A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Morrison sings the blues.

A Mercy has all the ingredients of the blues. It is filled with the jagged notes of tragedy - open and blood soaked wounds, the awareness of brutal separation and the disfigurement of slavery, the base and ugly underbelly of the jackal like quality of human nature breathing alongside the always simmering loneliness that dwells in the hearts of women. Morrison's words, like the blues, sooths the souls of those raped and brutalized; it is not music; it strips away all pretense that slavery was anything else but centuries of diseased vermin feasting on the flesh of trapped humans.

As the story unfolds, the reader must acknowledge the legacy of one's stolen culture, language, dreams, family and freedom. One must recognize the pedophile, the rapist, and the sadist. At the same time, like the volcano that keeps reshaping the earth, one is mesmerized by the unfailing and undaunted resistance of a people, of women, who refuse to let go of pride and the human dream of the right to be; the right to be free.

by Bacchus