In this post I wanted to talk about
the importance of fiction writing when it connects with African American
history. In books like Homegoing and Beloved, along with many others, authors
have the chance to talk about a lost part of history. Due to the slave codes
and the oppression that the salves faced, more times than not, slaves were
forced to become illiterate by moving away from their culture and language, and
adopting English. This was a systematic oppression which helped owners distance
their property from their roots. With this fiction writing, authors are able to
take us into the world of slavery, which for the most part has been hard to
find through non fiction writing.
Students and others willing to
learn about the very real tragedies that slaves faced owe a large amount of
their knowledge to fiction writing. In Homecoming,
characters like Quey are about to wrestle with the idea of Identity, which in
reality, most slaves had to grapple with. We are able to see his experiences of
living as both a white and black man, and how he fits into the two societies
that he identifies with. Although there was never a real man with the name of
Quey, there were people in this same position who had to wrestle with the same
struggles that Quey was faced with, with problems such as, his father playing a
big part in the slave trade, and whose mother was a Fante and African native.
When reading Beloved, Toni Morrison enables the
reader to grasp a deeper understanding of what slavery was like, as well as the
early stages of emancipation through her method of articulating,
simultaneously, both historical and literary elements throughout the text.
Through her fiction novel, she expresses the pain and brutality that slavery
caused her. Morrison writes about the terrors of slavery and the pain that she
was confronted with and the decisions that she was forced to make. When faced
with the option to kill her new born baby, or to allow her to go back into the
world of slavery, she has to make a terrible decision. Morrison attempts to describe the horrifying
death by writing, “a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest
with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other… she simply swung the
baby toward the wall planks (p. 175)”. Even though this story is not completely
true, fiction has something to tell us about reality, and Morrison gives us a
look into the wide range of possibilities of what slavery was like.
Fiction has the power to take us to a place that history
can’t go. Without fiction, we would not be able to fully grasp the horrors of
slavery. Both Yaa Gyasi and Toni Morrison are able to show us the great themes
of slavery, and the reality of it all, compared to the perspective of a white
man, from which American history has come from.
Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Vintage Books, 2004)
I really like your use of Beloved in this discussion of fiction writing. Ive personally had experience with this novel across multiple classes and I always enjoy how Morrison presents the emotions and struggles slavery caused even after its abolition. What greatly strikes me within these novels is the precise use of language to construct narratives throughout the black experience. As we've discussed in class, accounts from actual slaves should be equally considered to those of their masters and other outside writers when formulating opinions and theories about slavery. I really enjoy that these works of fiction allow us more insight into slave narratives, where historical accounts from slaves may not be as present as those from their masters.
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