Tanya Stanley

April 24, 2010

Juxtaposing the African Flying Myth between Tradition and Technology

            The rationale for this journal began as an extension from the midterm assignment. From the web highlight of previous student midterm submissions, the African flying myth appears to be the basis of a transformation as an act of suicide or as an action of mystical realism. Although I cannot conclude on which act the flight succumbs to, I realize the African flying myth does not have to an analysis in order for it to strengthen and continue within the minds of the modern day readers. The African flying myth only needs to remain in the collection of African American literature in order for the tradition to persist within the present-day cultures’ knowledge and possible future use. Instead of solely focusing the flying myth within African American literature, I wanted to extend the myth to Native American literature and Mexican American literature. The African flying myth can be traced throughout the texts of the seminar, and since the midterm I have found many instances of flight in Black Elk Speaks, Bless Me, Ultima, and Woman Hollering Creek. I wanted to learn more about the African flying myth and conclude what the African flying myth really signifies to the African American community, to the other minorities, and to the dominant culture. By extending the midterm, I found potential answers to my initial questions: “does the African have the ability to ascend to a new place in life or does he descend to his death to overcome his own oppressions? Does the ability to fly provide the African with supernatural qualities or provide them with a false outlet to escape torment” (Midterm Spring 2010).  The answers to these questions include both/and neither/nor responses, so even though I did not find the absolute answers to my questions, I think learning beyond my previous understanding of the African flying myth and following that myth throughout the course texts create a sense of unity among minority texts instead of separating those texts among ethnic boundaries. However, as a precursor to the final exam, this journal will only be following the flying myth through African American literature and culture. This journal will follow a path of learning, which will include Song of Solomon, a 1997 University of Houston-Clear Lake literature student’s thesis, Ralph Ellison’s short story “Flying Home,” websites concerning the Tuskegee airmen’s history and present-day Tuskegee airmen, two interviews with Toni Morrison, a webpage dedicated to women of color and their literature, and an article juxtaposing tradition and technology. Throughout the sources I will be tracing the flight of the flying African and extending the previous analysis I formulated in the midterm by providing further information about the myth and the African American minority.

            In Toni Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon Milkman’s flight in the conclusion is romantic, which creates a negative impact on the minority experience by mystifying the flight and the character Milkman therefore moving the flight away from reality into the imaginary. The mystical emphasis throughout the novel can create a sense of disbelief in the reader that may suggest the flight is not a flight at all but just a normal leap into the air. However, the flight ascends Milkman into the man he is trying to become within the novel, and in order for his transformation to occur, the flight is necessary for Milkman and the reader. Milkman’s flight separates him from the majority of the African American community that surrounds him, but he is able to connect with his aunt Pilate and his grandfather Solomon, which is an ability his father lacks. Like Pilate, Milkman has a superhuman quality about him even though the reader and Milkman do not suspect it until the conclusion of the novel. Milkman’s ability to fly constitutes separation from the dominant culture and separation from the minority culture he so desperately wants to represent. Neither the dominant culture nor the African American culture accepts Milkman. Milkman’s acceptance into the dominant culture lacks due to the role of the color code, and Milkman’s acceptance into the minority culture lacks because of his ability to move freely inside and outside the African American community; Milkman’s wealth and his ability to take flight in search of his individual desires separate him from the typical minority and minority experience.

            Milkman’s flight is mystical, which dehumanizes his individual experience, but as a communal experience, Milkman lifts the African American community out of oppression. According to the African flying myth, Milkman leaves behind his family and community in search of his own identity and needs. In Jacqueline I. E. Stirling’s thesis The Flying Africans: Flight as Symbol and Legend in African-American Literature, Stirling suggests Morrison’s use of the African flying myth “as social commentary upon the problems she feels face modern Black society, especially the relationship to, and the position of, the individual in the community” (58). Breaking from the historical communal flight of Africans returning to Africa, Milkman’s journey for himself suggests a breakdown in the modern African American community. No longer is the journey to Africa through flight a communal act or an act for the community. Perhaps the breakdown represents Milkman’s transformation of becoming an immigrant through assimilation. If assimilation is not possible for the minority through the barriers of the color code, Milkman’s journey into a world where he does not need assurance of his identity from the other—the dominant culture—can only come from within him. Milkman’s transformed identity may be the only desire of individualism that he needs. Stirling elevates Milkman’s flight, which maintains the elements of romanticism:

