Austin Downtown Arts Magazine
Record and CD Reviews
Paradise
by Manuel Gonzales
I spent a week in August in the sun, on the beaches of Cozumel,
frolicking in the white sand and snorkeling through the blue
water (so blue, it couldn't be real, could only be the product
of Disney's imagination, but it was real, all very real),
drinking more than my fill of rum-and-cokes and living in
a dream. Fitting, then, that I should have read Toni Morrison's
Paradise while in my own personal paradise. Of course, the
only similarities end in that both were beautiful, but even
there they differ -- one made of dark beauties and white beaches,
redorangepurple sunsets seen from the decks of small, rocking
boats, yellow and black striped fish so close you could almost
touch them, the taste and smell of salt on your lips and in
your nose morning, noon, and night; the other made of an almost
perfect prose, rich and well-thought out characters, and a
beautiful and sad (and somewhat troubling) story that leaves
you thinking and thinking and thinking.
Toni Morrison hit the literary world in 1971 with the publication
of The Bluest Eye. From then on, she has dealt with a particular
African American experience, some would argue the African
American experience, in seven novels, most of which have dealt
with a female African American experience (Song of Solomon
was her first -- and pretty much only -- novel whose main
character was not a woman) ranging from child molestation,
coming home, leaving home, slavery, and love -- the love of
a mother and daughter, the love of lovers, and most recently,
with Paradise, the love of God. But what is most striking
about her novels and her expression of the African American
experience is the relative absence of whites. For the most
part, they stick to the shadows of her work, and with the
exception of Beloved, slip in and out of scenes with very
little fanfare or affect. Guitar, in Song of Solomon, hated
whites and worked towards their extinction which led to strife
between him and Milkman. Tar Baby dealt with a young black
woman living with a Caucasian family in the West Indies, but
even then the family was little explored or exploited. Beloved
dealt with slavery, but more the effect slavery had on its
victims, direct and indirect, than on the inflictors themselves.
This same can be said for Paradise. Sure, the opening line,
"They shoot the white woman first," might suggest
Paradise is the exception, but more than any of her other
novels to date, Paradise deals with the relations of blacks
with blacks. More importantly, the relations of pure, eight-rock
blacks to blacks of mixed or lighter color. In this novel,
the former rule, while the latter should probably leave and
never come back, thank you very much. Ruby might or might
not be "paradise," but it is where the bulk of action
(and inaction) takes place. A small, all black town in the
plains of Oklahoma, Ruby was founded by 15 families, led by
Deacon and Steward Morgan (twins), after the all-black town
their fathers and grandfathers built, Haven, slowly crumbled
to the ground.
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There is an Oven. In the center of town, there is a large
Oven, built by the founding fathers of Haven and moved, brick
by brick, across the plains of Oklahoma until they reached
what would become Ruby. Before they built houses or stores
or schools, the men rebuilt that Oven and replaced its plaque,
engraved with the words "... the Furrow of His Brow."
The first word or words were lost through time, forgotten
or never even seen by those who left Haven to found Ruby.
And how they remember the original plaque -- Beware the Furrow
of His Brow -- and how the next generation wants to interpret
the plaque -- Be the Furrow of His Brow -- and the heated
arguments that follow serve as the first sign that Ruby is
no paradise and hasn't been so for quite some time.
The first 10 or 15 pages of Paradise might seem daunting
at first, confusing and much like the beginning of Beloved,
where Morrison throws the reader into a situation unexplained
and unreasonable. Simply, in the beginning section of Paradise,
nine men enter a secluded mansion, called the Convent by most
and located just outside Ruby city limits, and they proceed
to kill the women who live there. Why is explained (somewhat)
over the next 300-odd pages. Whether or not you are fulfilled
or will be fulfilled by Morrison's narrative as explanation,
I cannot honestly say. I can't say whether or not I was fulfilled.
By the prose and the characters and the story, the idea of
the story and how well she plays the story out, I was fulfilled.
Though why nine men felt that killing four women living alone
and wild and without supervision, living in relative peace
with Ruby; felt that killing these women who had on countless
times helped their women -- their wives and daughters -- and
had even helped them, the men, and if nothing else had sold
them good food and fiery hot peppers, and had (in at least
one case) loved, truly loved, at least one of the men who
would later break into the Convent, shotgun in one hand and
cross in the other; why these nine men felt they had to kill
these four women, that only by killing these women (unarmed
and unsuspecting women) would they bring back the Ruby of
their dreams, the Haven of their past, I don't quite understand.
The novel is sectioned by name. Names of women from Ruby (including
the woman named Ruby), and of women from the Convent. And
according to Morrison, the novel is about love. Godly love,
to be exact.
Beloved explored the love between a mother and daughter;
Jazz explored the love between man and woman; and Paradise,
the end of a trilogy of love, explores divine love or some
close semblance. And there is debate of God and between churches
and whether or not we should beware the furrow of His brow
or simply be the furrow of His brow. But more the novel is
about a people steeped in the dangers of tradition, men and
women alike, from Ruby and the Convent, stubborn and prideful
and willing to lay blame on anything they deem out of the
ordinary. But then, maybe the story is less about God and
more about religion. Whatever this novel is about, though,
(and I readily admit, it will take more than one or even two
rounds before I come closer to that truth) it is well written,
beautifully imagined and with less posturing and better characterization
than Jazz, as powerful as Beloved and as well-crafted as Beloved
and Song of Solomon. However many times I need to read and
reread this novel to understand better what Morrison had in
mind (though that may not even be what the novel is about
since nobody's perfect and books have a way of running away
from their authors), each read will be more than pleasurable.
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