Memphis

“I had out my pocket sketchbook, was already fumbling for the piece of charcoal somewhere in the many pockets of my Levi overalls. My larger sketchbook, my blank canvases the size of teacups, my brushes and inks and oils were all packed tight in the car. But my smaller sketchbook, I kept on me. At all times. Everywhere I went. I wanted to capture the life of the front porch, imprint it in my notebook and in my memory. A quick landscape.”

The novel’s beginning establishes Joan’s love of art. She always carries a sketchbook with her to capture the things that impress her and cause her emotional reactions. The landscape surrounding the family home immediately mesmerizes her and is something that she wants to keep in her memory. Joan’s inner world is inextricably connected to art, which defines her course throughout the story.

“My aunt looked like the taller, more regal version of Mama. Auntie August was nearly six feet tall. I had read Anansi stories. I knew that it was the women tall as trees and fiercer than God that ancient villages often sent into battle. If Mama was Helen of Troy, August was Asafo. She seemed to go on forever, seemed to be the height of the door itself. She had hips, the kind Grecian sculptors would spend months chiseling, big and bold and wide. Her skin was noticeably darker, darker than mine even, and I felt a welt of pride. I had always coveted darker-skinned women their color. There was a mystery to their beauty that I found hypnotizing, Siren-like. […] Most of the Black women the public pronounced beautiful looked like Mama. Black Barbies. Bright. Hair wavier than curly. Petite figures. So, when my Auntie August opened that door, and I saw that her skin was so dark it reflected all the other colors surrounding it—the yellow of the morning light, the yellow of the door, the peach tan of the calico cat weaving in and out of Mya’s short legs—I knew that the aunt I could barely remember was, in and of herself, a small, delicious miracle.”

Joan vividly describes her first impression of August. She compares her aunt to the African Asafo warriors, calling out her powerful Blackness. The passage highlights the pervasiveness of racism in social models and beauty standards that apply ideals of emulating whiteness to Black women. Joan expresses her admiration, love, and pride in Black skin while criticizing a society that values lighter skin. Simultaneously, her description indicates the diversity of Black hair and skin coloring as she embraces all forms of Blackness. Joan’s mention of her diverse literary choices that include works celebrating African roots is a contrast to the image of her mother reading Wuthering Heights and discussing it with Jax when they first met. Joan’s healthy understanding of beauty may come from her experience of literature with which she feels connected and visible.

“The voice was male. Not adult, but on the crisp cusp of it, burgeoning with masculinity. It shocked us. We hadn’t heard a male voice in days except for Al Green’s over the radio and that white man at the gas station a half day’s drive back. It was like a predator had suddenly announced its presence in our new safe haven. A boy, almost as tall as August but with a body slender and young, stepped into the doorframe, blocking the entry. He didn’t look like us. He didn’t have the high cheekbones, the slightly upturned top lip, or the massive forehead everyone else related to me had. He had a copper hue to his skin that seemed slightly foreign to me, like meeting someone from an entirely different tribe. But I recognized him. My cousin Derek.”

Joan sees Derek for the first time in years and memories of her rape return. The passage alludes to the theme of The Menace of Toxic Masculinity. Joan’s traumatic experience of rape and her father’s violent behavior towards her mother make her feel that masculinity is hostile and threatening. Even though she finds a sense of home in Memphis, Derek’s predatory presence disturbs her. Instead, she finds safety being in the presence of women.

“What had happened to that man? To her marriage? Miriam didn’t rightly know. All she knew was that she hadn’t prepared for how lonely marriage could be. Jax always off at training, months-long deployments God knows where, training for war. And then, one came. And off he went, leaving her alone. Once more. Miriam hated the large Victorian they’d moved into after their wedding seventeen years before, with its spiral staircases and secret nooks and crannies, its creaking floors. She hated the space of it at night, after she had put the girls to bed, how her footsteps echoed in the hallway. She had no one to talk to in North Carolina. She missed Memphis. When Jax returned from the Gulf, he returned even more distant than when he had left. Hardly speaking a word, and when he did, it was to argue.”

The passage describes Miriam’s initial emotions over the breakdown of her relationship with Jax. Miriam remains perplexed over the reason Jax changed. As his military career kept him away from her most of the time, Miriam became unhappy and lonely. Miriam realizes that the Gulf War had a profound impact on Jax. Jax’s experience of warfare made him aggressive and distant towards Miriam. After the war, their marriage began to collapse.