the culmination of a spiritual journey that has led him ever upwards through self-discovery, until the reaches a place from which he can leap toward what might be a better life, armed with a new understanding of himself. On his journey, he had discovered not only himself but also who his ancestors were, and he changes from a shallow, selfish individual into a caring, loving person. It is his realization that he is connected through Solomon to a much wider community that gives him a sense of his true place in society. (60)

Milkman’s journey begins as a physical search—as a quest for the missing gold—but concludes as a spiritual search. His leap into the air signifies his upward mobility; however, like Solomon, Milkman pays a price for his upward mobility along with the African American community (Stirling 62). Milkman loses the connection with his friend Guitar and Pilate loses her life. Milkman matures and transforms into a man of knowledge—knowledge of the past and knowledge of the true present times. Guitar’s separates himself from the African American community after shooting Pilate and severing the bond between him and Milkman. Guitar represents an outsider oppressing his own race. Pilate represents the fate of her family, especially her father Solomon, as she transforms from the physical world into the spiritual word.

            Gordon Lewis suggests Milkman’s flight has a romantic quality when compared to the image of slaves chained together during their own descent into the water thus ending their lives. The descent mirrors an image of birds flying in formation. The slaves and the birds remain connected to their own communities through their flights and their descents. Gordon’s suggestion of flight within Song of Solomon representing suicide indicates a failing of the community through the act of the individual.  Morrison’s ambiguity regarding Robert Smith’s flight in the beginning of the novel and Milkman’s flight at the end of the novel allows the reader to determine the outcomes of the individuals and the outcomes of their flights. Some readers like Gordon Lewis see one flight as suicide and one flight as a mystical one; other readers may suggest both flights encompass romantic elements or both flights as suicidal. Comprehending the flights as suicides parallel those flights with the Ibos slaves Lewis describes, and comprehending the flights as mystical ones transforms the individual into mystical characters—dehumanizing the experience. The romantic quality of the African flying myth suggests transformation of the individual from the communal, which suggests an attempt to leave the old world tradition of the community in search for the new world tradition of the individual—assimilation into the dominant culture’s ideals. The minority inherits the characteristics of the American Dream instead of the American Nightmare. Not knowing what the American Dream may have in store for the minority is a chance he has to take if the old world turns against him. Milkman’s transformation into a caring and loving young man through the characteristics of the African flying myth is both romantic and mystical. The flight can be a descent into the arms of a gun-waving lunatic—Guitar—or a flight into spiritual individuality and separation from the traditional self. The African flying myth offers an escape from the pressures of society but remains a flight that is not free for the individual of the community. 

After reading Stirling’s thesis, I read Ralph Ellison’s short story “Flying Home.” Ellison’s story adapts the African flying myth into a more modern period. Unlike Milkman, Todd’s understanding of flight and his fascination with the ability to fly begins when he is a young boy (Ellison 162-165). Todd’s ability to fly is not like Milkman, Robert Smith, and Solomon’s ability; Todd’s ability to fly is possible through the mechanics of an airplane, which separates Todd from the mystical and romantic elements of the African flying myth. Todd crashes his plane into a field where he miraculously only suffers a broken ankle upon his quick descent. Todd does not descend into the ground as act of suicide like the Ibos slaves and he does not take flight through a supernatural ability. Jefferson, the man who helps Todd after the crash, asks Todd why he wants to fly and Todd thinks to himself “because it’s the most meaningful act in the world…because it makes me less like you” (Ellison 153). Todd elevates the African flying myth even though he refuses to reference the past; Todd ignores the traditional ways of the African American community and desires separation by flying in order to separate himself from the minority status by buying into one of the dominant cultures’ institutions. Todd’s desire to separate from the African American community marked by his desire to fly rewrites the African flying myth in terms of the oppressed minority in the twentieth century. Todd is not only looking for independence as a desired feeling but also as a separation from the African American community and that minority status the African American community contains. Jefferson tells Todd about his death experience and the trip to heaven that follows that experience:

Well, I went to heaven and right away started to sproutin’ me some wings. Six-foot ones, they was. Just like them white angels had. I couldn’t hardly believe it. I was so glad that I went off on some clouds by myself and tried ‘em out. You know, ‘cause I didn’t want to make a fool outa myself the first thing…So I starts flyin’…old Jefferson could fly good as anybody else. And I could too, fly smooth as a bird! I could even loop-the-loop…I could fly so fast. I could do all kin’sa stunts too. I started flying up to the stars and divin’ down and zooming roun’ the moon…It was so good to know I was free at last. (157, 158)

Jefferson evokes the African flying myth, but for Todd, Jefferson appears mockingly and Todd thinks Jefferson mocks his ability and desire to fly (160). Jefferson damages Todd’s already shaken pride and with the story of Jefferson’s death experience and flight in heaven, Todd becomes more separated from the African American community and of tradition. Todd suffers at the hands of the old world in his own quest to find his identity while fulfilling his dreams in the new world. The African flying myth suggests Todd’s only ability to fly within the dominant culture’s world is through death. In order for Todd to fly, he must die and go to heaven where he will be free at last. Unfortunately for Todd, the dominant culture does not embrace him or his desire of flight. Todd reveals a minority experience, which offers a reversal of a dominant culture experience: “Todd had the sensation of being caught in a white neighborhood after dark” (Ellison 168). Ellison’s statement creates a unified experience between the self and the other. Is there a unified experience between one culture to another, one ethnic group to another, or is this experience just a similar event that occurs between the dominant culture and the minority? Throughout the course I have been separating myself from the minority in order to analyze who the “other” is, but the borders between self and other blur with realizations such as Todd’s fear of “being caught in a white neighborhood after dark” (Ellison 168). Ellison’s text offers an intimate perception of the minority against the old world he moves away from and the dominant culture that moves away from the minority. The introduction to “Flying Home” by Stirling shifted my research to the Tuskegee Airmen through Todd’s experience and the realization of the dominant culture preventing the African flying myth to occur in the modern day.

            A brief look at the history of the Tuskegee Airmen sets the stage for the unfortunate events Todd suffers along with what his non-fiction counterparts suffer. According to Tuskegee Airmen, Incorporated, the Tuskegee Airmen were “America’s first black military airmen, at a time when there were many people who thought that black men lacked intelligence, skill, courage and patriotism” (Tuskegee Airmen History) The Tuskegee Airmen were college students, graduates, and those who excelled on their entrance exams.  The Tuskegee Airmen excelled in their crafts. However, they suffered “humiliation and indignation caused by frequent experiences of racism and bigotry, at home and overseas. These airmen fought two wars—one against a military force overseas and the other against racism at home and abroad” (Tuskegee Airmen History). The history section provided by the Tuskegee Airmen, Incorporated website fuses the fictional oppression within “Flying Home” with the real oppression suffered by the real airmen. The United States Air Force Joint Base Balad, Iraq awards “Airmen between the ranks of E-1 and E-5…to become the 332nd AEW Tuskegee Airman of the Week, based on accomplishments on and off duty” (Joint Base Balad: Pina-Morales). Decades after the oppression Todd and the original Tuskegee Airmen face, America celebrates the accomplishments of its Air Force airmen. Airman Agustin Pina-Morales of the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Support Squadron is thankful to be able to represent the Tuskegee heritage. “His creativity and artistic talents definitely make [sic] him stand out” (Joint Base Balad: Pina-Morales).  Airman Pina-Morales represents the African flying myth and its modern-day legacy. Another United States Air Force Joint Base Balad, Iraq 332nd AEW Tuskegee Airman of the Week is Senior Airman Joseph Boyou of the 332nd Expeditionary Force Support Squadron. Boyou “holds a position with a lot of responsibility and has performed exceedingly well at it…He has stepped up and volunteered for a position that is not normally sought after and has performed excellently" (Joint Base Balad: Boyou). Boyou states “it feels amazing to be recognized at this level" who Sergeant Nettles describes as “a highly motivated individual and his work ethic shows it" (Joint Base Balad: Boyou). Both airmen succeed as African Americans in flight. They receive awards based on individual efforts, but they represent the African American community while their leadership soars above a dominant culture’s institution. After reading “Flying Home,” and witnessing Todd’s oppression from older generation African Americans and from the dominant culture regarding  his flight, I am pleased to learn and report the awards provided to Tuskegee Airmen of the week. The Tuskegee Airmen of today carry on the heritage of the men in the past—a past unappreciative of African Americans, their efforts, and their risks for America.

