right eye “announcing the beginning of her bat vision.”
The idea of “bat vision” glosses the notion of the Iyami Osoronga, who are
 In(her)iting Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, Mediations in Paradise k 133

also affiliated with bats and other nocturnal birds. Ironically, Connie now
as Consolata begins to see using her inner vision; her symbolic sight con-
nects her with nyama or vital energy and allows her access to the spiritual
life—not the dogma-filled life prescribed by Mother Mary Magna. Her soul
is now opened to the realization of itself and others allowing her to see
“what took place in the minds of others” (248). Consolata’s glasses function
like the mamoni lines painted around the eyes of the Nganga, which help
her to see the hidden and dangerous things of the world such as sickness
and evil (MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture 53). Moreover, the flash of
light that sears her eyes does not leave her totally in the dark; instead it
illuminates the internal space where spiritual light resides.
When the change comes, Lone Du Pres initiates her into a new con-
sciousness: one of balance and connectedness. Nzegwu argues that the var-
ious chapters in the narrative of life do not “subvert the unitary character
of the self or personal identity” (177). Instead, she asserts that people only
re-arrange and organize the meaningful and relevant values and inject new
stories to frame the narrative of self (177). Lone tells Consolata, “You need
what we all need: earth, air water. Don’t separate God from his elements.
He created it all. You stuck on dividing him from his works. Don’t unbal-
ance His world” (244). Morrison advances that skills in healing, knowledge
of the sacred, psychic abilities, and knowledge concerning herbal medicine
are constructed by aligning oneself to the rhythms of nature. In nature one
has the potential to learn that the universe is sacred and that divine forces
merge and interact with terrestrial forces.
The ritual of “stepping in” that Lone teaches Consolata—which Con-
solata calls “seeing in” or “in sight”—causes dissonance in her personality.
However, when she is able to keep Mary Magna alive by entering her body,
this helps her to reconcile practicing what felt “like evil craft” (246). Con-
solata learns to accept the different modes of traversing reality—different
ways to perceive the power of the self as she expands the nyama or vital
force to sustain and continue life. Nzegwu describes the process of “step-
ping in” and “stepping out” as an invocation of “the manner in which at the
transfiguring moment of death, we permanently step out of the conditions
of the everyday three dimensional reality, and into the pneumatic mmuo
conditions of spirit-space and time” (176). Movement from one space to
another, or transspatiality, can occur during spirit possession or other spir-
itually charged states where one accesses other realms of existence. These
epistemic constructions are culturally defined and expand time beyond the
European delineation of a three-dimensional structure.
134 k Chapter 5

Nommo
With speech, man receives the life force, shares it with other
beings, and thereby achieves direction for living.
—Dogon Oral Tradition

Not until the chapter titled “Consolata” has Toni Morrison divulged Conso-
lata’s twinned name. Called Connie by the novel’s other characters, Conso-
lata now tells the women as though introducing herself for the first time, “I
call myself Consolata Sosa” (262). As Connie, Consolata employed a mask
of concealment. The visit from the man with eyes “round and green as new
apples” (252), her deceased grandfather, Tea, the twin of Coffee, speaks
the language that wakes up the remembrance of her suppressed linguistic
code. As Consolata, she recovers her language and reconnects to a series
of ontological relationships including a recovered concept of God, her fam-
ily, and her former land. The Nummo or Nommo twins, whose number is
eight, represent the Dogon idea of speech, dogo so.16 This recovery of dogo
so ferries Consolata to a memory of self before the cultural impositions
perpetrated by Mary Magna.
The Dogon have terms to describe the process of language occurring in
four stages. Beginning with giri so (front speech), the person proceeds to
grasp concepts at the next level, bene so (side speech), then to bolo so (back
speech), and on to the final stage of a profound mastery of the ideas of the
world called so dayi (clear speech). So dayi is reserved for initiates and is
not available or accessible to all. Regaining her language helps to relocate
Consolata’s true voice. Benjamin C. Ray notes that one’s primary language
leads to the real nature of things (101).
In Paradise, Morrison reminds us of the process of Consolata’s cultural
assimilation. She writes, “The first to go were the rudiments of her first
language. Every now and then she found herself speaking and thinking
in that in-between place, the valley between the regulations of the first
language and the vocabulary of the second” (242). The former process of
linguistic embezzlement occurs as a matter of practice and the process of
the religious indoctrination of “forgetting.” Just as the students Arapahoe
or Algonquin have to whisper “to each other in a language the sisters had
forbidden them to use” (233), Consolata’s reclamation of her primal lan-
guage liberates her from the hegemony characterized by linguistic imposi-
tion. Like her diminished sight, her restored language gives her insight and
 In(her)iting Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, Mediations in Paradise k 135

mastery to preside more efficaciously over the rituals of transformation. By

removing the linguistic constraints, Consolata reintegrates and renews her
connection with those African women who “know things” and the rituals
that bind them in sisterhood. The medium of language transfigures her,
extends her senses and functions, modifies the codes, and creates an in-
junctive form of language consistent with her spiritual identity.
As ritual leader, Consolata employs so dayi (the language of knowing).
Using this new language, she prepares each of the women to meet her
particular spirit twin. The name Consolata is a derivative of the Spanish in-
finitive, consolar, which means to console. Having spent her life forgetting,
she now vows to teach the women what they are hungry for (262). One of
the songs sung in praise of the Ibeji states, “Olomo, beji mo (a) kara wa (a)
kara wa bo (i) ya re” (owners, parents of children born in twos know bean
cakes are prepared to feed mothers to console them) (Mason and Edwards,
Orin Orisa, 183). While another song says, “B’eji la Omo edun b’eji. B ‘eji la
O be Kun Iya re” (Give birth to two and be rich, Give birth to two and be
rich. They cut off the weeping and console mothers) (182). Also significant
about the lyrics is that each verse is sung twice, in keeping with the concept
of twinning.

The Ritual of Transformation

The nexus between real and imaginative is imperceptible through the met-
aphor of ritual. African ideas of the divine and the significance in ritual
determine the success or failure of characters. Moreover, ritual incorpo-
ration serves Toni Morrison’s narrative purposes and sheds light on the
ways in which African people rely on corporate behavior to engender their
healing. Through the ritual of transformation, Consolata reestablishes the
concept of the matriarch and the female notion of divinity linking ritual
power to act in response to the particular aims of the individual women.
This spiritual nurturance provided at the novel’s end by Consolata, allows
the convent women to find the spiritual in-between and discover their
spiritual selves. Drawing sacred ideograms representative of their spiritual
selves, the women express their sacred selves in silhouettes characteristic
of Kongo Pembas or Vodun Vévés. Using white, the color associated with
the ancestors and the color of kaolin or mpemba found at the bottom of
rivers, the women refashion minkisi to heal and help them realize their
potential (MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture 91).
136 k Chapter 5

These iconographic representations help the women mediate the space

between their scarred physical selves and their spiritual identity. Morrison
writes in Paradise, “They altered. They had to be reminded of the moving
bodies they wore, so seductive were the alive ones below” (265). These
outlines juxtapose the silhouettes of decay to that against which the people
of Ruby were always on guard, related in the stories of how other towns
had merged with white towns. These towns “had shriveled into tracery:
foundation outlines marked by the way grass grew there, wallpaper turned
negative behind missing windows, schoolhouse floors moved aside by el-
der trees growing toward the bell housing” (6; emphasis added). The ritual
the women performed is not for material considerations, but for spiritual
uplift and renewal. As individuals, the convent women shift their identities
through space and time in the physical world, body space, mental world
or ideational space, and the pneumatic or spiritual world. Nzegwu notes
that these spaces are mutually permeable and interpenetrable and onto-
logical spaces. For example, spirit time (oge mmuo) and human time (oge
madu) are interconnected at the ideational level. Additionally, she asserts
that these spheres constantly shift and change and allow a person to ac-
cess these spirit spaces in the same way as one does objects in the physical
world (Nzegwu 172).
First, Consolata paints each woman’s silhouette, representing a sacred
cocoon to enclose each individual self, delineating it from the profane, ex-
ternalized self. Since the body is the transgressive text employed to judge
the women, it is apropos that the marking of the body becomes the site of
ritual regeneration strengthening each individual woman as well as filling
the gaps in the circle or protective ring that surrounds the soul according
to Kongo belief. To that end, each of the women’s hair is shaved as a sym-
bolic act of releasing the old and preparing the head for a new life—one
unencumbered by the accumulated pain of the past.
The preliminary activity of the women’s spiritual “make over” is to have
the women position themselves on the floor in order to trace their life’s
story, choosing the positions for themselves in any way they feel comfort-
able. The omniscient narrator describes the shapes and directions their
bodies assume:
They tried arms at the sides, outstretched above the head, crossed
over breasts or stomach. Seneca lay on her stomach at first, then
changed to her back, hands clasping her shoulders. Pallas lay on her
side, knees drawn up. Gigi flung her legs and arms apart, while Mavis
struck a floater’s pose, arms angled pointed in. (263)
 In(her)iting Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, Mediations in Paradise k 137

The configuration of these poses are visually represented with Gigi in the
center as a cross, Pallas in a fetal position as the center at midpoint of the
cross, and Seneca on her back and Mavis on her stomach as the inter-
secting lines creating the four-quadrant cross with the two intersections
yielding the sign of eight, the Dogon sign of the world. The templates that
Consolata draws of the women invoke repressed memories that they will
ultimately embellish to illustrate their journeys.
Consolata then initiates the women into the healing power of narratives
by telling them the story of her life’s journey from Brazil, starting with a
description of a place where “fish the color of plums swam alongside chil-
dren,” where fruit tasted “the way sapphires look,” where “gods and god-
desses sat in the pews with the congregation.” She also describes “Piedade,
who sang but never said a word” (263–64). The women recycle themselves
as divine mothers.
The Yoruba lineage has conserved the concept of the ancestral mother,
one of the oldest and most persistent within the African spiritual universe.
These ancestral mothers are represented by the Iyami Osoronga, also ref-
ered to as Iya Won, the mother of all people. Moreover, like the divine
mother Òrìsà, Yemonja, Pieta or Piedade represents the mother and child
serving as the foundation of African families, communities, and society.17
In Brazil, one of the hymns sung at an “intraculturated” mass, defined
as combining elements of Catholicism with African cultural practices,
praises the women as mothers. An important prayer states, “We believe
in a Mother God, who is alive, fecund, of great fertility, a God Who, as a
woman, knows what it means to bleed in order to give life” (104).18
After the preliminary drawings, the women begin to dream loudly,
which in turn calls to mind stories. Once recovered, the stories serve as
conduits, to release buried memories. Subsequently, each woman adorns
her respective outline. Incorporating pictographic representations of un-
resolved issues, unrealized hopes, fears, disappointments, and a wealth of
distress, in the forms of dots, etchings, flowers (“a majestic penis pierced
with a Cupid’s bow”), the women integrate themselves with their unscathed
spirit doubles. These drawings invoke the earth’s participation as a portal to
transport the ritual participants to dimensions beyond the physical realm.
There is also a correlation to the inscriptions on the earth illustrated by the
following Dogon cosmological event:
The fiber skirt absorbed the moisture and became language. Nommo
are the guardians of the natural order. After the earth was defiled by
incest by the jackal, and the Nommo saw that twin births were in
138 k Chapter 5

danger of disappearing, they drew a male and female outline on the

ground on top of each other. This led to each human being having
two souls: one male, one female. Man’s female self is removed by
circumcision, as is a woman’s male soul at initiation (Griaule, Conver-
sations With Ogotemmeli 156).
The experiential captions the women create become personal altars to al-
ter their pockmarked souls. Sites of tremendous transition, the outlines
mark the beginnings, middles, and endings of individual narratives. In this
embodiment ritual, the women prepare to resurrect themselves. Griaule
remarks that as part of the creative process, the Dogon Supreme deity,
Amma, “traced within himself the design of the world and of its extension”
(The Pale Fox 83). The drawing of signs creates the meaningful images or
symbolic icons—yala, expressing the beliefs. All of the signs convey an
idea, and although not considered a writing system, they communicate
meaning in the same way writing does. Since the term yala also means re-
flection and expresses the future form of the thing being represented (The
Pale Fox 96), this supports the spiritual transformation that the women will
experience and ties in with the mirror imagery used throughout the novel.
This is not the first time this motif of graphic invocation would appear in
twentieth-century literature. In Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo artists use
cornmeal and water to draw vevés to invite “loas for New Art” (49). The
vevés are the portals for divinities to enter the physical realm.

The Return
Ibejire, omo Ibejire, omo edun kere kere yan.
Behold twins, children of the monkey. They do not die.

At the novel’s end, Billy Delia, who had been taken in by Consolata, hopes
that the women will return. Consistent with the African cyclical view of
the human experience, life is a release from death and death is an entrance
for life. For the Bantu Kongo, dying is not the end, as the proverb tufwanga
mu soba explains: “We die in order to undergo change as a process or as
a ‘dam of time’ it permits life to flow and regenerate to create a new state
of being freeing the spirit” (Fu-Kiau, African Cosmology 27). In the same
fashion, the Dogon believe that the power to continue life is within rather
than without. When the spirit of community or tradition is violated, some-
thing ancient rises to restore equilibrium. The Nommo’s resurrection is
 In(her)iting Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, Mediations in Paradise k 139

performed by Amma five “periods” or stages after the sacrifice, which is

five days (Griaule and Dieterlen 333).
Compelled toward the possibility of return, Misner’s sermon at Save-
Marie’s funeral captures the principle of Toni Morrison’s theme of spiri-
tual dualism. He says, “it is our own misfortune if we do not know in our
long life what she knew every day of her short one: that although life is
terminal, life after life is everlasting. He is with us always, in life, after it
and especially in-between, lying in wait for us to know the splendor” (307).
The idea that life continues beyond the physical body in an alternate realm
is corroborated in the resurrection of the women at the end of the novel
and their appearance to relatives and friends. When Reverend Misner and
Anna go to view the convent after the massacre, Anna collects five fresh
eggs (304), symbolic of the five Convent women and the Dogon concept of
completion and unity representative of Amma, the Dogon supreme deity.
Additionally, Anna gathers some of the “purple peppers from the bushes in
full flower” (303) amidst the lost garden. Harvey Birenbaum explains that
transformation is represented as “stages of life, phases, emotion, aspects
of personal relationships—all pass and alter, often in predictable rhythms,
but also in ways that provide continuity in difference, complementarity in
unity, self-transcendence, and self-exhaustion” (31–32).
This complementarity is illustrated in the description of the garden:
Beyond was blossom and death. Shriveled tomato plants alongside
crops of leafy green reseeding themselves with golden flowers, pink
hollyhocks so tall the heads leaned all the way over a trail of bright
squash blossoms, lacy tops of carrots browned and lifeless next to
straight green spikes of onion. Melons split their readiness showing
gums of juicy red . . . a mix of neglect and unconquerable growth.
(304–5)
Like the garden, the women have conquered death. Although changed, the
women still exist indicated by the fresh eggs and uninterrupted flowering
of the bush. Morrison establishes the relationship of women with the land
in her depiction of the convent women as Ajé. Fundamentally the power
of the earth is connected to those women who have the ability to wield
spiritual power.19 Streams, springs, rivers, oceans, trees, stumps, bushes,
twigs, berries, barks, mountains, hills, valleys, caves, sun, moon dirt, earth,
pharmacopoeia belong to women in the same way the hunt belongs to the
domain of men.
140 k Chapter 5

Bunseki K. Fu-Kiau speaks of the Bantu concept of the first eternal seed
ngina informing the tambukusu or genetic code as a memory of creation.
The cultivation of soil and the planting of seeds put one in direct contact
with that process, and sacred rites and ceremonies have evolved after ob-
serving and creating meaning to accompany those spiritual considerations.
Agriculture rites foster an idea of the sacred and the idea of memory. Fu-
Kiau notes that the game called “hopscotch” is actually a mnemonic device
used by the Ba Kongo to remember one’s genealogical lineage. Each box
on the grid represents the following narrative: I am the seed of a seed of a
seed of a seed of a seed, ad continuum.
Agriculture in itself is an act of solidarity with the earth and access to
power that now the women of Ruby only deal with as “gardening” to show-
case plants competitively. Removed from the camaraderie engendered by
the convent women tilling the soil corporately, the women of Ruby are
powerless. The twinned ideas of death/rebirth, fertility/barrenness, nature/
culture, and order/disorder find its parallel in Dogon agricultural activity,
as planting/harvesting is a central metaphor for life among agricultural-
ists. Additionally, the women tend to the fluids of life: water, wine, fruit
(semen), in the form of the peppers (a fruit), which have all the qualities
needed to bear life. The women’s agricultural activities represent the sym-
bolic landscape of power raising the ire of the men incensed about the
nature of women who do not need men and prefigure their demise.

Home Is Not a Small Thing

Another key idea that Toni Morrison presents about passages or means of
access occurs when Anna and Misner are at the convent. While collecting
the peppers, one sees a door, the other a window. They ask: “What did a
door mean? what a window?” (305). In the Kongo spiritual system, doors
and windows are considered mwela, or portals between the material and
spirit realms. These doors revolve and spirits can egress and ingress at
will, evident by the women who visit with the living. Consolata is reunited
with the mother God, Piedade, “black as firewood,” whose “black face is
framed in cerulean blue,” who sings to her and strokes her “tea brown hair.”
Consolata has gone “home to be at home” (318). Morrison intimates that
Consolata has crossed the watery depths, journeyed to the other realm
and is resting in the arms of Mother God. The enslavement lyrics, “Some-
times I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home” and “Deep river
my home is over Jordan” are revised as Consolata rests in the arms of the
Blessed Mother.
 In(her)iting Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, Mediations in Paradise k 141

In a conversation between Patricia Best and Reverend Misner, they con-

sider the notion of home as a third place, Africa. Even though distanced by
time and experience, “One, three centuries removed” as the poet Countee
Cullen muses, Misner tells Pat Best, “Africa is our home, Pat, whether you
like it or not” (210). Not willing to be resigned to a place where being an
outsider or an enemy means the same thing, Misner’s explanation of home
warrants our attention.20 Misner’s statement also establishes the idea of
paradise being here on earth. Additionally, he asserts that this heavenly
place (Africa) was given to African people, not taken by conquest suggest-
ing that instead of fighting over this small piece of physical or ideological
territory of the west, African people need to consider some other options.
Finally, he asserts that nothing good can come out of repressing other black
people. In this narrative of doubling, Toni Morrison informs her readers
that it is possible to move from destruction to construction, from removal
to restoration, and that the real power for the continuation of life exists in
the journey within and between the passages.
 III
f
Remembrance Has Not Left Us:
What the Record Shows
 6

Living with the Dead

Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved

I was made to touch my past at an early age. I found it on my

mother’s tiddies. In her milk.
—Gayl Jones, Corregidora

Now women forget all those things they don’t want to remem-
ber and remember everything they don’t want to forget.
—Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

The ax forgets the tree remembers.

—African American proverb

Using the conceit of memory as the central organizing principle, Toni Mor-
rison lays the necessary mythic foundations to invoke ancestral presence
in the novel Beloved (1987).1 The focus of this chapter is an examination of
the heroic character, Sethe, and the ways in which the ancestor, as memory,
works in consonance with Yoruba Òrìsà, African iconography, and ritual
to engender psychic wholeness. Examining memory is an important place
to begin, because it is only when characters regain a sense of the past that
they can begin to imagine a future.
Ironically, the novel ends with the sentence, “It was not a story to pass
on.” Repeated three times, this sentence frames the last five paragraphs of
Beloved. In these concluding lines, the eponymous character, Beloved, is
described as “disremembered and unaccounted for” as well as irretrievable
and “unclaimed” because they “don’t know her name” (274). Perhaps, the
reason they do not know her name is because Sethe’s deceased child, did
not have a name while living. From an African perspective, this innominate
status would leave her nameless in the spirit world. Even though Sethe had
“bought” her name by trading sex for a headstone with the seven-lettered
inscription “beloved” shortly after her death (204), by not having been so-
146 k Chapter 6

cially incorporated into the community with that name, she would remain
nameless to them.
How then can Beloved be remembered? Beyond the spiritual dilemma
created by postmortem considerations of naming, this tension of remem-
brance is complicated further by the historical disjuncture of enslavement
and the anonymity corequisite with African people’s status as chattel. Mor-
rison attempts to retrieve the lost contents of culture and to mitigate the
trespass caused by un-naming in the dedication to the novel by connecting
the character Beloved to the unnamed “sixty million or more.” Morrison
also raises a few philosophical questions: is it possible to know on another
level? Are there other epistemological approaches to gain access to the
past? Throughout the novel, Morrison highlights the characters’ reluctance
to delve into memory, while coterminously invoking that remembrance in
her literary figurations. Using conservative estimates, sixty million ances-
tors not only lost their names, but also their lives during the Middle Passage
from the west coast of Africa to the Americas.2 Countless others would be
renamed consistent with their predicament of being enslaved. In Beloved,
this presence/absence manifests itself by the omniscient narrator’s seem-
ingly paradoxical ending of the story mandating a mass forgetting, which
constitutes memory, albeit, in a different way than remembering does. It
is as if forgetting and memory are twin activities; one has to forget some-
thing to remember something else. Mary and Allen Roberts note among
the Luba of Southeastern Congo the concept of forgetting, like memory is
complex and signifies a purposeful action of concealment. That is a person
“may not have forgotten at all, but is purposefully withholding information
as a secret” (Memory 33). In this construction, forgetting is a conscious
disruption, yet still a remembrance.
Signifying on Frederick Douglass’s recollection of his first remembered
trauma and the dialectical idea, “I shall never forget it whilst I remember
one thing,” the characters in Beloved intimate that the process of memory is
complex and highly nuanced. It can work in reverse, deleting items rather
than storing them. In any case, memory acknowledges that some conscious
decision has been made, some selection process has occurred. “They forgot
her like a bad dream,” “quickly and deliberately forgot her,” “couldn’t re-
member or repeat a single thing she said,” “Remembering seemed unwise”
(274), are word masks that disguise the deliberate recollection of Beloved.
In the deep structure where compelling meaning abides, the narrator
fortifies the remembrance of the story events. Invoked by the twists and
turns of historical deletion, these memories resemble Pierre Nora’s no-
 Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved k 147

tion of lieux de mémoire, since the environments of memory have been

suppressed and silenced by trauma (284). Geneviève Fabre discusses the
dissonance created by forgetting and remembrance and suggests that the
tension between these two ideas find synthesis in the creation of an orga-
nizing principle to forge a strategy for collective remembrance (History
and Memory 88). That is, the detailed listing of items to “disremember”
and the trope of repetition reinforce memory. Ralph Ellison describes this
ontological consciousness not as “historical forgetfulness” but as a product
of memory (Shadow and Act 124).
One thing that is not negotiable for African people is a loss of mem-
ory. Concerning the agency of memory, Cornell West explains “African
Americans have been the ones who could not forget. They have been the
Americans who could not not know” (3). The subject of this present study,
African spiritual traditions, necessitates an exploration of the nature of
history and memory. Memory and history are connected but differ in their
function. Mary and Allen Roberts explain that memory represents the pro-
cess of evolution and is a cultural construction, while history concerns
reconstruction or a reproduction (Memory 29). Furthermore, Roberts and
Roberts define memory as “A dynamic social process of recuperation, re-
configuration, and outright invention” (Memory 17). Residing in the border
“between self and other,” memory is a social and cultural construct, rather
than a biological or a mental activity (Memory 41). Thus memory contrib-
utes to the sense of historical consciousness, which provides a people with
identity, is created in a variety of ways. The considerations in this chapter
are memory’s perpetuation through narrative and the reinvention and re-
codification of sacred ideas over time in language, dance, song, and ges-
ture. Specifically, I want to explore the ways in which memory is at once a
symbolic, sacred, and cultural conception.
As an active process of connecting and creating relationships, Nora ad-
vances that “memory installs remembrance within the sacred” (“Between
Memory and History” 286). For instance among the Luba the word lutê,
derived from kuta is defined as mémoire. However, more illustrative of the
spiritual connection is the phrase, “kuta ku mushina” meaning “to fix in
the spirit.” Kuta, “to remember” is also related to words, such as kitê and
mitê. Kitê translates as a little mound of packed earth where minkisi are
placed for protection, to honor the birth of twins, and to mark death. Mitê
represents sun rays, which allow one to perceive place and time (Memory
32). Moreover, for the Luba, memory consists of repetition; indicating con-
tinuity with the past, alongside the triadic structure of space, time, and the
148 k Chapter 6

sacred implying that memory is a function of a particular cosmology. This

sacred imperative of memory coexists in African American culture and
is realized in Beloved in the concentric circles of plot, characterization,
narrative structure, and ritual. Mircea Eliade explains that through ritual
cosmogonic time is retrieved and brought to the present moment (The
Sacred and the Profane 30).
A way to resolve this conundrum presented by “disrememory” (forget-
ting) and “rememory” (remembering) is to consider the dualism presented
by spiritual considerations. This idea of spiritual lineage through invoca-
tion constitutes memory and engenders community cohesion severed in
that historical breach. For example, in the Lukumi tradition the mojuba
(invocational prayers) are recited before any ritual including divination.
Calling the names of deities, community ancestors, lineage ancestors, and
individual ancestors from the past into the present ensures the future of
time. This invocation creates presence while simultaneously acknowledg-
ing absence in order to renew the community. These oral and performed
traditions are fundamental ways of representing the past and maintaining
a continuity with the present. Although these ancestors are unnamed, it is
possible to create a commemorative space to bridge the gap created by the
Middle Passage and the missing names. Previously, Toni Morrison began
her inquiry into the recovery of names in Song of Solomon, ferrying her
character to Africa, for this reflection. Macon Dead muses that he and
Pilate had “some ancestor, some lithe young man with onyx skin and legs
as straight as cane stalks, who had a name that was real” A name given to
him at birth with love and seriousness” (17).
Besides a consideration of irretrievable names that could hinder mem-
ory and narrative integrity, in “The Telling of Beloved,” Eusebio L. Rodri-
gues attributes the difficulty in recounting the story to the nature of the
“unspeakable” and exceptional horrors of the memorates. He writes, “The
past, racial and personal, seared into the being of her past, racial and per-
sonal, seared into the being of her characters, has to be exorcised by ‘re-
memory’” (153). Shortly after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved, Morri-
son remarks in a Time magazine interview that the enslavement of African
people is something that no one wants to remember. She states:

I thought this is got to be the least read of all the books I’d written
because it is about something that the characters don’t want to re-
member, black people don’t want to remember, white people don’t
want to remember. I mean it’s national amnesia. (120)
 Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved k 149

Sethe who consistently fights back the painful events of the past in her
“rememory” confirms her attraction to amnesia. This struggle with the
brain keeps her “not interested in the future,” because it refused nothing
(Beloved 70). The recollection of these dreadful memories forms the nec-
essary bridge leading to healing—the central point of the novel. Insisting
on recognition, memory signifies that life and is situated as much in the
present as it is in the past (Nora 285).
Memory, a phenomenon of primary importance in an oral tradition, be-
comes a political, spiritual, and cultural statement in Beloved—evidenced
by Toni Morrison’s combination of myth and remembered history. This
collective remembering is defined as the conscious historical and cultural
knowledge common to a group of people. Transmitted from generation to
generation through the use of traditional oral forms, this shared knowledge
assures spiritual and cultural continuity. The reformation and relocation
of memory through scenarios that conjure up ancestral images are accom-
plished by linking characters’ recollections of past events with re-enact-
ments of African ritual behavior and eulogistic tributes to the memory
of Baby Suggs. Working in concert with language, these mythologies are
foundational to the memories and their accompanying narratives that lead
Sethe toward healing.
Moreover, characters in Beloved embody the African idea of community
since they provide the primary support for the individual. Offering differ-
ent accounts of events, each provides what is significant and poignant for
them and omits details that do not inform their personal mythic realities.
What some characters leave out, others furnish; the result of which is the
creation of a complete story. Morrison inscribes the noun memory as a
verb to emphasize its dynamism. For example, Sethe remarks, “Funny how
you lose sight of some things and memory others” (201, emphasis added).
Memory performs and “rememory” names; together they help to elide the
past into the present.
These stories rooted in the pain-filled past are not easily told. Rodrigues
says that all the characters “have to tear the terrible past, bit by painful bit
out of their beings in order to be healed” (153). The result of their collective
account is a view of captivity from a sweeping perspective in this circular
narrative. Constructing the story in nonsequential order, using Baby Suggs
as the central focus for relating major story elements from the characters
and omniscient narrator, this circularity, akin to the African tradition of
call and response, allows for the affirmation of the ancestral ontological
experience.
150 k Chapter 6

Circularity is the antithesis of lineality, which Marimba Ani describes

as “the interpretation of phenomena” constructed of “unidimensional,
separate entities arranged in sequential order” (xxvii–xxviii). Since linear
conceptions are necessarily secular and result in de-sacrilization, besides
denying circularity and the spiral of organic development, they prevent
transcendence of ordinary time and space. Morrison elucidates this cir-
cularity saying that she prefers to “develop parts out of piece . . . preferred
them unconnected—to be related but not to touch, to circle, not line up”
(“Memory” 388). Like memory, this circularity serves as structure, theme,
narrative device, and ancestral characterization.
The ancestor’s dual signification of rebirth and the principle of circu-
larity finds agency in Toni Morrison’s circular language, “I am Beloved’s
and she is mine” (214); language rich in oxymoron, “drove him crazy so
he would not lose his mind” (41); paradoxical statements, “I’ll protect her
while I’m alive and I’ll protect her when I ain’t” (45). In this passage, Mor-
rison reveals Sethe’s beliefs about the continuity of life beyond the physi-
cal realm. In this passage, Sethe affirms the idea of the dead being able to
interact with the living and influence outcomes for them. Morrison also
encodes the notion of information available at the interstices where mean-
ing is intensified.3 She writes, “Ella listened for the holes—the things the
fugitives did not say; the questions they did not ask” (92). Establishing the
frame for remembrance by her deliberate recording of those insufferable
events that define both the community highlighted in the novel and those
in the realm of the ancestors, their historical experiences of captivity and
enslavement make strong spiritual and historical statements.
Time distinguished by spiritual emphasis is one of the decisive elements
that shape both narrative structure as well as content. The concept of his-
tory, posited to be linear and serialized, is razed as Morrison replaces it and
offers a definition of African-centered history harmonizing with African
notions of time. In addition to circularity, her narratives focus on embel-
lished personal accounts of individual lives in ways that the enslavement
narratives could not. Barbara Christian says that nineteenth-century writ-
ers were “constrained by the socio-political biases of their time,” which
restricted the expression of traditional beliefs because of the “detrimental
effects that such ‘superstitious,’ or non-Christian concepts would have had
on their own people” (“Somebody Forgot” 330). These narrators were also
restrained from the illustration of overt acts of resistance considered out-
side the mainstream of abolitionist-approved behavior. These self-deter-
 Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved k 151

mining acts were avoided as they would “muddy the already murky waters
of sentiment” toward African people by “presenting characters that might
terrify their readers” (“Somebody Forgot” 330).
In “The Site of Memory,” Morrison describes some of the conventions
used by these nineteenth-century writers to avoid the unholy details of
some of their most harrowing experiences. She notes: “Whenever there
was an unusually violent incident, or a scatological one, or something ‘ex-
cessive,’ one finds the writer taking refuge in the literary conventions of the
day” (301). The effect of this type of stricture was to make the reporting of
the brutal conditions of bondage acceptable to the abolitionists who were
in a position to influence its end. In this way, an authentic view of the Af-
rican’s suffering was veiled, the interior life of the captives was obfuscated,
and a realistic picture of their actual existence denied.
In her unrestrained narrative, Morrison’s omniscient narrator reveals
Sethe’s desperation at the thought of being remanded into captivity: “In-
side, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman
holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand and an infant by
the heels in the other” (149). Morrison also depicts the brutal practices
of enslavement, “It was a place where bits were put on human mouths to
prevent them from eating the food they were harvesting. She remembered
the bottom teeth she had lost to the brake and the scars from the bell
were thick as rope around her waist” (258). It was a place where kneeling
men were sexually abused and women were raped. “She had delivered, but
would not nurse, a hairy white thing, fathered by the ‘lowest yet’” (258–59).
These memorates are not individual components of memory, but repre-
sent the shared, collective experience of African people who suffered these
abuses over time through the practices of enslavement, including the trau-
matic forced migration and transportation from Africa and the subsequent
psychological seasoning on the plantations.
In her reconstruction of the enslavement period, Morrison employs a
recursive narrative structure that takes the various personal accounts of
“facts” recorded by characters and recounts a story of enslavement and
its repercussions. Morrison remarks, “The exercise is also critical for any
person who is black, or who belongs to any marginalized category, for,
historically, we were seldom invited to participate in the discourse even
when we were its topic” (“Site of Memory” 302). Valerie Smith writes in
Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative that the extent
of the control people have on their lives depends upon his or her capacity
152 k Chapter 6

to tell his or her own story (4). Morrison is clear about the empowerment
in telling one’s own truth and reveals that significance by including the dis-
quieting horrors of enslavement usually obliterated in historical accounts.
Additionally, absent from this novel is the determinism seen in some of
her other novels, especially The Bluest Eye, where characters are presented
with a dearth of possibilities and a limited capacity to work through their
difficulties. Toni Morrison endows characters in Beloved with the ability to
reverse the apocalyptic contours of their lives and emerge with a modicum
of hope. In this reversed apocalypse, the past, not the present, is where
future rewards are to be found.4 This achievement may be considered
attributable to the power of memory. The characters are empowered by
telling their stories, which are composites of significant features of their
experiences. In this manner the interior lives are shared and the story is
enriched.
For example, in an episode where Denver, the surviving daughter of
Sethe, chronicles what she misses, she remembers “Baby Suggs telling her
things in the keeping room. She smelled like bark in the day and leaves at
night” (19). As the novel opens, Baby Suggs is dead. However, Morrison in-
scribes her as the living dead cohering to John S. Mbiti’s explanation where
he expands the classification of ancestors, dividing them into “long dead,”
“recently dead,” or “living dead” (70). Those classified as being “long dead”
are so codified because they are “spirits” of forgotten people who are no
longer within the personal memory of the people (76). The living dead are
spirits for whom the family has a conscious memory. Mbiti suggests that
as long as the departed spirit has not lost its personal name and identity it
more or less leads a personal continuation of life (125).
Throughout the novel, the characters will invoke Baby Suggs’s memory
to ask for assistance. This is consistent with Morrison’s dictum, “If we don’t
keep in touch with the ancestor we are, in fact, lost” (“Rootedness” 344).
This sense of being lost or detached from the ancestors results from the ab-
sence of guidance from the other realm. Janheinz Jahn defines the magara
principle as, “the force of intelligence which flows in to the living man from
his ancestors (or Òrìsà) without whose help there is little he can do” (116).
In addition to offering guidance, the ancestors are also “the guardians of
morals.” In the life of the community each person has his place and each
has his right to magara, to well-being and happiness (116). This adherence
to community morals engenders well-being. Morrison expresses this sen-
timent saying, “If anything I do, in the way of writing novels (or whatever
 Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved k 153

I write) isn’t about the village or community or about you, then it is not
about anything” (“Rootedness” 344).
Denver’s memories of the earthy Baby Suggs connect Baby Suggs to
an ancient source, which supplants her enslavement origins Like M’Dear
in The Bluest Eye and other elderly women that inhabit Morrison’s nov-
els, Baby Suggs is spiritual roots worker. The individual memorates form
the collective memory of political, ideological, and cultural themes par-
ticular to African peoples. These pieces of memory are delivered primarily
through the narrative devices of an omniscient or implied narrator who
shapes these memorates and shares them with the readers through in-
terior monologues. In this way, the narrator contributes to both content
and structure. The narration also consists of direct exposition through
dialogue, alternating flashbacks, and flash-forwards that create a sense of
circularity, which resembles the African epic and signifies the cyclical idea
of the ancestor. For example, in Beloved there is a nonadherence to the de-
lineations of past, present, and future, indicative of the notion of hantu, the
construction of time from a Bantu cultural perspective.5 In epic fashion,
Sethe, having upset the balance associated with maternity, must restore
harmony.
The structure of the novel is divided into three major sections. Part 1
consists of eighteen chapters (163 pages), Part 2 has seven chapters (70
pages), and Part 3 has three chapters (38 pages). These structural delinea-
tions also roughly correlate in content to ideas of past, present, and future
and are also specific foci for each one of the trio of women inhabiting the
house. The house at 124 Bluestone Road also indicates this triadic struc-
ture. The house number indicates displacement of order consistent with
the disruption of family, dislocation from Africa, and the ruptured psyche
resulting from being captives. The missing number three, however, is not
an actual omission since the mind insists upon making closure and inserts
it anyway, symbolizing the adjustments African people have made in order
to survive in America. They have had to continually supply the missing
pieces—family members, memories, and other crucial elements—in order
to remain whole.
This multivoiced intergenerational story begins in medias res.6 The first
paragraph of Part 1, Chapter 1, informs the reader that Baby Suggs is dead,
that Sethe’s sons Howard and Buglar have run away, and that Sethe and
Denver are the only two left in a spiteful house possessed by a mischievous
baby spirit (4). In this synopsis of some of the salient plot elements there
154 k Chapter 6

is the omission of Sethe having committed infanticide. By the end of Part

1, a clear cycle of abuse has been established, and it becomes clear that the
goal of the heroic quest is to terminate this cycle and circle of pain.
At the beginning of the novel, Sethe’s spiritual strength and courage as
a potential heroic figure are demonstrated. She states, “I got a tree on my
back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I
am holding in my arms. No more running—from nothing. I will never run
from another thing on this earth” (15).
In an epic sense, bold affirmations of this nature usually prefigure a test
to assess the character’s dauntlessness and tenacity. This passage signifies
Sethe’s demonstration of personal commitment and sacrifice and shows
her willingness to face whatever is ahead of her in contrast to her unwill-
ingness to examine the past. The keloidal skin on her back represents an
overhealing of the skin and is a type of external memory juxtaposing the
emotional or internal healing that has yet to occur.
As she begins to journey through memory, Sethe recalls her physi-
cal violation when the white boys on the plantation steal her milk. Us-
ing the trope of repetition, Morrison underscores its significance: “I had
milk. . . . All I know was that I had to get my milk to my baby girl. . . . No-
body knew but me and nobody had her milk but me. . . . those boys came
and took my milk . . . held me down and took it.” When Paul D tries to get
the facts from Sethe through questioning, Sethe repeatedly responds, “And
they took my milk” (16–17). This chanting of the word milk stills her mind
and temporarily helps her transcend the horror of this memory. Moreover,
the remembrance of the past activates the asé or vital forces necessary for
her healing and inspires recall of the past, which has previously kept Sethe
from reaching her potential. Having been violated by the boys taking her
breast milk, Sethe is robbed of the vital life forces resident in white fluids
such as breast milk and semen considered in spiritual traditions to be white
blood. Sethe reveals another damaging memory when she recounts giv-
ing birth to Denver in the woods. Through her reflection on this incident,
Sethe revisits the distant past. When Sethe refers to her baby in vitro as
an antelope, she calls forth images from a remote time. The image of the
antelope has surfaced from the deep recesses of a memory long restrained
by the twin sensations of pain and fear. Not remembering even where she
was born “Carolina, maybe? Or was it Louisiana?” she does, however, re-
member song and dance.
Ronald L. Grimes asserts that performative, nonverbal elements of ac-
tion are important to interpret meaning (xii). This one recollection jump-
 Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved k 155

starts her stalled memory and connects her to a remembrance of a mother

signified by a “cloth hat” to distinguish her from her other mothers, all of
whom “were also called Ma’am” (30). Similar to the indeterminate memo-
ries of vital statistics and parental separation documented in the enslave-
ment-era narratives, Sethe’s memories are fragmented, but present. The
power of the song and dance memorates dominate her mind, and after a
brief digression to another resurrected thought, Sethe and the narrator
jointly recall the liberating effect of the song and dancing the antelope until
they shape-shifted. In The Myth of the Eternal Return, Eliade notes that all
dances were originally sacred rooted in a mythical moment informed by
an ancestor (28). Conflating the present with the past, Sethe’s recall of the
dance is an example of memory’s ability to transcend time and space.
It is significant that the narrator sees Sethe as one of the dancers, further
reinforcing the continuity between the multitiered past and present sym-
bolized by the image of the antelope. Among the Bambara people of Mali
this antelope is called tji wara, or chi wara, and is said to have introduced
agriculture to them. Tji means work and wara means animal, thus, work-
ing animal. The dancers appear in pairs, a man and a woman, an associa-
tion with fertility, and spiritually prepare the ground for planting. Wearing
masks, aided by song and drum, the dancers become the spirit symbolized
by the antelope as they dance. The prime purpose for the masks is to serve
as a temporary dwelling place for the deity. Functioning at its highest level,
the mask expresses the myths of a society or even an element of those
myths. Its image is used in ritualistic dances to ensure germination of the
seed and a good harvest. Tji wara is also the name for the goddess of fertil-
ity as well as the name of an earth goddess (Segy 148).
Sethe’s exercise of memory forces her to listen to her own voice and to
recall her own mother, her ma’am, with the special mark on her body, along
with her mother’s native language, songs, and dances. The remembrance of
dance is noteworthy as a memorate since dance makes a smooth transition
in religious worship in America and represents a primary vehicle to store
sacred information. As a consequence of memory lapses dance is an apt
medium for the safe keeping of memory, which can be performed again
and again. That is, dance is a way to both mask and preserve culture. Mor-
rison emphasizes the indispensability of dance in her depiction of Sixo’s
resistance. She writes, “Sixo went among the trees at night. For dancing,
he said, to keep his bloodlines open, he said” (25). Similarly, singing “too
loud” songs helps Paul D. and Sixo keep to recover their challenged man-
hood and to keep them going. The songs also helped to preserve memory
156 k Chapter 6

as the men “sang the women they knew; the children they had been” to
control the discourse of their lives(108). Referred to by Bob Marley as “Re-
demption Songs,” these songs helped them smash “Mr. Death” (109) as they
combined sounds, garbled and tricked the words to yield up other mean-
ings (108). At the novel’s end, the women in Cincinnati sing a song “wide
enough to sound deep water and knock the pods off chestnut trees” as they
exorcise Beloved’s unruly spirit (261).
Contributing to what Sethe refers to as her “homeless” mind (204) is her
physical and psychological separation from her mother at an early age. One
of Sethe’s most vivid memories of her mother occurs when her mother
tutors her on how to recognize her (mother) from the other women in
the field by the circle and cross burnt on her skin. Being instructed to
recognize her mother by the dikenga dia Kongo, not only connects her
to her mother, it is also a spiritual memorate that connects her mother
to an African past. Sethe’s mother reminds her that most of the people
who had this mark are now dead. Readers can infer that those African
bodies were not only branded with marks from their oppressors as the
identifying marks of bondage, but they were also inscribed with cicatriza-
tions and other descriptive markers referencing distinct African nations
and identities. Fu-Kiau notes, “To be a true knower is to know what is
marked on one’s own mind and body” (African Cosmology 33). The mark,
emblematic of the Kongo cosmogram, dikenga dia Kongo, and the Yoruba
sign orita meta, continues to connect the un-named displaced Africans to
origin and subverts the enslaver’s intention to signify the body as property
and subsequent racial stigmatizations. Roberts and Roberts note that the
body becomes a text to be written and read (Memory 41). Commenting on
the body as a visual representation of memory they assert that marks on
the body perpetually reify “the embodiment of memory to be enacted in
the present” (41). Sethe’s recollection of the mark provides the necessary
memory to invoke the ritual petitioning of Baby Suggs—the idea of mother
that Sethe can comfortably remember.
The telling of this story also unites Sethe with transplanted African an-
cestors who “used different words” (Beloved 62). This explains to Sethe why
she has forgotten almost everything except singing and dancing. Paradoxi-
cally, even through the remembrance of Nan, her other mother, she was
able to translate the code that was in the “same language that her mother
spoke and which would never come back” (62). Somehow, Sethe transcends
the present and journeys to a place where she “was picking meaning out
of a code she no longer understood” (62). This reminiscence brings to the
 Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved k 157

fore much of what has been haunting Sethe’s unconscious mind: that her
mother had in some way abandoned her.
After this “rememory” session Sethe yearns for Baby Suggs: “A mighty
wish for Baby Suggs broke over her like surf . . . in the quiet following its
splash” (62). Water is a metaphor for remembrance, and Sethe’s remem-
brance of Baby Suggs invoked in water imagery also encodes the idea of
bakulu or venerated ancestors who dwell under the surface of living waters
as manifestation as well as memory. After Sethe arrives at 124 Bluestone
Road “all mashed up and slit open” (135), Baby Suggs provides her both
physical and spiritual nurturing. As Sethe is the substitute for Baby Suggs
on the Garner’s Sweet Home plantation, Baby Suggs is the surrogate for
the mother who was hanged and is one who can teach Sethe knowledge of
traditional practices and provide a sense of spiritual and cultural continu-
ity.
Additionally, this memory of Baby Suggs, ushered in with the recurring
image of water, emphasizes the value of water associated with cleansing,
healing, and regeneration. The river to which Sethe alludes is also a major
metaphor in African and African American culture that provides a sym-
bolic paradigm for ritual as a place of transition, locations of memory, and
locus for spiritual initiations. Judith Gleason writes in Oya: In Praise of an
African Goddess, “The river is a matrix of memory” (55). This statement’s
profundity pertains to its analogous relationship to the novel’s dominant
motifs: memory, motherhood, and the ancestor as the river resembles
the circularity Toni Morrison employs in narration, diction, and plot ele-
ments.
Additionally, the symbols of dancing, water, and the number nine are so
intricately related that it is difficult to comment on one without examining
the other. For example, when Sethe calls for Baby Suggs in the passage cited
above, she longs to hear the echo of her voice. Deciding that she is in need
in some fixing ceremony, Sethe goes to the Clearing where Baby Suggs had
performed the ring dance in the sunlight. Dance and river suggest each
other because as Gleason says, “The river remembers transmitting sacred
information through its dances” (56). Since they are a part of each other,
they cannot be separated. In much the same way, the number nine also
signifies both memory and river. In the Yoruba religion the number nine is
associated with Oya, the Òrìsà of the Joliba (Niger) river, who is also iden-
tified with the ancestral maskers whom the Yoruba call the egungun. This
secret society is charged with the task of bringing the ancestor back to life
in masquerade form—a reiteration of memory.
158 k Chapter 6

Oya is the female warrior, owner of the ancestral cult, and a river Òrìsà.
One of the praises chanted for Oya is “Se Oya l’o ni Egun” (Oya owner of
the egungun). Additionally her name means “she tore,” a verb form that
signifies an event with “disastrous consequences” (Gleason 5). The myth
that explains the event says, “A big tree was uprooted, literally and figu-
ratively: the head of the household the one in whose shade we felt secure
suddenly perished. She tore, and a river overflowed its banks. Whole cloth
was ripped into shreds. Barriers were broken down” (Gleason 5). The major
elements in Oya’s myth are analogous to those related to Baby Suggs who
was the big tree that was uprooted.
Baby Suggs was once the head of the household and the spiritual leader
of the community. As its “unchurched preacher” she led “every black man,
woman and child” to the “Clearing—a wide-open place cut deep in the
woods” (87). The woods, a metaphor for a place dense with spirits, are an
abode for the invisible powers in West and Central African spiritual tradi-
tions. Ras M. Brown notes, besides its location as being rich with spirits,
wooded areas or feenda provide Africans with the organic materials for
healing and for the production of minkisi or charms (308). Similar to ex-
periences in Africa where sacred groves are dwelling places of individual
deities and the loci of other supernatural beings, the Clearing represents
the space for Africans to repair the ruptures of the past using dance move-
ments to free their bodies from the trauma imposed by enslavement’s lim-
ited opportunity for mobility. “In the heat of every Saturday afternoon she
sat in the Clearing while the people waited among the trees” (87).
Paul Cloke and Owain Jones argue that trees are landscapes of mem-
ory that are significant from a cultural perspective as “deep currents of
meaning swirl around our culture(s) and brush the branches of any tree
place which is being encountered, experienced, narrated, or imagined at
any given time” (19). It is her message of love, the power of dance, and
the transcending nature of song that Sethe yearns for, even just to “listen
for the spaces that the long ago singing had left behind” (89). The idea of
absences—that things that are missing are as noteworthy as those that are
present—relates to the power of memory to close the gaps and continually
invoke meaning. Baby Suggs also represents the barriers that are removed
or broken as she leads the people to deliverance in the wilderness. This
place is defined not only by Christian sentiments, but also by African ritu-
als. African spiritual sensibilities direct and sacralize the space accompa-
nied by the invocation of self-affirming statements. Through her supplica-
tions in the Clearing, the members of the community are able to break
 Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved k 159

through the barriers that keep them from loving and living. Baby Suggs’s
gatherings are acts of subversion and self-definition helping to restore her
village’s psychic equilibrium.
Baby Suggs, according to Morrison, was born in Africa. “Baby Suggs
came here out of one of those ships” armed with proverbs, songs, folktales,
and religious beliefs (Clemons 75). However, Baby Suggs becomes medi-
tative and silent because she cannot deal with the “nastiness of life.” Her
detachment from speaking is symbolic of the denial of the word, which is
necessary to sustain life. Resolved to the idea that “there is no bad luck in
the world but white folks” (89), Baby Suggs dies contemplating color to
augment a life where white things took all she ever had or dreamed (89).
Dying nine years after the death of Sethe’s baby, she leaves behind a legacy
of remembered words as touchstones for the characters to measure moral-
ity, good character, as well as contradiction. Sethe’s psychological duress is
heightened by the death of Baby Suggs and finds a temporary respite some
nine years later with the appearance of a woman called Beloved.
The first course of action in the examination of the complex nature of
the title character must be a focus on her identity. This is not, however,
a modest undertaking, as Beloved represents different things to different
people in her multivoiced, multiple identified presence. For Sethe, Beloved
is the murdered daughter returned from the grave. Deborah Horvitz sees
Beloved’s identity as follows: “She is Sethe’s mother, She is Sethe herself;
she is her daughter” (163). Explaining these “blurred boundaries,” Hor-
vitz continues, “Beloved exists in both the realm of the particular and the
universal. She is a member of Sethe’s family and a representative spirit
of all the woman dragged onto slave ships in Africa” as well as the Afri-
can women in America descended from the women on those ships (157).
I concur and consider Beloved as representative of all the children who
were transported into enslavement, not by the waters of the Middle Pas-
sage alone, but by the wombs of African women—the primary route that
delivered enslaved Africans to their principal roles as plantation laborers.
Also significant in the formulation of Beloved’s identity is the fourth
chapter of Part 2 where the omniscient narrator’s presence is effaced. The
section begins with Sethe saying, “I AM BELOVED and she is mine” (210).
Although this is the only sentence punctuated in the section, the spaces
are left where the punctuation would have appeared. This focus on the
interstices is significant on two levels. First, it suggests a remembrance of
unseen things by providing a place for them anyway. And second, it reveals
Morrison’s willingness to suspend mechanical conventions and opens up
160 k Chapter 6

spaces for cyclical and temporal/spatial realities that do not separate phe-
nomena in such severe frames. In addition, the capitalization of the first
three words suggests authority and deliverance. The word AM indicates a
state of existence that takes into account an inclusive and combined past,
present, and future (eternity), in short, a space of memory.
In the paragraph following this sentence, Beloved speaks, confirming
this cyclical overlay of temporal realities. She says, “All of it is now it is
always now” (210). This section also marks a turning point in the novel,
positing Beloved’s multifaceted identity and prefiguring Sethe’s fragmen-
tation and reintegration. She recalls knowing that Beloved is the returned
daughter when her “water broke” after seeing her on the tree stump (202).
Like Eva in Sula, Sethe chides herself for not remembering the signs—
“fingernail prints”—that she purposely marks on Beloved’s forehead when
she immolates her in the shed (202). The markings on the body are lieux dé
memoires or sites of memory confirming Beloved’s identity as her daugh-
ter. Like the abiku child born again to the same mother, Beloved bears the
mark that Sethe should have recognized. For example, Mobolade notes
that these children who don’t come to earth to stay very long are usually
given a mark, so that when they are reborn, their mothers can recognize
them as their abiku child. Sethe remarks that if Paul D had not distracted
her, she would have seen the fingernail prints on her “forehead for all the
world to see” (202–3). Also, instead of referring to urination, Sethe’s choice
of language connects the domain of prepartum, postpartum, and postmor-
tem and blurs the margins between the living and the dead consistent with
African spiritual sensibilities and in particular the abiku.
Bridging the gap between North America and Africa, the past and the
present, the dead and the living, the flesh and the spirit, the other person
to whom Beloved is significant is Denver. The exchange of blood between
them solidifies these relationships and connects Denver and Beloved spiri-
tually, matching the way that a blood offering would connect a devotée
to the Òrìsà to whom the offering was made. In this section of the novel,
Sethe and Denver, two living members of this family of women, have made
the crucial connection to Beloved and her multireferential identity.
In an interview with Walter Clemons, Toni Morrison remarks that she
did the bulk of the research for Beloved in Brazil because that country
archived historical information not available in North America—such as
archival displays of mouth bits, brakes, and other metalwork used by the
captors to humiliate and break the captive Africans (75). Highlighting Mor-
 Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved k 161

rison’s research in Brazil was her examination of Candomblé and Oya, an

Òrìsà of primary importance. Morrison’s depiction of characteristics and
images associated with the character Beloved include a plethora of sym-
bols that link Beloved to this Òrìsà. For instance, Beloved is the personi-
fication of Oya or Yansan, the other name by which she is known, which
means mother of nine. This number consistently recurs in the novel. The
feast that prefigures the killing of the baby fed ninety people; Part 1 of the
novel where Beloved is introduced is divided into eighteen chapters (nine
times two); Beloved appears eighteen years after the baby’s death and nine
after Baby Sugg’s death.
Still another of Oya’s powerful associations is with wind. She is de-
scribed as the wind that precedes a storm, the wind made by sweeping
(the broom is another of her symbols), and the wind energy manifested in
the lungs. When Beloved first arrives at 124 her breathing is labored. “She
was breathing like a steam engine” (63). Furthermore, one of Oya’s praise
names describes her as determined—someone who “when she’s got her eye
on something she never changes her intention” (Gleason 8). This is clear
in the attention Beloved gives Sethe, walking her to and from work and
always studying her [Sethe’s] face and asking her questions. After being at
124 for five weeks, Paul D tries to find the underlying cause of this mystery
called Beloved. He queries her about what she wants, “How’d you come?
Who brought you?” (65). Other inquiries concerned her familial relation-
ships of which their were none. Paul D asks, “Ain’t you got no brothers or
sisters” (65)? The narrator refers to her as “homeless and without people”
(66). Gleason reminds us, “Oya has no home, no special road she guards
the road into the world, and guards the road to heaven” (9). Paul D’s per-
ception of Beloved’s nature is a shining he cannot place, “silver fish,” “dark
water,” and “glistening” (65). This “water-drinking woman” (Beloved 66)
who glistens correlates with Oya who represents the transition between
life and death.
As the guardian of the cemetery gate, Oya provides access for the egress-
ing of departed souls across the river. This is consistent with Beloved’s ap-
pearance in the novel on the day of carnival, which is accompanied by
decaying dying roses. On that carnival day, which literally translates into
a day of death, or day of flesh, “A fully dressed [sic] woman walked out of
the water” attired in black cloth (50). The motif of the black dress recurs
in Chapter 8 of Part 1, “her black skirt swayed from side to side (74). And
finally, “Beloved dropped the folds of her skirt. It spread around her. The
162 k Chapter 6

hem darkened in the water” (105). The origin of the Joliba (Niger) River is
explained in the myth of Oya’s tearing the black cloth that formed the river
making the kingdom of Nupe the land where Oya originates.
In addition, Beloved’s appearance signifies the notion of bakulu, the
realm of the dead and a site of memory located under the surface of wa-
ter from a Kongo perspective. The BaKongo have generally thought of the
universe as divided into two worlds of the living and the dead, separated
by water. Any real body of water serves as the passage between the two,
which may be affected at certain other boundaries. Both the Yoruba and
the BaKongo understand death as life continued in another place. The
Òrìsà Oya’s, presence is indicative of the reconciliation of death crucial
to Sethe’s healing. Emblematic of the Òrìsà Oya Beloved assists Sethe by
unveiling memories, enabling her to confront her accumulated pain. And,
finally, as a primordial image, she provides a sense of release of the hidden
stresses not readily accessible to Sethe’s conscious mind.
Now that the ancestor, Baby Suggs, has been invoked and Beloved has
appeared what remains the proper rituals to engender Sethe’s are heal-
ing. The next element to be considered in this chapter is the use of rituals
employed in the novel. The following discussion concerns the three rituals
that assist Sethe to overcome her sense of desecration. These rituals are
categorized as initiating, mediating, and culminating.

k k k

Congo, the hoodoo man, haunts these cabins, words mesh into
night. He works spells; his spirit runs in deep rivers and sings in
shadow trees runs deep rivers and sings in shadow trees.
—Larry Neal, “Fragments from the Narrative of the Black Magicians”

