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

Light Girls Was the Silliest Thing I've Seen on Television in a While

A Recent Conversation at an Upper West Side Private School

6th Grader: Ms. Cardwell, are you black?

Me: Yes

6th Grader: So, you're just a very light-skinned black?

Me: Yes

6th Grader: Oh, my nanny was black and she was like my second mother . . .

The patron saint of all light-skinned Negroes

A Conversation at an Independent School in Harlem circa 2009

8th Grader: Ms. Cardwell, you're black?

Me: Yes

8th Grader: Oh, I wasn't sure until you opened your mouth and started yelling . . .

Although my race can be confusing to young children who have yet to be introduced to the One Drop Rule, I think that it is clear to most people that I am a light-skinned black person.  I have broad features, and from what I can remember of it, my natural hair is kinky and coarse.  

I grew up in a family where I was on the browner side of the color spectrum so I never had any doubt that I was black.   I remember a conversation that I had with my late cousin Donna Lynn.  Donna Lynn was like that fashionable big sister that everyone wishes they had.  She wore skintight high-waisted jeans with her straight hair slicked back into a tight ponytail.  Her nails were always long and painted a shade of  cherry red.  One day we were at my grandmother's house in Maryland and I asked her why she didn't pass for white.  She looked at me and said simply "why would I do that?"  Embedded in that question were a thousand statements about self-acceptance, and racial pride.

Donna Lynn as a child

I have always been interested in the issue of colorism in the black community, but when I saw the preview of Light Girls on OWN I cringed/rolled my eyes/sighed deeply and got ready to be embarrassed.  Against my better judgement, I decided to watch so that I would understand what the people on Twitter and Facebook would be talking about the next day.   I was disappointed in Bill Duke's previous film Dark Girls, but this one was even worse!  Listening to light-skinned women complain about being light-skinned is almost as annoying as listening to white people complain about reverse racism.   The experiences depicted in the film have not been my experiences.

For example, I have never:

1.  Been bullied or picked on because of my complexion.   People that I have met may have had preconceived notions about who I am based on the way I look, but I have found that, in general,  if you are nice to people they will be nice to you in return.  Do I have to try a little harder because I'm light-skinned?  Maybe.  Have I developed a self-depreciating sense of humor in order to make others comfortable? Perhaps.  But so what?  All of us adapt our personalities to our environment and our audience.

What was so damaging about Light Girls was the constant reference to darker skinned women as insecure, jealous bullies.  I know that I should accept and validate the experiences and pain of the light-skinned women on the show but . . .  I don't really feel like it.  

2.  Been told or made to feel that I wasn’t black enough.  There was one time in high-school when Brooke Lay said that I was Afrocentric because I was “overcompensating” for my light complexion.  I thought about what she said, considered the fact she claimed that she was bi-racial even though both of her parents were black, and decided not to take offense. 

3. Been treated "better" by a man because I was light-skinned.   I don’t think that I was aware that I  was light-skinned until 9^th grade, and by that time I was in high-school and it didn’t matter! There were so few black girls at Columbia Prep that we bonded together in friendship and mutual support. Furthermore, my complexion meant nothing to the black boys I went to school with because they had discovered white girls and wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of us (except the day that Spike Lee's Malcolm X came out in the movie theaters and we all went to see it together). 

As I got older, I acknowledge that my complexion may have been a draw for many of the men that I dated.  However, I learned that if they were attracted to me because I was light-skinned what they really wanted was a white/Asian/ or Latina woman-and usually they went out and got one.  I was like a "gateway drug" and there's no privilege in that.

Really Raven? Are we to assume that this is your natural hair color and you just dyed it for the show too?

The moment I should have turned the TV off and went to sleep was the moment when Raven Symoné  came on and started talking about how she tanned for her show That's So Raven.  It reminded me of my students at The Storefront who used to wistfully talk about how white they were when they were babies.  There's some Pecola Breedlove madness going on when the subtext is "despite what your eyes tell you, I'm not as black as I look."

#truth

In the end, a documentary that had the potential to elevate our thinking about how black people relate to each other ended up being divisive, over-simplistic, and at times silly (where did India Arie come from?)  If you are interested in learning more about colorism read:

The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color in a New Millennium By Kathy Russell and Midge Wilson

Tar Baby, by Toni Morrison

The Blacker the Berry, by Wallace Thurman