Early American Literature

a mercy

if you don't read this no one will.(one question: can you read?)this story begins in a language Ican't recall but I will tryto build a house of wordsanyway. it is the only way.on the cobblestones of umamemória portuguesa a minha mãeheld close to one life as the otherdrifted away. it was the only way.someone says dominion is wickedbut what she doesn't understand isthat the wilderness inside can bewicked, too. the wilderness ofletting go. so there is no protection herebut there is difference and if I can justremember the contours of thisportuguese memory it will makeall the difference. a man lovedme once, minha mãe, and so toodid women, but he shatteredat the dying inside and the others,at the dying without. those whopray to god say it is the only way.I say it is cruel. unforgiving.(another question: who is responsible?) [End Page 95] so in a moment like the crackingof creation my feathers unfoldedand I too became unforgiving.unforgiven. it was no miracle,minha mãe. it was simply the only way.my company now is the words that caress meand the darkness that thickens butdon't be afraid. if you don't readthis no one will and before it burnsI want you to understand:my soul is hard as cypress nowand I am free at last. I last.oh minha mãe. meu amor.hear a Florens. in full.this is the only wayand I last.

—Madeline Stokes

The poem above, by undergraduate Madeline Stokes (University of Virginia), represents one product of the SEA's 2023 Common Reading Initiative. The initiative is still new, imagined and then created in the year leading up to the 2021 conference by Cassander Smith, Brigitte Fielder, and Tara Bynum. These scholars and others, taking on the project of "conference organizing for change," aimed to create a sense of community centered on a single text while also broadening the intellectual approaches and perspectives shaping the SEA—including those of contemporary writers as well as scholars and undergraduate and graduate students focused on other periods. In 2023 the organizing text was Toni Morrison's A Mercy, the Nobel laureate's unforgettable novel about colonial America. As part of the initiative, SEA members around the country taught the novel in classes at various levels and grappled with its enduring questions.

Maddie Stokes works through some of these in her poem and the reflection she submitted with it. The poem rests on questions that came up for her as a reader: Why is the novel addressed to the character known simply as "the blacksmith"? "How would the narrative change," she asks, "if Florens attempted to bridge the gap between herself and her mother, the 'one sadness' that remains at the end of the novel? This poem is my experiment in [End Page 96] answering that question. It is, in effect, an attempt to retell the novel's story through Florens' voice and to Florens' mother."

As Maddie notes, Florens is "a character who lives among and between different cultures, languages, and power structures," some of which receive less attention in early American literature classrooms than others. To think through the significance of the novel's "memória portuguesa" required Maddie to consider and consult a language other than English, as Morrison also did, and to bump up against the limits of her own proficiency in its spoken and written form. A small exercise, one that Maddie chose herself, in recognizing the vast number of spoken and written tongues of the Americas—including those that have been lost, just as Florens loses not only her mother but, in her enforced adaptation to English, most of her mother's Portuguese, and all of her mother's natal African language. What does "a mercy" mean in this layering of language loss and acquisition that results in Florens's narration...