Stamp Paid performs the first ritual. The implied narrator says: “It was
Stamp Paid who started it” (135). As a ferryman, he personifies the Òrìsà
Aganju, who spiritually ferries people across great obstacles toward their
destiny. As a deity, Aganju helps his initiates to confront the internal-
ized pain and anger that left unresolved will thwart their future destinies.
Aganju hurdles physical obstacles and opens both unchartered geographi-
cal and psychological frontiers. Morrison’s description of Stamp Paid’s fa-
miliarity with the Ohio River suggests knowledge of the river beyond the
mundane: “He knew the secrets of the Ohio river and its banks” (170). Also
 Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved k 163

matching his identity as the Òrìsà of the wilderness, Stamp Paid goes “off
with two buckets to a place near the river’s edge that only he knew about
where blackberries grew” (136). The fruit he brings back is described as
being consecrated: “To eat them was like being in church. . . .[Eating] just
one of the berries and you felt anointed” (136).
This gathering of fruit is the ritual preparation for the community’s full
moon feast. This ritual performed by Stamp Paid is complete with blood
sacrifice. Because of the inaccessibility of the berries, he only reaches
them by going through “brambles lined with blood-drawing thorns thick
as knives that cut through his skirts and trousers” (136). Also cadres of
insects, “mosquitoes, bees, hornets, wasps, and the meanest lady spider in
the state” contribute their life essences to the sacrifice in the form of stings
(136).
It was after Stamp Paid brought the berries on a full moon day (a time of
abundance) just twenty-eight days (136) after Sethe’s arrival that the ritual
stage is set. Both the new moon and full moon represent times of height-
ened spirituality. As such, rituals are performed to ensure the success of
the community. Also, moon phases are thought to have chemical effects on
food, people, tides (both river and ocean), and are therefore propitiated by
ritual sacrifice.
When the moon is full, the next phase represents a dying or waning, a
foreboding of imminent death. Baby Suggs escalates the ritual action with
her decision to do something for the man who has demonstrated his love
going through such an ordeal to get berries. Morrison writes, “That’s how
it began” (136). Like the female spider’s poison, venomous resentment fills
the air in the form of envious whispers disguised as concerns for the ex-
cesses they all knew to fend off, even on the north shore of the river. The
community begins to stir, railing against the excess of eating, singing, and
dancing. Instead of providing a release for the community, they register
their collective disapproval and demand a sacrifice. Their displeasure be-
comes evident when they fail to warn the Suggs family that white folks are
heading toward 124. Therefore, the feast is the necessary event that leads
to one of the primary conflicts to be resolved in the novel: Sethe’s sacrifice
of the Crawling Already? baby.
The mediating ritual conducted by Paul D, a singing man, who has “ex-
perienced life on a plantation, a chain gang, and traveling around” (41),
occurs when he takes Sethe and Denver to the carnival—reconnecting
Sethe to the community. A spiritual truce is affected by her presence and
is reciprocated by the community members who nod heads in affirmation.
164 k Chapter 6

Moreover, by sharing his pain with Sethe, Paul D helps her to reconcile
some of her pain. Described as a man who has dealt with so much pain
that his heart has hardened, Paul D brings a view of his past to Sethe that
allows her to confront some of the horror from her own locked up past.
Ironically, the breaking of her heart is a pivotal aspect of her healing. Paul
D, who wants to put his story next to hers, represents more than a stopover
halfway through the journey; he provides a way for her to continue on her
journey.
The culminating ritual or last rites establish the conditions for rebirth
and regeneration. They occur when Denver, recognizing that her mother
is being consumed by Beloved’s greedy “love,” signals for help by leaving
the safety of the front porch with ancestral guidance from Baby Suggs, who
tells Denver, “Go on out the yard. Go on” (244). Like the ancestral presence,
the eponymous character invoked in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the an-
cestor is invisible, a disembodied voice speaking on the lower frequencies
(503). According to Ellison’s definition of the ancestor, one may draw the
following conclusions from this series of propositions: The ancestor is not
visible; knows things that need to be told to the living; is able to commu-
nicate with the living; and speaks on the lower frequencies to those who
listen. Denver heeds Baby Suggs’s advice and steps out of 124.
Leaving the liminal space of the porch, which is neither in the house nor
out of the house, she embarks upon a personal healing, which ultimately
leads to a communal cleansing. Denver, the daughter of Halle, described
as an “angel man” has the gift of spiritual diagnosis and is referred to as
“charmed” (209). When Denver tells Lady Jones of her family’s physical
hunger, she paves the way for the woman to make peace with the house and
its inhabitants through food offerings, a ritualized way of reconnecting to
the ancestor for the community’s behalf with “sacks of white beans,” “plates
of cold rabbit meat,” and “baskets of eggs,” (249). The food accompanied
with names—even when there were no plates or bowls to return—meets
the pressing need to diminish hunger. By placing their names on the offer-
ings, the women make peace with the ancestor, Baby Suggs. Their names
replicate speech, and the re-introduction of their names to 124 Bluestone
Road ultimately repairs their relationship with Baby Suggs’s spirit. I argue
that the spite in 124 described as being “full of a baby’s venom” belongs to
the Crawling Already? baby and Baby Suggs, Holy.
Following their propitiary food offerings (adimu), the women respond
by tapping into the power of the oral tradition using the power of the
tongue, which formerly castigated the inhabitants of 124. Now they raise
 Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved k 165

their voices rallying the community to protect the occupants of 124. After
the “story is properly blown up and they are sufficiently agitated,” Ella leads
the women “who convinced the others that rescue was in order” (256). The
community invokes Baby Suggs through remembrance of the help she has
provided to each of them along the way. Disarmed by the memories of 124
and Baby Suggs, the women move from “rememory” to redemption.
Equally important is their individual recollections of their own personal
damage as a result of enslavement. These traumatic remembrances allow
them to forgive themselves. As a result they forgive 124 and the people in it
for their sins of pride and excess, as well as themselves for excessive pride
and for failing the inhabitants of 124. The final ritual resembles a burial,
a culminating ritual with which most people have a familiarity. Albert J.
Raboteau notes the powerful position of the ancestors and the importance
of burial rites. Improper or incomplete funeral rites may interfere or delay
the entrance of the deceased into the spiritual world and may cause his soul
to linger about, as a restless and malevolent ghost (13).
The women’s mission is twofold: they come to exorcise the malevolent
spirit incorporated as Beloved, and to heal the rift with the spirit of Baby
Suggs that has kept the community from being united. In this symbolic
reburial, they come to observe the proper rites, which they had not ob-
served the first time. If they had been carried out properly, the spirit of
the deceased child and/or woman would not have troubled the living. The
concern for the spirit is coupled with concern for a proper burial. Without
a proper burial, the spirit is certain to be restless—and that restlessness
may lead to problems for those responsible for the interment. This time
the women come together in the spirit of cooperation and unity, armed
with the talismans (minkisi), roots, crosses, and an assemblage of items
remembered from belief systems anterior to their Christian conversions.
Marimba Ani notes the importance and power of rituals:
Our rituals, our songs, our music our dance, became vehicles through
which to contact the divine, media through which we reached the
spiritual source and so received sustenance and energy from the
knowledge of our specialness. (218)
This ritual reenactment, according to Ani, restates the solidarity of the
community and allows regeneration of space and expansion of time to
achieve eternity. Ritual allows imagination to bend time and, like memory,
points toward evolution.
The group, assembled in the manner of an African council around the
166 k Chapter 6

village tree, substantiates the idea that issues of morality are a communal
concern that warrants input and consideration from all members. Ella, in-
spired by her own haunting memories, “set her jaws working” and “hol-
lered.” The women follow in suit. Through their unified effort, these women
who collectively understood sound testify to its preeminence over words.
With its “heat of simmering leaves,” “right combinations” of keys, codes,
and sounds that “broke the back of words” (261), the power of sound ex-
tends and expands the space beyond the individual body. The collective
sound is liberating, releasing both Sethe and the members of the com-
munity from the web of grief and shame, similar to the therapeutic sounds
made in the Clearing, which were intensified by the dance. In Song of Solo-
mon, Morrison refers to these sounds as language and nonlanguage. She
writes, “It was what there was before language. Before things were written
down” (281).
Wole Soyinka interprets this dynamic:
Language reverts in religious rites to its pristine existence, eschew-
ing the sterile limits of particularization. In cult funerals, the circle
of initiate mourners, an ageless swaying grove of dark pines, raises
a chant around a mortar of fire, and words are taken back to their
roots, to their original poetic sources when fusion was total and the
movement of words was the very passage of music and the dance of
images. (Myth 148)
Morrison gives a clue to the composite nature and the dimension of the
kind of sound emitted by the women. In her article “Rediscovering Black
History,” she writes:
A sound, very special sound. A sound made up of all the elements
that distinguished black life (its peculiar brand of irony, oppression,
versatility, madness, joy, strength, shame, honor, triumph, grace and
stillness) as well as those qualities that identified it with all of man-
kind (compassion, anger, foolishness, courage, self-deception and vi-
sion). (16)
As a result of tapping into the power of the cosmic sound and remem-
brances of the past, both Sethe and the community emerge from the ritual
experience charged with new strength. Being reunited with the community
of women allows Sethe a return to herself and to properly situate the ances-
tor, the goal of ritual drama. Appeasement of the spirit of Baby Suggs and
the exorcising of the demanding spirit of Beloved restores the equilibrium
of the damaged community.
 Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved k 167

At the novel’s end Paul D’s return to 124 is inscribed as “his coming is the
reverse route of his going” (263) and alternately “his coming is the reverse
of his going” (270), a metaphor, which describes the process of memory.
Here, Morrison suggests that entry and exit occur not only in the physical
world, but also in the world of spirit. This fluidity is chiefly represented by
the ancestors who occupy both realms of present and past—chiefly through
the invocation of memory. In between the narrator’s two statements, Paul
D recalls Beloved’s escorting him to the “ocean-deep place” where he once
belonged (264). The “ocean-deep place: to which Paul D refers represents
the realm of the bakulu and connects his relationship with Beloved beyond
trespass to a cosmic return.
Furthermore, Morrison’s inscription physically re-creates the tight
packing of bodies in the holds of ships that brought Africans as captives to
America, with their arms crossed, knees drawn up. These re-significations
of Middle Passage memory and Paul D’s survival of subsequent of inhu-
mane acts realized in a scarred neck “collared like a beast,” furnish read-
ers with the expunged memorates to assist them in reconstructing their
own painful memories. Morrison suggests that readers may also be healed.
These memories and connections, ingressing and egressing not only in the
“stream in back of 124,” but also in the continuous stream of ancestral con-
sciousness, are available if readers listen at the lower frequencies. This rec-
onciliation with the pain too terrible to confront allows Denver and Paul
D to face the repressed memory of their painful pasts. While managing his
own recovery, Paul D is able to reach Sethe and help to release her from her
“too thick love” and its attending guilt through the intersection of shared
remembrance. Furthermore, through ritual re-enactment, Sethe has begun
the process of revision, rememory, and remembrance of the ancestor. It is
now possible for her to be “her own best thing.”
 7

Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and

Tracking the Hunter
An Examination of the Òrìsà Ochossi in Jazz

Once when I was tree

Flesh came and worshipped at my roots.
My ancestors slept in my outstretched
Limbs and listened to flesh
Praying and entreating on his knees
—Henry Dumas, “Root Song”

Jazz (1992), Toni Morrison’s sixth novel, employs a set of distinctive epic
characteristics and constructs the concept of spirituality as the matrix for
text, context, and ritual performance.1 My analysis of this novel focuses on
the heroic quest of Joe Trace, a character representing the Yoruba Òrìsà,
Ochossi. Reading Jazz outside the frame of the migration novel, I focus,
instead, on the transmigration of soul and spirit as I chronicle Joe Trace’s
quest for fulfillment. Key to this observation is a consideration of rituals
such as the sacrifice of Dorcas and other spiritual intercessions subsequent
to her spiritual transition.2 These ritual performances, not only reintegrate
Joe’s fragmented psyche, but also heal the community at large.
Using syncopated, improvisational language, mimetic of jazz music,
Morrison recodifies spiritual knowledge from various African traditions.
These spiritual riffs allow characters and readers to gain meaning in their
respective literary environments. My consideration of narrative modes
includes a description of the Yoruba Òrìsà of the hunt, Ochossi, and the
manner in which Morrison inscribes specific attributes to him. Moreover,
an analysis of ceremonial acts of propitiation honoring the phenomenon
of pursuit will serve as the basis for this interpretation. To facilitate this
critical undertaking, I will consider Ochossi’s major attributes as well as
 Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination in Jazz k 169

his connection with the Òrìsà Oshun and other spiritual ideas to advance
Morrison’s thematic trajectory of memory.

Jazz Impulses and Syncopated Rhythms of Time

Of the many essential characteristics of Kongo culture that have survived

among African Americans, the concept of time and the person’s relation-
ship to it remains significant. For the Ba Kongo time is cyclical, which
means it has no beginning or end. At the abstract level it is like a river, it
flows. At the concrete level events or dunga give time its value of percep-
tion. Even at the concrete level, time is unending; it just keeps recycling
(Adjaye 20). When a person’s energy diminishes, they perish and begin a
new cycle of existence.
Morrison inscribes this idea of time in her description of Rose Dear’s
emotional state prior to her jumping into the well. She writes, “Rose Dear
was free of time that no longer flowed, but stood stock-still when they
tipped her from her kitchen chair” (102).3 After Rose Dear’s death, her
mother, True Belle, arrives from Baltimore to take care of Violet and her
four siblings. True Belle expresses the concept of life as an adjunct of time
within the Kongo cosmological frame when she says, “Thank God for
life . . . and thank God for death” (101). Her statement underscores the idea
that just as life begins the journey, death, too, is part of that journey—the
return of the soul to itself and to the beginning. When a person dies he or
she undergoes change; life flows to create a new state of being.
This change or invigoration of the spirit may also take place through
interpersonal relationships, which refresh a person. After Dorcas’s death
Joe Trace remarks, “With her I was fresh, new again. Before I met her, I’d
changed into new seven times” (123). Fu-Kiau notes that seven concentric
circles situate human beings in the center of the circle defining the uni-
verse, according to the Kongo (African Cosmology 41).4 When a person
heads toward the seventh direction, he or she heads toward the self for
soul-realization.
Joe’s changes not only represent significant events, they “renew” time.5
His changes are as follows:

When he names himself;

When he is picked out and trained to be a hunter;
When Vienna burns to the ground;
In 1906 when he takes his wife to Rome;
170 k Chapter 7

When they leave the apartment on Mulberry Street and little Africa
and move uptown;
When the white men almost kill him in the white mob violence in
the summer of 1917;
In 1919 when he walks every step of the way with the three six nine.
(Jazz 123–29)

Joe’s changes suggest a kind of spiritual metaphysics going beyond Western

epistemic notions of migrations and suggest a type of shape-shifting or
transmogrification in order to survive “white folks.” In his recollection, Joe
explains how he and others knew how to survive down and up South by
following the example of the old people. Here, dissimulation can be read
as an earnest attempt to remain culturally whole.
Some of the examples of culture that continue in the up South envi-
ronment of New York City are the associations, lodges, and benevolent
societies that African people maintained to demonstrate the axiological
imperative of community cohesion. Moreover, the old people represent the
concept of the ancestor, which in turn represents timelessness on an Afri-
can continuum— another distinctive feature of African American writing
as well as an African spiritual remembrance. After considering the extent
to which his life has had its ups and downs, Joe muses that he is not pre-
pared for the changes that Dorcas will bring. Each of his changes is an at-
tempt to keep time flowing—giving him the emotional vitality to survive.
Joe states that change is necessary given the contours of oppression: “In
order to survive being colored, you had to be new and stay the same ev-
ery day the sun rose and every night it dropped” (135). His explanation of
changes reinforces the African idea of time being a social idea—the point
of occurrence between one social event and the next.
Conveying the primacy of history and records, the narrator begins her
oral recitation of the novel with the culturally nuanced sound of suck-
ing her teeth, and then speaks in a familiar gossip tone: “Sth, I know that
woman” (3). Unquestionably, the narrative voice is female with an attitude
confirmed by her remarking “I don’t hate him much anymore,” when re-
ferring to Golden Gray’s knocking the mud off his boots before entering
Henry Lestroy’s cabin (151). That is about all we, as readers, can rely on
throughout the narrative. As if hunted, the narrator throws us off the track
saying, “and that’s how that scandalizing threesome on Lenox Avenue be-
gan. What turned out different was who shot whom” (6). As we find out in
chapter 9, mostly narrated by Felice (who also narrates the final chapter),
 Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination in Jazz k 171

there is no corroboration for this alleged shooting. The narrator’s unpre-

dictability is illustrated in the first chapter of the novel when she gives
readers a glimpse of Felice’s visit to the house, which actually occurs in
one of the final chapters. The narrator continues to reroute readers when
speaking of the bright future to which black people should look forward:
“Forget that. History is over, you all, and everything’s ahead at last” (7).
Actually, the narrator’s statement dismisses the validity of the present
and undermines the novel’s major conceits—recording, tracking, and trac-
ing—which are all metaphors for situating time, history, memory, and the
ancestor. One has to both regard and disregard most of the information
supplied by the narrator, who implies that once in the city, this woodsman
cannot find the necessary correlates to sustain his nature personality. The
reader must, instead, follow the trails made by the characters if they are
going to hunt-down meaning for themselves. Like the characters in the
novel who “looked to the signs, the weather, the numbers and their own
dreams” to draw conclusions about what is really going on, the reader must
stay alert (18). For example, the narrator says, “In no time at all he forgets
little pebbly creeks and apple trees so old they lay their little branches along
the ground and you have to reach down or stoop to pick up the fruit” (35).
She tries to throw the reader off the track; he does not forget. Later in the
novel she notes that his voice retains the timbre of that former place and
time, a “woodsy voice” (181) that “had a pitch, a note they heard only when
they visited southern old folks” (71). He does not fool her, this nature man
who feeds small animals in a city teeming with people.
Despite the narrator’s sense of ambiguity and ahistoricity, the novel
bears witness to persistent racial discrimination demonstrating that his-
tory is not over.6 For example, Alice Manfred reports that she did not like
to venture south of 110th Street, where a black woman “had no surname,”
could not try on a hat, where women who were not black could be dismis-
sive of her presence and speak to her anyway they wanted. In such places,
white men could “push dollar-wrapped fingers toward her” (54). Joe, as
well as other black people, knew what was possible then and now. The riots
in East St. Louis exemplify the anything-at-all type of violence evidenced
in Alice Manfred’s recollection of her brother-in-law and sister’s deaths:
he was stomped to death and she was burned after her house was torched.
Adding to the historic cataloguing, Morrison’s narrator volleys back and
forth from past and present events with various characters providing dif-
ferent parts to recollect and therefore resurrect the unseen but known
spiritual forces.
172 k Chapter 7

Morrison’s reconfiguration of the epic is consistent with what John

R. Roberts contends is the function of the African American folk heroic
creation—that is, a normative cultural activity relating to building a dis-
tinct culture and the creation of a self (1). Not only is the subject matter
of Jazz compatible with epic sensibilities, the narrator’s ambivalent stories
correspond with the general propositions of epics, which create a history
complete with overlaying structures of past, present, and future fashioning
fully realized heroic characters sanctioned by ancestral ordination. Similar
to the epic, narration focus on genealogies, migrations, places, battles, and
group histories. For example, we know the genealogical information for
most of the characters in the novels, including minor characters. Redmond
says that epic is “mytharchival, mythopoetic, mytharkic, and mythotestify-
ing, framing, exchanging, and making strong statements about the ability
of African people to adapt to the “change-up.”7 This double consciousness
is rooted in a tradition that is intergenerational, ethnic in the fullest con-
notation, grounded in struggle—the day-to-day great family saga that has
to have death and depth.
As with all epics, identity is a key concept, indispensable to the inte-
grated cultural and spiritual personalities and tied intimately to knowing
one’s name. Similar to Song of Solomon, naming becomes an important
consideration for the hero. When Joe changes his name, his reclamation of
identity begins. Joe changes his name to “Trace” and initiates his quest as a
hunter. Shortly after that, he is chosen to go hunting with the best hunter
in Vesper County, reiterating the importance of Joe’s action to his ultimate
destiny and search for this familial past.
In this narrative, Toni Morrison warns about stepping out of the tra-
dition represented by Africa and by extension southern values such as
connection with nature. Joe’s tryst with Dorcas and his shooting her are
extreme examples of his displacement attributed to his nostalgia for the
old country. Another way to read his shooting of Dorcas is his attempt to
recapture the authority of his office as a hunter. Ras M. Brown notes that
the hunter’s ability to spill blood gives him the power associated with chiefs
(“Walk in the Feenda” 3).
In this tale of people losing themselves in the city, Joe Trace represents
the Yoruba archetypal hunter, the Òrìsà Ochossi, one of the primary deities
of the Ketu group of the Yoruba of Nigeria. Described as a double-eyed man
who loved the woods, loved them who fished, sold skins, and game, he is
a devotee of the hunter god exemplified by his being a professional hunter
who has the ability to kill from a distance with deadly accuracy.8 Further-
 Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination in Jazz k 173

more, Trace is a name that affirms his association with a hunter whose
primary orientation for finding game is to rely on tracks and traces—all
metaphors for memory. In the Yoruba pantheon, Ochossi is the son of the
Òrìsà Oshun, who is associated with rivers and streams. The third time Joe
tries to find his mother, he tracks her to a river called Treason where she
lives above the surface of the water. Joe’s killing of Dorcas for treason or
betrayal mirrors the apataki (archetypal story) where Ochossi accidentally
kills his mother with his arrow of truth. What follows are characteristics
that reinforce his identity as the hunter Òrìsà.
Violet remembers him with respect to the place where she meets him,
Virginia, as someone full of light, and a person with “razor sharp” shoul-
ders and “two-color eyes” (96). The significance of his eyes relates to the
folkloric idea of being double-eyed, like the conjure man or two-headed
snake doctor, who uses one eye for spiritual vision and one for physical vi-
sion. Moreover, Violet’s reference to the light identifies Joe as being more
related to Ochossi than with Ogun, since Ochossi is connected to the moral
light associated with Obatala, the supreme deity of ethical righteousness.
Ochossi is an Òrìsà regarded as being exemplary in character as such; he
is often thought to possess similar moral authority to Obatala, chief in the
hierarchical arrangement of Òrìsà. Some of the attributes that represent
Ochossi are absolute justice, truth, correctness, and innocence. Addition-
ally, he is considered as the ultimate judge, the keeper of traditions, and the
maintainer of customs. His impartiality and commitment to honor truth,
no matter the consequences, testifies to his moral character. Morrison
blurs the distinction between the hunter Òrìsà Ochossi and Ogun as she
collapses their distinct identities.
This overlay is not problematic, because of the close affiliation of the
two hunter Òrìsà. Using a variety of symbolic descriptions, Morrison in-
vokes their textual presence using multiple references to iron. One of the
references is to railroad tracks. A recodified spiritual idea, railroad tracks
are emblematic of Ogun; in fact, the Yoruba say wherever two pieces of
iron come together—there is Ogun. Other descriptions recall the style of
Ijala praise poetry unfolding Ogun’s characteristics.9 Hunters predominate
among the worshippers of the Òrìsà Ogun. In fact, it is often believed that
Ogun actually lived and was a hunter and a deity. As such, he controls all
metal implements as well as guns, machetes, and swords. Additionally, his
number of attributes is seven as indicated in the phrase Ogun meje l’Ogun-
un mi (The Ogun that I know are seven in number) (Babalola 147), which
also corresponds with Ochossi’s numerical delineation.
174 k Chapter 7

Toni Morrison begins Jazz with alternating invocations for the two
hunter Gods. Morrison’s re-signification of the razor denotes a primary
odu or merindilogun divinatory pattern where Ochossi speaks in the omo
odu, Ejioco Ogunda, which is described as sitting on the razor’s edge; the
odu Ejioco is associated with Ochossi, while Ogunda is emblematic of
Ogun. She writes, “A poisoned silence floated through the rooms like a
big fishnet” (5) and “Daylight slants like a razor” (7), and “just as wonder-
ful to know that back in one’s own building there are lists drawn up by the
wives or the husband hunting an open market” (11). An additional attri-
bute that confirm Ochossi’s inscription is the idea of poison; as a hunter,
he is considered a master of medicines and herbs and poisons.10 The job
that Joe takes to make extra money in the city is as a cosmetic salesman,
an occupation that signifies a correspondence with Ochossi, a camouflage
master. As a devotee of the Òrìsà of the earth and forest, the preparations
that Joe carries in his sample case, which promise to beautify the women,
are analogous to the herbal potions that Ochossi carries in his shoulder bag
made of leopard skin.
Another connection with Ochossi is Joe’s association with birds, espe-
cially trapping them. He traps birds and puts them in cages. Birds, the
parrot or odidé, in particular, characterize sacrifices made to Ochossi. Ad-
ditionally, Ochossi accepts all types of birds as his sacrificial food including
roosters, guineas, doves, pigeons, chickens, hens, and especially parrots.
At the beginning of the novel, the narrator describes Violet as a woman
who used to “live with a flock of birds” (3). Even though they live in New
York City, they still reside in a type of wilderness characterized by living
with a “flock.” After she marks Dorcas’s face at the funeral, Violet sacrifices
the parrots to mend the cosmic ruptures caused by Joe’s shooting of Dor-
cas; freeing the birds is an ebo or sacrifice to heal the breach.
Throughout the novel, Morrison employs avian imagery in a variety of
descriptions such as observations of “white plumes on the helmets of the
UNIA men” (8), or hunting signs like “the signal Hunter relied on most—
redwings, those blue-black birds with the bolt of red on their wings” (176).
Violet is a woman who speaks mainly to her birds as Joe remarks, “Violet
takes better care of her parrot than she does me” (188). It seems that the
parrot who answers back “I love you,” is the spiritual cohort and twin of
Joe Trace or spirit double who reassures Violet when she is feeling unloved.
When she releases the birds, including the one who says “I love you,” a
breach has occurred and she can no longer trust the birds to give her the
information she needs. Functioning as a double sign, the release of the
 Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination in Jazz k 175

birds puts an end to Joe’s hunting, since odidé (the parrot) assists Ochossi
in being an effective hunter.
Additionally, the symbolism of hunters concerns itself with migration
or society’s constant movement. Ochossi keeps tracks of the seasons and
the migratory patterns of animals. Likewise, Joe is the migrant who follows
game and knows how to survive in the wild. This is an interesting concept,
since Joe Trace is the child of Wild—and he is a wild child who inhabits
trees. Violet who knew that trees could “be full of spirits” (103) meets Joe
when he falls out of a tree. Their first conversation consists of Violet’s in-
sisting that “Nobody sleeps in trees” to which he replies, “I sleep in them”
(103). Brown notes that the forest represents at once the primary path to
manhood, abundant with invisible forces and a sacred “transitory realm in
contact with the Other World” (“Walk in the Feenda” 306–7).
Having lived in the city for twenty years, Joe becomes nostalgic for the
country as well as for family, especially for the mother of whom he has no
traces of memory. Joe is on a quest to find his mother, Wild, and track her
down. He has remembered his objective, and this time he will be careful
not to be thrown off the track by time or location—aware that neither tem-
poral concerns nor geography can impede his destiny. Existing in symbolic
patterns, meaning can be recognized, even though distorted.
Because Joe cannot find his mother, whom he believes to be Wild, he
looks for her in “Somebody called Dorcas with hooves tracing her cheek-
bones and who knew better than people his own age what the inside of
nothing was like” (38). Further descriptions that relate Dorcas to a deer
occur in passages such as “She rears up and, taking his face in her hands,
kisses the lids of each of his two-color eyes” (39) and a reference to her eyes
as being like those of a deer. Dorcas’s spiritual familiar as a deer is signifi-
cant and connects her with this woodsman. Addiitonally, this connection
is coalescent with the Yoruba’s worship of deer. For example, Yoruba hunt-
ers venerate the duiker—a type of deer— associated with the Oduduwa
creation myth (Babalola 20). Furthermore, the sable antelope is another
sacred animal that the Bantu “associate with the human soul” (Mutwa 191).
Joe associates Dorcas with Wild. And as a result, the things he wants to
share with Dorcas are things he never was able to communicate with his
mother, who had abandoned him at birth. He wants to tell Dorcas things he
never has told Violet. The part of himself that he wants to share with Dor-
cas is his missing part, the unconfirmed acknowledgment from a mother
who never mothered him.
Reminiscent of one of the 256 Odu Ifa in the Yoruba spiritual tradition,
176 k Chapter 7

odi meji represents the shells having been thrown twice with each throw
having yielded seven cowries facing upwards. This odu speaks about the
deleterious effects of maternal abandonment. If left unresolved the emo-
tionality caused by this desertion can thwart the accomplishments of the
person and lead her or him into great depression. In Joe’s case, Wild’s ab-
sence becomes the emptiness that defines his life. In short, Wild is also
the sole/soul aim of Joe’s unrelenting hunt, the maternal experience that
he continues to track and trace; “Wild was always on his mind” (176). The
elusive Wild could be anywhere, as she was difficult to track even for the
most experienced hunter.
Victory and Hunter find traces of Wild in the “ruined honeycombs,” as
well as the sign of the blue-black birds with the “bolt of red on their wings”
(176). The descriptions of her vary. When the reader first sees Wild through
the eyes of Golden Gray, she is a “black liquid female” with “leafy hair”
who lives in the woods where “wild women grow” (171). Hunter names
the woman “Wild” when she bites him while tending to her after the birth
of her child. She is hard to locate even for the Hunter’s Hunter who has a
great reputation for reading trails. While tracking her, “Hunter’s Hunter
got tapped on the shoulder by fingertips that couldn’t be anybody’s but
hers”(166). The narrator emphasizes her stealthful approach saying, “he
didn’t hear a single crack” (166).
Wild’s inability to leave a trail of sound indicates her bond with the spiri-
tual realm. This otherworldliness is communicated to the reader by various
characters in their response to her. When Patty’s boy, Honor, encounters
her, he tells his mother that the “whole cabin was rainbowed” (68). This
correlation with the rainbow connects her to the Òrìsà Oshumare and one
of the Vodun Loa, Damballah Wedo (Ouido) in the Fon tradition. Both of
those deities connote expanded consciousness and the idea of the bridge
connecting heaven and earth, since the rainbow arcs from the sky to the
earth. For the Yoruba, the cosmic realms of the earth or aye and heaven or
orun are distinct domains, but not separate. They connect and influence
each other depending on the level or quality of communication between
the person, other Òrìsà, and the ancestors.
Even though, Joe considers her abandonment of him incidental, once
resigned to the idea of Wild being his mother, he sets out to find her. Joe’s
three attempts to find Wild represent a three-stage ritual. Toni Morrison
uses an interesting narrative device in this chapter consisting of alternating
memories of tracking Wild and Dorcas indicated by space between para-
graphs. The first time he tries to find her, he has been fishing and thinks
 Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination in Jazz k 177