            In an interview with Toni Morrison in 1995, Cecil Brown asks Morrison if Song of Solomon is a parody of Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo, but Morrison says the “the flying is not about Icarus, it's about the African flying myth. When Milkman walks into that big house [Pilate’s house], what I have him relating it to is Hansel and Gretel” (461), which is usually why I do not use the author’s biographical information or interviews with the authors of the texts I research and analyze. Typically I want to be able to analyze the text itself and form my own analysis through textual evidence instead of authorial connections. However, by writing a journal instead of an essay, I wanted to approach the research by using different types of sources. The course, the text, and the assignment created an outlet to experiment in approaches and analyses. Morrison remembers “hearing people screaming, back in the sixties, that we need our own myths, we have to make our own myths…Instead of inventing myths, which is a certain body of work which black writers are in fact engaged in, I just didn't do that, I was just interested in finding what myths already existed” (462). Making up a myth to represent the African American culture would create a false sense of identity and would be a regression for the individuals who put forth so much effort to diminish the oppression of themselves and their community. Instead of upward mobility, the invented myth screamed for would actually represent a descent. Morrison’s adaptation from the African flying myth sparks the new African American minority’s quest for independence from his community and its oppressors. Ellison’s adaptation from the African flying myth juxtaposes tradition with technology but continues to expose the oppression of the dominant culture onto the minority. Morrison describes what the African flying myth means to her:

I’d always heard that black people could fly before they came to this country, and the spirituals and gospels are full of flying, and I decided not to treat them as some Western form of escape, and something more positive than escape. Suppose they were about the whole business of how to handle one's self in a more dangerous element called air, learning how to trust, to risk, and knowing that much about one's self to be able to take off and to surrender one's self to the air, to surrender and control, both of those things (463).

The African flying myth, according to Morrison, is not about escape, but I have to disagree. Solomon escapes the trials and tribulations of societal oppression just as Robert Smith escapes. It is possible that Robert Smith escapes the present day oppression with his life in hopes of bettering the lives of the community he leaves, but this analysis is not available from the text itself. Readers have to conclude their own beliefs about why the characters’ leave through flight and how to interpret those flights. Robert Smith does not trust the oppression to cease before his flight, so he only trusts that his escape will relieve his community of their current oppression. Robert Smith risks his own life for the betterment of his neighborhood and takes control of his own life, which like Jefferson in “Flying Home,” he finally will be free. For Morrison the ability to adapt the African flying myth was easy to accomplish, but for her being “told as a writer what to do by another black person” is the painful oppression of fusing tradition with modernity. Morrison suffers a double racism—oppression from within the African American community—as Todd suffers from the persecution of Jefferson’s supposed taunts.

