I don't have the Blues but I recently read Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin for the first time in a really long time. The re-read was prompted by the fact that I'm currently teaching it to my 9th graders. I remember feeling a kind of sadness the first time I read it but it doesn't compare with all the emotions I felt this time around. I actually sat in my office and cried. Real human tears. It was a combination of things that tugged at that tiny heart of mine.
This is the passage that struck me the most. I had to read it two or three times to really process the beauty of the writing and (what I think are) the meaning behind the words.
"This was the last time I ever saw my mother alive. Just the same, this picture gets all mixed up in my mind with pictures I had other when she was younger. The way I always see her is the way she used to be on a Sunday afternoon, say, when the old folks were talking after the big Sunday dinner. I always see her wearing pale blue. She'd be sitting on the sofa. And my father would be sitting in the easy chair, not far from her. And the living room would be full of church folks and relatives. There they sit, in chairs all around the living room, and the night is creeping up outside, but nobody knows it yet. You can see the darkness growing against the windowpanes and you hear the street noises every now and again, or maybe the jangling beat of a tambourine from one of the churches close by, but it's real quiet in the room. For a moment nobody's talking, but every face looks darkening, like the sky outside. And my mother rocks a little from the waist, and my father's eyes are closed. Everyone is looking at something a child can't see. For a minute they've forgotten the children. Maybe a kid is lying on the rug, half asleep. Maybe somebody's got a kid in his lap and is absent-mindedly stroking the lad's head. Maybe there's a kid, quiet and big-eyed, curled up in a big chair in the comer. The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frighten the child obscurely. He hopes that the hand which strokes his forehead will never stop-will never die. He hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won't be sitting around the living room, talking about where they've come from, and what they've seen, and what's happened to them and their kinfolk.
But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is already ending. In a moment someone will get up and turn on the light. Then the old folks will remember the children and they won't talk any more that day. And when light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness. He knows that every time this happens he's moved just a little closer to that darkness outside. The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's happened to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him."
Godfuckingdamn. This made me weep. And it made me want to be a better writer. It made me remember why I wanted to become a writer in the first place. I could feel the tears coming after the first read but by the third, I was done. I wasn't even sure I could talk about it with the kids.
To get my kids started on discussing this story I had them listen to Strange Fruit by Nina Simone and So What by Miles Davis. Now I do love Nina but truth be told I've never been an instrumental jazz fan. But I think that's about to change....Back to the important stuff. So the kids listened to the music and I asked them to write down what they were feeling as the music played. When I asked them to share a lot of them gave me images they saw rather than feelings. When they were done I pointed out what they had said and then I asked them to try again to think about how they felt. What they said was rather personal so I won't re-post, but it was interesting. What was also interesting came later, today, in fact. We were continuing our conversation about the story, mostly what they thought was the meaning behind all the mentions of darkness and light. I also asked them to tell me what they liked most about the story. Many of them related that they liked the way family was portrayed. "Don't let your brother fall," really resonated with a lot of them especially the ones with younger siblings. They also liked that there was a feeling of hopefulness at the end and that the two brothers had come to an understanding.
Class the last two days has been really interesting. Tomorrow we wrap up Sonny's Blues and move on to some Andrea Lee (YAY!!)
Also, I don't have the blues but I am ready for the weekend.
