Ep. 208 A Mercy by Toni Morrison -- The Stacks Book Club (Imani Perry)

Written By Megan Caballero

Today on The Stacks Book Club we speak again with Imani Perry, author of the New York Times bestselling South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of a Nation. In our discussion of Toni Morrison's novel A Mercy, we talk destroying ourselves over heartbreak, treating people tenderly and the book's central metaphor of the house. We also touch on the seduction of beauty, and breathlessness.
There are spoilers on this episode.

Be sure to listen to the end of today's episode to find out what our April book club pick will be!

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon

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TRANSCRIPT
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Traci Thomas 0:08
Welcome to The Stacks a podcast about books and the people who read them. I’m your host Traci Thomas. And every year on The Stacks we discuss and dissect a Toni Morrison novel for The Stacks book club. And this year’s Toni Morrison discussion is upon us. We are talking about Toni Morrison 2008 novel A Mercy with author and professor Imani Perry. Imani Perry is the author of seven books, including her latest a New York Times best seller, South to America a journey below the Mason Dixon to understand the soul of a nation. We talked today about the themes of the book, the subversion of historical narratives and the seduction of beauty. There are also a lot of spoilers on today’s episode, so please be sure you’ve read the book before you listen. Stay tuned to the end of the episode to find out what our book club pick for April will be. Now it’s time for the stacks book club conversation on A Mercy by Toni Morrison with the Imani Perry.

Alright everybody, we are back. It is The Stacks book club day I am joined again by the wonderful Imani Perry, author of recent the most recently south to America and it stacks Book Club. We’re going to talk about Toni Morrison’s a mercy. For people who have not finished the book there will be spoilers so please finish the book. We’re not protecting you from this. Imani. Welcome back.

Imani Perry 2:12
Thank you for having me back. Talk about this wonderful book.

Traci Thomas 2:14
I’m really excited. I one of my New Year’s resolutions this year was to remember to explain the book at the beginning of the episode because I was getting into episodes where I’d be like 30 minutes and I’m like, by the way. Okay, so let me do a quick this is not gonna be my best work. But here we go. A mercy is Toni Morrison’s novel that came out in 2008. It is about a group of people living on a it’s not really a plantation, a farm in the north. I think they’re in New York. And it’s sort of told through alternating perspectives about the different people. And then there’s one person whose voice we hear throughout, which is a young woman named Florence. I don’t know I didn’t do a great job there. But well, we’ll get into all of it. We’ll get into it. Yeah, so we always start here. Amani, just sort of tell us what you think of this book.

Imani Perry 3:01
So I love this book. I love this character Florence Florence is a girl who grows into a woman who has been sold to Jacob bark who is the farm owner, and she is somewhere descended from she was enslaved, but in the Portuguese world, but it’s not sort of clearly identified. So there’s all these meetings of cultures, right? So FARC is Dutch. And then he has a wife who is brought who shipped over from Europe. And then there’s a Native American woman who works on their farm as well. And then there’s a black blacksmith, and then there is a queer couple that’s in the community that works for them that are indentured. And so it’s like this moment of encounter before all of these categories are settled. And it’s part of why I love it. And Florence is someone who has lived with the wound of being pushed in her mind from her mother to be the one sold instead of her little brother, right? And it’s a misprint. It’s a misunderstanding, like her mother’s actually saving her from sexual violence. But she doesn’t know this. There’s so there’s this wound, right? And everybody has wounds. There’s also a woman named sorrow, who is kind of like a foundling, who’s like, in the area and is kind of wild, right, as described. And it’s, it’s a woman centered novel. It’s an encounter with history. And like everything, for me is someone who, who loves history to actually be able to feel what it felt like, like to lead these people who speak different languages and who ever, you know, people are dying all the time and like the you don’t know what the crop is going to yield and yet have all these passions and desires. I just think it’s funny.

Traci Thomas 4:45
Okay. I will go I will admit to all of you. I am very nervous about this conversation because I am not sure that I understood a lot of what I was reading because yeah, it’s a really hard book, which I like I like a challenge but I always get very nervous when I have to talk about a challenge on caste because I’m like, I’m too stupid for this, which is, I’m really glad you’re here. You have all the degrees for all the years.

Imani Perry 5:08
You are brilliant. So but But it’s hard. It’s a really hard changes. And there’s no yeah doesn’t tell you.

Traci Thomas 5:15
She doesn’t know when you can just know there’s no explanation. It’s just sort of happening you have to pick up what’s going on. However, the ending the last chapter is so incredible. I got that. I mean, I was like, holy cow, like the ending just really, I think the last two chapters because it’s Florence and then it’s her mother. And I of course I love Toni Morrison’s writing. I love i There’s so much like, lush NISS her sentences. This was also my first late Toni Morrison. Oh, I have read. I’ve only read the books we’ve done on this show, which are The Bluest Eye, beloved Sula, and now Song of Solomon. And so this is our fifth a mercy. And so it was really different. It’s really different. And like, one of the things that I know that I loved from the ones that I’d read prior are the scenes and like how suspenseful The scenes are. And in this book, she’s really like, sort of found a little more calmness in her scene. They’re not so intense. And so I think I also was like, waiting for what I thought was coming. Yeah, like I was waiting for those scenes that just aren’t there in there. But they’re not as clear.