he hears what sounds like “some combination of running water and wind
in high trees” (176). Hearing “the scrap of a song” from a “woman’s throat,”
he rushes to find the opening in the rock formation. Morrison writes, “The
song stopped, and a snap like the breaking of a twig took its place” (177).
The second time, Joe enters the rock place and does not find her; however,
“every movement and every leaf shift seemed to be her.”
He begs for some sign after he receives no verbal response to his ques-
tion is that you? “You my mother? Yes. No. Both. Either. But not this noth-
ing” (178). Joe’s petition to Wild to say some kind of yes, even if it is no, cor-
responds to the Yoruba divination system called obi, a system of using kola
nuts, or in the Americas, four pieces of coconut. John Mason describes the
type of answers available. He says when a Yoruba devotee divines with obi;
he or she is seeking a yes or no answer to a specific question that is asked
just one time. “There are three “yes” and two “no” answer possibilities, each
of a different quality” (Four New World Yoruba Rituals 83).
For example, the three “yes” answers are alafia, meaning an emphatic
“yes”; next is ejife, a more balanced “yes”; and the third etagua, an incom-
plete answer by itself, but combined with another response such as alafia
or ejife, or even another etagua, yield a positive affirmation. The answer
is yes, but the person will have some difficulty. If pursued, however, with
focus and clarity, the results will be sure. The “no” answers are ocana or any
of the following combinations, etagua ocana or etagua oyekun. Not having
a response to his query, Joe still has unresolved questions.
The third time he tries to find Wild, he is a married man. The tree that
he uses this time to locate her is different from the white-oak tree of his
previous attempt. Now, his landmark resembles a baobab tree with roots
that climb skyward: “Defiant and against logic its roots climbed” (182). The
baobab tree is a sacred tree representative of the ancestral impulse, since
its roots are both at his foundation and reach toward the sky in the direc-
tion of ancestors. Joe’s connection with the tree as a site to begin his search
corresponds with Dennis Duerden’s assertion that “maternal reconnection
with ancestors is the journey of the quintessential woodsmen. Hunter’s
cults have expressed their ambivalent attitude to the matrilineal authority”
(119).
When Joe reaches her place—“a natural burrow”—it is “pitch-dark” with
a “domestic smell” (183). The narrator reports, “He had come through a few
body-lengths of darkness and was looking out the south side of the rock
face. A natural burrow. Going nowhere. Angling through one curve of the
slope to another. Treason River glistening below. Unable to turn around in-
178 k Chapter 7

side, he pulled himself all the way out to reenter head first. Immediately he
was in the open air and the domestic smell intensified” (183). In this ritual
re-birth, Joe’s subterranean journey resembles the birth process. Climbing
through a symbolic birth canal—“a few body lengths of darkness”—and
entering a metaphorical womb—a natural burrow or “private place”—
Joe experiences a calm anticipation. He feels at “peace.” Again, the idea of
consumption and eating define Joe’s perception. The image of Joe waiting
alone, waiting to eat in Wild’s private place, with an opening closed to the
public” (184), is reminiscent of a fetal Joe deep in Wild’s womb, being nour-
ished through the umbilical cord.
The description of Wild’s domestic space also coheres with ideas about
ecological influences on the lives of people. Wild’s home in the rock and
its location—where water meets the shore—represent places of great spiri-
tual transition where reeds and other plants grow. From a Kongo spiri-
tual perspective, places where marshes meet the land represent ancestral
domains where there is a concentration of power and bisimbi or water
spirits. Additionally, some of the items enumerated to describe Wild’s resi-
dence “a circle of stones for cooking,” “a doll,” “a bundle of sticks,” a “set
of silver brushes, and a “silver cigar case” (184) are spiritually significant.
For instance, the circle of stones is a recodification of what the Ba Kongo
call makuku matatu an ancient idea of the three firestones or the physical
world linked with the Kongo worldview.11 Finally, the other items symbol-
ize a variety of memoirs: the doll represents the child she abandoned; the
silver items refer to the shine and gleam of the spiritual realm; and a bundle
of sticks is symbolic of a type of divinatory practice. Joe locates the pres-
ence of her things, but is still incomplete in her absence. His entrance into
the burrow to track Wild is replicated in the city as he tracks Dorcas from
“borough to borough” (131, emphasis added). Like Wild, Dorcas does not
fit in a role ordained by others and is Wild’s correlate located in an urban
environment.
From an African perspective, the efficacy of healing is the ability to tran-
scend time both liminal and spatial. In the absence of a spiritual healer,
Joe decides to heal himself and transmogrifies or shape-shifts by changing
Wild into Dorcas. This choice contrasts to his marriage to Violet. Marriage
was her choice, but it provided him a way to escape “all the redwings” (30).
While hunting for Dorcas, he refers to her as “Hardheaded” and “Wild”
(182). He is able to track her—although she is well camouflaged in her
environment. Her aunt, Alice Manfred considers Dorcas prey as well. To
prevent Dorcas from being stalked, Alice Manfred attempts to camouflage
 Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination in Jazz k 179

Dorcas by hiding her hair in braids. She also “taught her how to crawl along
the walls of the buildings, disappear into doorways, cut across corners in
choked traffic—how to do anything, move anywhere to avoid a whiteboy,
over the age of eleven” (55). Still that does not protect her from Joe’s hunt-
ing accuracy and the fervor of his search. Joe, who still practices the skills
of keen observation in his new environment “knew what a woman looks
like moving in a crowd, or how shocking her profile is against the backdrop
of the East River” (34), reads the sign of Dorcas’s wild nature: “Because he
was more used to wood life than tame, he knew when the eyes watching
him were up in a tree, behind a knoll or, like this, at ground level” (166).
As mentioned, the chapter that the narrator recounts Joe’s search for
Wild is the same chapter where he hunts for Dorcas in the City. While
searching for Dorcas, Joe “doesn’t see the paper ring from a White Owl
cigar that sticks to the crown of his cap” (181). Adorned in the regalia of
the feathers available in the city—a White Owl cigar wrapper indicates
his status as being “crowned” or an archetypal representation of the Òrìsà
Ochossi, an Òrìsà fun fun or white Òrìsà, like Obatala. Ochossi functions
to lead a person toward personal transformation and, like Ifa, helps a per-
son fulfill his or her destiny. Joe’s body becomes the threshold between
himself and the spirit world conveying the intent of his actions: the hunt.
Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts explain that the body is a place
where memory is created and preserved (86). They assert that these mark-
ings “do not document, describe or represent, or symbolize as much as
they dispose.” They further state that external signs present a “discourse of
power, which becomes meaningful in their elucidation, during the moment
of their disclosure” (112).
Additionally, the implication of the owl imagery in Jazz corresponds
to a foreshadowing of Dorcas’s death. In the story of “The Death Owl” the
narrator Thaddeus “Tad” Goodson warns:

Don’t you laugh and don’t you holler . . . fuh when det’ owl holler it’s
a warning, somebody soul guh enter de sky, somebody guh flap he
wings across the burnin’ lake. Det owl ain’t no wol, and he ain’t no
bird. Det owl de lost sperrit of a lonesome soul. He de scarified sper-
rit. An’ he ain’t got no fren’ an’ he ain’t got no company but de partin’
sperrits, and he fly wid {ap}em to de far shore. He rest in de hollow
tree, and he live in de night, an he visit de far shore. He de voice of de
onrestless sperrit, he de soun of death, an he ain’t nothen fer te make
game at. (D. Walker 13)
180 k Chapter 7

Dressed in his ceremonial dress and carrying the gun as an emblem

of his office, Joe begins to transform into the personality of the hunter.
He states, “I wasn’t looking for the trail. I was looking for me and when it
started talking at first I couldn’t hear it. I was rambling, just rambling all
through the City. I had the gun but it was not the gun—it was my hand
I wanted to touch you with” (131). He had lost the trail and picks it up
the next day. One of the attributes that assist Ochossi is his telepathy. His
power is potent. Joe communicates this to Dorcas, and her comments af-
firm this spiritual communiqué. She states, “He is coming for me. He is
coming for me. Maybe tonight. Maybe here” (190). The narrator adds her
insight about the hunt, remarking that he is not tracking her to harm her.
It is interesting to note: Joe’s actions not only ignore Henry Lestoy’s
advice not to kill the young or female, but also the mandate exemplified in
the refrain from one of Ochossi’s praise songs. The refrain sung for Ochossi
is Ode mata ore ore wole wole (Hunter don’t shoot, enter the house, enter
the house). In Tribal Talk, Will Coleman notes this restriction from a Fon
perspective. According to rules of hunting among the Fon of Dahomey, the
afianku or antelope should not be killed without making a proper sacrifice
of its own request (23).
Morrison presents Joe’s pursuit and killing of Dorcas as a logical part
of his lifelong search and hunt for Wild. The “tender” Dorcas becomes the
incarnate body of Wild and provides Joe the opportunity to be nourished.
Furthermore, the appearance of the birds gives him the signal of Wild’s
presence. He shoots her in a crowd that resembles a “flock of redwings”
(131). It is not Joe’s intention to harm Dorcas. He wants to stay and catch
her, so she will not hurt herself. In a conversation with Alice Manfred,
Violet confirms Joe’s gentleness: “Joe? No. He never hurt nothing” (81). The
intent of his shooting is to capture Wild/Dorcas for the last time. This is the
fourth time he has stalked Wild, which is the number of cosmic completion
indicating that this time, if he is successful, he will realize the heroic fulfill-
ment that he seeks.
When Joe shoots and kills Dorcas, he bonds with her as a sacrificial
victim through the link of blood, a metaphor for the blood relationship
that he has sought with Wild. Awolalu remarks that when Yoruba speak or
think of sacrifice, it is never in a metaphorical or general sense but always
in a religious sense (135). The sacrifice is performed to maintain and restore
the relationship of a person to the sacred world (135–36) and has various
intents and purposes; however the exchange of blood invokes the pleasure
 Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination in Jazz k 181

and the blessing of the divinities and the spirits and blots out sins and
averts illness and death (178).

k k k
Those who are dead are never gone. They are in the house. The
dead are not dead
—Birago Diop

After Joe shoots Dorcas, Violet also pierces her flesh with metal. Violet’s
cutting of Dorcas’s dead face is more a ceremony of marking her for recol-
lection with “a little dent under her earlobe” (91). In spiritual cultures, the
body is marked as a site of remembrance. The idea foundational to the cut
is memory. For example, should the person return to earth, they will be
recognized, remembered. Additionally, Toni Morrison continues her tra-
dition of marked women in her novels: Sula’s tattooed eye in Sula; Sethe’s
back in Beloved; Pilate’s smooth stomach in Song of Solomon.
I propose that the framed photograph of Dorcas, a phonetic approxi-
mation of the word sacred spelled backward, is an nkisi, a Kongo concept,
which translates into “things that do things.” Nkisi also represents a spirit
from the land of the dead. Much like the novel’s epigrammatic inscription,
“I am the name of the sound and sound of the name” taken from the Nag
Hamadi, the idea of nkisi is punned to correspond to both the name and
action illustrated in the root word that connects the nkisi as a phenomenon
of nature and an act performed by the nganga or ritual officiate.12 Mac-
Gaffey explains that an nkisi can also be represented as one of the bidumbu
or cosmograms in the graphic writing systems and can be inscribed on a
person or on the ground (Astonishment and Power 62). Etymologically,
nkisi is derived from the infinitive kukinsa—meaning “to take care, to cure,
to heal, to guide by all means even by ceremony.” The nkisi takes care of hu-
man beings in all aspects of life in the world because people have material
bodies that need care by nkisi (medicine) and nganga (healers). The silver
frame with its image captured by light contains the constituent elements
from which nkisi must be fabricated: mineral (metal), plants (paper), and
pigment (earth) (MacGaffey 37). All minkisi (plural of nkisi) are fabricated
things made from wood or other materials to produce desired effects with
a will of their own. Within the catalogue of minkisi there is a type of nkisi
called nkisi nkondi; nkondi means “hunter.”
182 k Chapter 7

Benjamin C. Ray explains the function of the nkisi in detail:

The nkisi spirit allows itself to be controlled by a ritual specialist,
called an nganga, in return for sacrificial offerings and money. The
nkisi-spirit has to be contained in a material object, usually a gourd, a
bag, bark box, or a snail shell; figure sculptures of humans or animals
were used in the past for the most powerful and violent nkisi. These
were called “minkisi of the above” because of their association with
rain and thunderstorms, in contrast to the benevolent minkisi of the
below, associated with earth and water. The minkisi of the below were
used to heal illnesses and to overcome misfortunes; the minkisi of the
above were used to attack and destroy people. (124)
MacGaffey remarks on the nature of nkisi nkondi as being swift to kill peo-
ple. This is evident in Dorcas’s death. She has already fallen to the ground
before anyone hears the report of Joe’s gun. The name nkondi, derived from
konda, means to hunt alone at night rather in a corporate game hunt with
the purpose of pursuing evildoers (MacGaffey 97). Practitioners of tradi-
tional religions depend on minkisi to do things for them, even to make life
possible. The narrator notes that “the mantel used to have shells and pretty
covered stones, but all that is gone now and only the picture of Dorcas
Manfred sits there in a silver frame waking them up all night long” (13).
The mantel has already been consecrated as a sacred space marked by the
placement of the organic shells and pretty-colored stones. For instance, the
seashells are minkisi known as zinga, which is a pun on the word kuzinga,
which means to live long. Robert F. Thompson and Joseph Cornet record
that seashells represent the “classic Kongo symbol of the spiral journey
from one world to the next” (“Siras Bowens” 238).
The photograph of Dorcas mediates the tension between Joe and Violet
Trace. This nkisi is the name of the thing used to help a person—when sick
they obtain health. The nkisi hunts down illness and chases it away. As an
organic object, it has an in-extinguishable life.13 Described as “the only liv-
ing presence in the house” (11), “the picture of Dorcas Manfred sits there
in a silver frame waking them up all night long” (13). Janheinz Jahn de-
scribes the Bantu concept of this stage of human existence. “When a man
dies, therefore his biological life (buzima) is in fact over, and his spiritual
life (magara) also ceases—but something remains, namely that life force”
(107).
Although the judgmental narrator’s comments are reductive, the silver
frame “flashes” spiritual information as a type of bakulu discourse trans-
 Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination in Jazz k 183

forming a moment of sublime recognition into eternity.14 Now installed on

the shrine, the picture fulfills various needs. For Joe, he derives pleasure
because the face is not accusatory. Violet sees a face that is, “an inward
face—whatever it sees is its own self.” The picture is a type of mirror like
one of the nkisi nkondi in the Kongo tradition represented by a carved
statue (portrait) with a mirror on the stomach. Similar to efficacy of ho-
meopathic medicine, the nkisi that causes the problem also supplies the
cure.
Joe and Violet also call Dorcas’s name in connection with their noctur-
nal viewings. Their summoning of the spirit personality controlling the
nkisi situates them as banganga (plural of nganga) (MacGaffey 27). In her
spiritual life or magara stage, Dorcas still has the ability to affect the living
world.
k k k

You just gotta know how to talk to the spirits. They teach you
everything.”
—Henry Dumas, “Echo Tree”

Attuned to the ancestral world and matters of the spirit, Violet, like Joe,
walks in both the physical and spiritual worlds at the same time. She is able
to see her other self: “that other Violet that walked about the City in her
skin; peeped out through her eyes and saw other things” (89). Throughout
the course of the novel, there are signs along the way providing traces of
information of her spiritual proclivity, such as Violet’s out-of-body experi-
ences—trancelike states when she peered out of her eyes and saw herself
astral-projected. Violet also channels spirits. In speaking of her personality
the narrator remarks, “Closely examined it shows seams, ill-glued cracks
and weak places beyond which is anything. Anything at all” (23).
The openings of which the narrator is speaking establish Violet’s being
vulnerable when examined from a spiritual perspective and can be read
as interstices where spiritual information exchanges between dimensions.
Moreover, when the narrator questions the illogicity of Violet’s language,
she observes Violet’s extrasensory perceptions as, “the anything-at-all be-
gin in her mouth” and disconnected words (23). This is illustrated when
talking about numbers she wants to play, Violet says, “got a mind to double
it with an aught and two or three others just in case who is that pretty girl
standing next to you?” (24). Another example of this spiritual predilection
184 k Chapter 7

is when asked if she could do somebody’s hair, she replies out of context,
“two o’clock if the hearse is out of the way” (24). The influence of something
outside of herself is reiterated by her hand’s independent actions, the hand
“that can find in a parrot’s cage a knife lost for weeks” (24).
Violet, like Joe, is also a hunter. After Dorcas’s death, “she commenced
to gather the rest of the information” (5). Violet begins to retrace the girl’s
life by hunting down information on her from Malvonne, the woman who
rented the “love nest” to Joe for his illicit rendezvous with Dorcas, to Dor-
cas’s beautician, to former teachers at “JHS 139,” to, finally, Alice Manfred,
Dorcas’s aunt and guardian. The narrator observes, “It was like watching
an old street pigeon pecking the crust of a sardine sandwich the cats left
behind” (6). Other indices of Violet’s affiliation with the hunter are physical
descriptions of her being dressed in a “fur-collared coat” and capable of a
sound that “belonged to something wearing a pelt instead of a coat” (92).
This description of her being able to mimic the sound of an animal is a key
confirmation of her being a hunter who is a master of animal calls used to
entrap prey.
Among other spiritual formulations, the hairdresser, like the midwife,
is accorded exceptional status and this sensibility as a form of cultural ex-
pression is codified in language unique to African American people. The
task they perform, dressing hair, speaks to the way in which African people
relate to the head or in Yoruba, ori. In fact, this detail extends beyond lan-
guage to signify spiritual awareness and protection in harmony with the
West African cultures. In the same fashion, the person who “dresses” the
head in African culture is one who executes a sacred act and participates
in the process of body memory, since coiffure is another form of body
memory, “a corporeal mode of communicating information about a per-
son’s past, personal history, and identity” (Roberts and Roberts 112).
The Òrìsà Oshun’s identity is also invoked in the novel in the characters
of Wild and Dorcas, as well as in symbolic representation. Particularly im-
portant to women seeking to become pregnant and to give birth safely to
healthy children, she is praised as Iya Lode (the Great Mother) who gives
birth “like a female animal with ease and frequency” (Ray 35).” She is called
the “goddess of the ‘Living Waters,’ the basic substance of life on earth”
(Ray 35). Morrison provides significant clues to indicate the presence of
the Òrìsà Oshun as a companion to Ochossi, most notably in allusions to
singing, laughter, sewing, brass, and the adimu or offerings of honey and
oranges emblematic of this river-rain deity. For example, immediately pre-
ceding her death as she lies dying, Dorcas sees a dark pile of oranges and
 Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination in Jazz k 185

says to Felice, “Listen, I don’t know who is that women singing but I know
the words by heart” (193). These references are to Oshun, the Òrìsà who
represents the idea of love—a strong connection to the heart.
Moreover, Toni Morrison emphasizes Oshun’s identifying feature of
laughter—asserting that a balance between joy and pain must be main-
tained to live life. Laughter is used as a kind of mask mediating, containing,
concealing, and revealing. “Laughter covers indiscreet glances of welcome
and promise, and takes the edge off gestures of betrayal and abandon”
(64). For example, when Violet attempts to “steal” a baby, “Violet lifted
her head to the sky and laughed with the excitement in store when she
got home to look. It was the laugh-loose and loud that confirmed the theft
for some and discredited it for others. . . . Would a kindhearted innocent
woman . . . laugh like that? (20). Violet’s laugh has different textures and
communicates assorted information. The women ask, “And what kind of
laugh was that? What kind? If she could laugh like that, she could forget not
only her bag but the whole world” (22). With Alice Manfred’s help, Violet
discovers “that laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than
tears” (113). When she comes to terms with how ridiculous she must have
looked cutting Dorcas at the funeral she laughs so hard, she is healed.
Laughter is also one of the signs to identify Wild. If she is close enough,
“she creeps and hides and touches and laughs a low sweet baby girl laugh in
the cane” (37). Joe who is ever alert for the signs associated with light and
movement is tricked by the laughter: “When he called on Sheila to deliver
her Cleopatra order, he entered a roomful of laughing, teasing women”
(29). The laughter deceiving him and throwing him off the track, he whis-
pers a forbidden thing in Dorcas’s ear. Dorcas replaces Violet to whom
he is barely speaking to “let alone laughing together” (36). Dorcas’s laugh
is comparable to Wild’s, which is described as “thick enough to laugh at”
and to break Golden Gray’s heart (154). Hunters Hunter also recalls Wild’s
laugh, “He remembered her laugh, though, and how peaceful she was the
first few days following the bite” (166). With Dorcas, there is much laugh-
ter. The narrator reports that after getting with Joe, Dorcas could “laugh
at the things that are right side up and those that are upside-down—it
doesn’t matter because you are not doing the thing worth doing which is
lying down somewhere in a dimly lit place enclosed in arms, and supported
by the core of the world” (63). Ultimately, Joe hears laughter like “pealing
bells” when he finally arrives at the party, right before he shoots Dorcas
(187).
Accompanying the motif of laughter are the multiple references to sing-
186 k Chapter 7

ing, also associated with the Oshun. Some of the references relate to the
sexuality needed to engender fertility expressed as “Songs that used to start
in the head and fill the heart had dropped on down, down to the place
below the sash” (56) or “The dirty get-on-down music the women sang,
the men played, and both danced to” (58). Furthermore, songs with sexual
innuendo like “ain’t nobody going to keep me down you got the right key
baby but the wrong keyhole you got to bring it and put it right here, or else”
(60) represent the raw sexuality associated with the Òrìsà of seduction and
childbirth.
Principally, one of Oshun’s spiritual functions is knitting and sewing
society together indicated by her role as a river Òrìsà. The river, Oshun’s
domain, is a metaphor for the birth of civilizations. Likewise, Joe’s search
for his mother is symbolic for the missing records of parentage or a genea-
logical connection. He is not alone in this search; here Morrison implies
that Africans in the western hemisphere have felt like motherless children
a long way from home. Using the image of the needle (abere) and its ac-
tivity of stitching, Morrison helps not only the characters come to terms
with the loose and unraveled ends in their individual lives, but also the
readers get a chance to stitch their discontinuous memories. The needle is
also connected to the hunter as Bade Ajuwon illustrates in his observation
of one of the Ijala chants to Ogun, the primordial hunter. He notes: abere
wonu ofun o raa poo (a needle that falls in a pit is lost forever) (180). An
additional chant is Abere o ni bale, oro gbongbon (a fallen needle will never
give a loud sound) (180). The needle and stitching are important to the
hunter so he can mend his clothes—a necessary expression of his personal-
ity.
Interesting to note are the ways in which Toni Morrison employs the
metaphor of the needle, also a major symbol of Oshun, to bring together
two women who are not mothers: Violet Trace and Alice Manfred. A pri-
mary example of healers, motherhood has a vaulted place in the hierarchy
of women’s power. The Yoruba lineage has conserved the ancestral mother
cult, one of the oldest and most persistent within the African spiritual uni-
verse. The mother is a collective term and refers to the special powers of
women whether elderly, ancestral, or deified. In her pairing of Violet and
Alice, Morrison suggests that an alternate way of constructing power and
authority in women’s space is through harmonious relationships between
women. Violet is the granddaughter of True Belle, a competent seamstress
who stitched by firelight (101) and Alice is a sewing expert whose “stitches
were invisible to the eye” (111). Just as True Belle heals the family after Rose
 Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination in Jazz k 187

Dear jumps into the dark well, Alice’s spiritual power, contained in the
invisible authority of her stitches, can heal Violet.
Having great value although a small object, Morrison emphasizes the
needle’s significance to repair the cultural breaches of African people rent
asunder in North America. After Dorcas is murdered, Alice puts down
her needle indicating the duress associated with her loss. Additionally,
the concept of stitching represents a type of nkisi called muzazu, at once
the name of something in the natural world, a cocoon (muzazu), and a
performative activity, stitching together (zazula) indicates its potential
to comfort and heal (MacGaffey 62). For example, the second time Violet
visits Alice the narrator reveals that Alice “was irritated by the thread run-
ning loose from her sleeve, as well as the coat lining ripped in at least three
places she could see” (82). Alice is able to see through Violet’s concealment
revealed by the narrator who says, “She was holding her coat lapels closed,
too embarrassed to let her hostess hang it up lest she see the lining” (109).
The coat’s frayed lining is a metaphor for her frayed mind and internaliza-
tion of the pain associated with her childlessness and her husband’s indif-
ference.
From this observation, she realizes that Violet needs healing. Violet is
in need of repairing. Alice offers to stitch her dress. Violet, threadbare and
broken in spirit, makes her way to the daily appointments with Alice who
repairs not only Violet’s worn clothes, but also opens up something to heal
her own loose threads (mind). With Violet’s lining repaired and “her cuffs
secure” (83), the reader realizes the extent of her healing through the ex-
change of life stories between she and Alice. This mending that makes the
cuffs secure is achieved by the interface, which is the insertion of a piece
of fabric between two other pieces of cloth. This interfacing represents the
power of narratives and female union to mediate and heal the sadness and
pain associated with the loss experienced by both women. Joe notes the
power of women to heal: “It’s a way they have of mending you; fixing what
they think needs repair” (122).
At the novel’s end, Alice, Violet, and Joe are restored. Moreover, the nar-
rator restores her integrity by admitting that she was thrown off the track
with Felice’s relationship with the Traces. She also declares that she was
wrong about Joe running around in bad weather looking for Dorcas, not
Wild’s chamber of gold. Reiterating the nuances of improvisational jazz,
the narrator ventures outside of the comfortable domain of melody, returns
to the beginning, and rejoins the melody line after having considered the
signs, records, traces, and tracks. To the question asked of the young girl
188 k Chapter 7

who leaves the baby unattended to retrieve a record, “You left a whole baby
with a stranger to go get a record?” (17), Morrison answers, yes; records are
important.15 Answering this question throughout the course of the novel,
Morrison affirms the necessity of recording one’s own stories, especially
for a people whose history has been inscribed by the same people that have
delimited their lives. As the refrain from one of Ochossi’s songs instructs:
Ko ro Ko ro ko mo de mo ro (Teach the traditional customs. Teach the tra-
ditional customs), L’aye l’aye ko mode mo ta (to have the world).
 8

If I’d a Knowed More, I Would a Loved More

Toni Morrison’s Love and Spiritual Authorship

The love we had stays on my mind.

—The Dells

In her 1993 Nobel Prize for literature lecture, Toni Morrison describes
prominent features of the African’s encounter in America, lamenting over
such disquieting conditions as their not having had a home in this place,
the historical occurrence of being “set adrift from the one(s) you knew,” and
the social situation of being placed “at the edge of towns that cannot bear
your company” (28–29). Morrison’s unwillingness to surrender commen-
tary concerning the defining attributes of the African American experi-
ence recorded in her novels is commendable, and the inexorable references
to historical, spiritual, and cultural modes of resistance complements her
narrative integrity.1 With honest courage and commitment to document
spiritual traditions of displaced African people through her verbal figura-
tions, Morrison has honored the living memory of Africa and has helped to
transform fiction from a site of terror to a place of spiritual power.2
By their having taken up residence in the spiritual spaces and cultivating
identities “separate” from the Europeans and within the cultural milieu of
Africa, African people have challenged the value of whiteness and sub-
verted the intentions of legal separation, which was to deny them access to
that perceived space of privilege. The novels examined in this study, when
considered collectively represent traditions inspired by a shared spiritual
memory. Using narratives that speak of displacement and the renewal of
hope, Morrison points to the possibilities for wholeness through the inter-
play between the individual and community.
Additionally, employing ritual that provides rehabilitation of the soul,
she awakens the sleeping giants of myth, and allows silences to be disturbed
through the montage of spiritual and cultural events. In Shadow and Act,
Ralph Ellison comments that “myth and ritual are used in literature to give
form and significance to the material” as they are true portraits of how peo-
190 k Chapter 8

ple function in everyday life (174). Similarly, Frantz Fanon explains the way
in which a people remove the yoke of cultural estrangement and negation,
stating, “The nation gathers together the various indispensable elements
necessary for the creation of a culture, those elements which alone can give
it credibility, validity, life, and creative power” (245). Language is decidedly
one of the “indispensable elements” to which Fanon makes reference. As a
major cultural dynamic, language continues to occupy a space of ultimate
importance. For example, Morrison begins her eighth novel, Love (2003),
with the voice of “L,” one of the omniscient narrators, lamenting about the
injudicious use of language. L exclaims, “Nowadays silence is looked on
as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by
saying little” (3).3 In her protracted remarks, she chides folks for their lack
of discretion. That tongues let loose “work all by themselves with no help
from the mind” (3) is not an inconsequential concern. L surmises that the
potency and potential of language to “stop a womb or a knife” has been
dispirited primarily because of the lack of restraint.
L cannot sanction this imprudent use of Nommo. Janheinz Jahn defines
Nommo as “The driving power that gives life and efficacy to all things”
and “the physical-spiritual life force which awakens all sleeping forces and
guides physical and spiritual life”; its misuse is inexcusable (101). In her
earlier novels Morrison establishes the exclusivity of black language. It
exists in the trespass of language, such as Hannah’s questioning of Eva’s
maternal affection in Sula or in the privileged language of “grown folk” in
The Bluest Eye when Claudia says, “We do not, cannot know the mean-
ings of all their words, for we are nine and ten years old. So we watch their
faces, their hands, their feet, and listen for truth in timbre” (17). It is also
located in the words of Baby Suggs that heal African folk in the clearing,
which capture the essence of asé to heal the people who have just crossed
over the threshold of enslavement in Beloved. The shape and content of the
spoken word have power. The spoken word can also be deprived of author-
ity illustrated by Baby Suggs’s words, “And no, they ain’t in love with your
mouth. . . . What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream
from it they do not hear” (Beloved 88). African people have held firmly to
the power of language to create the requisite spiritual realities to sustain
life in hostile environments. The same power resident in blood, water, seed,
and in everything that quickens life analogous to the Yoruba concept of asé
and the Kongo idea of nyama (vital force) informs language.
Other concerns that perturb L are the changes that have occurred since
the legal end of segregation, including the privacy and privilege of culture
 If I’d a Knowed More, I Would a Loved More: Spiritual Authorship in Love k 191

and the unity they engender. The cultural integrity represented in Eloe,
a town in which “no white people live” (Tar Baby 172) and “The Bottom”
(Sula) has been challenged. Since the 1960s and the advent of (dis)inte-
gration, what belongs in the catalogue of African culture is diminishing
because of cultural appropriation and the transfer of cultural memorates
into the province of popular culture. For instance, the concept of high five,
booka or yangalala in Ki-Kongo language, a gesture reproduced in the Af-
rican American community as remembered and regenerated tradition, has
become ubiquitous not only in American society at large, but also through-
out the world. As soccer moms slap their raised palms and retired Florid-
ians on golf courses in exclusive country clubs “give some skin,” it is only a
matter of time when the meaning of the gesture and the knowledge of the
gesture’s cultural authorship will be forgotten like other African performa-
tive expressions such as baton twirling, rapping, scatting, jazz singing, tap
dancing, among others too numerous to list.4
Assaults to culture are also accompanied by the insistence of people
who reside outside the cultural parameters of the black world to determine
not only the nature of black culture, but also to attempt ownership and
oversight. Toni Morrison laments about this type of cultural confiscation
saying, “For a long time, the art form that was healing for Black people was
music. That music is no longer exclusively ours; we don’t have exclusive
rights to it. Other people sing it and play it; it is the mode of contemporary
music everywhere. So another form had to take its place” (“Rootedness”
340). Morrison, like other Africans, remains alert and searches for new
codes, new ways to express their individual cultural ethos. For Morrison, it
is the novel that replicates the orality of narratives passed down intergen-
erationally; it becomes the restorative medium to communicate the values
of the group.
One of the compendium of items in the oral tradition, humming, is
highly valued. In Love, Morrison’s L counters the current state of affairs
by reaffirming the power of humming. The power of the hum to calm and
still the mind connects L with other “women who know things”—those
who rock, hum, and create an aura of spiritual space to center themselves.
To those readers familiar with African American worship traditions, Mor-
rison invokes images of women in plumed church hats or dressed in white
on first Sundays raising a hymn and moving the words beyond language
into the safe space of slow and steady hums. These women turn the wooden
benches into decks of ships, inviting us to “Get on board, the Ole’ Ship of
Zion.”5 The hum beckons and reiterates the sentiments of Ralph Ellison’s
192 k Chapter 8

protagonist in Invisible Man, who states that ancestral information is avail-

able on the lower frequencies. L’s hum “is mostly below range” (Love 4),
beyond language codes. Like the women who gather in front of the house
at 124 Bluestone Road and create the “sound that broke the back of words”
(Beloved 261), L uses the hum, a language that informs and transcends
words. We are prepared to believe L’s words and actions and respect her
access to information.
However, it is not until the end of the novel, that we, the readers, realize
that L’s narration, graphically represented in italics, takes place from the
realm of the ancestors. L, who like Baby Suggs is deceased when the novel
opens, only participates as a disembodied ancestor through the tropes of
memory, invocation, and narration. This concluding essay catalogues the
spiritual principles that the ancestral voice calls our attention to in Love
and discusses their significance with a correlative analysis with spiritual
ideas presented in other novels, emphasizing the primacy of love.
Structurally, Love consists of nine chapters (the symbolic number of
the Egungun, Oya, and Aganju) constituting individual remembrances
of Bill Cosey, who is deceased when the novel opens. The significance of
the structural correlation with these Òrìsà relates to their respective roles
of remembrance, change, and the ferrying of ideas across realms of con-
sciousness. Consistent with African belief systems, these recollections are
neither ultimately good nor bad. Instead there is an admixture of both at-
tributes.
L states that Bill Cosey could be called a “good bad man, or a bad good
man” (200). However, she concludes that even though she believes the
“Dark won out,” Cosey was “an ordinary man ripped, like the rest of us,
by wrath and love.”6 While it may be argued that his marrying his grand-
daughter’s age-mate in her prepubescent years denotes a morally reprehen-
sible act, his restraint in having sexual relations with her until she reaches
puberty redeems him. The reader understands that when Cosey wants to
have more children, he chooses Heed because she is a virgin. Additionally,
Bill Cosey is a man who has “wide hospitality,” an African value, which at-
tests to the core value of his having good character.
This is not the first time that Toni Morrison presents characters that
elide the severe categories of binary oppositions. In The Bluest Eye, she
relies on her reader’s awareness of the deleterious effects of aesthetic ne-
gation on the psyche of a young girl. As a result of this understanding,
we forego judgment. Moreover, we understand Pecola’s descent into mad-
ness, having escaped our own descent or having recently emerged from the
 If I’d a Knowed More, I Would a Loved More: Spiritual Authorship in Love k 193

abyss of self-dejection formed by internalized messages of racist thinking.

Additionally, in Sula, Morrison draws Eva Peace as a character who evokes
compassion from her readers even though she sets Plum on fire to relieve
him of the pain of his heroin addiction. Similarly, we are primed to under-
stand and sympathize with Sethe in Beloved for her difficult and desper-
ate decision to commit infanticide on the named, but unnamed, Crawling
Already? baby. Finally, in Jazz, a teary-eyed Joe Trace wins our hearts as we
accompany him through the pain of dejection associated with his displace-
ment to the North and his subsequent untethering from the woods and
the sense of psycho-ecological wholeness engendered in that space. We, as
readers, forgive Joe for shooting/sacrificing Dorcas because we understand
his burden of feeling like a “motherless child a long way from home.” With
empathy, we fill in the spaces created by that emotional trauma and cross
that “deep river” ourselves in an attempt to gain our own healing and psy-
chic stability.
However, we do not exonerate Jadine Childs for her singular ability to be
selfish and dismissive of other African people, especially those with earthly
ways, such as Aunt Rosa and the folks she encounters in Eloe and on Isle
des Chevaliers. She, unlike Sula, lacks spiritual depth, which renders her
an unsympathetic character, especially since her behavior is constructed
with the values, beliefs, and perceptions of white people. These attributes
motivate her to be destructive to not only her lover, but also to her kinfolks
Ondine and Sydney. In comparison, while Sula is unruly, she is someone
who engenders trust because of her honesty and courage, ideal cultural
traits.
Returning to Love, the narrative begins with the arrival of Junior Vivi-
ane. In Love, similar to Sula’s arrival to the Bottom after her ten-year so-
journ to an undisclosed place, Junior Viviane arrives to Silk accompanied
by a “chafing wind.” Additionally, like other characters—M’Dear (The Blu-
est Eye), Eva Peace (Sula), Thérèse Foucault (Tar Baby), Pilate Dead (Song
of Solomon), Baby Suggs (Beloved), Violet Trace (Jazz), and Consolata Sosa
(Paradise)—Morrison introduces Junior as a woman who has the abil-
ity to read people. Her method is “to watch for the face behind the face;
and to listen for the words hiding behind talk” (28). Furthermore, she is a
tree woman, comparable to the Ajé who Jadine encounters inhabiting the
woods on Isle des Chevaliers.7
Once in the house on Monarch Street, Junior feels protected—described
as a recurring vision of having a stranger with shiny eyes waiting beneath
the trees to rescue her.8 The picture of Bill Cosey over Heed’s bed reas-
194 k Chapter 8

sures her. He is the stranger. Her “Good Man” announces his presence by
the scent of his aftershave and later becomes a palpable presence in the
dream world. Morrison’s description of her “sci-fi eyes” with shiny lids,
lashes, and irises (114) and having such “beautiful hair, wild” (117) attests to
Junior’s otherworldly nature and connects her to the uninhibited charac-
ters Wild (Jazz) and the eponymous Beloved. Her liminality is signified by
the description of her: “Junior had no past, no history, but her own” (169).
Moreover she writes that Junior is a “strange girl with no purse” (Love 23),
similar to the women of Ruby (Paradise) who do not carry purses.
Although unaware, even to her, Junior’s role is to mediate between
Christine and Heed, who Christine believes has “robbed her of her past”
(Love 24). Having been in a protracted feud, the two women need outside
help to repair their rift in the same way Sethe needs the circle of Cincin-
nati women to rescue her from her “too thick love.” Prior to her arrival, the
women live in the house with the spirit of Bill Cosey, who resides in the
portrait located in Heed’s room. With her presence as the fourth person in
the house, the girl with fins for feet brings the narrative to a level of cosmic
completion.
Just like the assemblage of characters in previous novels, the residents of
Monarch Street share some of the spiritual features that Morrison has pre-
viously employed. For example, the omniscient narrator describes Chris-
tine as having “one gray eye” (19), linking her to the double-eyed men who
walk in two realms such as Cholly Breedlove, Joe Trace, Ajax (A. Jacks),
Son Green, and Stamp Paid. Continuing this description, Morrison writes,
“Twelve rings on three fingers of each hand snatched light from the ceil-
ing fixture and seemed to elevate her task from drudgery to sorcery” (20).
Heed is also similar to characters drawn from Morrison’s spiritually situ-
ated imagination. Portrayed as a woman who moves from a world of mud
to white sand, Heed is described as smelling like “butter-rum candy, grass
juice, and fur” (24) with hands “like fins” (28) and skin with a memory of
“seafoam” (78). As readers who have made prior visits to Morrison’s imagi-
native world, we are primed to expect concepts and behavior and have
come to accept these depictions as ordinary.
The occupants of Monarch Street are not the only women who speak
spirit. Consistent with her cultural cataloguing of ideas, Morrison also iter-
ates the power of cultural memorates that have traveled from Africa such
as an awareness of the heightened spiritual power of all African women.
For example, Vida Gibbons tells her grandson Romen, “I don’t want you
eating off her stove” (17). Her admonishment to Romen does not reflect her
 If I’d a Knowed More, I Would a Loved More: Spiritual Authorship in Love k 195

concern that he might be poisoned; instead it corresponds to the African

idea that by ingesting food from people—especially women—who are ill-
intentioned, one might also ingest a spiritual malevelonce that has been
placed in the food. We have witnessed this occurrence in Sula, where it
is suggested that the root-working mother of Ajax is the cause of Sula’s
demise.
Additionally, in Love, as in preceding novels, Morrison employs spiritual
signs, such as the motif of the Kongo cosmogram. In her description of
Christine’s stopping the car to brake for a turtle crossing the road, Mor-
rison repeats the Kongo cosmogram motif used in all of her earlier novels.
Morrison writes, “She stopped and looked in the rearview mirrors—left
one, right one, and overhead” (87; emphasis added). The four cardinal di-
rections of the dikenga dia Kongo serve as a major conceit for the remem-
bered tradition of the Kongo reiterated in this novel. Moreover, Morrison’s
account of Christine’s looking into the mirror recalls the layout of the town
of Ruby in Paradise.
Additionally, Morrison’s description of Christine’s recognition of the
turtle’s spiritual significance is telling. Intuitively, Christine leaves the car
and runs back down the road. Morrison writes, “[She] did not ask herself
why her heart was sitting up for a turtle creeping along Route 12” (87). 9
In Kongo tradition the turtle’s carapace (lolo ina nombe) represents the
founding ancestor and invokes an awareness of spirituality. Morrison uses
this motif of the turtle in Beloved, described as “four placed plates under a
hovering motionless bowl” as a means of substantiating Beloved’s spiritual
identity (105). Among the Dogon, turtles possess mystical power symboliz-
ing ancestral lineage. The encounters that both Christine and Denver have
with the turtles come at a turning point in their emotional lives, when they
need the direction of divine forces to intervene.
Morrison suggests that these signs are coded in the spiritual DNA and
in the matrix of the soul and are accessible when one needs the requisite
information. This information occurs not at the cellular, but at the soul-
ular level. Her response also suggests the practice of communicating with
nature in order to receive messages consistent with the folkloric idea of
being able to hear something “from the grapevine,” or the expression “a
little bird told me something,” or understanding the disconcerting feeling
one has about wind that does not produce rain, an idea that we encounter
in Sula.
There are also other instances of remembrances of nature and the esteem
in which African people recollect that sacred connection. Like Joe Trace
196 k Chapter 8

and Son Green, who are both archetypes of woodsmen, Sandler misses
the trees peopling the land where he lived before Bill Cosey rescued them
from their lives in the swamp. Morrison also laments about the ecological
changes, a conversation that she begins in The Bluest Eye and reiterates in
each of her subsequent novels. L laments the changes in nature. She states
in Love:
The sky is empty now, erased, but back then the Milky Way was com-
mon as dirt. Its light made everything a glamorous black-and-white
movie. No mater what your place in life or your state of mind, having
a star-packed sky be a part of your night made you feel rich. And then
there was the sea. (105)
In the world of black people, the moon can be a personal friend, a person
can become a star, according to Son Green (Tar Baby), sand is a comrade,
and as Pauline Breedlove has told us in The Bluest Eye, june bugs not only
light up a tree leaf, but can also inspire a life.
In Toni Morrison’s novels, separation from the land creates such a psy-
chological disjuncture in the personalities of characters that some never
recover. This disconnection serves as a metaphor for the dislocation of
African people from the African continent. It continues to sign itself as a
trope of remembrance of that iniquitous history.
Just as she attempts in preceding literary efforts—and like her literary
ancestors whose literary figurations indict the oppressors—Morrison en-
sures that history is documented, no matter how horrifying the nature of
those recollections. Just as she lifted the veil concerning the horrors of en-
slavement and the inhumanity of chain gangs in Beloved and recorded the
social, political, and economic displacements in all of her novels, Morrison
is careful to document the latest episodes in the serialized epic of America’s
racial terror. In her description of the resort, she notes that besides being a
place for recreation and leisure activities, it is a place where African people
could debate “death in the cities, murder in Mississippi” (Love 35). She fur-
ther details events of the time, such as children blowing “apart in Sunday
school” (80), re-recording the bombing of the church in Birmingham and
the resultant murder of four little girls who were attending the church at
the time of the bombing. Furthermore, she also includes a reference to
the murder of Emmet Till: “As early as 1955, when a teenager’s bashed-up
body proved how seriously whites took sass” (81). Morrison also shows that
times never really change as far as the brutal ways in which white suprema-
cist ideology plays out on the text of black bodies. For instance, times have
 If I’d a Knowed More, I Would a Loved More: Spiritual Authorship in Love k 197

not changed from Sandler Gibbons’s time, where “his boyhood had been
shaped by fear of vigilantes,” to the present, where the police in “dark blue
uniforms . . . did the work of the posses” (15).
Not only are there the continued haunting of oppressive forces, there are
interactions with spirits similar to the contact between Pilate and her father
Macon Dead, Sethe’s and Denver’s relationship with Beloved, and Violet’s
connection with Dorcas’s spirit in Jazz. Characters in the novel Love have
encounters with apparitions. For example, May’s ghost is described as be-
ing “helmeted and holstered” as well as to be “gaining strength” (82). At the
novel’s end the two women who were separated in life, reunite and renew
their friendship in death, much like Sula and Nell. Christine tells Romen
who is on his way to take Heed to the morgue, “take a blanket. She might
get cold” (198). Even in Bill Cosey’s description of the death of his only son
Billy, Cosey says, “When I lost him . . . it was like somebody from the grave
reached up and grabbed him for spite” (43). Here Bill broaches the topic of
the dead being able to interact and exert influences on the living, and idea
that Morrison inscribed repeatedly in her novels in a variety of narrative
settings.
The final point to discuss here is Toni Morrison’s novelistic preoccu-
pation with the concept of love. Love according to Morrison is verifiable
through the five senses—as well as through spiritual channels. For example,
at the end of Jazz, Morrison iterates the power of love and forgiveness to
ferry one across the deep abyss of despair. Joe and Violet have re-captured
their love for one another. The narrator of Jazz ends her narration remark-
ing, “I envy their public love” (229). In Love, being smitten causes a glisten-
ing in Romen that the narrator describes as a “moist radiance” (109). In
Love, Morrison defines love as being “soul-chained” (112)—an expression
that relates to the feeling Connie Consolation experiences with “the living
man” in Paradise.
Besides romantic love and its attending passions, love has different faces
and takes on different personalities. For Heed and Christine, the rift in
their love occurs when Bill Cosey chooses Heed. Their relationship suffers
even more after Christine is sent off to boarding school. Brought together
by Heed’s death, the reader is assured that their renewed relationship will
be stronger and will resume where they left off as children. Christine is able
to communicate her feelings to Heed before her death. Unlike Sula and
Nell, Christine and Heed have the opportunity to mend and recover their
ruptured love before Heed makes her spiritual transition.
Morrison discusses the power of love in a 1989 interview with Bill
198 k Chapter 8

Moyers. She says, “Love, we have to embrace ourselves. Self-regard. James

Baldwin once said, ‘You’ve already been bought and paid for. Your ances-
tors already gave it up for you. You don’t have to do that anymore. Now
you can love yourself.’ It’s already possible” (266–67). She continues, “Some
of it’s very fierce. Powerful. Distorted” (267). Through a consideration of
love, most of the characters in Morrison’s novels change in the course of
the novel’s plot action and come to realize some powerful life lessons. By
this, I am referring to a dynamism that allows the characters to go through
an ordeal, learn lessons about themselves, about others, about the nature
of being human with all their personal foibles, and come through those
challenges fulfilled and re-centered. Experiencing love, characters not only
discover meaning, but also healing.
In Love, Morrison informs readers that love is enabling and elemental
to wholeness, wellness—and is the ultimate expression of one’s being a
full human being. Because African people were denied the right to love
each other in healthy ways, in stable family units uninterrupted from the
parceling out and selling of African people that occurred under chattel
enslavement, this expression takes on new challenges, given these external
hostilities. As Baby Suggs reports, “Yonder they do not love your flesh.
They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out.
No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it” (Beloved
89). In her novels, Morrison not only indicts white people for their ignoble
actions, she also records the destructive effects of withholding love and re-
jecting one’s own in The Bluest Eye. For example, in The Bluest Eye, because
of her sense of rejection, Pecola searches for maternal love, similar to both
Joe and Violet Trace’s pursuit, based on departures of their own mothers,
through abandonment and the other through suicide, respectively. Punctu-
ating this experience is Dorcas’s own maternal yearnings after the murder
of her father and her mother’s burning during the St. Louis race riots.
Notwithstanding the muffling of the sustained notes of love in the cho-
rus of African life in North America, Morrison’s words fill the compressed
spaces of identity, push against oppression, and create openings and po-
tentialities that allow the reader to grow and find new ways of being, new
ways of loving. This is especially important in the socially suboptimal en-
vironment of America where African people have had to live on avenues of
uncertainty near the intersections of whatever whim and whatever horror
prevailed in the unbridled imaginations of their oppressors.
However, that being said, the themes of Toni Morrison’s novels imply
that as long as we can say we have loved, we have lived: that is the measure
 If I’d a Knowed More, I Would a Loved More: Spiritual Authorship in Love k 199

of a life. At the end of Pilate’s life, when she lies dying, she tells Milkman,
“I wish I’d knowed more people. I would have loved ’em all. If I’d a knowed
more, I would a loved more” (Song of Solomon 340). In Love, as in all of her
novels, Morrison’s spiritual authorship makes the point decidedly clear:
that no matter what African people in America have faced, love is the true
power of our lives. Echoing Baby Suggs’s words, Morrison’s novels insist,
“Love your heart. For this is the prize” (Beloved 89).
 Glossary

Yoruba Terms

Abara meji: Owner of two bodies.

Abere: Sacred needle used by Oshun to mend and heal her devotees.
Abiku: A child that is “born to die.” An abiku is a spirit who continually dies
and is continually reborn.
Adimu: Offerings to Òrìsà that do not include blood sacrifices. Adimu can
include fruit, liquor or oti, grains, or cloth.
Aganju: Aganju is the Òrìsà who embodies the essence of fire. One of the
Òrìsà considered as the father of nature, he assists human beings by fer-
rying them toward their destinies. He is petitioned to transform the fire
within, which is sometimes realized as anger, into passion and psychic
empowerment. Represented by the sun, he reminds human beings of
the potential of each day and helps them work toward the fulfillment of
their destinies.
Agogo: A bell used to communicate with Òrìsà. The agogo is also used to in-
voke a priest into an altered state of consciousness to then be possessed
by the Òrìsà that crowns his or her head. It also is used to spiritually
clean an environment.
Ajé: In the Lukumi Yoruba spiritual tradition, the Ajé or awon iya wa (our
mothers), are also referred to as Iyami Osoronga. These wise women with
extraordinary power make people both revere and fear them because of
their dense concentration of Asé. They exist in the African American
tradition and are called Ma Dear, Other Mother, or Big Momma.
Apataki: Stories that illuminate a situation that delivers a moral tale. Apa-
taki accompany the odu being read during the divination and contrib-
utes to the person’s understanding of the archetypal idea being com-
municated in the odu.
Asé: Asé is the divine power that innervates all life forces. As the spiri-
tual essence of God, it can be exchanged through ebo when a person’s
life force becomes diminished. The power that makes things happen or
the spiritual energy of Olodumare in the universe, it is the performa-
202 k Glossary

tive power of spirit. All things are accomplished through asé. There are
places on the body and on the earth the have concentrations of asé.
Asedi: The monetary component of a sacrifice. The money reinforces the
sacrifice and underscores the ritual’s intent.
Ayé: The earth and the world of the living.
Babalawo: A babalawo is a male initiate of Orunmila who performs Ifa
divination. Babalawo literally translates as “the father of secrets.”
Babaluaiye: Father of the world who carries diseases into the world and
cures them. This limping Òrìsà is the owner of balance. He reminds hu-
man beings to maintain the balance between the spiritual and material
realms.
Ebo: Sacrifice or offering to one of the Òrìsà, ancestors, or Iyami to elevate
and strengthen the devotee, to assist them with a problem or to propiti-
ate the deity or spirit to whom the offering is made. This offering can
be a blood offering, but may consist of any of the formulary offerings
within the Yoruba tradition. The idea of ebo is exchange, giving some-
thing to receive something.
Egun: Egun are the ancestors. They protect us from malevolent forces and
spirits. They are the link between the spiritual and the material realms.
The foundation of all people, egun dwell among us and continue to influ-
ence the lives of their descendants.
Egungun: A form of egun worship performed through masquerade. The
egungun maskers help the community to understand their symbiotic
relationship between themselves (the living) and those who have transi-
tioned the physical realm into the land of spirits.
Ejila: Ejila shebora is the odu represented by the number 12. The refrain is
“the soldier never sleeps.”
Ejioco: One of the odu in the Yoruba divination system of merindilogun.
The metaphoric refrain is the “arrow between brothers.”
Eleda: A person’s head. The head represents God.
Elese meji: A person’s feet.
Ekundayo: The joy that comes after pain.
Elegba: The messenger of God who represents the beginning and ending of
all things. Elegba helps human beings to reach their destinies by offering
choices to determine one’s life. Elegba is the idea of choices and change
who delivers messages to the other Òrìsà on behalf of human beings
who acknowledge and petition him.
Emi: Breath and lungs.
Eniyan: A human being.
 Glossary k 203

Ese: Traditional stories.

Ewe: Various plants and herbs used for healing and making ebo and osain.
Fifeto: A fifeto ritual is performed to spiritually clean and cool down the
energy engendered from the use of knives and the heat of the blood of-
fered in ritual sacrifices.
Fun fun: The color white. Fun fun also refers to the Òrìsà that are consid-
ered cool such as Obatala.
Gbere: Incisions or gbere in Yoruba language are protective cuts made in
the skin signaling the invisible transformations of persons.
Gelede: Performed by men, this masked performance honors the power
of women.
Ibae: A term of respect when speaking about the dead.
Ibeji: The Òrìsà who are twin deities who represent balance between the
interstices. The children of Sango and Oshun, Ibeji are powerful repre-
sentations of the bounty of life and remind us of the potential available
at the intersections of the realms. They comprise the three children who
are born after them. The first twin is called Taiwo, the second is Kehindé,
the third is Idowu, the fourth child is Alaba, and the fifth is Idogbé.
Ifa: A form of divination, the Ifa corpus has 256 signs with a variety of sto-
ries attached to them. These stories deliver a moral story to help devo-
tees cope with life’s challenges.
Ifunpa: Amulets sewn in a packet.
Ijala: A type of chant performed for hunters.
Inu: The internal self.
Iré: Blessings and good fortune or positive influences.
Ita: Ita is a divinational reading with the merindilogun the third day after a
person’s initiation into the priesthood.
Iyalòrìsà: Female priest in the Lukumi system and the mother of Òrìsà.
Iyawo: A person who is an initiate into the priesthood. In this liminal state,
the person is not who they were and not who they will become.
Iwa: Character. In the nondoctrinal Yoruba spiritual tradition, the goal to
be reached in one’s lifetime is the achievement of good character (iwa
pele).
Lukumi: Lukumi is the name of the Yoruba tradition that developed in
Cuba during the enslavement era. A variation in spelling is Lucumi. The
Lukumi people originate in southwestern Nigeria and Benin and Togo.
Mae de Santo: Mae de Santo is the mother of saints and a female priest
in the Candomblé system of Brazil. Her office is similar to that of the
Iyalorisa.
204 k Glossary

Mae pequena: Literally, little mother, this Iyalorisa assists the Mae de
Santo. In Yoruba language she would be called Iya Kekere or Oju Ebona
Kan (Ojubona Kan).
Matanza: the ritual sacrifice of animals to birth the Òrìsà.
Merindilogun: Translating into sixteen, the merindilogun (dilogun) is a type
of divination using sixteen cowrie shells. These ritually charged dilogun
yield patterns, generate odu, and recollect associative apataki.
Mojuba: The mojuba are elegiac prayers that accompany all rituals. Besides
being foundational to all ceremonies, these prayers are recited daily to
greet the day and reinforce the interconnectedness of God, Òrìsà, the
ancestors, the divine forces of nature, one’s sanguinal parents, God par-
ents, and the community of Òrìsà worshippers.
Ogbanje: An Igbo word describing children who are born to die; similar
to abiku.
Obba: The true wife of Shango, this warrior Òrìsà is the defender of women.
She represents the cemetery.
Obatala: The deity of creation and the chief representative of Olodumare
on earth, Obatala is the highest in the hierarchy of Òrìsà. Obatala is the
creator of the first human beings. The owner of the white cloth, he is the
guardian of morality recognized as good character.
Obi: Obi ata is a system of divination that one employs to communicate
with the Òrìsà. Using four lobes of coconut meat to ascertain yes or no
answers to a series of questions, the supplicant is able to get guidance
on various issues.
Ochossi: Ochossi is the Òrìsà of hunting and is associated with ethical righ-
teousness. He is the Òrìsà that assists devotees in achieving goals and
helps them to achieve their destiny.
Odidé: Parrot sacred to Ochossi.
Odu: A sacred corpus of knowledge elemental to one of the sixteen ideas
of the merindilogun.
Ogun: Ogun is the Òrìsà of iron and creativity who owns the world. He
owns all sacrifices and is the patron of blacksmiths and hunters. Consid-
ered an elder Òrìsà, he has been on the earth since the earth’s creation.
Ojiji: A person’s shadow.
Oju inu: Insight.
Oké: Child enclosed in a caul at birth.
Okan: Heart.
Olodumare: The primary name used to refer to god, the Supreme Being of
 Glossary k 205

the universe. Other names used to refer to god are Olorun (“owner of
heaven”) and Olofi.
Olokun: Olokun is the deep part of the ocean or the bottom of the sea. He
represents history and shared memories. A primordial Òrìsà, Olokun
assists people in healing themselves from the suppression of memory,
which holds the key to their liberation from the lesions and breaches of
the past.
Olòrìsà: An initiated devotée dedicated to a specific Òrìsà.
Oni l’oni aiye: Owners of the world.
Ori: Ori translates into head and represents a person’s destiny.
Oriki: A praise poem chanted during public celebrations.
Orile: A particular type of oriki that stresses the accomplishment of family
members and lineage ancestors.
Ori inu: A person’s destiny.
Òrìsà: Òrìsà are the divinities in the Yoruba spiritual tradition. They may
be Irunmolé created by Olodumare at the beginning of the world or dei-
fied human beings who, having distinguished themselves during their
lifetimes, have been elevated to the status of an Òrìsà. The Òrìsà are
manifestations of the natural world and interact on earth with the living.
Through interaction with the Òrìsà human beings gain an understand-
ing of the Olodumare.
Orita Meta: An intersection. Referred to as three roads that come together.
It is a symbolic representation of the intersection between ayé and orun
depicted as a cross within a circle. When drawn it creates a spiritual
portal.
Oromadie: Oromadie are roosters sacrificed to Elegba as propitiary sacri-
fices or ebo.
Osain: An Òrìsà or sacred aspect of God that is hidden in the leaves and
plants and roots of trees. He is the Asé found in the phytonutrients of
organic matter. There can be no ceremony or initiation without Osain’s
invocation through the ritual washing of leaves and plants. As sacred
medicine, he washes away pain and sickness and renews all who invoke
his power.
Oshun: Oshun is a female Òrìsà who is also referred to as Iya Lode, the
great mother. This river deity represents the “blood that flows in the
veins.” She is the Òrìsà of society, love, beauty, and family. She is primary
to the notion of development since all civilizations depend on the fresh
water sources of rivers to generate and sustain societies.
206 k Glossary

Oshun Ibukolé: This road or aspect of Oshun is represented by the buzzard

and is responsible for saving the world from destruction.
Ota: Divine force that lives in stones, they are the memory of the earth.
Oya: Oya is the warrior Òrìsà who gave Shango thunder and lightning.
She is the wind before the storm and the guardian of the spirits of the
dead. Her domain is the gate of the cemetery. Oya is the mother of the
egungun.
Oyeku meji: Oyeku meji concerns the relationship of dark spaces and indi-
vidual actions and their ultimate connection to spiritual elevation.
Shango: Shango is the Òrìsà who represents the office of king and the seat
of authority. A historical person who was the fourth Alaafin of Oyo,
Shango is the idea of passion, truth, and the life force that empower hu-
man beings to achieve greatness in their lives.
Tibi Tire: Good and bad luck together.
Yemonja: The mother of all Òrìsà, Yemonja is the owner of the sea. Yemonja
is also the Òrìsà of motherhood. The merciful Òrìsà is petitioned when
seeking comfort and spiritual deliverance. Like the ocean, her grace is
wide and deep and devotees understand that there is no problem too
great for her to handle.
Yoruba: A group located in West Africa. Historically, the Yoruba lived in
kingdoms and city-states. A highly developed civilization with unparal-
leled artistic and cultural achievements, the Yoruba are well known for
their spiritual and technological accomplishments. In North America,
the spiritual tradition of the Yoruba is often referred to as “Yoruba” as
well.

