I think everyone can recall their first moments of true self awareness. Mine happened around age 11. I was in a gas station bathroom. Like Baby Suggs, my self awareness came through my hands. I somehow had discovered for the first time, staring at myself in a dirty mirror, that these oddly shaped tools at the end of my arms completely belonged to me and that I was the only one who could control them.
On page 166, Baby Suggs, quite a bit older than my prepubescent self, has her big moment. Big Suggs declared, "with a clarity as simple as it was", ' "These hands belong to me. These my hands." ' It took her becoming a free woman to discover her hands. This simple fact shows the oppressive nature of slavery, of dehumanizing and controlling someone so much that they don't realize they have their own hands. As a free woman, Baby Suggs has to establish who she will be and what she will be called. She would no longer be called by the name on her sales ticket, Jenny. A name she never knew why she was called. She is now Baby Suggs and, for the first time, she can feel her beating heart.
Baby Suggs shares her awakening with a huge crowd of people in, what I like to think of, as an antebellum era TED Talk. She tells her audience to love the "beat and beating heart", as well as their liver and neck and mouth and flesh and shoulders and arms and womb, and all that they had forgotten was theirs and all that they were never taught to love.
Morrison's rich imagery and layered descriptions are not as present in this passage. After I read it, I felt the passage was somehow out of place. The language felt almost "cheesy" or "clichéd", unlike Morrison. When I read the passage again, I realized these emotional and basic statements were what the crowd needed to hear. At the age of 11, when I had my gas station bathroom realization, I had been hearing these messages of self love and individuality for 11 years from my parents. In the context of the lives' of the people in this crowd, they often did not have present and nourishing parents to remind them of their worth. Baby Suggs played that role.
I really like your analysis of Baby Suggs' description of discovering her hands through freedom. By extension, she is also discovering her humanity through her newfound freedom. This development is very interesting because Morrison describes Baby Suggs' ignorance to the concept of not being a slave which means she could not even fathom the idea of being fully human if she couldn't imagine freedom.
ReplyDeleteI really like this! I cannot think of a time when I first became self aware but I think that your description of Baby Suggs' "preaching" was accurate. I think that dehumanization occurs when ones identity is stripped or in these cases, never allowed to develop. I think that it can take a community to instill a sense of meaning back in you and to reestablish an identity.
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