Imani Perry 6:34
Yeah. Was she? I mean, I think what happens is that Morrison, I think made a decision. And she banked on his having, in a later work, we had earned her trust. And so she doesn’t tell us everything. Yeah. So like, you know, so you can imagine the scene, there’s a scene where Florence is jealous of the man she loves who, who ultimately rejects her because she’s too wild. And she’s a slave. And he’s a free black man. And it’s a sort of devastating encounter. And she’s jealous of the child, he’s taken in. Again, we said there are spoilers, right? So this tells of a child that he’s taken and she hits the child. And but it’s not a scene that is described in the way for example, the scene and beloved is in the right, you know, when school teacher and other guys come in where there were you like, know, everything that’s going on, like you can easily read by the scene, and not. It’s not like she struck the boy across that that, you know, it’s like, yeah, it’s it’s very, it’s like a series of emotions and, and responses and anger. And so you discern it. But on the other hand, it feels like what it feels like when you’re in one of those dramatic scenes, right? Like, you’re kind of breathless, and you don’t know what’s going on and the words they’ll come to you like, so yeah, it’s there. It is different. She pairs down so much.

Traci Thomas 7:50
I feel like this is one of those books on a second read. I will appreciate it so much more, because I was doing so much of like, what’s happening? Wait, what’s going on? Like, I had to reread that section a few times, because I was like, Wait, why does she Why did let’s talk what happened? And then I was like, Wait, is this his kid? Like, what’s like, there’s so much of like, reorienting with the start of every little chunk. And so that’s always, you know, that’s just tricky. For me as a reader, because I really like I came I My background is in theater, so I’m very Oh, like scene oriented, which is like the kind of fiction I really love our books. Yeah. You know, like passing for example. Like that’s basically a play. You know, like, it’s like so many scenes.

Imani Perry 8:32
We move on to you, she wrote plays, it would be so fun to do stage readings of her plays.

Traci Thomas 8:39
Oh, my God, it would be a dream. I wish. I wish more authors that I love would write plays. But plays are so hard so hard. Yeah. It’s just like such a different. Such a different thing. I’m currently reading through August Wilson’s century cycle right now. Oh, my gosh, I love that. There’s, I just I love a play. But so so when I read a novel, I feel like I’m always searching for the scenes, because that’s how my brain understands narrative best, I think, yeah, it’s like my background. But I am curious. I want to ask you so I so for people who don’t know we do a Toni Morrison every year, and I usually try to find the right guest and then just let them pick the book. And you pick this one. So I want to know why you picked A Mercy.

Imani Perry 9:23
I mean, I love the Mercy Morrison. Part of what’s amazing about her that I think is different Morrison dwells on the mother wound right like and she had there are so many terrible mothers in Morrison’s just a lot of terrible mothers. And she has no and I think it’s just sort of amazing for someone who was a mother to dwell in sort of the problems of motherhood as a writer. I think it’s very courageous. And in this one though, she tries to get to a healing. And that doesn’t really happen in a There’s so much like this, you just sort of have to make do with the disaster at the end. But this one, you know, she tries to pull it back together and to make sense of that. So that part, I think, for me, that’s really important. Because it’s, she’s a philosopher, as an artist, right? And to think about, you know, she’s asking us to think about really core wounds that we experience from people we love deeply. And how do you not allow those to eat you up? So it’s a big story, but it’s a big question for the reader and the same with the love story, right? And she’s had other love stories that are like instructive in various ways, like, whether we’re talking about, you know, in beloved, where you know, Paul D is like, listen to that the you your best thing, like, it’s not beloved, and it’s also not me, it’s not this is. And we have Hagar and Song of Solomon, who’s like, you know, essentially destroys herself out of love for milkman. So here’s another story like that we’re here. This is a Florence is sort of obsessed with this blacksmith who is cruel, even if he’s right in some ways. But I think it’s good though, in this book that Morrison lets us know that there’s a cruelty there, right like that. It’s not just that it’s her fault for falling so deeply in love and being willing to do anything but that he hasn’t treated her. And his obsession with his status as free is not necessarily a virtuous thing. So I like that she’s also telling us something about like, heartbreak, and how we can destroy ourselves in moments of heartbreak, but also that people have a responsibility to treat others tenderly. I just think there’s big lessons from from the book.

Traci Thomas 11:55
Yeah. this definitely feels like a big a big lesson book. Like, I feel like she was like, I gotta tell the people something, right. You know, I’ve written a bunch of books I gotta get, I gotta get something off my chest.