“She was going to go back to school, at the age of forty. The studying alone would swamp her. The forthcoming long nights at the library. And all the other students would be so young and hungry and ambitious. Miriam was just plain hungry. She knew she needed to provide for her girls. And something deep and almost animalistic, instinctual, in her did not want Jax’s money even if it were offered. She wanted to do this on her own. Her mind went to a fight long past, when Jax had spat out a vicious question she had no true answer for: ‘Where the hell you think you going go, how far you think you going get, with two babies, no degree, and a Black face?’ Miriam doubted she had the answer now. But she knew she needed to try to find it.”

The passage reveals Miriam’s inner character. She lived as a homemaker for years and never obtained a degree, she decides to return to school even though she is decades older than the average college first-year student. Her inner strength becomes evident as despite her fears and Jax’s underestimation of her, she vows to make it alone and claim her Independence as a woman and mother. Miriam is courageous because she goes on despite her fear.

“And my dark skin—Mama never treated me different from Mya because of it, bless God. But she didn’t have to. The neighbors did. My teachers. Girls, Black and white, on base. The people who worked at the grocery store. The parents handing me slightly smaller handfuls of Halloween candy. All those confused double takes, the outright stares. The pity behind their prolonged looks came next. Then the disgust. And now it came with such clarity, watching my Auntie August drop green tomatoes into sizzling hot grease, that I took after my aunt. And she was a vision. Her skin was the color of late evening. I imagined drawing her. I wanted to get the length of her limbs just right, the curve of a high cheekbone. I wanted to put her on paper. Have her live there. Proof of dark beauty. I wanted the world to see and to be ashamed.”

The passage extends the topic of racial discrimination and alludes to the issue of colorism. Joan is thankful that her family does not value lighter skin above darker skin and describes her own experiences of racism. Her dark skin makes her subject to discrimination in several social environments. However, Joan is proud to be Black. She considers dark skin beautiful and admires her aunt’s dark coloring. Joan wants to paint the Black women she knows to counter racism and show off the beauty of Blackness.

“Maybe it was the fact that they were all together again—North women underneath one roof. Maybe it was seeing Joan’s drawing and the rush of love and protection that had welled up in her in that moment. Wanting Joan to always cherish her gift made her want to honor her own. August couldn’t rightly explain it herself, but she figured her mother would have been right proud. So, maybe she did it for her.”

Realizing Joan’s gift in painting, August remembers her singing talent. August feels a different kind of energy in the household since her sister and nieces moved in. Their loving bond and mutual support make August feel empowered and more hopeful. As she sees Joan painting, working on her gift, August feels the need to sing and honor her own talent.

“Drawing was my refuge. I could escape into my sketchbook. I didn’t see much of Derek because I chose not to. Yes, he was there in the house living with me. But I behaved as if he were a house cat I didn’t much like and who did not much like me. If he entered a room, I left it. If he spoke to me—rare—I hissed back. […] If I concentrated on the sketch at hand, Derek would fade into the background of my life.”

The passage alludes to the theme of The Healing Power of Art. Despite the pain caused by Derek’s presence at home, Joan derives energy from her art. While painting, Joan forgets about Derek and traumatic memories. As such, art gives her the power and energy to shield her inner self. This realization is important for the growth she experiences after her later confrontation with Derek at the prison.

“N*****, Hazel did not so much mind. Perhaps because she used it herself, albeit affectionately, with only the closest of girlfriends, albeit without the sharp, hard r sound the officer had used. But girl had always sent Hazel into a silent rage. Ever since she had noticed at a very young age that white folk used it to address her mother. Girl, you did a wonder on this lace. Or Girl, you got my linens ready? Della, a grown and determined and brilliant woman, reduced to that colored girl in North Memphis who makes them fancy dresses.”

Hazel’s experience with the term “girl” indicates that racism not only oppressed Black male identity but also Black womanhood. Hazel feels that “girl” was a term that relegated her strong and resilient mother and all Black women to socially inferior persons. Hazel realized early on that claiming her womanhood was also a means of claiming her humanity. It is significant that in her musings, Hazel places higher on her hierarchy of detestable terms the white use of “girl” in the contexts she specifies than their use of the hard-r form of the N-word, which is universally understood as akin to evil when white people use it.

“That night, she’d packed up her college textbooks—packed up her dream of attending Rhodes like her mother before her, of perhaps even becoming a doctor—and, like winter sweaters, stowed them away in her dead mother’s armoire. Went to the shelf in the kitchen Meer could never quite reach without straining, found the nearest bottle, and sat that whole night with the whiskey and her thoughts and her sobs. But by the time morning light had streaked into the kitchen’s windows, she had a plan. Hair—the idea had hit her like a drunken husband. Singing, she knew, was not an actual plan.”

