The Music of Black Love

a VERY short summary:

the major characters in this story are Violet and Joe Trace a middle aged (50ish) married couple with martial problems. Joe trace has a lover, a 18 year old girl named Dorca that he ends up murdering (which is revealed in the first few pages of the story). The book transitions into alternative perspectives of the main scene (Dorca's murder), childhood experiences of the characters, explanations for attitudes and philosophies of the characters, and some random fun and flighty tidbits of Harlem lifestyle in the 1920s.

Key Characters in the story:

Violet Trace
Joe Trace
Dorca
Felice
Malvonne
Alice
Vera Louise
Golden Grey
Hunter's Hunter
True Belle

Unlike the previous literary blog, I will not go into much detail about motifs and themes and such. In the case of this novel there are so many important key points to this book, life lessons, respectable and obtainable views that it would do the messages no justice to try to classify them simple in motifs of my own perspective. One which I do feel the need to discuss.

Elements of maternal trauma-
Out of the key characters listed above, all of them experience some kind of maternal trauma that connects them to one another. Each of these characters lacks something from, or has the absence of some element of maternal nurturing and rearing that has effected them emotionally and is the basic catalyst in their thoughts and actions throughout the novel. The relationship with their mother (or lack thereof) is directly reflected in their relationship with other characters in the novel. Especially when it resounds to the elements of black love.

Why is black love an important aspect of Toni Morrison's writing?

Toni Morrison is a writer that intensely describes feelings of people based on their interactions with themselves, and their interactions with others. She does it in a significantly profound way that elevates beyond any other writer's work that I have read so far (other than of course, Alice Walker :-). Black love is an important theme for black literature because it is the anchor of the existence of black culture, the trends that psychologist claim are remnants of "post-traumatic slave syndrome", or constant battle with family issues, conversations of passion, religion, all these things transition back to the idea of black love and how the adverse effects of broken family units leads to subject matter so intricate and filled with rage, passion, sadness and dedication as Jazz.

What I am trying to say is Toni Morrison brings up two important elements in this text that are striking to me. 1. the dedication of the black woman 2. the deep and resounding yet imperfect love of the black man.

Whether or not these examples of Violet and Joe Trace are accurate or fantastical is not necessary to divulge into, rather the fact that these two black human beings coexist together despite the adversity is a lesson which to me is inspiring. Violet a woman deeply in love is betrayed experiences some moments of "insanity" and decides to stay dedicated to a man, Joe Trace, who has betrayed his wife spent many months with a girl of 18 years old, killed her in a passionate rage and spends many months mourning her death shows a passionate and real (although sometimes unfulfilled loved for his wife Violet). It's realistic, it's crisp, it's accurate.

Neither one of the characters are shielded in a cloak of perfection, and neither one of them are complete villains. Their is a human balance of good and bad...right and wrong...mortal, and the ability for immortality in not only Violet and Joe but all of the characters in the novel. There is potential in the character development, and where Toni Morrison has taken them isn't bad at all.


Stylistic Notes:

What is customary and consistant, in regards to Toni Morrison's work is its expected difficulty and sometimes utter ability to deeply confuse the reader. For anyone else who has read other Toni Morrison works they will notice her combative switch in character perspective, without easily clarivoyant transitions from one perspective to the next. All of these classic Morrison stylistic signitures are evident in this book, but what makes the reader unable to beseech the ability to give up on the complexitioes of speaker and tone, is Morrisons interesting method of using simile and methaphor and her enchanting way of writing explicit and paradoxial imagery.

example of this:

" ...might it have been the moring after the night when craving (which used to be hope) got out of hand? When longing squeezed, then tossed her before running off promising to return and bounce her again like an India-rubber ball? Or was is the chair they y tipped her out of? Did she fall on the floor and lie there deciding right then that she would do it. Someday."

There are simply no words to describe what Morrison imagery makes you feeling, makes you think, and how it influences how you might approach your next poem, piece of prose, creative essay.


Final Thoughts

The intricacies of black relationships never fail to astound and captivate as meaningful subject matter for any budding novelist or poet alike. In particular, the examining of relationships without the exploitation of black pain is an admirable quality of a black writer (exploiting black pain for entertainment purposes is very easy and commonly done i.e. Tyler Perry). Toni Morrison's book Jazz examines intricate relationships in her classic style of combating perspective writing, and this book was indeed a pleasurable transition into a peaceful and sincere harmonic understanding for the elements of black love.




m. m. t

Wounds of Passion...a Bell Hooks Memoir.

