Waterbearer: A Reading From the Book of...

Abstract

In the following piece, I examine the relationship between color and water (Baby Suggs and Beloved) in Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, as a type of synesthetic coping mechanism meant to disrupt the encroaching normalization of an anti-Black world postslavery. Early in the text I posit two questions: What if Baby Suggs’ appetites shifted, not as some kind of woeful trauma response but as a very deliberate solution to the problem of a world where everyone else’s senses lie askew? What if Beloved likewise rose up from the water, not as a vengeful haunting but a haintful reminder for those living who had lost their way? Building upon this theory, I expand its reach to establish a continued relationship to water and the sensory which Black people have inherited today as our own surreal legacy - one which requires a constant mental reorientation toward freedom. In constructing my thesis, I reference Beloved but also several other critical works of Uction, nonUction, poetry, visual art, Ulm, and sound, each framed as meditation on a particular color and liturgical text ("a reading from the book of... ") to create a mixed media ekphrasis that mimics the surreal in both citation and physical form. The Unished product can be described, at its simplest, as a braided creative nonUction essay or, at its most complex, as a hybrid blend of cultural commentary, personal essay, poetry, and scholarly article.