Reading Response 11/17

The opening lines in "Suppose Sorrow was a Time Machine", by Amiri Baraka, instantaneously lay down this premise of racial tension. Baraka says, "Here is Dothan, Alabama, USA, 1898. This is of value. What is to be said about the place, Dothan, and the time, 1898. It is of value, but it doesn't matter what becomes of the telling, once it is told." If you think about the fact that Baraka is black, the title of the book, and what he just said about the location, Alabama, a racist southern state, it is quite clear this is going to be a story about the struggles of racial battles his family fought around the turn of the century. He keeps talking about his Uncle Tom, which I think might be a symbolic reference to the anti slave novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the journey of slaves and just Africans in general in the US.

Baraka keeps mentioning these "vibrations" that Tom feels, and I think those represent the struggle Tom went through. Kind of like an earthquake, where the vibrations can shake your world and bring it down but you can rebuild, and that's exactly what Tom did. His store gets burned down and he builds a new store so quickly to show that he's not scared of racists. But when the racists burn the new one down and he rebuilds a third building, making it bigger and better than the last, but the racists burn this down again and Tom is forced to head north. This shows the persistence Tom had, even though his world was constantly knocked down he rebuilt to show the racists he was strong. But when they face racists in Pennsylvania they head even further north to New Jersey where Tom finds himself holding political power. I think Tom feels this is the only way to change things, to do it the proper way. This really reminds me of the Jackie Robinson story. They chose Jackie Robinson to be the iconic baseball player who would change the rules of the game forever because they knew he would do the right thing and not fight back even though he really wanted to. He had to show the world how disgusting racism really was, and he did just that.

Baraka keeps mentioning Tom's grandson. I think he does this to build up this story of Tom's grandson only to have it be shattered in the end. I think that Tom died in Alabama after someone hit him over the head and the whole story is hypothetical. It leaves the reader with this kind of sour taste in their mouth because you realize that these racists are killing the innocents of the future. I think that was the bigger picture in this story. Hatred doesn't have a positive impact on things and this story proves just that.