Wounds of Passion- A Writing Life by bell.hooks.

a VERY short synopsis of the text:

bell hooks, know mostly for her social and cultural critiques exposes herself in this vividly written memoir. The text transitions over several specific aspects of her life, her childhood clothed in loneliness and isolation, her college years, her long relationship to a man named Mack (also a writer), and her struggle through writing in the world of professionalism.

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I want to first start off by saying, that I love the way this book is written. Most people who are familiar with bell hooks' writing style find her (like most social critiques) matter-of-fact. That is not the case in this text. The imagery is beautiful. Captivating. Vigorous, and stimulating. She does a fun and flighty writing technique of separating the narrative, by having it in regular font, from the commentary/thoughts of her own emotions and feelings in italicized text. It is easy to read, and allows the succession of the story to be effortless.

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Some of the themes brought up in this story are:

1.regionalism (her life in the south compared to life in California)

2.isolation (being a reader, being smart, being black, and being a woman)

3. Black Feminism ( which incorporates secondary motifs like, professionalism and creativity being challenged)

4.Relationships (which takes up most of the attention of the book)

All of these themes overlap.

However, the memoir itself I find to be undoubtfully pretentious.

But why?

I don't feel that there is any element of accountability from bell hooks. It is a bare-all manuscript, but it lacks any sense of resolution. I found myself reaching the end of it with the prying question, "well, bell hooks, what did you learn?" I imagined her subdued personality answering "nothing", with a taunting grin.

Out of the above themes listed, my problems were mostly centered around the last two:

Black Feminism

The insistent attitude of a lot of black feminist writers is that the black is always the villain. Never shed in a light of kindness, goodness, strength, or being at all admirable, beyond idolization, is and always has been for me excruciatingly boring.

In fact it puts in perspective a lot of bell hooks opinions in her other social texts like "We Real Cool" were it seems as though she has a general discontent for the black man.

In fact, the only men that seem to have any positive impact on bell hooks' life are liberal white men, that participate or patron some kind of aesthetic lifestyle. (in the story: two gay men named Jess and Duncan, and another man to whom she lost her virginity, who seemed to have effeminate characteristics).

Relationships:

Hooks discontent for men seems to come from her admiration of her grandmother and grandfather awkward separatist marriage and her mother and fathers relationship, which to me did not seem that bad.

Hooks harps on discontent for her fathers one abusive moment with her mother. This altercation was based on his accusations of the mother's infidelity. Although, I am not making excuses for any man threatening or beating a woman, I found it alarming that hooks expectations of relationships are unrealistic.

In love, in relationships when peoples feelings are involved there will be moments of limited self-control. Any rational person realizes that. Jealously, rage, passion, all these things are words to describe human emotions. Hooks sums up her discontent for her father and her relationship and attitude towards men from one incident. It seems exstreme, and leads me to believe that a lot of her pain throughout the story is self-inflicted.

For example, she demands an open relationship with a man, and once he finally agrees to it she is wounded and writes herself as a victim due to the pain of him holding true to HER request. It's nonsense.

Not the fact that she is full of human contradictions ( as we all our, even on our best days), but she has no integrity as to acknowledge her fallacies.

I am not looking for an apology in the text, just some element of insight. She makes a big deal about how she's so good at the southern art of knowing things about people, and makes all these rash assumptions about other peoples lives, but can not have in depth insight to her own actions. It makes me not trust the author, as a reader.

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Final Thoughts:

As an aspiring writer, I am struggling to form my own basis and need for Black Feminist literature in this world and my place in it.

I am also struggling to understand the detrimental and the positive in regards to relationships between black men and women. It perplexes me that hooks does not acknowledge that black love can in some way be a healthy, monogamous union if so desired.

She makes it seem impossible that black love can even function or exist. Elements of this book in regards to those notions actually depressed me.

Even the title "Wounds of Passion" although very poetic, seems odd to me. Which really goes back to my belief that hooks has hypebolized her pain to some kind of exaggerated feminist martyrdom. It's self righteous and unnecessary. Even the reference she uses to explain the title in the text made me roll my eyes in displeasure (check out your bibles!).

This is not at all one of my favorite books, and does not putting bell hooks (at this point) as one of my favorite writers. But I will make it my duty to read more of her work and finalize this opinion to gain more evidence for or against her ideas and thoughts.

The thing I liked most about the book (apart from the actual style) was her open and self-sacrificing passion for writing. That in itself is a love story, and it brought me to an obsessive state of page turning as I engulfed myself in the text, and the rollercoaster of emotions it was driving me through. It only seems fair that I acknowledge it, in my critical review of this text.

I hope to someday possess a passionate luster for anything the way bell hooks feels about her literary existence. It's inspiring.

- m.m.t