LITR 5731:
Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of
Houston-Clear Lake, Fall 2001
Sample Student Midterm
Becky Nelson
Dr. Craig White
LITR 5731
2 October 2001
Religion
in the Writings of Linda Brent, Toni Morrison, and Sapphire:
A
Movement Toward Inclusive Spirituality
What would it be like to be torn from your home and sent so far away you
could never return? And what would it be like to have your history stripped from
you, your name discarded, and your own religion replaced with one that had few,
if any, ties to your previous life? When slaves were brought to America they
were taken from all they had known and forced to live in a land of dark irony
that, while promising life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, provided them
with only misery. In a situation such as the one in which the slaves found
themselves, many people would rely on their religion to help them survive. But
would slaves be able to find spiritual comfort within the parameters of a
religion that had been passed on to them from the slaveholders? In each of the
three texts "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," Song of
Solomon, and Push, African-Americans struggle to find a spirituality
that is responsive to their needs and that encompasses their experiences in a
way that the religion of the dominant culture does not.
Of the three texts to be examined, Linda Brent’s Autobiography,
"Incidents," most explicitly shows the inability of the dominant
culture’s religion to fulfill the needs of the minority. From the tone of her
story, one realizes that Brent felt "true Christianity," if it could
be found, might comfort the slaves and fulfill their needs. But Brent also felt
that slavery created a paradox which made "true Christianity"
impossible.
Many times in her text Brent points out the
irony that, as slaveholders, the masters treat their slaves as property; yet, as
Christians, they should treat them as humans. For example, Brent’s mother’s
mistress promises that Brent and her siblings will "never suffer for any
thing" (343). Brent assumes that this means they will be given their
freedom when the mistress dies; however, they are not freed but passed along as
property. Brent says that her mistress taught her the biblical principles that
she should treat others as she would wish to be treated, and that she should
adhere to the biblical commandment to "love thy neighbor as thyself,"
but then she pointedly adds, "But I was her slave, and I suppose she did
not recognize me as her neighbor"(344).
Another example of this non-Christian
behavior occurs when a class leader at church happens to be a constable
"who bought and sold slaves, who whipped his brethren and sisters of the
church" (399). One day, one of the slaves pours out her broken heart over
the loss of her children to this class leader—her last child, a sixteen year
old girl, had just been sold from her. Brent tells the reader that the constable
held a handkerchief over his mouth to conceal, not a guilty conscience as might
be expected, but laughter at the woman’s sorrow (399). Brent says that slavery
"deadens the moral sense" (368). It deprives the slaveholders of their
conscience. To truly live as a Christian, Brent sees the necessity for the
return of that lost conscience.
At one point Brent tells of a single good
minister that she knew who helped the slaves and actually treated them like
people. His wife, who freed her slaves on her deathbed, was the only slaveholder
to which Brent applied the phrase "truly Christian." The slaves loved
this minister and his wife. He took them home and taught them to read; he
fashioned his sermons according to their needs, not the needs of their masters.
He told the slaves that "God judges men by their hearts, not by the color
of their skins" (401), thereby disrupting the idea that there was something
about them that made them less than human. The slaves loved this minister; the
slaveholders despised him. This one good Christian minister that Brent describes
was an anomaly within the system of slavery. Yet, even being as good as Brent
portrays him, he did not require his wife to give her slaves their freedom until
she died.
Slaves wanted and needed spirituality, but
they did not receive comfort from the religion of the slaveholders. Brent points
out that the slaves did worship together in a church they had built for
themselves. They had built it in order to have their own place to pray and sing
and bury their dead. After the Nat Turner episode, however, the slaveholders out
of fear of another uprising "demolished" the church the slaves had
built and forced the slaves to worship in their churches. Under this edict,
slaves were forced to worship in churches where they were required to wait until
after the whites had left the building before they could partake of communion.
Brent says that, actually, the whites did not want them there at all—they were
worried about their "cushions" and their "carpets" being
dirtied (397). If the slaveholders wanted to control the slaves’ worship,
however, allowing them to worship in the white churches was the only way.
Though they were no longer allowed to guide
their own worship, the slaves did express themselves spiritually. Brent tells of
the hymns that they composed for themselves. The text of one of the hymns
follows:
Ole Satan thought he had a mighty aim;
He missed my soul, and caught my sins.
Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God!
He took my sins upon his back;
Went muttering and grumbling down to hell.
Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God!
Ole Satan’s church is here below.
Up to God’s free church I hope to go.
Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God! (400)
Brent states that if you heard the slaves
singing, ". . .you might think they were happy" (400). But the only
happiness would seem to be singing about the injustice of "Satan’s
church" which is the only church that exists in slavery.
Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, while perhaps less visibly than
Brent’s narrative, also deals with the African-American struggle to find a
spirituality not defined by a religion of the dominant culture. From the
beginning of the novel, Morrison alludes to Christianity with the names she
chooses—Hagar, First Corinthians, Magdalene, and Ruth for example. However,
the two main allusions Morrison draws on are the name "Pilate" and the
name of the biblical book Song of Solomon.
In the narrative in which Pilate is named,
Pilate’s father, who can’t read, lets the Bible fall open and points to a
set of lines that look agreeable to him. It just so happens that the word
spelled out by those lines is "Pilate," the name of the Roman who
turns Jesus over to be crucified. The midwife attending at Pilate’s birth asks
the father if he really wants to name the child after the person who killed
Jesus, and the father replies, "I asked Jesus to save me my wife," and
he continues, "I asked him all night long" (19). Yet his wife wasn’t
saved, and Pilate’s father feels betrayed by the religion he has trusted in to
help him.