August planned to be a doctor. After Children’s Services ordered that someone Must supervise Derek constantly, August abandoned her dreams and plans for the future with sorrow. However, she immediately formed another plan. August resolved to be independent and provide for herself and her son. Even though she did not pursue her musical talent, she converted one of her practical talents, hairstyling, into a business opportunity. In a short time, she became one of the most successful hairdressers in her area. The imagery in this quote shows resilience as a scrappy, gritty quality, one which August embodied fully.

“She remembered Myron adding the finishing touches, flowers blooming on the walls against the warm buttermilk backdrop. Few knew he could draw. It was something he had hidden even from her—until, one day, doing the laundry, fishing in his pants pockets for loose change, she had discovered a napkin with an exact copy of her sleeping face on it. How Myron survived the war was anyone’s guess. Hazel had received weekly letters from him, now a Marine Corps private, alluding to his location—Normandy, the Ardennes, Buchenwald. The atrocities at each, the details of the carnage, Myron never included. Only his love for his new wife, his desire for the touch of her.”

Myron fought during World War II. However, instead of absorbing the violence and becoming aggressive, Myron’s love for Hazel sheltered and nurtured him. His drawing of her while she was asleep is a quiet act of a man besotted. It is a powerful testament to the depth of his love. His omission of the gruesome acts of war from his letters was another example of how he protected Hazel. His artistic talent might have been a hereditary legacy linking him to Joan.

“Miss Dawn had known August her whole life. She’d even been there at August’s birth. […] In the middle of a late August night in 1963, Miriam ran from the family home and down the street to the leaning pink house at the end of the block, screaming for Miss Dawn to come and to come quick. Pulling her head back in from her bedroom window, Miss Dawn had sprinted back with Miriam and found Hazel on all fours near the clawfoot tub, a moaning and calving heifer of herself. Miss Dawn had placed a hand on Hazel’s belly, another cupped August’s crown, and she cooed and guided August into existence.”

The character of Miss Dawn is present throughout the narrative and acquires an almost mystical dimension. Miss Dawn represents the Black female community of Douglass who always supported the North family. Joan is immediately impressed by her and her aged but strong hands inspire Joan to capture the characters of Miss Dawn and the other women in her art.

“The officer stood before her and muttered under his breath that Myron’s squad car had been found in an abandoned salvage yard on Mud Island, his body, bruised and broken, found and pulled from the Mississippi a mile downriver. Before Hazel could process this information, she was drawn to the demeanor of the man. The way Barnes avoided Hazel’s eyes was all the proof she needed that whatever had happened to Myron, her Myron, had been no accident. Myron had been murdered. By members of the very force who had sworn to protect and defend and honor.”

A crucial point in the narrative is when Hazel learns about Myron’s murder. The passage shows that racism and racial violence are at the root of the North family’s trauma and emphasizes the reasons for their losses. The cruelty of the event is intensified by the fact that Hazel is pregnant; not only is Hazel now alone as a mother and full of rage for her husband’s death, but these white men have taken from her child a good man for a father. Without fear, she shows her disgust for the white officer.

“All of Douglass—the teenagers in love, the tired workingmen, the even more tired womenfolk— all of them stood on the steps of the porch of the house Myron had built for Hazel, stood on the lawn, climbed up in the branches of the magnolia and found seats where they could. The people in the neighborhood stood watch that night. Stood there all night. Not a one saying a word. Stood watch over Hazel and her baby. Some of the men fetched their old war uniforms. Stood saluting the house. That whole night.”

The passage shows that the Black people of the Douglass neighborhood always shared a bond based on common experiences with racism and violence but also Black identity. They recognized Myron as a foundational member of their community and his passing received the respect it was due. Even though Hazel had no other relatives and was alone after Myron died, the Black community provided moral support for her and her children throughout the years. The neighborhood believed in the importance of community and belonging and saw it as an extension of everyone’s family. This imagery is both present and in contrast with the later gang activity that ravages Douglass. Gangs fill a need for community among people who have lost connections with other forms of community. They symbolize the destructive force of both toxic masculinity and white oppression. They move young Black men further away from the forms of community Hazel experienced during times of upheaval. The decline in the community from former times has a hand in men like Jax not knowing how to be a strong, steady presence for their families. However, its resurgence shows in the ways Black women are present for each other.