Kongo Terms (Bantu)

Baana ba nlongo: Born abnormally and having precocious spiritual sen-

sibilities.
BaKuba: Literally the people of lightning, the BaKuba live in the Kasai area
of the Kongo.
Bakulu: The bakulu are deceased ancestors who continue to interact with
human beings. Residing below the kalunga line, the bakulu or venerated
ancestors dwell under the surface of living waters as manifestation as
well as memory.
BaLuba: The Luba people or BaLuba live in the southeastern part of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo and are renowned for their highly
evolved material and spiritual technologies.
 Glossary k 207

Ba Manianga: A subgroup of the BaKongo, located in lower Kongo.

Banganga: Plural of nganga.
Bantu: Plural term for people. (Muntu, singular person.) It also represents
a large group of people and a language family that includes Kiswahili,
Xhosa, Chiluba, Ki-Kongo, and hundreds of languages.
Bisimbi: Plural form of the word simbi, these water spirits found at the
intersection where water meets the earth are vital forces of nature. They
are the guardian and protective spirits.
Booka: Booka or yangalala is a spiritual gesture that accompanied Africans
to the western hemisphere. The gesture now called “high five” trans-
ports feelings of good will when the two palms touch.
Buta: Family.
Buzima muzazu: At once the name of something in the natural world, a co-
coon (muzazu), and a performative activity, stitching together (zazula)
indicates the nkisi’s potential to protect and heal.
Candomblé: A term that refers to the organization of religious practices. It
translates from the Ki-Kongo language as “house of initiation,” from ka
a diminutive, ndumbe (initiate); and mbele (house).
Dikenga dia Kongo: The Kongo cosmogram represents the journey of the
soul of a person. Its four points represent the life crises stage of exis-
tence: Pre-birth/birth, puberty, marriage, and death. The four stages are
marked as musoni, kala, tukula, and luvemba.
Dingo dingo: Process.
Izilo ze Nkosi: Beasts of the King were often used to test the courage of men
who were to be promoted to the next level of status.
Kala: Kala means black and represents the second phase of a person’s ex-
istence. Kala and zima collectively represent the notion of duality in
Kongo traditional beliefs.
Kalunga: The principle of change.
Kanda: Community.
Kimyumba: Deceased.
Kini: The invisible body.
Kitenta: Motifs or spirit capitals.
Konda: To hunt alone.
Koyija kibundi: This refers to washing the village after something cata-
strophic has occurred. In a general sense, this washing purifies the vil-
lage and its inhabitants of the negative forces associated with the di-
saster.
Kinzu: Kinzu is the structural motor of the universe that is the prime mover
of all energy.
208 k Glossary

Lolo ina nombe: In Kongo tradition the turtle’s carapace represents the
founding ancestor and invokes evokes an awareness of spirituality.
Lukasa: The memory grid that subsequently became the prototype of the
computer’s motherboard. Lukasa is a mnemonic device employed in
traditional African cultures such as the lukasa sculptures of the Ba Luba;
each board is a commemorative site where readers can participate in re-
collecting buried knowledge to refortify and restore a sense of identity
and cultural connectivity. A conceptual map of fundamental aspects of
Luba culture used to trace memory and recall genealogies and arcane
knowledge to pass on to subsequent generations. Each board is unique
and represents the divine revelations of a spirit medium expressed in
sculptural form.
Lwengisa: A foreshadowing of a significant event.
Magara: Spiritual life of a person. This idea also includes the force of spiri-
tual intelligence engendered by the ancestors.
Makuku matatu: Represents the three firestones foundational to cre-
ation.
Mamoni: Lines painted around the eyes of the Nganga that help her to
see the hidden and dangerous things of the world such as sickness and
evil.
Mpemba: Also known as luvemba, mpemba is kaolin or white clay rep-
resenting the dead. The realm of the ancestors, this community of the
dead is called Mpemba, and its residents are called bakulu. Kongo pem-
bas are the graphic symbols drawn on the floor or walls to invoke the
presence of the spirit.
Minkisi: Plural of nkisi.
Moyo: The members of one’s family matrilineally descended.
Muntu: Singular person.
Musoni: The first phase of life’s journey represented by the color yellow.
Musoni represents the realm of prebirth or the beginnings of a person’s
life process on the dikenga dia Kongo or wheel of eternity. Musoni is
the stage where a human being is instructed to become a true knower
of one’s destiny.
Mwela: The soul. Mwela can also express portals between the material and
spirit realms.
Ndoki: This term is associated with the word kindoki, which means power
or force. Ndoki is a person with power or force. This term is especially
used to describe someone who has spiritual or “invisible” power. As
with all power in the hands of a person, a kindoki can be used benevo-
lently or malevolently by the ndoki. Bandoki is the plural form.
 Glossary k 209

Nganga: Master teacher, priest, and ritual officiate. An nganga is a special-

ist, a true knower, a master. Other functions include being a physician,
a visionary, and a priest.
Ngina: Literally, a seed. It can also represent generations. I am the seed of
a seed, of a seed, of a seed.
Nkisi: Singular of minkisi. An nkisi is a form of traditional medicine made
from animal or mineral, which, under the guidance of an Nganga, helps
to heal people from illness or any other imbalance. An nkisi makes it
possible to approach a spirit. In the Western hemisphere, the Bantu of
Brazil refer to the Kongo deities as Nkisis.
Nkisi nkondi: An nkondi is an nkisi, which means hunter. This nkisi hunts
down the source of the problem. It is a diagnostic device as well as a
prescriptive tool.
Nitu: The physical body.
Nommo: Nommo also refers to the power of speech to create, organize all
that exists.
Nsi: Land.
Ntu: A Bantu concept that represents the innervating power of existence.
In the language it forms the noun class of words. For example: muntu (a
person), kintu (things), et cetera.
Nyama: Vital force.
Nza: The universe.
Semba: Punish.
Tukula: The northern node of the dikenga dia Kongo cosmogram, tukula
represents the maturation cycle of the person and is signified by the
color red.
Tambukusu: The genetic code as a memory of creation.
Togu na: House of words. Speech.
V: The basis of all realities.
Vanga: Vanga means to perform or do.
Vangama: Vangama is the formation of the person.
Vaika: Vaika represents the existence stage, to be, to exist, to rise.
Vezima: Flash of light representing the interaction between the physical
and spiritual realms.
Vunda: Vunda means death both natural and unnatural.
Zinga: The seashell used as an nkisi. Kuzinga is an infinitive, which means
to live long. Seashells represent a major Kongo symbol of the spiral jour-
ney from one world to the next.
210 k Glossary

Other Terms

Amma: Dogon supreme deity.

Bukra: Bukra is one of the terms that African people in North America
employ to refer to white people.
Damballah Ouido: A principal deity in the Fon tradition. Alternately Dam-
ballah Wedo.
Dogo so: Dogon idea of speech. Speech is divided into four categories: giri
so (front speech), bolo so (back speech), bene so (side speech), and so
dayi (the language of knowing reserved for initiates).
Loa: The deities of the Vodun (Voodoo) tradition. Alternately, the spellings
are Lwa.
Fon: People from Benin, formerly Dahomey, and parts of Togo. The Fon
tradition birthed the Vodun spiritual tradition of Haiti and Brazil. It is
also one of the antecedents of the African American hoodoo tradition.
In Brazil their descendants worship the Vodunsi, while the Haitians
worship the Loa.
Maafa: A term coined by Marimba Ani, which means the great disaster of
captivity, transport, and subsequent enslavement of African people.
Malochia: The “evil eye.” The intent of the gaze is to cause psychic harm.
One can protect oneself from harm using talismans or other apotropaic
means such as asafetida worn in cloth around the neck, similar to Aunt
Jimmy in The Bluest Eye.
Nommo: In the Dogon cosmology, Nommo or twins refer to mythological
ancestors, and to one’s own lineage.
Palo Monte: Also referred to as Regla Congos, this system of worship is a
derivative of Kongo spiritual traditions recodified in the western hemi-
sphere.
Sangoma: South African female traditional healer.
Umuntu umuntu nagabuntu: A person is a person because of people. This
philosophical statement refers to the complementary nature of the col-
lective.
Vévé: The iconographic pattern used as a site to invoke the presence of the
Loa (deities) in the ritual space of Vodun ceremonies.
Yala: Meaningful images or symbolic icons in the Dogon language.
Yingim and Danyim: Funeral events held annually among the Dogon of
Mali to honor all the deaths that have occurred in the village throughout
the year.
 Notes

Preface: Dancing between Two Realms

1. In the preface of African Rhythm and African Sensibility, Chernoff explains that
the fundamental aesthetic in Africa is participation, stating that “without participa-
tion there is no meaning.” Illustrating the importance of dance to music, he says,
“When you ask a friend whether or not he ‘understands’ a certain type of music, he
will say yes if he knows the dance that goes with it. The music of Africa invites us in
the making of a community” (23). Chernoff, African Rhythm and African Sensibility,
23.
2. The Kongo cosmogram, dikenga dia Kongo, is represented in many ways in
African American material and performance culture. See Tobin and Dobard, Hid-
den in Plain View. Also, see Gundaker, ed., Keep Your Head to the Sky. Thompson
has documented the repeated influence in painting, quilt-making, yard decorations,
funerary art, performance styles, and body gestures. The repetition of this structure
is a variant of the ring shout, a Kongo sacred dance that African people retained in
America. See Thompson, Flash of the Spirit. Also, see Thompson and Cornet, Four
Moments of the Sun; and Thompson, Faces of the Gods.
In its re-codified form as a popular dance, the Kongo cosmogram is performed
as the “Electric Slide” (a testament to its Kongo origins of which a subgroup of peo-
ple are referred to as Ba Kuba (the people of lightning). The dance consists of four
90-degree turns counterclockwise (360 degrees), which re-creates the dikenga dia
Kongo and signs the remembrance of the matrix or spiritual structure of the circle
representing the soul’s journey. Sterling Stuckey posits that the ring shout helped to
consolidate African’s identity in North America. See Stuckey, Slave Culture, 12.
It is significant that memorates were kept in musical and dance forms as symbolic
modes of cosmic perception in the United States of America owing to the manner
in which the particularly harsh conditions of American enslavement denied African
people access to little other than their physical bodies. Since dance does not have a
material artifact as the product, it allowed Africans to not be completely submerged
by Euro-American concepts (Baraka, Blues People 16.) Dance is a major archival re-
source of African people and exists as “symbolic restatements of something sacred
the history of which may still be remembered or may have been forgotten” (Idowu,
Olodumare 115). See Fabre, “The Slave Ship Dance” in Black Imagination and the
Middle Passage. According to Fabre, in dance performances Africans expressed
coded kinships and loyalties, references to the spirit world and claims of African
identity (40).
212 k Notes to Pages xii–4

Through the creation of sacred space, Africans re-presented belief systems us-
ing the body to inscribe the cultural worlds east and west of the Atlantic. Like the
dikenga dia Kongo, the Yoruba worldview is also described as a circle with intersect-
ing lines. The circle with a cross has a representation in Yoruba spiritual culture as
orita meta or the crossroads, the intersection between the cosmic realms. As such,
merindilogun divinations performed with sixteen cowrie shells begin with the in-
scription of this sacred sign to open the channels to pass information between the
realms.
3. In this study I employ the term spirituality as a multivalent term that includes,
but is not limited to, notions of philosophy, religion, belief systems, ritual practices,
kinship, and community formation representative of a clustering of African identi-
ties. Moreover, in my application of the term I am creating a spiritual inquiry across
distinct cultures and disciplines within the historical, cultural, and spiritual context
of the African diaspora. Undergirding this approach is a theoretical alliance with the
ideas that Olupona expresses in the foreword to African Spirituality. I concur with
Olupona, who asserts that “African people continue to express an essential element
in the formation and sustenance of modern cultures in various parts of the globe
consistent with African meaning in the modern, post-colonial world” (xv). His edited
volume explores how Africans in the diaspora and on the African continent have
maintained the possibilities of making and deriving meaning relative to the spiritual
world.

Introduction: There’s a Little Wheel a Turnin’ in My Heart: Cultural Concen-

tricities and Enduring Identities
1. For the purpose of this study I am defining African peoples as a confedera-
tion of various nations of people captured and brought to the western hemisphere.
Additionally, I am using the term African in its broadest sense to include all people
of African descent, regardless of national origin. I am not employing the term tra-
ditional to separate time, but to demonstrate the harmony between historical and
contemporary realities, which connect the present with infinite time consistent with
African cosmologies. Nell Irvin Painter argues that being “‘African’” Americans is
part of a New World identity. Naming people by the continent of their origin and
ignoring their ethnic identity is a consequence of distance in time and space” (Creat-
ing Black Americans 5). Although this generic term lacks the particularity of ethnic
delineation, it references a common site of origin.
2. Louisiana was the only state in America where drums were not outlawed for
use by African people. Subsequently, a distinct musical and cultural heritage persists
unparalleled on the American landscape. Not limited to Congo Square, jazz funerals,
“second line parades,” and Mardi Gras, Louisiana culture represents an intense and
dynamic cultural example of Africa in America
3. Although most biographical information records Toni Morrison’s birth name
as Chloe Anthony Wofford, her mother states that she named her Chloe Ardelia
Wofford after Morrison’s maternal grandmother, Ardelia Willis. In an interview in
 Notes to Pages 5–9 k 213

the Lorain Journal, Morrison’s mother says that Morrison changed her name to Toni
after having converted to Catholicism while at Howard University. Saint Anthony
was the name that Morrison selected for her confirmation name. It was subsequently
shortened to Toni and adopted as her first name. Ansberry, “Toni Morrison’s Mom
Recalls Storytelling Days in Lorain.”
4. Lecture at the Goree Institute, July 19, 2002, as part of the UNCF Mellon 2002
Faculty Seminar at the Goree Institute, Goree Island, Republic of Senegal, July 15–23,
2002. In this seminar, titled “Gods, Knowledge and Modernity” and led by Nobel lau-
reate Wole Soyinka, I examined the belief structures and worldviews of the Yoruba,
Dogon, Baule, Igbo, and other groups’ spiritual traditions as the bases for exploring
modernity and the humanities within an African frame. As a result of participating
in this seminar, I developed many of the ideas presented in this study.
5. In Curtin’s The Atlantic Slave Trade, the author gives the figures of 24.5 percent
of enslaved Africans transported to North America from Angola, or the Royal King-
dom of Kongo, which is approximately 109,214 Africans transported from the Angola
region alone (157). Gomez revises Curtin’s number in his germinal study, Exchanging
Our Country Marks, remarking that 26.1 percent or 125,253 enslaved Africans were
brought to British North America and Louisiana (29). As significant as those calcula-
tions are, they are still conservative. However, evidence of the cultural and spiritual
influences of Kongo culture remains one of the most influential systems of ideas in
the western hemisphere. Heywood assembles an impressive group of scholars, all of
whom attest to the influence of Central African people in the American diaspora. See
Heywood, ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformations. Also see Thornton,
Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800, for a discussion
of the stability of Kongo identity in “a bundle of traits” including language, religion,
aesthetics, as well as material culture, which could be appreciated and adopted by the
“larger community than the one that originally created it” (208).
6. In the African American sense, music, dance, drama, and language are spiritual
practices as there are no clearly drawn lines dividing notions of sacred, secular, or
profane.
7. Maafa is a term coined by Marimba Ani that refers to the great physical and
psychic despair resulting from the capturing of African people, their subsequent
transport to the western hemisphere, and continuous experience of oppression con-
sistent with the values of white supremacist values.
8. An alternative spelling is Lucumi. The Lukumi people originate in southwest-
ern Nigeria and, to a lesser extent, portions of Benin and Togo.
9. See Blassingame, The Slave Community. Blassingame notes the ability of cul-
ture to bolster “self-esteem, courage, and confidence” as well as a means to “defend
against personal degradation” (76). See also Stuckey, Slave Culture; Heywood, ed.,
Central Africans and Cultural Transformations; and Gomez, Exchanging Our Coun-
try Marks.
10. See T. Washington, Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts. In Yoruba language,
ayé is the word for earth. Fundamentally, the power of the earth connects to the
214 k Notes to Pages 10–51

power of the Ajé, those older women who have the ability to see through different
eyes, shape-shift, as well as the ability to confidently wield spiritual power. See an
extended discussion of the Ajé in my examinations of The Bluest Eye and Tar Baby.
11. I am employing the term cosmology as the body of conceptions that enumer-
ate and classify the phenomena that compose and order the universe as well as the
norms and processes that govern it. Accompanying these conceptions are embedded
myths and other collective representations.
12. Similar ideas about the nature of African spiritual practices equal to the hy-
perbolic analysis in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, where Kurtz has been entrusted to
make a report to the “International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs”
in order to facilitate “weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways” (45).
13. Jung and Kerenji, Introduction to a Science of Mythology, 101. Quoted in
Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World, 35.

Chapter 1. I’s Got the Blues: Malochia, Magic, and the Descent into Madness in
The Bluest Eye
1. In this essay, all references to The Bluest Eye refer to the 1994 Plume edition and
will consist of pagination in parenthetical format.
2. Waliggo quoted in the foreword to Magesa, African Religion, xii.
3. The asafetida bag replicates the Kongo concept of an nkisi, a visual implement
that has the power to heal, protect, and deflect harm. See MacGaffey, Religion and
Society in Central Africa. Also see Thompson, Flash of the Spirit.
4. See an extended discussion of the role of Banganga (plural of nganga) in the
Song of Solomon essay.
5. The color of the marigolds—yellow—corresponds to the Kongo delineation of
musoni, representing the realm of prebirth or the beginnings or the prelude to the
life process on the dikenga dia Kongo or wheel of eternity.
6. By adding the money or (asedi) to the sacrifice, the ritual is ensured a higher
degree of efficacy. The money reinforces the sacrifice or exchange. This idea of reci-
procity underscores the intensity of the ritual intent.

Chapter 2. Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula
1. All references to Sula are from the 1973 Knopf paperback edition and will con-
sist of pagination in parenthetical format.
2. See Song of Solomon and Jazz chapters for further discussion of the epic con-
tours in Morrison’s novels.
3. Birenbaum asserts that the most important thing that a hero does is to travel,
which is a traversing of mythic space. See Birenbaum, Myth and Mind, 55.
4. See Adjaye, Time in the Black Experience, as well as Fu-Kiau’s description of
time as the Kongo propose in the essay on Jazz.
5. See essay on Jazz for a more detailed discussion of this idea.
6. Morrison’s introduction of a male character as the first focal point of her nar-
rative is a pattern initiated in Sula that is repeated in Tar Baby and Song of Solomon.
 Notes to Pages 51–54 k 215

Also significant is his name. Shad is the name of a member of the herring family that
ascends rivers in the spring to spawn. It also suggests shadow.
7. The use of the terms eccentric and peculiar are not confined to their usual con-
notations and are not meant to be pejorative. In the context of this study, the term
is extended to and describes those who primarily listen within and attend to the
dictates of the spiritual realm, or to those who are in touch with the natural world.
8. See the chapter on Beloved for a more detailed idea of the river as a matrix of
memory.
9. The word medallion further solidifies the idea of rank. As a cognate of the
word medal, it indicates an acknowledgment of something of consequence to be duly
noted. It is also the physical equivalent of a title.
10. The idea that his grandfather is not mentioned by name, but referred to as
“long time dead,” is an appellation referencing the ancestors and hints that his grand-
father who lived on the river may have been a river priest of Oya as well. He also lived
at the edge of town and made his living on the river. Most of the character’s names
in Morrison’s novels suggest significant attributes of the characters’ personalities.
11. This trio of women is another leitmotif that Morrison uses. In The Bluest Eye
there is the trio of prostitutes: China, Poland, and the Maginot Line living under
one roof. Claudia, Frieda, and Mrs. Macteer are another trio of women. In Song of
Solomon there is Ruth, First Corinthians, and Magdalene (called Lena). In that same
novel, Pilate’s house consists of Pilate, Reba, and Hagar. In Beloved, the house at 124
Bluestone Road consists of the female occupants Sethe, Denver, and Beloved. There
are multiple significations in the ascription of trios of women. For example, there is
a story for each of the women—or a story in every name. These narratives help to
erase the stereotypes or basic stock characters that form a major part of the African
American literary tradition. Also, because these households for the most part consist
of intergenerational women, Morrison engenders a sense of continuity subverting
the disruptions created by the historical enslavement of African people and pro-
vides a context for understanding the traditions of the past and a clear direction for
the future. Samuels and Weems add, “By including distinct communities of women,
Morrison allows us to see individuals who refused to be destroyed by external defi-
nitions of the other” (25). In addition to the three women, there are other trios such
as the three Deweys, the date of Suicide Day (the third of January), the three ritual
implements that Shadrack uses, and the three beets that motivate Eva’s journey of
survival.
12. In this novel, as in Beloved, there are significant references to Oya. For ex-
ample, the number eighteen reduces to nine and represents the amount of time Eva
spends away from her family making her sacrifice. When making offerings to Oya,
the supplicant provides nine or any multiple of nine items, since nine is Oya’s em-
blematic number. Plum’s name is significant because it represents one of the fruits
that are ritually given to her when a devotee makes an ebo, or offering, because of its
purple color’s association with Oya. Also, note the connection of Eva’s motivation for
her journey as being down to her last three beets, also representative of Oya’s color.
216 k Notes to Pages 60–70

13. See discussion of this Yoruba Òrìsà in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon
chapters.
14. Feeding the hole is a Yoruba ritual performed to strengthen one’s body and
spirit along with one’s relationship with the earth and the ancestors.
15. For example, because Tupac Shakur’s body was cremated, an enduring con-
versation exists concerning the slain rapper’s not being dead. However, the death of
his contemporary Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls,
whose body was paraded through the streets of the Bedford Stuyvesant section of
Brooklyn, has not generated any rumors of his still being alive.
16. Their identities as intermediaries or bisimbi spirits are intimated by their de-
scription. MacGaffey notes that bisimbi are the tutelary spirits of special children
(“Twins, Simbi Spirits” 213). The Deweys are described as three boys who, under
the influence of Eva, have merged into one personality: “They spoke with one voice,
thought with one mind, and maintained an annoying privacy” (39). They have even
begun to look alike so that even their mothers cannot tell them apart. These Deweys
“who went wild at the thought of water” resemble Kongo bisimbi. This transfor-
mation and their identity suggest the meaning of their collective name. The word
dew derives from the Indo-European base that produced words that mean flow, run,
wash, and brook. In the novel’s culminating ritual, they are presumed dead because
their bodies are not found (162). Failure to find them suggests they have returned to
their source.

Chapter 3. I’ve Got a Home in Dat Rock: Ritual and the Construction of Family
History in Song of Solomon
1. Nicolaisen argues that naming is intimately tied to narration, which together
represents “two of the most essential speech acts.” The name as an identifying ref-
erence gives structure to a chaotic world, while the story creates the past to help
negotiate the present realities (260).
2. Subsequent references to this novel refer to the 1977 American Library pa-
perback edition of Song of Solomon and will consist of pagination in parenthetical
format.
3. These circles are emblematic of the missing navel (circle) on Pilate’s smooth
stomach, whose absence is so remarkable that the verbal commentary by other char-
acters creates a type of presence analogous to the ruptures and displacement of Afri-
can people to the western hemisphere, which engenders a re-creation of Africa more
dynamic than the geopolitical space called Africa.
4. I am employing the concept of the reiterated self to refer to the African onto-
logical impulse to recover the ethos, values, and mores of Africa in order to remain
whole. This spiritual/cultural insistence subverts the force of white supremacy and
its accompanying hegemonic practices, which insist upon fragmenting the African
personality and disrupting liberation.
5. See Diedrich, Gates, and Pederson, eds., Black Imagination and the Middle
Passage, 11.
 Notes to Pages 71–76 k 217

6. See Lawal, The Gelede Spectacle. Lawal states that the Yoruba idea of oju inu,
or inner eye, can be expressed as the ability to look beyond the present moment and
therefore connotes the concept of intuitive imagination.
7. In a linear-defined reality, this return phase signals the completion of the epic
journey. However, when situated in the African world, it also signals the beginning
as the community receives new information to act upon. This is consistent with the
importance of community survival within an African context.
8. The idea of flight is a recurring trope in African American literature docu-
mented in enslavement spirituals. Undergirding that belief is the hope of returning
to Africa and being released from bondage and an abiding understanding of trans-
mogrification or shape-shifting informed by a worldview that supports the notion
of a person actually taking the form of a bird. For more examples of this cultural
narrative see, Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among Georgia Coastal Ne-
groes, a 1940 publication by the Georgia Federal Writers’ Project. In one of the many
accounts of flying in the collection, a former enslaved African from Tin City, near
Savannah, Georgia, recounts: “Duh ole folks use tuh tell as chillun duh story bout
people dat flied off tuh Africa. I blieb um about flyin” (18). In “Suicidal Tendencies,”
Daniel Walker notes the coalescence of African notions of transmigration and the
African American “preoccupation” with flight.
9. This is Toni Morrison’s date of birth.
10. The return to Africa, a recurring mytheme, provides a fixed point for the sym-
bolic return of the fully realized self. This repossessed self experiences a synthesis
with the truncated parts of the personality in the return and becomes whole. Eliade
discusses the importance of a fixed point or center being elemental to the “founding
of the world.” It is at this point, he argues, that the “real unveils itself and the world
comes into existence” (Sacred and the Profane 63).
11. Pilate reminds Ruth of what Milkman had to endure in order to be born. She
says, “He come in the world tryin to keep from getting killed” (140). Consistent with
the heroic mytheme, which demarcates the arduous birth of the hero, Milkman has
to “fight off castor oil, knitting needles, and being blasted with hot steam” (Song of
Solomon 140).
12. In his review of Okpewho’s The Epic in Africa, Kunene states, “every human
society has a clear view of what constitutes the heroic, the epic the extraordinary”
(552). Kunene calls for African scholars to note the parameters of this expressive
behavior. Clearly the use of music, dance, and the heightened emphasis of the perfor-
mance make definitive statements concerning the cultural specificity of the African
epic.
13. In this analysis of Song of Solomon, the idea of folklore and African spiritual
continuities are used coterminously. In Long Black Song, Baker notes that folklore
stands at the “foundation of the Black literary tradition” (18). Although African spiri-
tual continuities inform what would be known as folklore, I assert that a process of
relexification occurred, which only changed the word and not the deep structure of
meaning. That is folklore became the inclusive term to house concepts of African be-
218 k Notes to Pages 80–97

lief, verbal significations, and traditions without referencing particular African spiri-
tual traditions. I am conflating the two terms in order to not engage in a protracted
discussion tangential to this present study.
14. See discussion of the significance of the woods in the essay on The Bluest Eye
in this work.
15. While conducting research on spiritual technologies of the Bantu people of
South Africa in July 2002, a Sangoma or traditional female priest informed me of the
significance of feet as spiritual signs.
16. Morrison would repeat this idea of a building being untethered from its foun-
dation in her seventh novel, Paradise. The significance of this idea concerns the
notion of spiritual transcendence and is an indication of the spiritual status of the
house’s occupants.
17. In “Art or Accident: Yoruba Body Artists and Their Deity Ogun,” Drewal notes
that although aye and orun are distinct concepts, they are fluid and interpenetrable
(257).
18. In a personal conversation with Iya Stephanie Weaver, a priest of Obatala in
the Lukumi/Yoruba tradition, Weaver notes that feet—elese meiji—are the spiritual
points for the Yoruba that are more reliable for establishing spiritual identity than
even the physical face.
19. See discussion of ebo in the Jazz chapter.
20. See a lengthy discussion of the four moments of the sun or the dikenga dia
Kongo in the preface to this study.
21. The subtitle, Maneno ya melele, is Kiswahili language, which I am employing
to mean forever words or words of forever.
22. All word translations are from Turner’s, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect,
68.
23. Among the Dogon two multiday events occur: the yingim and the danyim,
which are held annually to celebrate all the deaths that have occurred in the village
during the year. See Davis, “Dogon Funerals,” 68.
24. Milkman’s leap into “Solomon’s Leap” is described as being “As fleet and bright
as a lodestar” (341). This exchange of energies balances out Pilate’s death and repays
the cosmic debt incurred by Solomon’s flight and “abandonment” of Ryna and his
twenty-one children. He does not leave a “body behind” like his great-grandfather.
Instead, as a ritual interchange, he joins her in the spirit world, the world of Africa.
This time he exchanges the authentic life that Pilate gave him for his true life. The
stars for the Dogon are inspirited components of a dynamic whole among which
there is a constant exchange of energies as they are concerned with the metaphysical
and physical realities of the universe. See Griaule and Dieterlen, Pale Fox, 15.