Morrison’s use of bibliomancy in this narrative asks the reader to
consider the meaning of the prediction Pilate’s father receives when his
finger lands on "Pilate." Does it mean Pilate will be a Christ killer,
or does it mean she will be a pilot, as the father first thinks? Perhaps more
than even giving the reader a clue about what is to come, Morrison gives readers
this scene in an attempt to pique interest in the meaning of words. Perhaps
Morrison is showing readers that just because a word has meant one thing in the
past, it is not precluded from taking on other meanings as well. For the readers
of Song, that is exactly what happens.
In Morrison’s story, the name Pilate loses
its original meaning of Christ killer and gains the meaning of one who has
control of the direction of her life. Pilate is a seeker. She asks, "What
do I need to know to stay alive?" and "What is true in the
world?" (149). Dominant culture might only need to ask about truth.
Minority culture asks about survival. Because of her gift for penetrating to the
heart of her own experience, Pilate becomes a person who can guide others.
The most prominent of all the uses of biblical names in the story is the
title itself, Song of Solomon. Throughout the novel, a non-minority
reader, recalling the biblical Song of Songs or Song of Solomon as
the title is often translated in English Bibles, has the image before them of
sensual love poetry. However, a reader who, because of the title, is expecting a
sensual love story will be wondering how Morrison is going to tie this title in
with the naming taking place in the story, with the metaphor of flight contained
in the narrative, and with the search for identity that is a strong theme
running throughout the work. Suddenly, as the non-minority reader learns that
the title comes from a song that was sung as a result of an African myth of
flight and not from the Bible, the reader’s presuppositions are shattered. The
spiritual experience that fulfills need in this novel comes about as a result of
Milkman’s return to his family. It comes as he learns who he is. The
traditional biblical story touched this story by sharing its name, but it did
not form the meaning of milkman’s spiritual experience, nor did it form the
meaning of this novel.
Morrison’s amazingly crafted novel puts the presupposition that
everything is formed out of majority experience to the test. The questioning
that comes about because of Morrison’s juxtaposition of meanings shows both
majority and minority readers that African-American spiritual experience, while
touched by majority experience, does not have to be formed by it.
Sapphire’s novel Push also has as one of
its themes African-American spiritual experience. While Brent and Morrison
question the ways Christianity affects African-American religious experience,
Sapphire explores the effect of the National of Islam. At the beginning of the
novel we learn that Precious loves Louis Farrakhan. She has his picture on her
bedroom wall (34). It is not surprising that Precious is a Muslim. Many Nation
of Islam tenets meet Precious’ needs. The Nation of Islam believes in a
unified black family, something Precious yearns for. The Nation of Islam
believes that black people are the original people of earth. This belief gives
Precious pride in herself, something she desperately needs. It also gives her a
reason to believe the abuse that occurs in her life is not her fault. At one
point she says that her father acts like he does because "He has forgot he
is the Original Man!" (34).
There are other allusions to the Nation of
Islam within Push. For example, mathematics, in Islam, is the means for
understanding the universe, and Precious loves math. Islam believes that
children must be loved, taught, and protected, and Precious loves and wants to
teach and protect her children. And finally, the Nation of Islam believes that
each one should teach one, and Precious finds an alternative school named
exactly that.
But even though Islam is Precious’
religion, she is willing to question it when it falls short of meeting her
needs. Precious’ questioning of Farrakhan begins with the revelation that his
take on homosexuals affects Ms. Rain, the woman helping Precious more than
anyone ever has by teaching her to read and to express herself through her
writing. Precious is dumbfounded when she discovers that Ms. Rain is one of the
"butches" Farrakhan dislikes. After making that shocking discovery,
Precious says, "Too bad about Farrakhan. I still believe Allah and stuff. I
guess I still believe everything" (81). She hasn’t given up her beliefs,
but any belief system that doesn’t include everyone might not be what she is
looking for.
By the end of her story (or at least the last
part that the reader sees) Precious has decided that there is a god. However,
the god that Precious needs is defined as follows:
But me when I think
of it I’m more inclined to go wid Shug in The Color Purple. God ain’
white, he ain’ no Jew or Muslim, maybe he ain’ even black, maybe he ain’
even a ‘he.’ Even now I go downtown and see the rich shit they got, I see
what we got too. I see those men in vacant lot share one hot dog and they
homeless, that’s good as Jesus with his fish. I remember when I had my
daughter, nurse nice to me—all that is god. Shug in Color Purple say
it’s the "wonder" of purple flowers. I feel that even though I never
seen or had no flowers like what she talk about" (138-39).
Precious has decided that no one religion can suffice for meeting the
needs of every individual. But as she sees people doing good to each other, she
realizes that perhaps people meet needs, not religions.
All three of the texts, "Incidents," Song, and Push
deal with the struggle of African-Americans to find a spiritual avenue that is
responsive to their needs and reflective of their experience. These texts help
people to examine differing ideas, learn about different experiences, and become
sensitive to various needs. If we are able to learn something from these texts, really
learn something, perhaps life, liberty and happiness will finally find us.
Works
Cited
Brent, Linda.
(Harriet Jacobs). "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." The
Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Mentor, 1987.
332-515.
Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New
York: Plume, 1987.
Sapphire. Push. New York: Vintage,
1997.