“[T]hinking about how when Derek was still living with us, I sometimes felt a rage so strong I believed I could kill. Maybe I wasn’t so different from Daddy. An unpleasant thought. Maybe he’d even made me this way, I realized, angrily. But my rage came partly from fear. That reassured me until I considered, with a start, that maybe that wasn’t so different from my father, after all. When Derek got me angry, especially when we first moved to Memphis, it would take all of me not to break something—to pick up some antique in the house and throw it against the wall. I had to learn to control this rage. I would walk away, argue with myself. I’d leave the table and eat alone on the porch, cooling off. Why on earth could my father not do the same? What did my daddy have to be afraid of, anyway?”

The contrast between male and female rage is evident in the passage. Joan realizes that her expression of rage differs from her father’s. She can control her anger because she has an outlet in painting. Joan’s art sustains her inner self. She wonders why a man can only resort to aggression and violence to feel in control of intense anger, frustration, or circumstances.

“My mind was racing. Professor Mason’s words had ignited a fire in me. For better or worse, I was born this way. I was born to be an artist. Placing pencil to page felt like worship each and every time. Of course, I did it. Of course, I was obsessed. Art is air. How can Mama not see that? I wondered silently. How can she not see that I may just be great at it? That just maybe a dark-skinned skinny girl from North Memphis can draw something that will silence this world?”

The passage indicates Joan’s coming of age and the realization of her vocation. The moment that Joan understands that art is what she dreams of doing in life, she cannot hear Miriam’s concerns. Her gift offers Joan a sense of self. Despite her mother’s doubts, she believes that she can attain her dream.

“That very night, after August had gone to bed, Miriam had helped her mother paint big, bold, black letters onto a large white placard. The sign, so simple, stated, I Am a Man. […] The deaths of the sanitation workers had provoked an already tense Memphis. Ignited the place with a fury. Miriam could feel the anger well up in her city. Folk spoke different. Had an altered, higher pitch to their voices, the end of their questions rising in a way that made Miriam wary. Memphis had raised Miriam. After her father’s death benefits had run out, a mere year after Miriam’s birth, her mother had had to go to work. That or sell the house Myron had built for the both of them. And as her mother often told her, it was the talk of the town that Southwestern, over on Parkway, had a nursing program. One of the first in the country to offer admission to Black women. Miriam had grown up with her mother’s passion tied around her like yarn: revolution. Ever since Miriam could remember, their house had been filled with leaflets proclaiming the power of Black women, detailing the humanity of Black men.”

Hazel’s resilience is also evident in her participation in the Civil Rights movement as a grassroots activist in the South. Hazel instilled her passion for justice and equality in Miriam who witnessed her mother’s strength and courage. Like Miriam, Hazel also had to provide alone for herself and her daughter and channeled her Power and resilience to becoming a nurse and leaving footprints on a path for Black women that, in Hazel’s time, was still a new and uncertain journey. Miriam demonstrates the same courage and resilience when she follows her mother’s footsteps as a part of her healing arc.

“Daddy took a deep breath then and began again, speaking more slowly this time. We were all looking at him, but he was looking only at Mama. That and the desperation in his voice, the way it sounded almost like a plea, gave me the impression he was offering up this story to her as both explanation and apology for something else altogether.”

Jax attempts to apologize to Miriam for his behavior. When he visits her and their daughters in Memphis after the terrorist attacks in the Pentagon, Jax realizes that war and violence distorted his personality. Telling the story of his harrowing experience in the Pentagon on 9/11 is how he voices his trauma. This is an important meeting of the themes of The Resilience of Black Womanhood and the Menace of Toxic Masculinity. Miriam, who wants real love in her life, stands resolute, unwilling to take any more chances with Jax. Jax opens himself up and admits fault, two things that might combat toxic masculinity, but Miriam is not willing to sacrifice her current peace and feelings of accomplishment to a figment of the possibility of love. Part of her strength here is in knowing she isn’t the answer Jax needs for his healing.

“Miriam had wanted that for herself all her life. Simple, Black love. For the life of her, she couldn’t place a finger on what exactly went wrong or why. It was as if she held a broken teacup in her hands but couldn’t remember breaking it and had no idea how to mend it. The next day, Jax was gone. But the black Shelby Mustang remained. There was a note next to the keys, which he’d left on the kitchen table: ‘Joan, treat her better than I ever treated your mountain of a mother…Oo-rah.’”

Despite Jax’s attempts to apologize, his and Miriam’s marriage is over. Jax cannot make amends to Miriam because there is so much unaddressed trauma between them, and Miriam doesn’t know how to trust Jax. Miriam idealized her parents’ legendary “Black love” and still wonders why her relationship with Jax failed. Jax eventually realizes her strength and courage. Miriam’s marriage to Jax is the nexus of the novel’s themes of The Resilience of Black Womanhood and The Menace of Toxic Masculinity. The status quo at the end could symbolize many things: How toxic masculinity prevents men from changing patterns of behavior even with the love and support of strong women, how strong Black women persevere during and after their encounters with toxic masculinity, or how the clash of female power and toxic mindsets force a paradigm shift in family structures, for example.

