God Help the Child

I don’t know what I was expecting when I arrived at Barnes and Noble last Tuesday. Balloons, maybe? A block-long window display of Toni Morrison: a photograph in profile with her silver dreadlocks flowing and the red lipstick she wore on the recent cover of The New York Times Magazine.  Yes, that is what I expected.

Illustration by Eva S.

Instead I saw nothing.  I looked around the bookstore, at times distracted by other novels, wondering if such an intense search would be necessary when Harper Lee’s new book comes out.  Afraid that I had gotten the release date of God Help the Child wrong, I asked someone for help and was directed to a slim stack of books without one standing up to alert the browser to the presence of the others.  I know that the sale of hardcover books is down and it would have been easier (and cheaper) to download the book on my Kindle, but this is a book I wanted to own.  I love that when Chloe sees a picture of Toni Morrison, she says "Look, there's Chloe."  These books are part of her inheritance.

Unfortunately, being the Nobel and Pulitzer prize winning author of eleven novels doesn't guarantee prime real estate in Barnes and Noble.  Neither does being the subject of a New York Times Magazine cover or a New York Times Book Review front page review by artist Kara Walker.

Olaf Hayjek

Nevertheless, God Help the Child, was the most pleasurable reading experience that I have had in a while.  Many people believe that Toni Morrison's books are "too much work" but reading with a pencil in hand is part of the thrill.  I read this book when I should have been sleeping, when I was traveling to work on the train, during homeroom- and in 48 hours I was done.

I will not reveal too much of the plot, but I will say that God Help the Child is NOT simply about a light-skinned woman and the mental damage that she causes her dark-skinned daughter, nor is it about racism.  As Booker states, "Scientifically, there's no such thing as race . . . so racism without race is a choice.  Taught, of course, by those who need it, but still a choice.  Folks who practice it would be nothing without it."

As other reviewers have written, God Help the Child, seems to reference many of Toni Morrison's earlier works.  Reading it is like meeting old friends who are familiar, yet not exactly as you remember them.  Bride reminds me of the dark-skinned woman that Jadine encounters in Tar Baby who threatens her entire perception of beauty.  Rain is Amy Denver from Beloved in another form.  Brooklyn is as infuriating and one-dimensional as Maureen Peale in The Bluest Eye.  And Booker is reminiscent of Son from Tar Baby in that they are both beautiful, eloquent runners.  

Reading books by Toni Morrison books often leaves me with more questions than answers. After reading God Help the Child, I am left wondering if Booker is even black, and why Bride's body begins to revert back to its pre-puberty state after her break-up?   What is Morrison saying about black women "having it all" in the modern world?  Is the ending ultimately optimistic or pessimistic? Does Toni Morrison write white characters badly on purpose? These type of questions stay with me long after I have finished reading Morrison's books and motivate me to read them again and again.  Right now, I am about to pass God Help the Child to my father because he wants to read it.  Good thing I bought the hardcover.

If you liked God Help the Child, here are other books you will probably enjoy as well.

Tar Baby and Sula by Toni Morrison

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman

Happy Birthday Toni Morrison!!!!

Illustration by 6th grader Eva S.

I remember visiting my grandmother in Columbia, MD and seeing Toni Morrison on her bookshelves.  Looking back on it, Toni Morrison and Willie Marie Cardwell could have been sisters, as similar as they were in terms of looks, temperament, and wit.

However, my  first true encounter with Toni Morrison's work was in Mr. Daley's 9th grade English class at Columbia Prep. We were reading The Bluest Eye, and although I was a conscientious student, I remember not understanding or finishing the book.  Perhaps reading a book about a black father who rapes his daughter in "mixed company" made me feel uncomfortable.  Perhaps, I just didn't understand the complicated narrative structure or the figurative language.  Nevertheless, that experience turned me off from Toni Morrison for the rest of high-school.  It wasn't until college when I completed  Song of Solomon, followed by Beloved.  After that I was hooked.   

Toni Morrison's novels are like a roadmap for being a woman in the world, a kind of  literary Bible.  When friends share their problems with me Toni Morrison quotes automatically pop into my mind ("Love is never any better than the lover . . .").  I quote Sula or Tar Baby in everyday conversation like preachers quote the Scripture.  I love the exquisite attention that Morrison pays to describing the interior lives of black people.  The subject matter of some of her novels is difficult, but the language is always beautifully breathtaking, thought-provoking, and transcendent.

When I began teaching, The Bluest Eye became the centerpiece of my curriculum and a rite of passage for 8th graders at The Storefront. Students looked forward to reading the novel and completing the metaphor projects that they saw hanging in the classrooms and hallways of the school.

Sharing The Bluest Eye with my 8th graders led to some of my best experiences teaching. I treasure the memories that I have of spending two full days unpacking a single quotation:

“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.”

We took notes, drew charts on the board, and  shared real life experiences. I loved when students would point out something in the novel that I had not noticed: the significance of a color, a symbol that I had missed after years of reading the novel.  

Each year I taught The Bluest Eye I did so expecting to get in trouble.  I wrote a rationale and had it ready to hand to the first parent or administrator who complained or questioned what I was doing.   Year after year of teaching The Bluest Eye, a book that has been banned in many high-schools, no one ever said anything.  No parent complained, in fact, it was often the opposite.  During one parent teacher conference Michael Wilkerson's mother told me that she went to the library and took out a copy of the book because she wanted to know what her son was so exited to read and talk about.

One of my favorite moments in fourteen years of teaching is when we finished the last page of The Bluest Eye and Lahasia Brown started applauding. It was such a spontaneous, emotional moment because she wasn't someone who had ever shown a strong interest in books.  Years later, I  love that when Toni Morrison publishes a new short story in The New Yorker, I find out about it from Sonje Washington, a former student and fellow Toni Morrison fan(addict).

Toni Morrison's words have the to ability to engage traditionally strong readers, and those who perhaps will never read a full novel again.  It teaches students how to really read a book, while giving them the opportunity to think about how their beliefs about themselves impact the way that they treat others.

Unfortunately, these moments are not not measurable or considered valuable in an educational setting that is motivated by "data-driven" instruction, Danielson rubrics,  and standardized test scores (and I'm not just talking about The Storefront).  No student is going to remember the Test-Prep that I did with them, the grammar drills, or Wordly Wise tests,  but they will never forget The Bluest Eye.