            P. Gabrielle Foreman’s article “Past-on Stories: History and the Magically Real, Morrison and Allende on Call” furthers Morrison’s argument about keeping the African flying myth out of a Western analysis by not explaining Solomon’s gift of being able to fly. Solomon’s ability “symbolizes both the element of faith in magical realism and a breaking point with the explanatory mode of African American literature… She [Morrison] does not write to offer legitimation for her culture, her traditions, her words. In many ways, however, Morrison's role is explanatory, for she recovers history for her people, using her language on her own terms” (384). Breaking from the Western ideology of explaining how and why is Morrison’s attempt to maintain the folklore and the tradition as purely folklore and tradition and nothing more. Morrison’s work is not legitimizing the African American culture; her work provides restoration of the African American community’s culture, traditions, and literature. Stirling states “the legend they [African Americans] told has survived into the twentieth century and will continue to be told in the twenty-first” (9), which is affirmed in the research I have found for this journal and for my final exam essay. Morrison and Stirling’s work continues to maintain the folklore and the tradition of the African flying myth and the African American community itself. Continuing the intertextuality of minority texts and juxtaposing the past with the present sustains “the interconnection between myth, folklore, oral tradition, and written literature” (Stirling 9). Stirling introduces “a living link” to the African American community’s past through the introduction of Africa’s “principal storyteller in the village [who] was known as a griot” (10). Stirling suggests the griots taught the people to learn about themselves: “who their ancestors were, what happened to them, and the position and responsibilities of every member of the community in the village” (11). African American literature replaces the traditional form of African cultural communication with the modern form of novels, short stories, and poems. Morrison and Ellison’s texts and characters’ connections to the past and the present parallel the griot’s purpose of storytelling. Milkman becomes his own griot when he journeys to find out the truth about his extended family in hopes of finding his identity. Todd becomes the outlet for representation of the African flying myth through his meeting with Jefferson.

            Through another extension of my experimental research, I found the webpage of the University of Minnesota’s Voices of the Gap, which offers biographical information of minority authors, criticisms of minority literature, and suggested resources for further learning. I discovered information on author Toni Cade Bambura, and in an interview with Kay Bonetti in 1982 she reflected “on the symbolism of salt and the African flying myth,” within her novel. Bambura supplies the myth with a reason why Africans quit flying, which I found quite interesting and representative of the oppression of the dominant culture. Bambura says the African were “grounded because we ate too much salt, but some folks say it, we got grounded because we opened ourselves up to horror—invited it onto the continent—that created tears. And it was that salt that drowned our wings and made us earth-bound " (Voices of the Gap: Bambura). Having Africans grounded appears to be an institution of the dominant culture—placing a lid on the freedom and independence of the minority to take flight. The color of salt is white—the salt representing the dominant culture—and that whiteness is what grounds the Africans’ ability to fly.

            Olivia Smith Storey’s article “Flying Words: Contests of Orality and Literacy in the Trope of the Flying Africans” describes the representation of the African flying myth through various outlets including novels, short stories, poems, films, paintings, and songs. Storey states “Lionel Hampton's jazz instrumental "Flying Home" preceded Ralph Ellison's short story of the same title. Jacob Lawrence's painting of Harriette Tubman, "Crossing the Line," manifests another wordless version of the trope” (Paragraph 2). Storey suggests the imagery of the flying Africans extends farther than the griot’s storytelling could possibly ever could: “these instances in modern technological form manifest a recurrent pattern of imagery that is more vast and less knowable in oral genres” (Paragraph 3) but the griot’s purpose is served. The artists of more modern times knew the story of the flying Africans and were able to adapt that knowledge for their own particular audiences in order to keep the story alive within the newer generations of not only African Americans but anyone interested in the flight of the minority.

            Storey describes an alternative approach to the study of the Flying Africans from the perspectives of three figures in the Diaspora of American slavery:

[the] African, the American born or Creole, and the Overseer. These three look at each other from the three points of a triangle; that is, they exist in relation, and they constitute an entity among themselves, examining and defining each other. Individual expressions of the trope might refer to only the African figure or to the African and an Overseer or to all three, but even in accounts where the Creole and the Overseer are not explicitly mentioned, their presence is strongly implied. (Paragraph 3).

Storey defines the African flying myth through the slavery ideology within America. With the aforementioned texts, the authors do not explicitly label those three representatives. However, within “Flying Home,” Todd represents the Creole, Jefferson represents the African because he is the closet link to the African in this text, and Dabney Graves represents the overseer. In Song of Solomon, Milkman represents the Creole, Pilate represents the African, and Guitar represents the overseer. Through Storey’s assertions, the African flying myth maintains the traditional aspects while representing the African, the Creole, and the overseer in the new world at various points in time. 

