It's a story about a quiet, queenly woman who never looked away, a tale to tear the heart of a mother, daughter and the Blacks with slave ancestors.
Here are the fragments of the sad song by Tony Morrison:
A man was nothing but a man. They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house.
The best thing was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, maybe you’d have a little love left over for the next one.
To get to a place where you could love anything you chose---not to need permission for desire---well, now, that was freedom.
Unless carefree, motherlove was a killer.
Your love is too thick.
Too thick? Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.
When I tell you mine, I also mean I’m yours. I wouldn’t draw breath without my children
Whatever is going on outside my door ain’t for me. The world is in this room. This here’s all there is and all there needs to be.
Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. . . . The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, . . . the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. . . . The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own.
Slaves not supposed to have pleasurable feelings on their own; their bodies not supposed to be like that, but they have to have as many children as they can to please whoever owned them. Still, they were not supposed to have pleasure deep down.
Sad as it was that she did not know where her children were buried or what they looked like if alive, fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like.
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