A Challenge from Beyond the Grave
After spending time with Toni Morrison this week, I took the time to test out what I learned in some writing challenges.
I’ve been spending time reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved this week. I’d been introduced to Toni through my mother’s book club recommendation of The Bluest Eye when I was younger — the same club that introduced me to the works of J. California Cooper and Asha Bandele — but it was always hard for me to read her. Toni is a writer whose works demand your full attention; requiring you to summon the depths of your intelligence to really feel what she is saying — and where it is coming from. And for me a reader with the attention span of a fruit fly, her works have always been a challenge for me.
But this week instead of running, I put on my big girl reader pants and dove into the insane world of Beloved. For those unfamiliar with the story, it is a tale of a woman dealing with the ghost of the child she murdered upon being threatened with the idea of returning to slavery. A haunting concept Morrison develops through and through to the bitter end where the main character is left to contemplate what was taken from her over the course of her life.
What struck me most was Morrison’s comfort with language, using it to dive in and out of character thoughts while simultaneously layering her story with depth and emotion, without placating the audience’s intelligence. Something I myself have struggled with in my characterizations. Not for lack of language, but because I myself, for lack of better words am dead inside — I tend to rely on wit and humor to deal with more complex emotions that are largely uncomfortable for me in my writing.
But under Toni’s wise tutelage I came to see pain and trauma not as things to survie and encourage and empower, but rather as tools for exploration of the psyche. How does one deal with one’s choices as they continue to define one’s character. Toni gave me, as she would put it, a language for said pain and emotion. And in it I found a way of expressing truth beyond simple words and anecdotes. I found poetry. I found music. I found what I can only describe as “The Whoa”.
But the true test of whether you learned something or not, is to practice. And practice I did. First today with a Twitter challenge I received from a mutual follow. The challenge was as follows:
This was challenging because the immediate temptation was to go with a horror story in an attempt to spoke the pants off of people. But I could feel Mama Toni’s watchful eye go “Ah-Ah little one, plumb, don’t tread.” And so I did. I took something that was bothering me and turned it into a source of inspiration. Here was the result:
“The light left them too long ago. I watched my children’s spirits evaporate beneath clouds of brokenness and failure to understand. Death was never an easy thing for adults to process. I can’t fathom what it does to children. I watched their play grow less creative.
Watched their nightmares grow stronger and fears of abandonment increase. Things they gained from the fire that claimed their grandmother and home. And I knew not how to bring back my children. I myself swam in a river of “Yes I Can” and “I am strong” — my Nile of sorts.
But their faces reminded me. Joy absent, tears present and growing. And I was lost praying for the day they would return to me, the innocent lambs of God presented me upon their births. I had failed to protect them from the world.
But then, they found books. They found refuge in exploring worlds that took them from where they were and into another place. YouTube and tv shows reminding them better was possible. And one day it passed that i began to see them again. Sparks of life emerged from the ashes of our former life. And they day they came back I found my purpose and knew I wanted to give that light to children everywhere. That even if life is unhappy, they too can find a spark in the darkness. That’s why I write. #storytimewithjael #basedonatruestory”
I was impressed with it, not because I wrote it but because I took the time to address something I had been feeling in way that conveyed feeling without needing to explain the origins and try to coax the audience into my shoes as a parent. I just stuck with the POV and contrasted the change I witnessed against things society expects of children. And I did it using Toni’s gift of language to me.
But to ensure it was not a fluke, I had to do it again. A friend of mine *who bday is intriguingly enough the same day as Toni’s death day) made a simple request on my timeline: Find a recent picture of yourself and explore the story inside of it. Simple enough, right?
Herein lie the tricky part: the selection of the picture. A difficult thing only because I don’t do a ton of selfies, and the ones I do take usually feature makeup. I wanted a story that was compelling and captured the truth of how I really feel at the moment, while allowing the audience to find some relation to me. After all, this exercise can either yield emotional depth…or a tmi induced bout of narcissistic rambling — and I ain’t tryna sound like of H.C.I.C right now (head cheeto in charge).
So I settled on this makeup free picture:
And this was the result:
“There is a light in you.
Can you find it? There was a time I felt it out of my depths. Clouded perception of self, longed for last breaths to be drawn beneath diamond skies.
Blue I was.
And now looking upon your face I see only a remnant of that which eclipsed your eyes but so long ago. It lays beneath the curve of your brow and hidden in the shadow of genetic indents that never quite cut all the way through.
You sparkle. You shine.
And that glow remains effervescent in the clean lines of your jaw.
But a hesitant smile; as though you wish not to burst the bubble of what may come. A rarity of good fortune you think, and you long to savor it…
But you wonder if it’s safe. Will it last? Or is this just a moment of air, taken upon resurfacing from the deep.
Shall you dive once more?
Though you may fear the return and wish not to face the darkness again, you are not a creature made for surface things.
A wolf of the ocean’s depths are in you; you’re meant to sing songs to the people of the treasures you find.
Fear not little one the return to the dark.
The dark is where I found you.”
All in all this challenges showed me complex emotions aren’t scary. They’re natural and if you allow them to flow as the words do — rather than trying to spend your time conjuring complex images — then the audience will not only get the picture you are painting, but will feel what it is you felt as you were writing it.
Both stories moved me to tears as I wrote them because they were a cathartic release. One of a mother’s concern for her children’s emotional state after a traumatic loss; the other a young woman’s note to self on embracing the darkness she is afraid of. Both stem from the same place: loss and fear. But each tackle it from a different perspective that allows the audience into my world, rather than keep them at a distance.
I still have much more to learn and far more to writer, but breaking down what I’ve learned helps me cement what I’ve learned in a more concrete way so it never leaves me.
I am eternally grateful to the spirit of Toni Morrison for sitting with me and demanding of my soul and spirit a connection with what makes me human. Something difficult to do as a Black person in a world where literature almost goes out of it’s way to convince you the opposite is true. And I thank her for giving me the gift of language to express my humanity with, no matter how stubbornly I refused at first. Under her patient eye and care I’ll be a better writer, and perhaps a better person.
And I don’t think I could ever thank her enough for that.
