Paradise

 PARADISE

Toni Morrison

Books for Bigots

I've really got my work cut out for me on this one in The Books for Bigot series.  As I have said numerous times, but bears repeating, a first effort must be made to convince potential bigoted readers to pick up a book even with the unarticulated feeling, that a book in hand is actually necessarily a first step toward actually opening it to determine the number of pages one would have to commit to reading, and oh my gosh - the time involved.

For those who are not familiar with books, nor the reading of them, it is often thought that if one is to open a book and start reading it, the book must be read through to the end whether one likes the book or not.  To the bigot, all books have this entry problem, the supposition that once you begin a book, you have to finish it.  Not so.

Often a book is picked up, purchased, or what not with a particular intent to learn something specific about a particular subject.  This is not the case with fiction which I write about in its relation to the world of bigotry.  A novel's purpose has always been and its effect has always been, to give a view of other people and their lives, or, more broadly, society in general:  novels allow you to realize that there are other people on the planet not like you and who have no intention of being like you; and alternatively, there are people like you  who have issues to resolve like you, the daily issues you may need to resolve in yourself and reading about them may actually give you a sense of comfort or ideas on how to resolve some of these that present themselves to you..  

Now PARADISE, written by a Nobel Prize winner for literature, Toni Morrison, a black American, is a book about a group of black people, after the failure of Reconstruction, not being welcome in exiting communities as they travel west, create their own town in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma - - all black people with the exception of the convent already present in the middle of nowhere.  In addition it is about the ladies of the convent, pretty much self-supporting, and either runaways or rejects - - only the remnants of a convent really- definitely a different group of people from the new town makers.

The first pages of the book relate the action of the townsfolk (men) driving to the convent and killing all (women) that lived there.  The very last chapters finish the killing and the aftermath.  What occurs in between, and takes up most of the book, is how the townsfolk, the subjects of slavery, jim crow, segregation, and other forms of hatred and subjection came to act the same as the white society they had fled several generations previously.

As I said in  the beginning, this is a tough book for a bigot since the subject of the book is bigotry; it's about them and it also clearly accepts the fact that bigotry is not limited to white people - - there was clearly bigotry amongst the people of the community based on how dark you were. This should be comforting to white folk - - knowing, "Hey we aren't the only bigots".

So once we gain an understanding that bigotry knows no boundaries, or I should say creates them.  What chance does a bigot have in finishing the book or even advancing far enough to get the point.  Not good, I would say.  But hey, give it a chance.  You, as a bigot, can realize that bigotry escapes all boundaries, which realization can either comfort you in the knowledge that there are many of you - - all different kinds of you or, demoralize you with the understanding that you, yourself, may be the subject of bigotry and artificially created boundaries.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo