Lecture One: A Bench by the Road: The Forgotten Slaves
Introduction to Beloved Brief biography of Morrison Morrison on the
writing of Beloved: a deliberate act of re-membering and
re-inhabiting a traumatic past and the African roots of
African-American culture. Some facts about slavery: the focus on
the people who were slaves versus Slavery with a capital S The
transnational fusion of forms in the novel
Slide 2
Toni Morrison Born 1931 in Lorrain, Ohio Born 1931 in Lorrain,
Ohio Chloe Anthony Wofford Chloe Anthony Wofford The Bluest Eye
(1970) The Bluest Eye (1970) Sula (1973) Sula (1973) Song of
Solomon (1977) Song of Solomon (1977) Tar Baby (1981) Tar Baby
(1981) Beloved (1987) Beloved (1987) Pulitzer Prize for Beloved in
1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved in 1988 Jazz (1992) Jazz (1992)
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992)
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992)
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature in
1993 Paradise (1998) Paradise (1998) Love (2003) Love (2003) Mercy
(2008) Mercy (2008) What Moves at the Margin (non fiction) May 2009
What Moves at the Margin (non fiction) May 2009 Home (2012) Home
(2012) Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2012) Awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom (2012) God Help the Child (2015) God
Help the Child (2015)
Slide 3
Beloved belongs on the highest shelf of our literature even if
half a dozen canonised Wonder Bread Boys have to be elbowed off. I
cant now imagine our literature without it. Where was this book
that weve always needed? Without Beloved, our imagination of
America has a heart-sized hole in it big enough to die from. (John
Leonard, Toni Morrison Critical Perspectives Past Pastand Present,
45)
Slide 4
Reading Beloved as a transnational text focused on the
historical and cultural entanglement of Africa and America
http://www.unc.edu/wrc/maps/08-Map.png
Slide 5
Transnational fusion of forms/genres Historical accounts of
slavery Historical accounts of slavery First-person slave
narratives First-person slave narratives Psycho-analysis: the
theoretical understandings of the processes of mourning,
repression, repetition, remembering Psycho-analysis: the
theoretical understandings of the processes of mourning,
repression, repetition, remembering African retentions in
African-American culture folktale, songs, call and response, the
role of art in the community. African retentions in
African-American culture folktale, songs, call and response, the
role of art in the community. The musical language of
African-American culture: spirituals, the blues, the language and
music of the church, uses of dialect. The musical language of
African-American culture: spirituals, the blues, the language and
music of the church, uses of dialect.
Slide 6
I thought this has 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 remember, I don't want to remember, black people don't want
to remember, white people don't want to remember. I mean, it's
national amnesia. The Pain Of Being Black TONI MORRISON, winner of
the Pulitzer Prize for her gritty novel Beloved, smolders at the
inequities that blacks and women still face. Interview with BONNIE
ANGELO, Time Magazine. 5/22/1989, Vol. 133 Issue 21, p120. 4p. (RU
LIB: Ebsco Host Academic Search Premier)
Slide 7
Slavery wasnt in the literature at all. Part of that, I think,
is because on moving from bondage into freedom which has been our
goal, we got away from slavery and also from the slaves, theres a
difference. We have to re- inhabit those people. Interview with
Paul Gilroy in 1993, quoted in Linden Peach p. 95 813.54 MOR/PEA I
will call them my people Which were not my people And her beloved
Which was not beloved Romans 9:25
Slide 8
There is no place you or I can go, to think about or not think
about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of
slaves; nothing that reminds us of the ones who made the journey
and of those who did not make it. There is no suitable memorial or
plaque or wreath or wall or park or skyscraper lobby. Theres no 300
foot tower. Theres no small bench by the road. There is not even a
tree scored, an initial I can visit or you can visit in Charleston
or Savannah or New York or Providence or, better still, on the
banks of the Mississippi. And because such a place does not exist
(that I know of), the book had to. Toni Morrison, A Bench by the
Road (1989) Quoted in Casebook p. 3
Slide 9
A Bench by the Road Sullivans Island South Carolina July 2008 A
Bench by the Road Sullivans Island South Carolina July 2008
Slide 10
Iziko Slave Lodge Adderley Street, Cape Town Iziko Slave Lodge
Adderley Street, Cape Town www.iziko.org.za www.iziko.org.za Dutch
East India Company Slave Lodge built in 1680 Home to 500 slaves In
the 18 th Century more slaves than free people in the Cape
Slide 11
Elmina Castle, Ghana photos: Nicky Ritchie (2007)
Slide 12
The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A
Visual Record Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr. Gate of No
Return Cape Coast Castle, Ghana
http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.php The
approximately 1,235 images in this collection have been selected
from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period
of slavery. This collection is envisioned as a tool and a resource
that can be used by teachers, researchers, students, and the
general public - in brief, anyone interested in the experiences of
Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the
lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New
World.