Chapter 4. Dancing with Trees and Dreaming of Yellow Dresses: The Dilemma
of Jadine in Tar Baby
1. All references to Tar Baby refer to the 1987 Penguin paperback edition and will
consist of pagination in parenthetical format.
 Notes to Pages 110–125 k 219

2. Although many sources refer to Oya and Oshun as two of the three wives of
Shango, according to Iyalosa Oseye Mchawi, Obba Nani was Shango’s only true
wife.
3. In this collection titled, Maternal Divinity Yemonja, Weaver and Egbelade pres-
ent eleven ese, or traditional stories, representing Yemonja, the Òrìsà who is consid-
ered to be “God the Mother” (xvi).
4. Ayé is the Yoruba word for earth. Fundamentally, the power of the earth is con-
nected to the power of the Ajé—older women who have the ability to see through
spiritual eyes.
5. See Song of Solomon for the significance of climbing rocks from the Dogon
spiritual perspective.

Chapter 5. In(her)iting the Divine: (Consola)tions, Sacred (Convent)ions, and

Mediations of the Spiritual In-between in Paradise
1. For this essay, all references to the novel are from the 1998 Knopf hardback edi-
tion of Paradise and will consist of pagination in parenthetical format.
2. In the preface of his book, Myth, Literature and the African World, Soyinka
chides African people for accepting doctrines originating from cultural spaces out-
side themselves. He asserts that African people should check to see if they can elicit
those ideas from their own cultural frames (xii).
3. Morrison begins this idea of racial indeterminacy in her short story, “Recitatif ”
(1991). In this story, Morrison encodes the assumptions, premises, and other deter-
miners of racial identity in dialogue guiding readers to determine the racial identity
of the characters. In order to make the determination, the readers have to read the
signs and test them against the assumptions of race they bring to the text. Morrison
argues that all American texts encode highly nuanced language loaded with racial,
political, cultural, and gendered meaning.
4. In Myth and Mind, Birenbaum suggests that the division of the world into op-
posites creates opportunities of choice between the polarities (32).
5. This idea of two brothers shooting each other mirrors a Yoruba odu, or spiritual
pattern, called ejioco whose metaphoric refrain is the “arrow between brothers.” The
number two represents the pattern for this odu and is also emblematic of Ibeji or
twins within a Yoruba frame.
6. The “Disallowing” is the defining event in the construction of the family history
of the townspeople of Haven and Ruby. The core experience of having been turned
away by “the blue-eyed, gray-eyed men in good suits” (193) helped them to establish
themselves as insiders and everyone else as outsiders. The nine patriarchs who es-
tablished the town signify the Dogon’s cosmological number of creation consisting
of God, Amma, and the eight original ancestors of the Dogon creation.
7. The original motto affixed to the iron stove was, “Beware the Furrow of His
Brow.” Subsequently, to match the self-righteous attitudes of Ruby’s inhabitants, who
believed that the “hard-won heaven [was] defined by the absence of the unsaved,
the unworthy, and the strange,” the motto changes to “Be the Furrow of His Brow.”
220 k Notes to Pages 126–131

Finally, after the massacre of the women, the motto morphs into, “We are the Furrow
of His Brow,” indicating the displeasure of God concerning their actions.
8. In 2001, my Iyalosa and I visited several Dogon villages and witnessed the par-
ticular layouts of the various communities: Kani Kambole, Teli, Ende, Begnimatu,
and Djiguibombo are all consistent with Griaule’s description recorded in Conversa-
tions with Ogotemmeli and Griaule and Dieterlen’s, The Pale Fox.
9. The concept of “8-rock” represents the coal-colored men of Ruby, who along
with their descendants band together and form their own settlement, excluding other
African Americans through the practice of intragroup discrimination. The name cor-
responds to the number of Dogon ancestors in the Dogon cosmology. Moreover, the
number eight represents the number of men on the Dogon leadership council who
act on behalf of the village. Additionally, there are eight symbolic seeds that represent
the organization within the body of human beings realized as the microcosm of the
world. The eight is derived by combining the four elements and the four cardinal
directions (Griaule and Dieterlen 54).
10. From the Yoruba perspective, abiku refers to a child who is “born to die.”
For more information about this concept see, Okri, The Famished Road. See also,
Soyinka, Ake. See also, Osundare, “The Poem as a Mytho-linguistic Event,” in Jones,
Durosimi, and Jones, eds., Oral and Written Poetry in African Literature Today. The
space where abiku reside while they wait to take another body is in the interspace
between the spirit world and the living. Sometimes they take long breaks between
coming to earth and dying and remain in the in-between (Okri 5). Additionally, abiku
children are marked by incisions to their flesh and piercings so their parents will
recognize them when they return.
11. The Candomblé tradition of Brazil consists of representation from the follow-
ing nations: the Nago/Ketu people of Nigeria, the Fon or Jeje people from Benin, the
Kongo/Angola from the Bantu groups of Angola and the Democratic Republic of
Kongo, and the indigenous people of Brazil—the Amerindians called Caboclo.
12. This female-centered focus of divinity was maintained in the Catholic struc-
ture, which has female saints and other female ideas of spiritual power, unlike the
Protestant obliteration of the female spiritual presence. See, Lopes, “Sobrevincias e
Recreacões Bantas no Rio de Janeiro,” 69–75.
13. In a conversation with my Iyalosa (Godmother), Oseye Mchawi, Priest of
Obatala, she mentions the idea of the protective nature of Oshun, Iyalode, and Ye-
monja—the Great mother, to safeguard and defend their children, all people. On
another note, I see a parallel with the guarding of the Ibeji as an allegory for African
people in the western hemisphere charged with the responsibility of keeping the
living traditions of Africa alive. Sustained by the re-codifications and continued dy-
namic re-inventions, they safeguard what they cannot afford to forget so far removed
from the geophysical space of continental Africa.
14. The narrator provides the discrepancy between the two versions of the story.
In the first instance, the narrator passes judgment regarding the nature of cultural
imposition by the Catholic nuns by calling the nuns’ action a “kidnapping,” while
 Notes to Pages 132–153 k 221

Consolata, whose voice is indicated by the words hurt and soil, has an appreciation
for her rescue and provides a different narrative.
15. Connie attempts to consecrate that unity when she bites Deacon’s lip. Since
she has been taught that the blood is the life, from a Catholic perspective her biting
and licking of Deacon’s blood is her attempt to sacralize their union (Holy Commu-
nion).
16. Dogo so is the Dogon word for language.
17. In The Cultural Unity of Africa, Diop notes the dissolution of the matriarch as
a major cultural disruption that served as a precursor to the invasion of Africa by the
Arabs—and subsequently the Europeans.
18. See Rocha, Cadernos de Teologia Negra: Deus na Roda Com a Gente.
19. See the discussion of Iyami Osoronga or Ajé in the chapters on The Bluest Eye
and Tar Baby in this study.
20. In his essay titled “The Immortal Child,” DuBois discusses America’s disallow-
ing in his rendering of the career of British musical genius, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
He states that in America his talent “might never have been permitted to grow.” He
continues, “We know in America how to discourage, choke, and murder ability” (97).
See DuBois, Darkwater.

Chapter 6. Living with the Dead: Memory and Ancestral Presence in Beloved
1. Morrison, Beloved, 274–75. Subsequent references to the novel refer to the 1987
Knopf hardcover edition and will consist of pagination in parenthetical format.
2. For African people, the necessity to acknowledge the “sixty million” is evident,
especially when the suppressed memories transform into a denial of their own his-
tory. For instance, in Crouch’s review of Beloved in the New Republic, he notes, “Be-
loved above all else, is a blackface holocaust” (40) and an “appropriation of a holo-
caust tale” (42). This anachronistic statement affirms the necessity for Morrison to
tell the story of the “sixty million” or more. An African American, Crouch dismisses
the validity of the African captivity experience in his reductive statement, “sixty is
ten times six” (40). He intimates that Morrison has taken Jewish history and has at-
tempted to trump it to elicit sympathy and to compete in a “big-time martyrs rating”
(40). See also, Morrison, interview with Angelo, “The Pain of Being Black,” 120–23. In
this interview Morrison discusses the idea of “sixty million” as being a conservative
estimate of the lives lost in the Middle Passage.
3. See the discussion of the concept of the “in-between” in Paradise in Chapter 5
of this book.
4. Russell notes, “The end is a constantly recurring theme” of apocalyptic writing.
For him it is the end that gives meaning to the present and the past and in which
all things, on heaven and earth and in heaven, will receive their deserved reward”
(21–22).
5. This construction of time consists of time and space as well as accompanying
events occurring in overlays, or the collapsing of time in three dimensions (past,
present, and future). See a compilation of essays for a discussion of the complex
222 k Notes to Pages 153–173

nature of time from a variety of African cultural perspectives. See Fu-Kiau, “Ntangu-
Tanda-Kolo: The Concept of Time,” 3–34, and Kokole, “Time, Identity, and Histori-
cal Consciousness in Akan,” 35–77, in Adjaye, ed., Time in the Experience. See an
extended discussion of the concept of Hantu in Jahn, Muntu, and Pennington, “Time
in African Culture,” in Asante and Asante, eds., African Culture, 123–39.
6. Morrison explains why she opens the novel in media res noting, “I wanted the
compelling confusion of being there as they (the characters) are; suddenly, without
comfort or succor from the ‘author’ with only imagination, intelligence, and necessity
available for the journey” (33). The audience invited to participate with the heroes
on their journey vicariously becomes a hero. See Morrison, “Unspeakable Things
Unspoken,” (33).

Chapter 7. Tracing Wild’s Child Joe and Tracking the Hunter: An Examination
of the Òrìsà Ochossi in Jazz
1. Epic, defined as a genre of literature, contains poetic language, is narrative,
heroic, and uses legendary characterization. In addition, it is a multifunctional idea
dealing with cultural and traditional transmission in a didactic fashion and embodies
a multigenre approach including legends, genealogy, song, praise poems, and incan-
tations. See Johnson, “Yes Virginia, There Is an Epic in Africa,” 308–26.
2. For the discussion of human sacrifice throughout this chapter, I am using the
Yoruba idea of oluwo or oluo as described by Awolalu. He notes the practice of hu-
man sacrifice before the arrival of the British before the nineteenth century. Awolalu
explains that it was better to sacrifice one life for the good of the community than for
all to perish. See Awolalu, Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites, 168–69.
3. All references to Jazz are from the 1992 Knopf paperback edition and will con-
sist of pagination in parenthetical format.
4. Fu-Kiau explains that the muntu is encircled by Buta (family); Moyo (the mem-
ber’s of the family from one’s mother’s descent); Mwelo-nzo (extended family); Kanda
(community); Nsi (land, region, or country). All radiate outward and are bordered by
the last circle, Nza, representing the universe (African Cosmology 41). See the chapter
on The Bluest Eye for a more detailed explanation of this concept.
5. Among the Dogon there are seven initiation societies that correspond to the
body’s seven main joints: the ankles, the knees, the hips, the necks, the shoulders, the
elbows, and the wrists.
6. Morrison is dismissive about the changes that white Americans have viewed as
progress. For a discussion of how events of the 1960s influenced her fiction, see Jean
Strouse’s “Toni Morrison’s Black Magic,” 52–57.
7. I view the quality of the change-up as a way to culturally survive. The change-
up quality becomes evident when other groups attempt to expropriate African world
culture.
8. Joe’s two-eyedness references his relationship to the Yoruba odu ejioco, the
representational odu of the hunter deity.
9. Ijala chants are performed at gatherings or meetings of hunters. The purpose
 Notes to Pages 174–191 k 223

of the chants is to salute and invoke the presence of Ogun, the patron deity of hunt-
ers. Ijala chants are performed at gatherings or meeting of hunters. See Babalola, “A
Portrait of Ogun as Reflected in Ijala Chants,” in Barnes, ed., Africa’s Ogun, 147–72.
10. As part of his hunting arsenal, Ochossi is familiar with ewe (various plants and
herbs including poison).
11. See the chapter on Tar Baby for a more extended discussion of these ideas.
12. In the nineteenth-century narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs
notes the presence of minkisi in her reference to the preacher’s castigation of the en-
slaved African’s practice of “tying up little bags of roots to bury under the door-steps
to poison each other with” (69).
13. A looted people, our artifacts, too, have been expropriated. For some, minkisi
are interesting nail-embedded souvenirs whose operative structures are dormant.
Displayed in travelers’ living rooms they have been turned into conversation items.
14. For more clarification, see the discussion of this idea in the Song of Solomon
chapter in this book.
15. The Okeh record company was one of the first music publishing companies to
record what was then called race music. They recorded blues and early R&B.

Chapter 8. If I’d a Knowed More, I Would a Loved More: Toni Morrison’s Love
and Spiritual Authorship
1. Resisting the imposition of hyphenation and the hybrid identity imposed by
that “dash,” I refer to African people in North America as African Americans, no
hyphen, or African people in America.
2. See her commentary on the depiction of African people as background in the
nihilistic figurations of European-American writers. Metonymically displaced, the
presence of Africans provided an ontological space for Europeans to be self-fashion-
ing. See Morrison, Playing in the Dark.
3. All references to the novel are from the 2003 Knopf hardback edition of Love
and will consist of pagination in parenthetical format.
4. In the catalogue accompanying the Musée Dapper’s 2002 exhibition, Le Geste
Kongo, Thompson chronicles spiritual gestures such as the Kongo sign, called booka
or yangalala. Described as holding one hand above the head, this gesture’s purpose is
to transport feelings of good will from one person to another. Thompson chronicles
that the booka sign belongs to a Kongo spiritual society. With the fingers apart the
gesture becomes spiritually charged and represents the rays of the sun. This par-
ticular sign is recognized and “signed” throughout the world. Moreover, two hands
raised in this manner represent a level of spiritual possession. See Thompson, “Le
Gestuelle Kongo,” 177–78. See also Major, ed., Juba to Jive, 420. Major notes that the
gesture originates in Africa and represents solidarity between men and serves as a
compliment for an accomplishment.
5. I recall being at a Bernice Reagon concert when she began singing the hymn
“Tis the Ole Ship of Zion.” When the African women in the audience did not join
in this communal performance, she chided them saying, “You better sing, or hum if
224 k Notes to Pages 192–195

you don’t know the words.” Afterwards, she told the group that the song was one to
remember, she continued, “Who knows, something might go down and this song
might be the access code to get to safety.”
6. This is both a reference to the nature of Bill Cosey’s character and to the spiri-
tually bankrupt behavior of his father, Daniel Robert Cosey, also known as DRC or
“Dark.”
7. The term Ajé not only refers to the concept of spiritually powerful women but
also to the spiritual power itself. This power is resident in all women, but when de-
veloped signifies a select group of women. As women age, the power increases and
engenders both fear and respect. Many Yoruba believe that the Ajé must be placated
and offered propitiary sacrifices to gain their support. Often called awon iya wa
(our mothers) in the Lukumi Yoruba spiritual tradition, they refer to these women
as Iyami Osoronga and salute them in the mojuba, or prayers that proceed all ritual
activities.
8. As Morrison’s faithful readers, we never question why Junior sees herself in a
tree. In Morrison’s literary vistas, Junior’s being positioned in a tree seems to be as
natural an occurrence as saying she is walking.
9. The turtle is a familiar of the Òrìsà Sango. The significance of the number
twelve has already been discussed in the chapter on Tar Baby. Additionally, the num-
ber twelve is represented by the odu ejila, whose refrain is “the soldier never sleeps,”
a reference to Sango’s singular and unfailing ability to defend his devotees.
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 Index

Abara meji (owner of two bodies), 101, 201 African Religions (Ray), 28–29, 65, 109, 182
Abere (sacred needle), 186, 201 African Rhythm and Sensibility (Chernoff ),
Abiku (spirit born to die), 128, 160, 201, 220 211
Adimu (offerings), 164, 201 African Spirituality: Forms, Meanings, and
Adjaye, Joseph K.: Time in the Black Experi- Expressions (Olupona), 212
ence, 214 The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition
Aesthetics: art and, 31; black, 34; Black is (B. Bell), 2
Beautiful movement and, 42; The Bluest Afrogenic culture, 9–10
Eye (Morrison) and, 192–93; whiteness and, Aganju (deity of fire), 162, 192, 201
32, 105, 192; white supremacist, 43, 45, 48 Agogo (bell), 53, 201
African Americans: African culture and, 5; Ahistoricity, 3, 171
core beliefs of, 8–9; enslavement and, 1–3, Ajé (earth mother): African people and, 9; in
159, 190; European culture and, 8, 103–5; Morrison’s fiction, 22, 82, 106–7, 114, 116,
identity formation of, xi, 6–7, 13, 46, 139, 193; spirituality and, 100–102, 201,
69–70; literature of, 11; marginalization 224; Yoruba people and, 97–98
of, 30, 48; music and, 191; proverbs of, 40, Ajuwon, Bade, 186
145; white supremacy and, 196–97 Amma (Supreme God), 83, 210
African Cosmology (Fu-Kiau): community Anatomy of Criticism (Frye), 17
and, 78–79, 169; cosmologies and, 30–33; Ancestor societies: Bakulu and, 39, 77, 157,
death and, 138–40; Kongo cosmogram 162, 167, 182, 206; egun and, 113, 202;
and, x–xi, 30–33, 156; V and, 102 Kongo people and, x–xi, 4, 195; memory
African culture: African Americans and, 5; and, 145–46, 148–50, 152–57, 170–71; in
Afrogenic culture and, 9–10; enslavement Morrison’s fiction, 11, 21, 50, 54, 61–64,
and, 1–2, 7–9, 70–71, 146; The Gelede 70–72, 75–85, 113–14; Yoruba people and,
Spectacle: Art, Gender, and Social Har- 28, 37–39, 58, 186
mony in an African Culture (Lawal), 217; Ani, Marimba, 13, 150, 165
“Theatre in African Traditional Cultures: Apataki (moral tales): in Morrison’s fiction,
Survival Patterns” (Soyinka), 2, 5 113, 173, 201; Yoruba people and, 86–87,
African global mutuality, 35 124–25, 131
“African Heroic Epic” (Biebuyck), 3 Archetypal images: helpers as, 70; spaces
Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (L. and, 3; spirituality and, 17
Turner), 95 Armah, Ayi Kwei: Two Thousand Seasons, ix,
African people: Ajé and, 9; beauty and, 32, 30, 35, 97, 115, 119
34; community and, 8, 27–30, 149–50; Art: aesthetics and, 31; Gelede: Art and
cosmology of, 7, 10, 13, 18, 48; dance Female Power Among the Yoruba (Drewal
traditions of, ix–x, 211; in diaspora, 1–2, and Drewal), 34, 37–38, 81, 101; The Gelede
9, 72, 212; forced transfer of, 1; identity Spectacle: Art, Gender, and Social Har-
formation of, 16; naming practices of, 36, mony in an African Culture (Lawal), 217;
109, 145–46; spirituality of, 3–9, 37, 105; Memory: Luba Art and the Making of His-
symbolic codes of, 70; values of, 50, 54, 85, tory (A. Roberts), 146–47, 156, 179; politics
192. See also African culture and, 18; spirituality and, 10–11
240 k Index

Asé (life force), 87, 100, 190, 201 Berry, Mary Frances, 33, 77
Asedi (money sacrifice), 47, 202, 214 Best, Pat, 124
Astonishment and Power (MacGaffey), 181 “Beyond Realism” (Byerman), 13
The Atlantic Slave Trade (Curtin), 213 Bhabha, Homi: Nation and Narration, 121
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman Biebuyck, Daniel P.: “African Heroic Epic,” 3;
(Gaines), 107 Hero and Chief, 75
Awkward, Michael: “Negotiations of Power: “Big lies,” 51
White Critics, Black Texts, and the Self- Birenbaum, Harvey, 139, 214
Referential Impulse,” 18 Birth: of heroes, 76–79; ritual of, 85
Awolalu, J. Omosade, 35, 87, 180, 222 Bisimbi (water spirits), 65, 91, 178, 207, 216
Ayé (world of living), 35, 39, 83, 116–17, 202 Black aesthetics, 34
Black Arts Movement, 3–4
Baana ba nlongo (born abnormally), 76, 206 Blackburn, Sara, 19
Babalawo (initiate), 202 Black Gods (Mason), 34, 86, 88–89
Babaluaiye (deity of balance), 93, 202 Black is Beautiful movement, 42
Baker, Houston A., Jr.: Long Black Song, 16, Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon), 44
21, 71, 217; Workings of the Spirit, 16 Black Women Writers at Work (Tate), 18, 20
Bakerman, Jane, 55 Blassingame, John, 9, 33, 77, 213
BaKongo people, 4, 27–28, 52, 130 Blues, 5, 84
BaKuba (people of lightning), 206, 211 Blues People (Baraka), 211
Bakulu (ancestors): ancestor societies and, The Bluest Eye (Morrison): aesthetics and,
39, 77, 157, 162, 167, 182, 206; mpemba 192–93; analysis of, 22, 27–48; community
and, 208 and, 51; ecological changes and, 196; Nom-
Balance, and nature, 35, 98–99 mo (word) and, 190; outdoors and, 124
Balancing plane for all existence, x, 39 Bockie, Simon: Death and the Invisible Pow-
Baldwin, James, 198 ers, 19, 27–28, 47, 77
BaLuba people, 4, 206 Booka (spiritual gesture), 191, 207, 223
BaManianga people, 80–81, 206 Bradshaw, John: Bradshaw on the Family, 43
Bambara, Toni Cade: The Salt Eaters, Bradshaw on the Family (Bradshaw), 43
39–40, 46 Brown, Ras M., 8, 158, 172, 175
Banganga (priests), 183, 207 Bukra (white people), 210
Bantu people: cosmology of, xi, 30–31, 153; Burroughs, Margaret: “What Shall I Tell My
proverbs of, 8, 138; traditions of, 6, 27–28, Children Who Are Black?” 27
207 Buta (family), 30, 207
Baraka, Amiri: Blues People, 211 Buzima muzazu (cocoon/healing), 182, 187,
Beauty: African people’s view of, 32, 34; 207
nature and, 15, 97; polarized views of, 35, Byerman, Keith: “Beyond Realism,” 13
44; white supremacist view of, 29
“Behind the Making of the Black Book” Call-and-response motif, 84, 93, 149
(Morrison), 4 Candomblé (spiritual practice), 129–30, 161,
Bell, Archie, ix 207
Bell, Bernard: The Afro-American Novel and Cane (Toomer), 15, 56, 106
Its Tradition, 2 Chernoff, John Miller: African Rhythm and
Bell, Catherine, 121 Sensibility, 211
Bells: agogo and, 53, 201; in Morrison’s fic- Christian, Barbara, 59; “Somebody Forgot,”
tion, 66 150–51
Beloved (Morrison), 23, 107, 145–67, 190–94, Christianity: imposition of, 4, 37, 150; Roman
198–99 Catholicism, x, 7, 137
 Index k 241

Chukwunyere, Kamalu, 108 and, 4. See also African culture; European

Circling motif, 59, 66, 104, 111, 216 culture
The City of Women (Landes), 130 Curtin, Phillip D.: The Atlantic Slave Trade, 213
Clarke, John Henrik, 4–5 Cutting and memory, 181
Cloke, Paul, 158 Cyclical time, 169
Cognitive behavior and European culture,
13–14 Damballah Ouido (deity in Fon tradition),
Coleman, Will: Tribal Talk, 180 176, 210
Communal identity, 8 Dance: of African people, ix–x, 211; com-
Community: African Cosmology (Fu-Kiau) munity and, 9–10; gelede (masked dance
and, 78–79, 169; African people and, 8, in honor of women), 203; masks and, 155;
27–30, 149–50; The Bluest Eye (Morrison) ritual and, xi–xii
and, 51; dance and, 9–10; individualism Danyim (annual funeral event), 210, 218
and, 49, 104; kanda and, 77–78, 207; Davis, Christina, 19
masks and, 105, 116; memory and, 11, Death: African Cosmology (Fu-Kiau) and,
145–49; in Morrison’s fiction, 13, 27, 42, 138–40; Death and the Invisible Powers
48–50, 92; Reclaiming Community in (Bockie), 19, 27–28, 47, 77; “The Death
Contemporary African American Fiction Owl” (Goodson), 179; “Gullah Attitudes
(Page), 15–16; ritual and, 39, 42, 53, 64–65, Toward Life and Death” (Creel), 62, 66;
164; Song of Solomon (Morrison) and, 57, Kongo cosmogram and, 92; luvemba and,
113, 166 xi, 92, 207, 208; vunda (death) and, 102,
Complementary opposition, 34 209; whiteness and, 92
Conjurers, 7, 14, 40 Death and the Invisible Powers (Bockie), 19,
Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness, 214 27–28, 47, 77
Conversations with Ogotemmeli (Griaule), “The Death Owl” (Goodson), 179
129 The Dells (musical group), 189
Cooper-Clark, Diane, 57 Derrida, Jacques, 121
Core beliefs of African Americans, 8–9 Diaspora: of African people, 1–2, 9, 72, 212;
Cornet, Joseph, 182, 211 revisionist school of scholars of, 8
Corregidora (G. Jones), 145 Diedrich, Maria, 71
Cosmogram. See Kongo cosmogram Dikenga dia Kongo. See Kongo cosmogram
Cosmologies: African Cosmology (Fu-Kiau) Dingo dingo (process), 78, 207
and, 30–33; of African people, 7, 10, 13, Diop, Birago, 181
18, 48; of Bantu people, xi, 30–31, 153; of Diop, Cheikh Anta: The Cultural Unity of
Kongo people, x–xi, 34, 169; of other- Black Africa, 2, 221
ness, 32, 35; of Third World, 20; of white Dogon people: masks of, 74; spirituality of, 6,
supremacy, 44 23, 115; traditions of, 93, 117, 126–27, 134,
Creating Black Americans: History and Its 195, 210, 218; twin motif and, 137–38
Meanings, 1619 to the Present (Painter), Dogo so (speech), 134, 210, 221
212 Do Nascimento, Abdias: “Pade de Exu
Creel, Margaret Washington: “Gullah At- Libertador,” 85
titudes Toward Life and Death,” 62, 66; A Double consciousness, 119, 172
Peculiar People, 10 Douglass, Frederick, 146
Creolization, 7–8 “Dream Girls” (Early), 89
Cullen, Countee, 141 Drewal, Henry: Gelede: Art and Female
The Cultural Unity of Black Africa (C. Diop), Power Among the Yoruba, 34, 37–38, 81,
2, 221 101; Nine Centuries of African Art and
Culture: political, 37–38, 133, 135; spirituality Thought, 58
242 k Index

