LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, Fall 2004
Sample Student Midterm

Kristy Pawlak

8 October 2004 

Ties to the Past: The Effect of Slavery on Modern Familial Relationships within the African American Community 

The concept of family and community crosses racial, cultural, and economic lines and forms the cornerstone of human existence.  The oft quoted phrase “No man is an island” is applicable within this concept as no person comes into this world entirely alone—even the unwanted child becomes the part of some community, good or bad, by virtue of being alive and by being human.  However universal the concept of family and community, there are considerable differences in how different cultural groups define familial boundaries.  Consider some families where anyone about your age, but not a sibling is your “cousin” and any person older than you, but not a parent or grand-parent is “Aunt” or “Uncle”.  Other families fastidiously reserve such titles for those to whom they genetically belong and carefully note such relationships as “we are second cousins, twice removed.”  As brought forth in Objective 6 of the course syllabus, minority groups tend to emphasize “‘community’ aspects of human society, such as extended families or alternative families.”  In the course selections of African-American literature from the slave narratives to Song of Solomon and Push this concept of familial relationships manifests itself repeatedly.  By looking at the writings of Equiano and Douglas the modern concept of family within the African-American community as seen in the two later novels can be traced to both deeply ingrained traditions and to historical circumstances to which the black community was forced to respond.

            Equiano’s tale is useful and unique in that it gives us a look at cultural traditions which the original slaves brought with them from Africa.  He describes a society that was ruled by chiefs and divided into family groups for purposes of living, but the day-to-day activities and the general welfare of the people depended upon the cooperation of the village as a unit.  He describes a society where “Every one contributes something to the common stock” (17).  Protection from raiding parties depended upon the ability of the village to rely on each other for protection and security.  Even the dwellings were built as a community effort where “the whole neighborhood afford their unanimous assistance in building them” (16).  This sense of community and common responsibility was brought with these men and women to America.  The now famous phrase taken from an African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child” reflects a deeply held cultural belief that did not disappear when Africans were brought to America as slaves. 

Examples of this almost unconscious way of thinking are seen in both of the modern novels that this paper deals with.  First of all, in Song of Solomon the people whom Pilate meets and lives with up to and including her eventual stay with the island people demonstrate the traditional qualities seen in Equiano’s home village.  They value hard work and accept outsiders regardless of actual family ties; they contribute the products of their labor to the common good; and, they protect one another from outside dangers.  In Push, the very concept of the alternative school is one of responsibility to those within your community.  These teachers seek to protect members of their community through their own sacrifice and hard work.  Financial reward is obviously not their goal, nor is fame or glory.  Rather, they recognize a deeply felt tradition within their culture that compels them to work for a common good.

            As powerful as cultural traditions are and as diligent as the African-American community is about retaining their historical ties to Africa, these alone would not have been powerful enough to shape the familial and community relations of modern black society.  In fact, it was the historical circumstances of the black community in America which had a profound effect on familial ties within their culture.  The extension of the nuclear family to include and even be replaced by extended families and alternative, community based families is a direct result of slavery in America. 

The most direct impact that slavery had on the family was simply one of necessity.  Slaves were unable and even prevented from forming relationships with their nuclear families.  Douglas comments on this in his narrative saying, “My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant . . . It was a common custom . . . to part children from their mothers at a very early age. . . For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of he mother for the child” (256).  Apparently his theory held true because he tells us that he later “received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt as the death of a stranger (256).  This dulling of the natural affection between parent and child resurfaces in Push when Precious suffers not only abuse from both parents, but perhaps even more devastating to her at the time, the lack of protection that a mother should naturally feel for her child.  Precious can feel no ties to a father who raped her and a mother who “. . . ain’ come on here and say, Carl Kenwood Jones—thas wrong! Git off precious like that! Can’t you see Precious is a beautiful chile . . .” (66).  Mary’s lack of protection for and abuse of Precious in no way indicates that a lack of affection between parent and child is common in the black culture; rather, it shows that the psychological problems that the interruption of natural relationships, for whatever reason, force a person to look outside the nuclear family for community and belonging. 

This need to look outside the nuclear family is further highlighted in Douglas’s explanation of his childhood and the subsequent attitude he had towards his genetic siblings.  Douglas was raised, along with the other children on the plantation, by his grandmother.  Later when leaving the plantation Douglas explains his feelings:

The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes were all suspended in my case . . . My mother was dead, my grandmother lived far off, so that I seldom saw her.  I had two sisters and one brother, that lived in the same house with me; but the early separation of us from our mother had well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories. (271-272)

Slavery created among blacks an inability to bond with those in their nuclear families.  Even if there was no concerted effort by the owners to separate families, just the constant knowledge that one could be sold away at any moment creates a situation where even at a subconscious level strong bonds would be hard to form.  This difficulty in bonding with family members did not, however, remove the desire to have a family of some sort.

