Suppose Sorrow was a Time Machine

“Suppose Sorrow Was a Time Machine,” by Amiri Baraka envisioned his own family's history as an emotional time loop knotted by racial violence against African Americans. The story follows a timeline of events his grandfather Tom goes through regarding acts of violence.

I think these first two paragraphs marks the impact of the story, is in the witnessing, the looking back, the looking forward, the emptiness of loss, and the fullness of knowing. Baraka was a witness. It is through witnessing and experiencing that we provide history that has value.

The story's second paragraph introduces us to the "you" of the narration enacting the tense of the title “You are a Negro who has felt the ground vibrate, and you are trying to interpret the vibration. You are trying to interpret the vibration, and what it means in 1898 Dothan. I know you Tom. You are my grandfather. I am not born yet but I have felt the ground vibrate too.” The author becomes the not-yet-born child. He opens a passage between himself and his absent grandfather, which the same vibration goes from one generation to another. I feel like the present is translated into the past to interpret. "Let your unborn grandchild know what his dead, whistling grandfather thought." The ‘vibrations’ the unborn child senses through the womb of his mother is the maternal passage connecting grandfather and son.

Tom Russ was a shopkeeper whose store was burned down by racists. He rebuilt it, "knelt back down in those ashes and scraped the black off again, and built again" (2). The black ashes and the image of flames in this sentence show to me images of brilliance and savagery.  I didn’t quite completely understand what the word vibrations meant in the story.  At some parts of the story I thought the “vibration” was referring to his struggles but at others I felt like it was referring to the music inside of him or his determination. When I think about vibrations I think of natural disasters for example a tornado or a hurricane, the vibrations represent tragedy, negative impacts. The fact that Tom’s store was burnt down 2 times and he rebuild it back up shows the reader he is not afraid and he will overcome these harsh racists acts.  In Blues People, Baraka repositioned African American music in the U.S. as a technology of cultural evolution and secret resistance.