Slide 13
The Middle Passage One of the most famous images of the
transatlantic slave trade. After the 1788 Regulation Act, the
Brookes was allowed to carry 454 slaves, the approximate number
shown in this illustration. However, in four earlier voyages
(1781-86), she carried from 609 to 740 slaves so crowding was much
worse than shown here. The Illustrated London News (Sept. 27,
1845)
Slide 14
Results of Severe Whipping, 1863 Harper's Weekly, July 4, 1863
Iron Mask, Neck Collar, Leg Shackles, and Spurs, 18th cent. Thomas
Branagan, The Penitential Tyrant; or, Slave Trader Reformed (New
York, 1807)
Slide 15
The Life of Olaudah Equiano the AfricanThe Life of Olaudah
Equiano the African (1789) The closeness of the place, and the heat
of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so
crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost
suffocated us. The air soon became unfit for respiration, from a
variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the
slaves, of which many died The shrieks of the women, and the groans
of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost
inconceivable. http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/index.htm
Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave (1845)Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
an American Slave I do not recollect ever seeing my mother by the
light of day.... She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep,
but long before I waked she was gone. Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in
the Life of a Slave GirlHarriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a
Slave Girl (1861) I saw a mother lead seven children to the
auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her;
but they took all... She begged the trader to tell her where he
intended to take them; this he refused to do. How could he, when he
knew he would sell them, one by one, wherever he could command the
highest price? I met that mother in the street, and her wild,
haggard face lives to-day in my mind.
Slide 16
Twelve Years a Slave (1853) 12 Years a Slave and the roots of
America's shameful past Interview with the historical consultant,
Harvard academic Henry Louis Gates 12 Years a Slave: in our
'post-racial' age the legacy of slavery lives on Paul Gilroy Paul
Gilroy theguardian.com theguardian.com 10 November 2013
theguardian.com 10 November 2013 theguardian.com Why I won't be
watching The Butler and 12 Years a Slave Orville Lloyd Douglas
Orville Lloyd Douglas theguardian.comtheguardian.com 12 September
2013 theguardian.com Andrew Anthony Andrew Anthony 12 Years a Slave
fails to represent black resistance to enslavement Carole Boyce
Davies theguardian.comtheguardian.com 10 January 2014
theguardian.com The ObserverThe Observer, 5 January 2014 The
Observer Torture porn - Armond White, NYFCC
Slide 17
Over and over, the writers pull the narrative up short with a
phrase such as, but let us drop a veil over these proceedings too
terrible to relate. In shaping the experience to make it palatable
to those who were in a position to alleviate it, they were silent
about many things, and they forgot many other things But most
importantly at least for me there was no mention of their interior
life. [The writers] job becomes how to rip the veil drawn over
proceedings too terrible to relate to find and expose a truth about
the interior life of people who didnt write it. to fill in the
blanks that the slave narratives left, to part the veil that was so
frequently drawn to implement the stories heard. Toni Morrison:
Site of Memory
Slide 18
I [am] deadly serious about fidelity to the milieu out of which
I write and in which my ancestors actually lived. Infidelity to
that milieu - the absence of the interior life, the deliberate
excising of it from the records that the slaves themselves told -
is precisely the problem in the discourse that proceeded without
us. How I gain access to that interior life is what drives me .
It's a kind of literary archeology: On the basis of some
information and a little bit of guesswork you journey to a site to
see what remains were left behind and to reconstruct the world that
these remains imply. What makes it fiction is the nature of the
imaginative act: my reliance on the image - on the remains in
addition to recollection, to yield up a kind of a truth.