            It is human nature to want to belong to a family and when one avenue is shut off, another will be found.  For slaves what evolved was the ability to form close relationships with whomever they could.  Matters of blood kin took a back seat to similarity of situation.  These relationships formed quickly because one never quite knew what tomorrow held.  Douglas found such a relationship with the men he began to teach in Sabbath school.  Contrast his words about them to the words previously quoted about his own family; “We loved each other . . . We were linked and inter-linked with each other.  I loved them with a love stronger than anything I have experienced since. . . We were one; and as much as so by our tempers and dispositions as by the mutual hardships to which we were necessarily subjected by our condition as slaves” (304-305).  Note that when he writes this he is looking back as a free man—a free married man—and yet the love he had for these men is stronger than anything else he has experienced!  The way in which familial relationships were affected by slavery did not end when slavery ended, neither for Douglas nor for African-Americans as a whole; this ability to see others as “family” members, regardless of blood ties, becomes a central part of black culture and even a driving need for black individuals.

            This need to form relationships outside of the nuclear family is recognized in Song of Solomon by both Guitar and Milkman though differently by each.  Guitar’s entire life is driven by the need to celebrate, avenge, and in his mind, love his community as a whole.  He has rejected any notion of having a traditional family in favor of service to his people.  He accepts as obvious the shortcomings of those who live lives absorbed within the confining walls of the nuclear family or individual desires.  He calls Milkman selfish because of his lack of activism, and he implies that Macon’s isolation of his family from the black community as a whole is a sign of his desire to be white.  After Hagar’s final attempt to kill Milkman, Guitar drives her home and muses that “She needed what most colored girls needed: a chorus of mamas, grandmamas, aunts, cousins, sisters, neighbors, Sunday school teachers, best girl friends, and what all to give her the strength life demanded of her—and the humor with which to live it” (332).  Guitar recognizes the value in what Douglas and his fellow slaves found years before—in a world where bad things happen and life takes unexpected turns, the more people you can count on and trust, the better.

            Milkman also comes to recognize the value of looking beyond his own house for family, but his realizations are hard earned and slow in the coming.  As previously mentioned, when a person is not able to find a sense of belonging within their own nuclear family, they look outward.  This should have been easy for Milkman because as a member of the black community he should have been accepted, but his family’s position in the community made him an outcast among his own.  His father grew his wealth by the rejection of the community principals which had been held dear by his culture since those hard learned lessons of slavery.  He was viewed as unwilling to help his fellow “brother” in a time of need.  No rent—No House—No Exceptions.  As in any family, when you’ve messed with one you’ve messed with all, and the “family” he messed with when he kicked the first person out in the dead of winter was the entire black community.  Therefore, Milkman had no alternative family to whom to turn.  He tried to turn to Pilate’s little family, but really only succeeded in miring himself further in the mysteries of his own nuclear family.

            It wasn’t until a journey, albeit one motivated by greed, sent him tracing his history that he found the sense of what it meant to be a part of an extended family.  In Danville he finds “It was a good feeling to come into a strange town and find a stranger who knew your people.  All his life he’d heard the tremor in the word: ‘I live here, but my people . . .’ or: ‘”she acts like she ain’t got no people’ or: ‘Do any of your people live there?’ But he hadn’t known what it meant: links” (250).  Later, in Virginia, Milkman truly begins to understand the idea of community as family as he feels pulled to the places of his family’s past:

            He was curious about these people.  He didn’t feel close to them, but he did feel connected, as though there were some cord or pulse or information that they shared.  Back home he never felt that way, as though he belonged to anyplace or anybody.  He’d always considered himself the outsider in his family . . . But there was something he felt now—here in Shalimar, and earlier in Danville—that reminded him of how he used to feel in Pilate’s house. (317)

Milkman has finally realized that family is something that can transcend your own household.  It is a realization that in Push saves Precious’s life.

            Precious lives a life in a family that is only family because of genetics.  She doesn’t know the comfort and love of “normal” families, but she does know deep inside that she wants more.  As in the situation of Douglas and other slaves, it is through the unspeakable horror of a situation beyond her control that Precious learns to reach to her community and embrace them as family.  In her first day at the alternative school she is befriended and she realizes simply, “I’m not used to this.  But this what I always want, some friendly niceness” (50).  So little to ask really, but more than she had ever experienced.  After making that final break with her mother, Precious experiences the kind of unconditional, selfless love that a true family offers when she shows up at school with her baby and “can tell by Ms Rain’s face I’m not gonna be homeless no more” (81).  Precious has become the beneficiary of the deeply held respect for alternative families found within the black community.

            African Americans have a unique place within American society.  They have at different times, in different ways been excluded from participation in the “main stream” culture.  As a result of years of hardships as slaves and subsequent years of discrimination, the black community learned to form strong bonds to others within their community.  Nuclear families are important to black people just as they are to any other group of people, but respect for their African heritage and lessons learned through historical circumstances have taught them that “family” is a flexible concept.  Often the support and the belonging needed most will be found by reaching out to the waiting community and extended family.  For Douglas, letting go of ties to his nuclear family meant sanity and escape; for Milkman, it meant finally achieving a sense of self; for Guitar, it meant purpose; and for Precious, it meant survival.