Summer Reading List: Song of Solomon

After Fall, Summer is my favorite season for a variety of reasons. The beer tastes fresher, the days are longer..and of course, beautiful brown bodies are decorated in sundresses.  The long days are great for kicking back with a book and a young woman recently recommended I dive into Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.

The book mostly follows Macon Dead, known in his neighborhood as Milkman, for reasons that make me uncomfortable to think about. Milkman's pops is a well to-do negro who sees money and ownership of property as the great equalizer. Throughout the book Milkman struggles with this concept, even though he perpetuates his father's behavior which ultimately alienates him from his community and even his own sisters at one point.

The general insanity and jaw dropping scenarios (necrophiliac incest, hidden bodies..) make this a pretty fun book to read however, there were also some pretty interesting themes that can definitely be relevant to a lot of black lives out there...Below I touch on what I gained most from this book, which was the importance of oral tradition.

Regardless of what mainstream white america will have you believe the effects of The Trans-Atlantic slave trade still, yes in 2014, have blasted jarring holes in our culture, in our history. This book really highlights the importance of oral tradition.  Because the history books are always written from the perspective of the conquerors, conversation with our elders is the only way we can know where we truly come from. Just like Milkman, a conversation with my mom, dad or granddad really gives me a sense of pride. My history begins, as told by my mother in Georgia and South Carolina with slave great-grandparents and sharecropper grandparents. These are people who had no rights and ultimately chose to flee the hold of the south for a better chance at life in Philadelphia and New Jersey. It's up to me to give these stories to my future seeds. Milkman only got to hear mythical stories about his great grandfather who may have been a runaway slave, but the little he heard definitely inspired him. It made me wonder about what my sense of self would be had my great grandparents been able to pass stories down to my grandparents...which could have ultimately trickled down to me. The moral of the story...get those oral histories while you still can! And hold on to them like gold!

Deuces...