Imani Perry 12:06
And then there’s also the, like, the white people in the book who get worse. Here, like I love, I think, I don’t love that they get worse. But like, you know, there’s, you know, Jacob and Rebecca, husband, wife, they have a great marriage, they go through all this heartbreak, their children die, they’re like, but, and then Jacob gets obsessed with being wealthy, and building this big house, and all this stuff. And then, you know, and Rebecca’s heart is broken, because their children die. And so Jacob, values shift because he just wants to become rich, like, you know, like the, the Europeans and, and Rebecca becomes cool. And she has these close relationships with Lena who is the indigenous woman, and, you know, Florence and not with sorrow, but they’re all part of the same household. And she make pushes them away, because of and becomes sort of status oriented because of her heartbreak. And so you get in, like, becomes white as it were. Right, in a way. So that’s also really interesting.

Traci Thomas 13:05
Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that as like the becoming white with a capital W. Yeah. Because I mean, one of the things I did think about was like, in beloved also, and when we did, beloved, Damaris Hill was our guest, and she did marry. Oh, my God, she broke that book down. It’s still like one of my favorite episodes, because I also really struggled with Beloved. But one of the things we talked about on that episode was like about the benevolent slave owner, because they, you know, at the beginning of Beloved, and also at the beginning of this book, she sort of sets up the people who own other humans as like, not so bad, like, like, not so bad. And, you know, I took the note immediately when I started reading about him in this book being like, Oh, she’s doing it again. Yeah, she’s doing that thing, where she’s kind of like playing to our, against, like, what we think of slave owners, right? Or like, people who own others. And then, you know, he falls apart, just like that happens in Beloved, you know, like, like, he has that line, or there’s that line where it’s like, nothing makes Jacob as mad as brutal handling of domesticated animals. And I was like, Well, what about the fucking handling of people? Like, it’s just such lines? Yeah, yeah. And like, it’s also like the mother sort of Florence’s mother sort of redeems Jacob, a little bit right at the end, where she talks about, like, his seeing of humanity and a seeing of humanity and her daughter and like, the humor in her and like, right, seeing her as a person. And that was, you know, I’m often confused about what Toni Morrison is saying about the people who owned other people, right? Because she definitely is doing a lot of work to find humanity in them as well.

Imani Perry 14:55
Right? Well, I mean, I think what she’s doing and I also just say I read it took me Three times to understand beloved, yeah, it’s hard. Is it hard, but, and then it became my favorite. It became my favorite book for years. And then immersi became my favorite book. But I think what she’s doing is actually trying to reach for the truth. And he like, so when you know, so meaning Yeah, my Florence mother says, he looks at her and sees a child. Right? And that’s true, I’m sure, right. I mean, in terms of true in terms of the history of slavery, right, that these are human beings who are living in incredible physical intimacy and facing the hardness of the environment together. And I think for me, and this is part of, for me, as the writer, one of the things I think is so important is to remember that, yes, these are people they were close together. And also incredibly, there was incredible cruelty and violence and race, right? Because that actually makes it even worse. Right? There’s right there is this intimacy, right? And to understand that part of humanity seems to me to be like one of the scariest but most important thing, so I do think, you know, yeah, he could see her as a human, but also doesn’t blink it like what it means that he’s taking his child away from her mother.

Traci Thomas 16:14
Yeah. And you talk about that, like, close, intimate violence in your book? Oh, yeah. I think it’s in Maryland, right, when you’re talking about Astor Easter, and the kitchen, and like, I think this is, I am both black and Jewish. So I think a lot about the Holocaust and slavery, even though my family was not in Europe at the time, they weren’t injured. They were Russian they came before anyways. Yeah. But I think a lot about how these atrocities and you know, you could include other ones, but these are the two that are personal to my family. About how it’s really people, like it’s really people to people, it’s not drone strikes, right, like we’re not talking about, again, and I think we forget, I don’t know, but I know that I forget, even though I don’t know how I possibly could, but it’s almost like too big to understand or to think about regularly, you know, like, I know, there’s all this language about people who are like, you know, don’t say slave say enslaved, right, because that, like, they’re the people aren’t slaves. But it’s almost like all of the language around slavery, and all that stuff was built that way so that we could disassociate from the horrors of it. And so it’s hard to like, think of her as a child. Like, it’s hard to think of people who were brutalized and owned and, you know, broken, their spirits broken all these, it’s hard to really actually take the time to think about what that means. And like, what that looks like, and then to think about it on that scale. Because it’s not just one, it’s not one child who’s like, sold into slavery, no, right? It’s like, hundreds of 1000s of millions of people. And the scope of the whole thing is overwhelming and almost impossible to take in.

Imani Perry 18:12
Right? I mean, this is, to me, this is a really important point that you’re making about language and writing, because this is part of why we need literature, right? So you need that particular story, to be able themselves. So it’s like, why, you know, if you hear somebody say, 100,000 people died, it doesn’t have the same impact as if you tell the story of one slow death, right? Emotionally, it just becomes too overwhelming. So we need, but we do need the research that tells us everything that happened, right, that we need that kind of writing, and we also need the intimate story writing, right? We need to be able to access the past. And it goes back to the you know that that formulation. And beloved, it was not a story to pass on. wasn’t in that there’s a double entendre there, right? Because you do have to tell the story. She’s telling the story. Right? You can’t tell it, you have to be careful with how you tell it. You can’t tell it all the time. You can’t eat right. So you had has to be manageable for us to function. I mean, I’ll give you an example. Because I wrote about in South America, but it’s a much bigger story. But about all these Nazi scientists came to Alabama after World War Two that they hired NASA hired for the space race, which is and one of them von Braun was a man who was in the camps, right next to gas chambers. And they told this fictional story, you know, but there were survivors who were like, No, he was there, right? Like this was he wasn’t just a scientist, right? So they bring them to Jim Crow, Alabama, right. And we know the relationship between you know, Nazis in the architecture of Jim, Jim Crow. And he has the status that the black, literally a Nazi, that black people who fought against fascism, don’t write, and then people will talk about well, but you know, but he wanted to integrate NASA. And it’s sort of like to meet people respond. Me too, because I didn’t write about that part. But I’m like, but so what, but it’s also, like people want to compartmentalize. But this is actually a really horrific revelation, because you realize that winning the space race was more important than in that moment for the federal government, then what had happened to Jewish people in the Holocaust.

Traci Thomas 20:23
Right. And also what had happened to Americans to fight against what was happening.

Imani Perry 20:27
Yeah and what was happening in the very midst, right, like, All right, so then you will, that is the primary driver is winning the space race with this person who has all of this violence, right? There’s all these layers of violence on the grounds of where they were like enslaved people whose bought whose graveyards were papered over to build the arsenal, you know. So that’s, it’s a lot.

Traci Thomas 20:52
It’s a lot. Yeah. But I also think that like, that still happens right? Now, this very moment, you know, like, we’re still finding ways to redeem horrible people, because they have some value that we think is more important than whatever, they’re horrible. And this is, I can’t even I can’t think of a great example right now. But the only example that’s coming to my mind is like Joe Rogan. Oh, yeah. Right. It’s like, oh, he provides this he’s, he’s a great interviewer. Like, okay, so what? Like, he’s also a raging, racist, and homophobic person, and why is it private? Like, he’s horrible? And I get that it’s entertaining. But like, is that the most important thing? Like, what is the thing that we care the most about? Is it the space race? Or is it the extermination of 6 million Jews and millions of other people? Or is it you know, the American lives lost? You know, and we could talk about the ways that we claim to care about the people who fight in the American military, but I think that’s right. That’s a whole other thing,

Imani Perry 21:51
The whole thing unto itself. Yeah.

Traci Thomas 21:53
Yeah. But I do. I do think that like, these small moments of humanity, and like, you’re saying truth, within the system of American chattel slavery is always really, like, it’s jarring. Because it’s a reminder that it is people and like, I think you say in your book, like, it’s not just people as people who like lived together. Yeah. And like, we’re close to one another, and like, knew each other. Like your housemates. Your housemates owned you and beat you Yes, and killed you. And like, you have the story. I can’t remember the person’s name, who the brothers chop up his body and like, it’s just like, such brutality and horrific Ness. I don’t know if that’s a word. And like, among people who now if you lived in a home with someone you would consider like your nearest and dearest. Right? Like, yes.

Imani Perry 22:50
But you know, to me, this is also why I guess, and this is, I think it’s part of the virtue of the book, right? Because, like, when we talk about something like domestic violence, right, or childhood, you know, child abuse these things like we just we separated them out from these larger social practices, but they’re actually so intimately connected, because we have set the stage in our culture in so many ways for intimacy to not necessarily mean kindness, or care. Right, that’s not an it’s a lot of it has to do with patriarchy. You know, a lot of it has to do with various forms of status. So, to me, and, you know, when we’re in the house, and we see the growing cruelty, we’re seeing something that we can recognize when we talk about abuse, and patriarchy and sexism, but we’re also seeing something that we can recognize when we talk about racism and the construction of race. Right, those are there. And I think that the mastery of like understanding that those things are really intertwined. It’s still so important, you know, right, because they like reflect back on each other. You know, right.

Traci Thomas 24:01
You’re just making me think I’m going to do like an English teacher question for you do, or I’m going to ask you, and you tell me if I’m right. Because you probably know, do we think that that house houses are a metaphor for America? That’s supposed to be?

Imani Perry 24:17
Yeah, I think they’re a metaphor for America. And they’re also a critique of the ideals of the American dream, right, like we talked about, we literally talk about, you know, white picket fence, we talk about the house is a representation and by the time that house is built, everything is dead in this book, you know, dig, right, like children are dead. That’s not incidental. Right? This aspiration for what I mean, there’s that and it’s another thing that Morrison picks up again and again, aspiration for what, but also houses are dangerous places in Morrison’s work from 124 to you know, that the House and the old plantation house and so on the Salomon to the house and in paradise in the houses They’re complicated, right? They’re the sights of aspiration, but they’re also the sights of, of enclosure and disaster. And they make space for like, oh, and you know, so this is really interesting. So there’s an article by Horton spillers written in 1987 Mama’s baby pop, this may be an American grammar. And in it she talks about, like, sort of where black woman fit and the, the domestic structure of the of the US nation. And she uses this term vestibular like in the vestibule, right? Like, and they’re writing, you know, Morrison and Horton spillers are talking to each other, as she’s writing that article. And Morrison is writing Beloved. So they’re talking about houses and like this the house as a metaphor for the country. So all that to say yes. That’s actually explicitly in the minds of the of more in Morrison’s mind and others who are she’s in conversation.

Traci Thomas 25:52
I haven’t I’m starting to think back of the houses in the books like I’m thinking of the house in Sula, too. And Song of Solomon, of course, yeah, like, wow, oh my gosh, this is what’s been fun about reading Morrison for the show, is like getting to talk to different people and then adding different insights, like in the like, I get to think back to earlier, you know, it’s just like, really, it’s a cool, it’s a real, I feel very lucky whenever we get to do this. I want to talk about the names because you are a professor, and I know professors think about these things a lot. And so I feel like you might have some insights. I think, like I, Rebecca and Jacob That’s Biblical.

Imani Perry 26:41
Yes. I know that. Jacob I love to be so have a head. Yes.

Traci Thomas 26:46
And because right. That’s his Rebecca’s his like most beloved wife, right? Yeah. I know that from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Everybody, thank you. Yes. But what about what’s Sally and Willard?

Imani Perry 26:58
Oh, you know, I don’t know. I spent a lot of time and growing up in Massachusetts and Chicago. So I think of Sally as a classically Irish nickname. Sally, okay. Like, I’m used to like, I don’t know what that you know, I actually hadn’t thought about the symbolic means it’s a great question.

Traci Thomas 27:16
But I guess I know, she’s like, really into names, like all of the names in the book. I mean, Song of Solomon is like a book about names, obviously.

Imani Perry 27:24
But like, I don’t know. Sorrow changes her name.

Traci Thomas 27:28
Yes. And sorrows name, we kind of hear about, like, how she got the name. It’s like a very literal, you know, she’s sad. So they started calling her sorrow because she wouldn’t say what her name was. Right. But what about Florence? What’s Do you have any sense of that?

Imani Perry 27:43
I mean, I, I don’t know. I thought about it in terms of her as a cactus capturing something of her personality. She’s sort of she’s florid, and that’s what makes her puts her at risk, right? She wants, she wants shoes, and she likes pretty things and her mother’s like, that’s going to be your demise. Because right? You can be controlled by your desire. Right? Yeah. But I don’t know.

It’s a good. Yeah, it’s a good question. No, I don’t know. But I but I do, but it’s just in terms of sorrow.

I just, I feel I love it. But I also feel a little bit of, I don’t know, conflicted when she she renames herself complete after she has a child. As a mother. I’m like, I don’t know. Like, are we like the idea that you’re your mother? And now you you’re complete. Without sounds very Puritan, right. Puritans would choose names like,

Traci Thomas 28:40
like, like, I just Yeah, I don’t. So I, I’m a mom. And I just don’t relate to a lot of that. Like, yeah. narrative in general. Like, I just, I don’t I like my kids. I love my kids.

Imani Perry 28:57
But like, I don’t feel they’re not your whole life. No, it’s not good. As a model, if you are,

Traci Thomas 29:02
yeah, right. Like, I didn’t even have the like, instant the moment I saw them that whole, like, my life has changed. I was like, Oh, my gosh, there’s people here live. Like I just never related to those things. Yeah, just there’s now there’s two more people in my house, and they are very needy, they’re demanding. I think another thing in the book that I kept noticing, and I think it’s very obvious, it’s like, the orphaned people, like everyone who comes to the place is like, on their own. No one comes with someone, I guess, except for except for the guys, the indentured guys, but even they have their own, like, independent backstories. And, you know, it begs the question of like, who owns who like, who’s responsible for each person, because they all sort of got there. They all sort of ended up there because they were forced there for different reasons. Like who’s in charge like autonomy? I don’t know. It’s sort of like autonomy is that joke. Like it’s not real. Like, yeah.

Imani Perry 30:01
This sort of isn’t I mean that, don’t you think that’s sort of another way that it’s a kind of an American origin story? Sure.

Traci Thomas 30:09
Yeah. Because we all sort of ended up here. Or forest here. Yeah. Yeah, I think but I also think it like goes against a lot of the narrative about America too, which is like that we all belong to this thing we all belong to each other in this way is like how America wants us to think. Yeah. But I don’t think that that’s true, necessarily. Oh, no. And, yeah, and like, I mean, especially, you know, people who are descendants of enslaved people in America, like, I think, you know, if you’ve seen roots, you know, if you if you’ve had any experience, like, you know, that we were sold from our families, right, regularly. Yeah. And like, so.

Imani Perry 30:55
Yeah. All this fragmented? We’re easy. I love that the detail that she has, I don’t love it, because it’s terrible. But I love that she added that Morrison added about the details about how they wouldn’t allow the children who died to be baptized. Are they the church, the local church and the kind of quality of the rules of the church because even that mythology of like, churches as anchors or comedians to to, you know, that it she really showed how the kind of the fragmentation and the exclusion that came from the outset.

