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Twenty-one years ago Toni Morrison published "Beloved," a slavery tale set in 1855 Cincinnati. Morrison accomplished a rare feat for an American by winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.
Morrison's latest book, "A Mercy," is a prequel to "Beloved." The story takes place in Virginia around 1690.
In a recent interview with the The Scotsman newspaper, Morrison said she wrote "A Mercy" because "what I was wondering was what it must have felt like to be a slave before racism."
Growing up in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison listened to family storytellers. She repeated stories, with her own embellishments.
Morrison's storytelling genius is fully blooming in "A Mercy," told from the viewpoints of a number of characters, the most significant being Florens, a young black slave. As the story begins, she is being sold to a Dutch trader, Jacob Vaark.
Vaark tried to collect on a bad debt. He didn't like slavery. Still, he takes Florens as partial payment. Initially, Vaark demanded Florens' mother, but the mother begged Vaark to take 8-year-old Florens instead. Her mother's act of sending her daughter to what might be a better life was "a mercy."
Morrison explores this not yet racist slavery. On Vaark's farm, she meets Lina, the sole survivor of a smallpox epidemic that wiped out her entire tribe. Vaark's wife, Rebekka, came to America as a mail-order bride.
Sorrow is an indentured servant at Vaark's place. She was the sole survivor of a shipwreck. Willard and Scully also are indentured servants. White, black and American Indian, these characters have something in common — each is some type of orphan, and with the exception of Vaark, they are all in some sort of bondage.
It was a land of fear, hardship and death. Lina, the Native American, ponders the madness of these invaders she calls the "Europes": "cut loose from the earth's soul, they insisted on purchase of its soil, and like all orphans they were insatiable. It was their destiny to chew up the world and spit out a horribleness that would destroy all primary peoples."
Sorrow is so damaged that she has an invisible twin to keep her company. But the suffering that Florens endures is the central focus of "A Mercy." We feel her misery as she says "I never cry. Even when the woman steals my cloak and shoes on the boat, no tears come."
At age 16, Florens falls in love with a blacksmith, a free black who came to the farm to build a grand iron gate for Vaark's new mansion. Vaark has cut down 50 trees to build it, but he dies before his dream home is finished.
Morrison creates a magical voice for Florens that lifts readers up on a swirling arc of prose, which makes all this heartbreak and despair almost tolerable. Florens could be describing how Morrison captivates her readers when she says "I can never not have you have me."
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 11/26/08; 12:06:06 PM
from the dept.
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