“She wondered then if Myron could see her squatting in the garden he had built for her, planting her vegetables for the coming summer. She wondered whether he would even recognize her now, hair gray at the roots, thighs thickened from years of work and motherhood and suffering and laughter. What she never stopped to wonder, even after all the years, was whether Myron still loved her. That was fact. Always had been. She still spoke to him, albeit less often.”

At the moment of her death, Hazel still thought of Myron as her love for him remained with her. Hazel let herself go without asking for help. Her life was full of struggle but also filled with courage and joy. Despite her suffering, Hazel died content, eager to reunite with her love, Myron. Hazel’s relationship stands as an ideal for love and partnerships. It is a useful contrast for relationships damaged by the ravages of toxic masculinity. There is a lesson about masculinity in Myron’s example: he cultivated something special with Hazel, protected it and her, and chose her over the lure of misogyny already present in their day. One tragedy of white on Black violence during the Civil Rights Era is how it removed so many role models and Black leaders—activists, teachers, labor leaders, political catalysts, and fathers—and left families and communities with young Black boys to struggle to define and live up to the masculine ideals set by men like Myron and abandoned in the wake of so much violence and death.

“For the second time that night, Miriam nearly had a heart attack. She could have fallen to her knees, dropped down onto the hardwood floor, and prostrated herself in front of all the beauty. She had never really looked at Joan’s drawings, her sketches. All these years of telling Joan to put her sketch pad away, asking her bluntly if she had finished her calculus homework, Miriam had never really seen anything Joan had done. At least, not since she was a child. And now Miriam was certain her daughter had grown up into such a fine thing. For all around that room was Joan’s art.”

The passage illustrates a key moment in the narrative when Miriam realizes her Daughter’s gift. Miriam wanted a financially secure future for Joan and urged her to become a doctor. Miriam wants her to be independent and never struggle like she did. However, when August shows her Joan’s work, she understands that her daughter is accomplished and has potential. Joan’s art is beautiful and August makes Miriam understand that she must believe in her daughter’s dreams. Once again, Miriam must shift her understanding. Just as she must adjust to being a single parent and nontraditional student, she now must rethink her litmus for what a strong, successful Black woman looks like. In this quote, she begins to understand the power and necessity of art and creativity, for the artist, but also consumers of artistic products.

“‘You asked that girl once to name you a famous artist who was a woman, who was Black.’ August’s cigarette was out, but her face was set in stone. She hadn’t minded the fact that the cigarette singed her fingers. ‘Joan Della North. That’s who. If she has to be the first, then so be it. […] And I know I shouldn’t be telling no mother how to raise her kids. But I am a mother, too. And Joan. My. They mine, too.’”

August remains a supportive aunt throughout the story and loves her nieces as if They were her daughters. August realizes Joan’s gift from the beginning and believes in her niece’s ability to succeed. She doesn’t supplant Miriam as the mother figure, but she casts a powerful shadow over prejudice of any kind, even prejudice held against art and artists as superfluous to Black identity. August also learns how her belief in the child can be leveraged for the adults. She reminds Miriam of the long history of women’s resilience in their family, and that the two of them together, as mothers and powerful Black women, can support the children and each other.

“Derek said nothing for a time. The chains allowed enough slack for him to rub a long, furrowed line over his brow. He closed his eyes and did not say what was so apparent: that Derek knew—as did I—just what it is like to live among demons. To be played with, unwillingly, like a child holding a magnifying glass over an ant. […] Or one burying a comb deep in a backyard, underneath a magnolia. […] If I had the power to break a man, break him I had. Not a soul, not even Derek, deserved that kind of damnation. […] And I prayed He would forgive me. Because no matter what Derek had done to me, to others, to Memphis, that n******’s trauma could never heal mine.”

A turning point in the text is Joan’s visit to Derek. Facing Derek, Joan confronts her childhood trauma head-on. Joan realizes Derek’s trauma when she sees him in prison, a place full of suffering. She understands that her fervent hate for Derek cannot heal her and that no kind of revenge could change his or her traumas. It is significant to Joan’s healing arc that for most of the narrative, she can’t stop the persona of “victim of sexual violence” from dominating her concept of self, encounters the ways prison victimizes Derek, she understands that to heal, she must let go of that concept of herself and nurture those that make her whole and speak to her power.