Traci Thomas 31:30
yeah, I would love I’m really not a church person. I don’t know much about the church. I wasn’t raised in the church. And so I that’s always like a big mess. Missing spot for me, when we talk about a lot of Morrison actually has a lot of church related things. What did you make of the religious politics in the book? Like, I think a lot of that went over my head? Because I don’t know. Um, yeah.

Imani Perry 31:51
Well, I mean, I think it’s just it was an accurate characterization of how exacting and cool so many of the Protestant sects were sect were. And then also there, I loved the discussion, the kind of judgment of the sort of excesses of the Catholics and the idolatry when Jacobs assessment when he goes because it’s, it was apt, right, like they had there, and they had very different ways of navigating this horrific institution, which is interesting, because, I mean, implicitly, part of what Morrison is kind of showing is, you know, the Catholic countries, there was more sexual interaction, those those countries, the slavery of those countries like Spain, and Portugal, there’s more sexual violence committed against black women than in the product from the product and pricing. Of course, they’re terrible in both instances, but that’s I think that’s part of the subtext. Right, with the, with Florence coming from a Portuguese, you know, and they have that. Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m just jumping all over. But one of my favorite sentences in the book is about the, the Angola, part of Portugal, right there, like the the idea that Portugal had lay claim to all of these places in Africa, and then it becomes private. Right, right. Right. So they come from, you know, so she comes from there, where there’s a lot more, a lot less censure from the church, about interracial sexuality there than in Protestant country. So that also may have been why Jacob was seen as a more as a safer place. Interesting. Yeah. But so the they all are so exacting and judgmental. And you see that it has to do with the harshness of the environment. They like sort of have these very stoic dispositions around religion, but they also mean that they’re cruel to people in their in their midst.

Traci Thomas 33:47
What did you make? What do you make of the dying of Rebecca and Jacobs babies?

Imani Perry 33:53
I mean, I guess I thought about it as both a meaningful plot device and historically accurate, you know, kids, there just lots of kids didn’t make it. Right. I guess, for me what part of it Morrison is doing is for those of us who, you know, Morrison centralizes black experience in black life, right. But she’s in this book, she’s also reminding us that like, the way that we talk or even imagine a slave society tends not to dwell on the adversity faced by the white people and then in our midst. And I think it’s really important because it’s not as though she’s doing apologetics. But at all but that was real. All right, baby died, Rebecca. I mean, Rebecca seemly. Rebecca comes over, for me is one of the most powerful scenes in literature because it’s like you, you don’t think about how much for women like her. They came to this country in conditions that aren’t we’re not wholly different from enslaved He put in the hold of a ship, right? Like in a disk, right hold of a ship, he has this line, it’s one thing, you know, to live in your own waste, it’s another to live in other people’s ways this was so, you know, Rebecca, a white woman comes here that and she experiences all of this loss of her children, and it is physically demanding. And she’s heartbroken. Right? And they are like a family. But then there’s a point when she decides, I’m going to become the mistress of this plantation. And I just, I think that there’s something it’s both accurate, but it also helps us rethink the institution of slavery.

Traci Thomas 35:43
Why do you think we don’t we as an, I guess, people who learn and live in America, you know, I’ll say, Yeah, we don’t talk about the difficulty for white people during that time. Because I feel like so often, like, especially, you know, in a white supremacist society, we’re always trying to find ways to make white people static. And I just think it’s interesting that that’s not something like, I’ve definitely heard white people talk about, like, you know, my family was too poor to own slaves. So like, I’m absolved of slavery, but like, we don’t talk about, like, how hard life was just like, period. Right. And, and then for white people on, in addition, I guess, to just general,

Imani Perry 36:24
I mean, I think we don’t, it’s because we don’t talk about class in this society. And I think it’s also because of, you know, what Dubois classically called the wages of whiteness, right? It’s a cycle of being a psychological wage. So this conception of oneself as white is also about belonging to the superior group. Which means that people will say, Oh, my family was poor, but not my family was oppressed and exploited in the service of a white supremacist order that we didn’t benefit from. Right, like, right, right. Right, financially, right. I mean, now, I mean, I think there are people who will talk about like, you know, miners or Yeoman farmers, but not people who don’t want to put it all together, right, like, here are white people who are at the bottom of a hierarchy, who are suffering, but who are disciplined from identifying with black people by saying, well, you’re white, so you’re a little bit better. Right? And, and I also think we just, we love a plantation drama, in this in our society, right? We do. And we love. I mean, I’m watching, I’ve been watching the Gilded Age, which is a fantastic TV show. But I’m also like, gosh, like we really do from, you know, from bridgerton to the gills, like we like, we’d like to watch rich people and their melodrama.

Traci Thomas 37:48
And so you’re saying the seduction of beauty? Yeah, like, when I think about my love of Gone With the Wind, the thing that always comes into my mind first is the dress that scarlet wears the white and green dress with the big hat, which goes to the picnic. That’s like, my Yes, that’s the image and it’s and it’s because I love that dress. Like, I think half of the reason I love Gone With the Wind is because I think Vivian Lee is so beautiful. And I think that her clothes are so beautiful. And I think you know, it’s it’s beautiful. It’s so gorgeous to look at what’s your love?