Drewal, Margaret, 34, 37–38, 81, 101 European culture: African Americans and,
Drums and Shadows (Georgia Federal Writ- 8, 103–5; cognitive behavior and, 13–14;
ers’ Project), 76–77, 90, 94–95, 217 spiritual imperialism of, 4, 98–99
Duerden, Dennis, 177 Evans, Lawrence J., 69
Dumas, Henry: “Echo Tree,” 183; “Rite,” 108; Evil eye, 22, 31–32, 42, 63
“Root Song,” 168 Ewe (healing plants), 203
Exchanging Our Country Marks (Gomez),
Early, James “Thunder”: “Dream Girls,” 89 7–8, 35, 213
Earth, Wind, and Fire, 46
Ebo (sacrifice), 174, 202, 218 Fabre, Geneviève, xi, 72, 146, 211
“Echo Tree” (Dumas), 183 Faces of Gods (Thompson), 90
Ecological changes, 196 The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness
Eerindilogun (Ogunbile), 101 (Wilson), 3
“Ego Tripping (There May Be a Reason Fanon, Frantz: Black Skin, White Masks, 44;
Why)” (Giovanni), 80 The Wretched of the Earth, 5, 18, 190
Egun (ancestors), 113, 202 Ferreira, Anthony, 87
Egungun (commemorative rites): in Morri- Fifeto (purification ritual), 126, 203
son’s fiction, 22, 53, 58, 157–58, 192; Yoruba Flight and spirituality, 70, 76, 95–96, 217
people and, 202, 206 Folktales from oral tradition, 2
Ejila (divination value), 202, 224 Folkways, 2
Ejioco (divination value), 174, 202, 222 Fon people, 210, 220
Ekundayo (joy), 35, 202 Forced transfer of African people, 1
Eleda (head), 35, 202 The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu
Elegba (messenger deity): in Morrison’s Ritual (V. Turner), 62–63
fiction, 41, 60, 70, 85–89, 94; The Signify- “For My People” (M. Walker), 30
ing Monkey (Gates) and, 21–22; Yoruba Four New World Yoruba Rituals (Mason), 177
people and, 202, 205 “Fragments from the Narrative of the Black
Elese meji (feet), 202 Magicians” (Neal), 162
Eliade, Mircea: The Myth of the Eternal Re- From Trickster to Badman (J. Roberts), 22
turn, 155; Sacred and the Profane, xi, 100, Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism, 17
106–7, 148, 217 Fu-Kiau, Bunseki K.: African Cosmology,
Ellison, Ralph: Invisible Man, 164, 191–92; x–xi, 30–33, 78–79, 102, 138–40, 156, 169;
Shadow and Act, 12, 70, 147, 189 “Ntangu-Tanda-Kolo: The Concept of
Emi (breath and lungs), 35, 202 Time,” 222; Self-Healing, 39
Eniyan (human being), 202 “Full Moon” (Hayden), 80
Enslavement: African Americans and, 1–3, Funerals as ritual, 65
159, 190; African culture and, 1–2, 7–9, Fun fun (color white), 179, 203
70–71, 146; memory and, 148, 151–53, 165,
196; white supremacy and, 44, 125 Gaines, Ernest J.: The Autobiography of Miss
The Epic in Africa (Okpewho), 73 Jane Pittman, 107
Epics: “African Heroic Epic” (Biebuyck), 3; Gates, Henry Louis: The Signifying Monkey,
The Epic in Africa (Okpewho), 73; masks 21–22, 71
and, 74; music and, 74; Mwindo, 74–75; Gaye, Marvin, ix
myth and, 172; Sundiata, 74–75 Gbere (protective cuts), 92, 203
Epic topoi, 71–76 Gelede (masked dance in honor of women),
Ese (traditional stories), 93, 203 203
Eshu (Yoruban deity), 22, 86 Gelede: Art and Female Power Among the
 Index k 243

Yoruba (Drewal and Drewal), 34, 37–38, Hughes, Langston: “Juke Box Love Song,” ix
81, 101 Humming, 191–92, 223
The Gelede Spectacle: Art, Gender, and Social Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were
Harmony in an African Culture (Lawal), Watching God, 145
217
Georgia Federal Writers’ Project: Drums and Ibae (term of respect for dead), 203
Shadows, 76–77, 90, 94–95, 217 Ibeji (deities of bounty), 119, 122, 129, 203,
Ghanaian people: proverbs of, 90 220
Giovanni, Nikki: “Ego Tripping (There May Idana Fun Òrìsà (Mason), 122
Be a Reason Why),” 80 Identity formation: of African Americans,
Gleason, Judith: Oya: In Praise of an African xi, 6–7, 13, 46, 69–70; of African people,
Goddess, 58–59, 157–58 16; communal, 8; Kongo cosmogram and,
Global mutuality, 35 156; Song of Solomon (Morrison) and,
God: whiteness and, 40–41 172, 199; spirituality and, 20, 37; “Time,
Gomez, Michael A.: Exchanging Our Coun- Identity, and Historical Consciousness in
try Marks, 7–8, 35, 213 Akan” (Kokole), 222; whiteness and, 29,
Goodson, Thaddeus “Tad”: “The Death Owl,” 35, 45–46, 124
179 Idowu, E. Bolaji, 99, 211
Griaule, Marcel: Conversations with Ogotem- Ifa (divination system), 203
meli, 129; The Pale Fox, 138 Ifunpa (amulets), 203
Grimes, Ronald L., 38, 154 Ijala (chant for hunters), 173, 186, 203
Grossberg, Lawrence, 6 Ile Ife (city), 7, 124
Groupings of four and Kongo cosmogram, “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man” (Dixon),
32–33 92
“Gullah Attitudes Toward Life and Death” Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs),
(Creel), 62, 66 223
Gullah region: Africanisms in the Gullah Individualism: community and, 49, 104; will
Dialect (L. Turner), 95; “Gullah Attitudes and, 49
Toward Life and Death” (Creel), 62, 66; In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (A.
spirituality and, 10 Walker), 48
Inu (inner self ), 203
Hall, Julien: “Negro Conjuring and Trick- Invisible Man (Ellison), 164, 191–92
ing,” 21 Iré (blessings), 203
Hantu (continuous time), xi, 153 Ita (divinational reading), 203
Hayden, Robert: “Full Moon,” 80 Iwa (character), 203
Head, Bessie, 49 Iyalòrìsà (female priest), 130, 203, 219
Heart of Darkness (Conrad), 214 Iyami Osoronga (wise women): in Morrison’s
Helpers: archetypal, 70 fiction, 97, 124, 132, 137; Yoruba people
Hero and Chief (Biebuyck), 75 and, 201, 221, 224
Heroes: birth of, 76–79; male and female, 71; Iyawo (initiate), 203
quest motif and, 168 Izilo za Nkosi (beasts of the King), 93, 207
Hip-hop, 5
Hogue, W. Lawrence, 14 Jacobs, Harriet: Incidents in the Life of a
Holloway, Joseph E., 6 Slave Girl, 223
“Home” (Morrison), 1, 19 Jahn, Janheinz, 99, 182
Horvitz, Deborah, 159 Jazz, 169, 187
Hubert, Henri, 125 Jazz (Morrison), 23, 123, 168–88, 193–94, 197
244 k Index

Jones, Gayl: Corregidora, 145 Literature, of African Americans, 11

Jones, Owain, 158 Loas (deities of Vodun), 99, 138, 210
Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African Ameri- Lolo ina nombe (carapace), 195, 208
can Slang (Major), 223 Long Black Song (Baker), 16, 21, 71, 217
“Juke Box Love Song” (Hughes), ix Love (Morrison), 23, 189–99, 192–94, 196–97,
Jung, C. G., 17, 214 199
Luba people. See BaLuba people
Kala (black), 80, 207 Lukasa (memory grid), 4, 208
Kalunga (balancing plane), x, 39, 91, 207 Lukumi (Yoruba tradition), 7, 126, 203, 213,
Kanda (community), 77–78, 207 224
Kimyumba (deceased), 77, 207 Luvemba (death), xi, 92, 207, 208
Kini (invisible body), 77, 207 Lwengisa (foreshadowing), 78, 208
Kinzu (prime mover), 103, 207 Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 120
Kitenta (motifs), 207
Kokole, Omari H.: “Time, Identity, and His- Maafa (great disaster of African captivity),
torical Consciousness in Akan,” 222 7, 210, 213
Konda (to hunt alone), 182, 207 MacGaffey, Wyatt: Astonishment and Power,
Kongo cosmogram: African Cosmology (Fu- 181; Kongo Political Culture, 37–38, 133,
Kiau) and, x–xi, 30–33, 156; death and, 92; 135; Religion and Society in Central Africa,
details of, 207, 209, 211–12; groupings of 214; “Twins, Simbi Spirits, and Lwas,” xii,
four and, 32–33; identity formation and, 76
156; in Morrison’s fiction, 195; V and, 102 Mae de Santo (priestess), 203
Kongo people: ancestor societies and, x–xi, Mae pequena (assistant priestess), 130, 204
4, 195; cosmology of, x–xi, 34, 169; minkisi Magara (spiritual life), 152, 182–83, 208
and, 135, 147, 158, 181–82, 208; Nganga Magesa, Laurenti, 42, 98–99, 109, 214
and, 22, 28, 37–38, 70, 85, 181–82, 209; Magic: ritual and, 47
spirituality of, 6–8, 22, 61, 70, 90, 178; V Major, Clarence: Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of
and, 209; whiteness and, 37–38 African American Slang, 223
Kongo Political Culture (MacGaffey), 37–38, Makuku matatu (three firestones), 103, 178,
133, 135 208
Koyija kibunda (washing the village), 65, 207 Malochia (evil eye), 22, 31–32, 42, 63, 210
Ku Klux Klan, 125 Maloney, C., 42
Kunene, Mazisi: “Toward a Poetics of the Mama Nganga (female priest), xi, 7, 37
Oral Performance,” 217 Mamoni (lines painted around eyes of
Nganga), 208
Landes, Ruth: The City of Women, 130 Manfred, Alice, 171
“The Language Must Not Sweat: A Con- Marginalization of African Americans, 30, 48
versation with Toni Morrison” (LeClair), Marley, Bob, 78, 156
12, 70 Masks: Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon), 44;
Lao Tzu, 119 community and, 105, 116; dance and, 155;
Laughter motif, 185–86 of Dogon people, 74; epics and, 74; gelede
Lawal, Babatunde: The Gelede Spectacle: (masked dance in honor of women), 203;
Art, Gender, and Social Harmony in an in Morrison’s fiction, 44; music and, 74
African Culture, 217 Mason, John: Black Gods, 34, 86, 88–89; Four
Lawson, E. Thomas, 79 New World Yoruba Rituals, 177; Idana Fun
LeClair, Thomas: “The Language Must Not Òrìsà, 122
Sweat: A Conversation with Toni Mor- Matanza (animal sacrifice), 126, 204
rison,” 12, 70 Maus, Marcel, 50, 125
 Index k 245

Mbiti, John S., 28, 152 Kongo cosmogram in fiction of, 195; “The
McCauley, Robert N., 79 Language Must Not Sweat: A Conversa-
McKay, Nellie, 15, 18, 73 tion with Toni Morrison” (LeClair), 12,
Meals and ritual, 91–92 70; Love, 23, 189–99, 192–94, 196–97,
Memory: ancestor societies and, 145–46, 199; masks in fiction of, 44; “Memory,
148–50, 152–57, 170–71; community and, Creation, and Writing,” 4, 16, 20; memory
11, 145–49; cutting and, 181; enslavement in fiction of, 145–62, 165–67; minkisi in
and, 148, 151–53, 165, 196; lukasa (memory fiction of, 51, 165, 187; myth in fiction of,
grid), 4; “Memory, Creation, and Writing” 4, 16; Nganga in fiction of, 80–81, 102–4,
(Morrison), 4, 16, 20; Memory: Luba Art 133; Nobel Prize of, 189; Ochossi in fiction
and the Making of History (A. Roberts), of, 23, 87, 172–75, 179–80; Oshun in fiction
146–47, 156; Middle Passage and, 4, 9, of, 22, 45, 110–13, 169, 184–86; Oya in
70–71, 75, 112, 146, 148, 159, 167; in Mor- fiction of, 52, 54, 57–62, 192; Paradise, 22,
rison’s fiction, 145–62, 165–67; olokun 119–41, 193–95, 197; Playing in the Dark,
(deity of ocean and memory), 111–12, 205; 223; Pulitzer Prize of, 148; quest motif in
otherness and, 3; “The Site of Memory” fiction of, 49–50, 55, 70–72; “Rediscover-
(Morrison), 12–13, 151; Song of Solomon ing Black History,” 166; ritual in fiction
(Morrison) and, 148; will and, 71 of, 12, 21–22, 36–39, 58–59, 91, 162, 176;
“Memory, Creation, and Writing” (Morri- “Rootedness,” 20, 61, 152–53, 191; “The Site
son), 4, 16, 20 of Memory,” 12–13, 151; “A Slow Walk of
Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History Trees,” 21, 54; Song of Solomon, 22, 51, 57,
(A. Roberts), 146–47, 156 69–96, 113, 148, 166, 172, 193, 199; Sula, 22,
Merindilogun (divinational system), 114, 116, 49–66, 123, 132, 190–95; Tar Baby, 22, 51,
174, 204, 212 97–118, 191–93, 196; twin motif in fiction
Metanarratives, 5 of, 34–35, 83, 119–23, 126, 128–29, 131–32,
Middle Passage: B. Bell and, 2; Bhabha and, 140; “Unspeakable Things,” 14–16
121; memory and, 4, 9, 70–71, 75, 112, 146, Moyers, Bill, 197–98
148, 159, 167 Moyo (matrilineal family), 30, 208, 222
Minkisi (traditional medicine): Kongo people Mpemba (kaolin), 77, 103, 135, 208
and, 135, 147, 158, 181–82, 208; in Mor- Mumbo Jumbo (Reed), 138
rison’s fiction, 51, 165, 187 Muntu (human being), 30, 80, 107, 208
Mintz, Sidney W., 8 Murray, Albert, 12
Mnemonic devices, 4 Music: African Americans and, 191; blues, 5,
Mojuba (elegaic prayers), 148, 204 84; epics and, 74; hip-hop, 5; jazz, 169, 187;
Morrison, Toni: Ajé in fiction of, 22, 82, masks and, 74; ritual and, 84–85
106–7, 114, 116, 139, 193; ancestor societies Musoni (birth phase), 103, 208, 214
in fiction of, 11, 21, 50, 54, 61–64, 70–72, Mutwa, Credo, 93
75–85, 113–14; apataki in fiction of, 113, Mwela (soul), 77, 140, 208
173, 201; “Behind the Making of the Black Mwindo (epic), 74–75
Book,” 4; bells in fiction of, 66; Beloved, Myth: criticism of, 17; epics and, 172; in
23, 107, 145–67, 190–94, 198–99; The Morrison’s fiction, 4, 16; Myth, Literature
Bluest Eye, 22, 27–48, 51, 124, 153, 190, and the African World (Soyinka), 17–19,
192–93, 196, 198; community in fiction of, 71, 84–85, 166, 219; mythemes and, 44; The
13, 27, 42, 48–50, 92; egungun in fiction Myth of the Eternal Return (Eliade), 155
of, 22, 53, 58, 157–58, 192; Elegba in fiction Myth, Literature and the African World
of, 41, 60, 70, 85–89, 94; “Home,” 1, 19; (Soyinka), 17–19, 71, 84–85, 166, 219
Iyami Osoronga in fiction of, 97, 124, 132, Mythemes, 44
137; Jazz, 23, 123, 168–88, 193–94, 197; The Myth of the Eternal Return (Eliade), 155
246 k Index

Naming practices, of African people, 36, 109, Oduyoye, M. A., 3

145–46 Of Water and Spirit (Somé), 84
Nation and Narration (Bhabha), 121 Ogbanje (children born to die), 128, 204
Nature: balance and, 35, 98–99; beauty and, Ogun (deity of iron), 125, 173, 204, 218
15, 97; human relationship to, 22, 41, 48, Ogunbile, David O.: Eerindilogun, 101
96, 106, 140, 171, 195–96 Ogunyemi, Chikwenye Okonjo, 128
Ndoki (person of power), 79, 208 Ojiji (shadow), 35, 204
Neal, Larry: “Fragments from the Narrative Oju inu (insight), 204
of the Black Magicians,” 162; Visions of a Okan (heart), 111, 204
Liberated Future, 31 Oké (child born in caul), 204
Needham, Rodney, 76 Okpewho, Isidore: The Epic in Africa, 73
“Negotiations of Power: White Critics, Black Olatunji, Olatunde O., 94
Texts, and the Self-Referential Impulse” Olodumare (Supreme God), 108, 204–5
(Awkward), 18 Olokun (deity of ocean and memory), 111–12,
“Negro Conjuring and Tricking” (Hall), 21 205
Nganga (priest): Kongo people and, 22, 28, Olòrìsà (devotee), 205
37–38, 70, 85, 181–82, 209; in Morrison’s Olupona, Jacob K.: African Spirituality:
fiction, 80–81, 102–4, 133; Song of Solomon Forms, Meanings, and Expressions, 212
(Morrison) in, 51 “On Being Brought from Africa to America”
Ngina (seed), 48, 140, 209 (Wheatley), 72
“19 Necromancers from Now” (Reed), 1 Oni l’oni aiye (owners of the world), 205
Nitu (body), 77, 209 Ontology: African, 8–9, 35, 69–72
Nkisi (medicine), xi, 181–83, 209, 214 Oral tradition: folktales from, 2; novels and,
Nkisi nkondi (hunter), 183, 209 191; spirituality and, 97, 134; “Toward
Nobel Prize, 189 a Poetics of the Oral Performance”
Nommo (twins), 119, 126, 134–35, 138, 210 (Kunene), 217
Nommo (Word), 15, 62, 190, 209 Ori (head), 79, 184, 205
Nora, Pierre, 146–47 Ori inu (destiny), 205
Novels and oral tradition, 191 Oriki (praise poem), 84, 94, 205
Nsi (land), 30, 209, 222 Orile (deity of family accomplishment), 84,
“Ntangu-Tanda-Kolo: The Concept of Time” 205
(Fu-Kiau), 222 Òrìsà (deities), xi, 21–22, 37, 205
Ntu (being), 15, 209 Orita Meta (intersection), 156, 205, 212
Nuclear families, 30 Oromadie (sacrificial roosters), 87, 205
Nyama (vital force), 190 Osain (deity of medicine), 205
Nza (universe), 209 Oshun (river deity): in Morrison’s fiction, 22,
Nzegwu, Nkira, 79, 121, 133, 136 45, 110–13, 169, 184–86; Yoruba people
and, 97–98, 100–101, 131, 173, 205
Obatala (deity of creation), 7, 173, 179, 204 Oshun Ibukolé (road aspect of Oshun), 100,
Obba (warrior deity), 204 103, 124, 206
Obi ata (divination system), 177, 204 Osofsky, Gilbert: Puttin’ On Ole Massa, 2
Ochossi (deity of the hunt): in Morrison’s Ota (deity of stone), 206
fiction, 23, 87, 172–75, 179–80; Yoruba Otherness: cosmology of, 32, 35; memory
people and, 168–69, 184, 188, 204 and, 3
Odidé (sacred parrot), 174–75, 204 Otten, Terry, 32
Odu (sacred knowledge system), 127, 174–75, Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts (Wash-
204 ington), 9, 104, 114, 213–14
 Index k 247

Outdoors, 124 Redmond, Eugene, 172

Oya (wind deity): Candomblé and, 161; de- Reed, Ishmael: Mumbo Jumbo, 138; “19 Nec-
scription of, 206, 215; koyija kibunda and, romancers from Now,” 1
65; in Morrison’s fiction, 52, 54, 57–62, Regla Congas, 7
192; Oya: In Praise of an African Goddess Religion, 3
(Gleason), 58–59, 157–58 Religion and Society in Central Africa (Mac-
Oya: In Praise of an African Goddess (Glea- Gaffey), 214
son), 58–59, 157–58 Revisionist school of diaspora scholars, 8
Oyeku meji (dark spaces), 114, 206 “Rite” (Dumas), 108
Oyo Empire, 7, 109 Ritual: of birth, 85; community and, 39, 42,
53, 64–65, 164; dance and, xi–xii; fifeto
“Pade de Exu Libertador” (do Nascimento), 85 (purification ritual), 126, 203; The Forest
Page, Philip: Reclaiming Community in Con- of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (V.
temporary African American Fiction, 15–16 Turner), 62–63; funerals, 56; magic and,
Painter, Nell Irvin: Creating Black Ameri- 47; meals and, 91–92; in Morrison’s fic-
cans: History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the tion, 12, 21–22, 36–39, 58–59, 91, 162, 176;
Present, 212 music and, 84–85; of rebirthing, 41, 178; of
The Pale Fox (Griaule), 138 transformation, 135–38; vévé (pattern of
Palo Monte, 7, 210 ritual space), 210; will and, 53–54
Panspiritualism, 4–5 Roberts, Allen F.: Memory: Luba Art and the
Paradise (Morrison), 22, 119–41, 193–95, 197 Making of History, 146–47, 156, 179
Patterson, Orlando, 125 Roberts, John: From Trickster to Badman, 22
A Peculiar People (Creel), 10 Roberts, Mary Nooter, 146–47, 156, 179
Pedersen, Carl, 71 Robinson, Smokey, ix
Playing in the Dark (Morrison), 223 Rodrigues, Eusebio L.: “The Telling of
Polarized views of beauty, 35, 44 Beloved,” 148
Politics: art and, 18; Writers in Politics (Wa Roman Catholicism, x, 7, 137
Thiongo), 20 “Rootedness” (Morrison), 20, 61, 152–53, 191
Price, Richard, 8 “Root Song” (Dumas), 168
Proverbs: of African Americans, 40, 145; of Root-workers, 5–6, 152
Bantu people, 8, 138; of Ghanaian people,
90; of Yoruba people, 122, 186 Sacred and the Profane (Eliade), xi, 100,
Pulitzer Prize, 148 106–7, 148, 217
Puttin’ On Ole Massa (Osofsky), 2 The Salt Eaters (Bambara), 39–40, 46
Sangoma (healer), 81, 210, 218
Quest motif: heroes and, 168; in Morrison’s Scarification, 57, 81
fiction, 49–50, 55, 70–72 Schechner, Richard, 39
Seeds: symbolism of, 48, 140, 209
Race, 19–20 Self-Healing (Fu-Kiau), 39
Racism in America, 2, 31, 48 Semba (punish), 78, 209
Ray, Benjamin C.: African Religions, 28–29, Shabaka, Abbasante, 69
65, 109, 182 Shadow and Act (Ellison), 12, 70, 147, 189
Rebirthing: ritual of, 41, 178 Shango (deity of kingship), 97, 108–9, 113,
Reclaiming Community in Contemporary 206, 219
African American Fiction (Page), 15–16 Shape-shifting, 170, 178
“Rediscovering Black History” (Morrison), “Signifying,” 51, 92
166 The Signifying Monkey (Gates), 21–22
248 k Index

Signs (omens), 33–34, 48, 62, 64, 116 “Theatre in African Traditional Cultures:
Simbi (water spirit), 91 Survival Patterns” (Soyinka), 2, 5
“The Site of Memory” (Morrison), 12–13, 151 Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston),
Slave Culture (Stuckey), 211 145
Slavery. See Enslavement Third World: cosmology of, 20
“A Slow Walk of Trees” (Morrison), 21, 54 Thomas, H. Nigel, 21
Social amnesia, 3 Thompson, Robert Farris, 66, 182; Faces of
Solipsistic worldview, 13–14, 17 Gods, 90
Somé, Patrice Malidoma: Of Water and Tibi Tire (good and bad luck), 35, 206
Spirit, 84 Till, Emmet, 196
“Somebody Forgot” (Christian), 150–51 Time: cyclical, 169; as hantu (continuous
Song of Solomon (Morrison): analysis of, 22, time), xi, 153; imposed time-space frame-
69–96; community and, 57, 113, 166; iden- work, 72, 133; “Ntangu-Tanda-Kolo: The
tity formation and, 172, 199; memory and, Concept of Time” (Fu-Kiau), 222; Time in
148; nganga and, 51; trees in, 107 the Black Experience (Adjaye), 214
Soyinka, Wole: Myth, Literature and the “Time, Identity, and Historical Conscious-
African World, 17–19, 71, 84–85, 166, 219; ness in Akan” (Kokole), 222
“Theatre in African Traditional Cultures: Time in the Black Experience (Adjaye), 214
Survival Patterns,” 2, 5 Time-space framework: imposed, 72, 133
Spaces: archetypal, 3 Togu na (house of words), 209
Spiritual imperialism of European culture, 4 Toomer, Jean: Cane, 15, 56, 106
Spirituality: of African people, 3–9, 37, 105; “Toward a Poetics of the Oral Performance”
African Spirituality: Forms, Meanings, (Kunene), 217
and Expressions (Olupona), 212; Ajé and, Transformation: ritual of, 135–38
100–102, 201, 224; archetypal images and, Trees in Song of Solomon (Morrison), 107
17; art and, 10–11; culture and, 4; of Dogon Tribal Talk (Coleman), 180
people, 6, 23, 115; flight and, 70, 76, 95–96, Trickster: “Negro Conjuring and Tricking”
217; Gullah region and, 10; identity forma- (Hall), 21; spirituality and, 21; From Trick-
tion and, 20, 37; of Kongo people, 6–8, 22, ster to Badman (J. Roberts), 22
61, 70, 90, 178; oral tradition and, 97, 134; Tukula (maturation phase), xi, 207, 209
trickster and, 21; of Yoruba people, 42, 62, Turner, Lorenzo Dow: Africanisms in the
85–89 Gullah Dialect, 95
Stein, Karen, 49 Turner, Victor: The Forest of Symbols: Aspects
Stewart, Carlyle, 13–14 of Ndembu Ritual, 62–63
Stuckey, Sterling: Slave Culture, 211 Twin motif: Dogon people and, 137–38; in
Sula (Morrison), 22, 49–66, 123, 132, 190–95 Morrison’s fiction, 34–35, 83, 119–23, 126,
Sundiata (epic), 74–75 128–29, 131–32, 140; Nommo (twins), 119,
Sweet, James H., 7 126, 134–35, 138, 210; “Twins, Simbi Spir-
Symbolic codes of African people, 70 its, and Lwas” (MacGaffey), xii, 76
“Twins, Simbi Spirits, and Lwas” (Mac-
Tambukusu (genetic code), 140, 209 Gaffey), xii, 76
Tar Baby (Morrison), 22, 51, 97–118, 191–93, Two Thousand Seasons (Armah), ix, 30, 35,
196 97, 115, 119
Tate, Claudia: Black Women Writers at
Work, 18, 20 Umuntu umuntu nagabuntu (a person is a
“The Telling of Beloved” (Rodrigues), 148 person because of people), 210
 Index k 249

Universalism, 14, 17 tion and, 29, 35, 45–46, 124; Kongo people
“Unspeakable Things” (Morrison), 14–16 and, 37–38
White supremacy: aesthetics of, 43, 45, 48;
V (basis of all realities): African Cosmology African Americans and, 196–97; beauty
(Fu-Kiau) and, 102; Kongo cosmogram and, 29; cosmology of, 44; enslavement
and, 102; Kongo people and, 209 and, 44, 125
Vaika (existence phase), 102, 209 Will: individualism and, 49; memory and, 71;
Values of African people, 50, 54, 85, 192 ritual and, 53–54
Vanga (to perform), 102, 209 Wilson, Amos: The Falsification of Afrikan
Vangama (formation of a person), 102, 209 Consciousness, 3
Vévé (pattern of ritual space), 210 Wise women, 36
Vezima (flash of light between realms), 90, Workings of the Spirit (Baker), 16
209 The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon), 5, 18, 190
Visions of a Liberated Future (Neal), 31 Writers in Politics (Wa Thiongo), 20
Vodun, xi
Vodun (Voodoo) tradition, 210 Yala (images), 138, 210
Vunda (death), 102, 209 Yangalala (spiritual gesture), 191, 207, 223
Yemonja (sea deity), 45, 111, 131, 206
Walker, Alice, 5; In Search of Our Mothers’ Yingim (annual funeral event), 210, 218
Gardens, 48 Yoruba people: Ajé and, 97–98; ancestor
Walker, Margaret Alexander: “For My societies and, 28, 37–39, 58, 186; apataki
People,” 30; “We Have Been Believers,” 1 and, 86–87, 124–25, 131; egungun and,
Walker, Sheila, 9 202, 206; Elegba and, 202, 205; Four
Washington, Teresa N.: Our Mothers, Our New World Yoruba Rituals (Mason), 177;
Powers, Our Texts, 9, 104, 114, 213–14 Gelede: Art and Female Power Among the
Wa Thiongo, Ngugi: Writers in Politics, 20 Yoruba (Drewal and Drewal), 34, 37–38,
Weaver, Lloyd, 111 81; Iyami Osoronga and, 201, 221, 224; Lu-
“We Have Been Believers” (M. Walker), 1 kumi tradition of, 7, 126, 203, 213, 224; in
Welsing, Frances Cress, 41 New World, 7; Ochossi and, 168–69, 184,
West, Cornell, 147 188, 204; Oshun and, 97–98, 100–101, 131,
“What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are 173, 205; proverbs of, 122, 186; spiritual-
Black?” (Burroughs), 27 ity of, 42, 62, 85–89; traditions of, 6, 28,
Wheatley, Phillis: “On Being Brought from 37–40, 206, 216
Africa to America,” 72
Whiteness: aesthetics and, 32, 105, 192; death Zazula (stitching together), 187
and, 92; God and, 40–41; identity forma- Zinga (seashell), 182, 209
Kokahvah Zauditu-Selassie is a Yoruba priest of Obatala and a Mama
Nganga in the Kongo tradition. She has been a National Endowment for
the Humanities scholar, a Fulbright-Hays fellow in Cairo, Egypt, and South
Africa, a National Council for Black Studies fellow at the University of
Ghana, Legon, and a Scholar in Residence at New York University. She has
lived, studied, and traveled extensively throughout Africa, South America,
and the Caribbean. Her teaching specialization is African American litera-
ture, while her research focuses on African spiritual culture in literature
and popular culture. Currently, she is an associate professor of English at
Coppin State University, Baltimore.