            So, does the African American ascend to freedom or descend to death in his flight against oppression? Milkman appears to ascend and find his true self, but some readers see his flight merely as a leap. Robert Smith’s flight is also ambiguous for the reader; some readers view his flight as a fall. Todd does fly, but he does so without the permission of his white officers, without the support of the African American community, and without the support of the dominant culture. The historical Tuskegee Airmen flew for America but continued to suffer the oppression of others. The present-day Tuskegee Airmen receive awards, but neither of the two airmen actually fly in their current positions within the United States Air Force. The African American ascends to freedom through his own desires of individuality and dreams of freedom, but it many cases the salty dominant culture grounds him from physical flight. If the African American has the ability to fly, do we consider his flight mystical or real? Does that flight provide him with a false sense of escape? Again, the answers are ambiguous—both/and neither/nor—and contingent on the reader’s perception and analysis. In terms of unity, the research continues to juxtapose the traditional world with technology. Through this juxtaposition, intertextuality occurs between the traditional storytelling of the orality and the modern storytelling of African American literature. This intertextuality links the past with the present and provides the reader with additional outlets for discussion of minority literature and the minority’s relationship to the dominant culture. By keeping the tradition alive in the literature, music, art, and film of the popular culture, the traditional African culture remains in the foreground of American cultures instead of in the background of a museum.

            Unlike some myths, the unity within the African flying myth scarcely strayed from the heritage in which it was first told. Morrison’s variations were necessary to appeal to her audience and to remain coherent with the story’s setting and action; however, Morrison does create characters that represent the traditional triangle of the African flying myth—Milkman, Pilate, and Guitar. Like Morrison, Ellison’s variations are necessary for his characters and his story, but he also represents the traditional triangle through the characters Todd, Jefferson, and Dabney Graves. By limiting this journal to the African American minority, I discovered unfamiliar aspects within the African flying myth that I could not introduce if I went outside this scope. However, this journal is an enormous platform—a precursor to my own flight through minority literature—to begin the preliminary gathering of course materials for the final exam assignment.

             As a learning experience of using experimental sources—experimental sources for me anyway—I will continue to use the primary texts themselves for future analysis. Even though the websites and interviews brought a different voice into the findings, I remain solemn about their continued use in my own research. Having the different voices and different representatives for the African flying myth widened my understanding of real world perceptions of traditions and technology. Two sources I did not include in this journal were blog postings and comments regarding the African flying myth, but like Stirling states, as long as the people talk about the myth, the tradition stays alive. Even though the griot has vanished, the literature and the other art forms have prevailed. The African American community cannot let the traditions of their culture evaporate in the traditional versus technology age. As a continuation from the journal, I would like to use the myth of flying within Black Elk Speaks, Bless Me, Ultima, Woman Hollering Creek, and possibly The Best Little Boy in the World for the final exam assignment. The first three texts allude to flight, but I have not completed The Best Little Boy in the World. Through the theme of flight, I would like to determine what the other minorities use flight for in their individual or communal journeys. I will possibly extend my question of flight for the minority as a mystical or real flight and my question of flight as an escape from oppression.

Works Cited

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            Balad, Iraq. 10 April 2010. Web.  17 April 2010.

---. “Tuskegee Airman of the Week: April 4-10, 2010.” Joint Base Balad, Iraq 17 April 2010.

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Brown, Cecil. “Interview with Toni Morrison.” Massachusetts Review 36.3 (1995): 455-474.

            Print.

Ellison, Ralph. “Flying Home.” Flying Home and Other Stories. Ed. John F. Callahan.  New             York: Random House, 1997. 147-173. Print.

Foreman, P. Gabrielle. “Past-on Stories: History and the Magically Real, Morrison and Allende

            on Call. Feminist Studies 18.2 (1992): 369-388. Print.

Stirling, Jacqueline I. E. The Flying Africans: Flight as Symbol and Legend in African-

            American Literature. MA thesis. U of Houston-Clear Lake, 1997. Houston: UMI, 1997.   Print.

Storey, Olivia Smith. “Flying Words: Contests of Orality and Literacy in the Trope of the Flying

            Africans.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 5:3 (2004).

“332d Air Expeditionary Wing.” Joint Base Balad, Iraq. n.d. Web. 17 April 2010.

 “Who Were The Tuskegee Airmen?” Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. n.d. Web. 17 April 2010.