Imani Perry 38:22
I’m sorry. I mean,

Traci Thomas 38:23
I’m like not black. I not really like. Oh, that’s interesting. I like vivid colors. I like pretty things but I don’t have like a favorite color. But I do love the red dress she wears Of course, the sexy red like the clothes in that movie are so important to my life. Like I don’t like I think about them. And I love Scarlett i love that she was like a badass like, she i She’s like my Lady Macbeth. Right? Okay, love Lady Macbeth. It’s like that same. I think of them in the same place. But I do think so much of like, the seduction of beauty is what I love about Gone With the Wind. Yeah, like it’s I even love mammies red petticoat. You know, like, I think about that beautiful thing. And I think it’s so fucked up when you think about what you’re talking about. But like, the way that we can erase so much with like, wealth and beauty and pretty people on pretty things is very scary.

Imani Perry 39:17
Yeah. Well, it’s scary. And I think the question is then, not to, I mean, there’s that and that’s that scene, right? When he’s when he’s at. I can’t think of his name. The Portuguese.

Traci Thomas 39:31
The Portuguese-

Imani Perry 39:33
Yeah. And he’s like, in your in your in. He’s like, he’s horrified. But he’s also enchanted, because it is really beautiful. And then he wants it. And I think that that’s such a beautifully written scene, because we know what that feels like. Like what were like, Oh, that is nice, right? Like, oh, it’s so excessive, but ooh, it’s nice, right? Like that feeling. You know, and it’s real. Right? I mean, it’s, it’s human. And so I think so that’s why I think what is great about this book is it resonates with that. And we get everybody so excited when the house is being built, and it’s gonna be so beautiful. And then it’s also this right at the core. And it’s also but they want it because they’ve had such a hard time already. Like it’s. So it’s got all the layers, right? It does. He doesn’t Yeah, that Morrison is always pushing us because I was like, pushing buttons about beauty. Like when you get to the very last one that she published, it’s all about, like, so much is gets to this sort of dangers of beauty. So, repeated thing.

Traci Thomas 40:41
I think also, like, she’s she’s always kind of subverting what we what we think we know about things. And like, I think one of the ways she does that with this book is setting it in the north. Yeah. Right. Like, that’s a choice that is very much like, Oh, you think this is just the thing that happens in the South? Right, right. Like that’s in conversation with your book? Like, Oh, you think that the South is the only place that did bad? Yeah, you know, which I, I always appreciate. I just, I just think like, I know, we talked about this last time, I just think that the way that America shits on the south, because like they it’s like, the scapegoat is just so sad to me, because I know how many black people are there. It’s like, okay, you’re you’re blaming us for our own oppression?

Imani Perry 41:25
Actually, the majority of African Americans still are in the south. And I always happen. Yeah. And also, I think, just sort of to go back to what we were just talking about. The cost of that is we don’t examine wealth and power. Right. So I wrote a little bit about this. But the Lehman when I went to see the Lehman Brothers play on Broadway, and the Lehman Brothers, right, the most important you no investment bank of the 20th century began as cotton traders in Montgomery, Alabama, that’s the or Wall Street starting as a slave market. That’s the foundation of New York wealth, right? All the stuff that we default, so much glamour, or, you know, if you’ve ever go to Newport, Rhode Island, right? I mean, Rhode Island’s wealth is all wealth produced by slavery, right? And so there are things that we take pleasure in that we treat as though they just are right, like, oh, there’s just titans of industry. But wait, they had to rest on a foundation of something which was unfree labor. And it is, it’s also the people up in the Northeast.

Traci Thomas 42:28
Yeah. Okay. Who is your favorite character in this one? Who is your favorite character? Lena? You okay, me too. Lauren.

Imani Perry 42:36
I identify with Florence. But Lena is just, she’s just amazing. You know if

Traci Thomas 42:43
Lena too, is that big Leo energy also.

Imani Perry 42:46
Oh, that’s interesting. Yes, she doesn’t. So she has a self possession. She does the next needed thing she you know.

Traci Thomas 42:56
Yeah. She’s and she’s very, I mean, she’s very pragmatic, which is necessarily Leo.

Imani Perry 43:02
I don’t even her like sense of like, confidence in it. Right. That’s Lea.

Traci Thomas 43:06
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think this is people who are listening to the show who listen regularly. This year. Somehow we’ve gotten off on this track where like, every character we started to finding like, because we did earlier this year. And so we were talking about like Claire and I read and then like, you know, deciding what happens at the end of that book was we were like talking about it. Well, I guess people if you haven’t read the book, this is sorry 30 seconds just just in case. I’m certain it was a murder. I’m certain that she was pushed but I turned out that’s apparently a very hot Leo take other people I had a lot of friends who had different feelings. There was like so ended up being like when we did because I do a virtual book club for my patrons, where we talked about the book in person together virtually together. And ended up being this thing of like, drop what you thought happened at the end of the book and what your sign is, and like, this whole thing of like, but so now this is this new this new trend, like as I feel like I’ve finally stepped into my full la life. I don’t like doing astrological signs or classic literature. But I do think Lina has big Leo energy for sure. It is fun, right? Yeah. Well, um, some characters like, you know, the author tells us when they were born, I can remember what I was just oh, I just read Parable of the Sower. And Lauren is a cancer and it’s very she makes us her birthdays. Yeah, her birthday is July 20. And it’s like that is she’s and she’s almost on the cusp. Yeah, on the cusp. Yeah, that’s my birthday is July 22. And I’m the last day of cancer but I was born so late at night. It’s my son’s birthday. My 22nd Yeah. Oh my gosh, I feel like maybe I feel like we talked about this on a Taurus or something. Okay, yeah, cuz my husband has a Taurus I think we do and I like but yeah, I’m so I’m technically a Leo, even though I was born the last day of cancer Okay, and my kids are born the first day of Capricorn so very KOSPI in this household. Yeah, anyways, but yeah, so now this is my new thing is astrology for characters. Okay, I have a few questions of just like, is this what happened or not? Okay. Salia and Willard were lovers. Yes. Okay. Does Florence kill Smithy?

Imani Perry 45:22
I don’t think so. Okay, because she beats him up. Yeah.

Traci Thomas 45:25
I wasn’t sure I could I don’t think she was, you know, the book starts with like, I did this horrible thing. And I couldn’t tell if maybe she was like writing to him being dead or not. Okay, those are my two questions, like, Did this happen? Okay, the last thing I want to talk about before we talked about the title and the cover. I just talked about short books for a moment. Okay. Because Toni Morrison writes a lot of short books he does. And I think that’s great. And in this book, she has like seven commas total. And every paragraph is five pages long. Yeah. What is that about? I don’t know. I don’t know about writing that was. Okay.

Imani Perry 46:03
That’s how I read it. That when so I read the book as one that is intensely emotional. And so it’s not people use it’s not stream of consciousness, though. But it is that like, like, when you’re like, going that, that feeling of like that has that’s breathy, and then breathless. So I think that is how, and you’re inside people’s minds. And sometimes they’re thinking the same thing. Like, there’s this moment, when I think it’s both Lena and Rebecca, have this thought, when it’s when Florence is off rich, getting the blacksmith and she’s like, you know, where she gone? Will they rape her wish? Like they’re having the same series of thoughts. It’s like an echo in your insight, and that’s part of why it becomes confusing, because she has seen shifts, and she won’t tell you, you’re inside somebody else’s head. And you have to glean from context that you’ve moved to someone else altogether. So it’s like, it’s this sensibility. And I think, for me, it gives me like, a kind of sensory feeling about what that time and place was, like, of course, an effort to it anyway, but that’s my take. I don’t know, buddy, what do you think?

Traci Thomas 47:18
I don’t know. That’s like, this is really not my strength, because I don’t right. So I don’t think up I think about books as a reader. That’s it. I don’t think about I think about structure when it comes to me when I read it. But I don’t think a lot about what how things are, why things are done. And so I feel like I started thinking more about that. The more I talk to authors as they talk to me about like their process and things they start to understand it, but she doesn’t use any commas and I and I thought sometimes I found that hard actually, I was confused with I was like, Wait, let me read that sentence again. This was another sort of slow read for me because I kept having to go back Yeah, because I was confused a little bit. And like these long these long paragraphs, I was like, Wait, where am I like, like I would get lost in the writing. Yeah, but I just I love a short book. Like I love a short movie. I love the short play. I love brevity and narrative art. I just think it’s like so like I think of like Colson Whiteheads the nickel boys so short. Yeah, good. I think of Sue less so short. So good. Yeah. And I know that there was like some someone on Twitter was talking about some agent was saying like, do we don’t buy books that are short? And I just terrible. It’s so terrible. But also so many great books have the greatest books are short and I think like when you can write a story and it can be short, it’s like indicative that that person had something to say yes.

Imani Perry 48:45
Oh, yeah. You know, it’s a mastery of form like when someone with you especially with someone like Morrison or whitehead or or jasmine Ward, like when they they have mold when they can’t wait they can do it. And and and have the arc complete?

Traci Thomas 49:02
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of academic books do it too. And I think maybe for different reasons. But I feel like a lot of like, academic books that I like books that are published academic presses that I really like are shorter, like they’re just not they’re just like not always going on and on you know, like my you should Cherry’s book like she got that book that came out last year, belly of the beast, like it’s not, there’s not a lot like we have things to say we’re gonna say them and I just I don’t like all the extra and so I just feel like the short really speaks speaks to me, because I’m impressed. Wow. Anybody could anybody could do Titanic and three hours let me say Titanic and 90 minute, Cameron. So the last thing we always do is talk about the cover and the title. I don’t know what your cover up I have this like, I think it’s only like Pastor pastoral club. I don’t think they have redone it yet. So I’m excited about that. It’s sort of like blue gray. A with green trees, different trees pretty. Her name is high up in. In mine it’s foil then it says a mercy a novel.

Imani Perry 50:10
Not great cover. I’m not crazy about it a cover. But you know what, I don’t think that they I had a student several years ago so brilliant. I wish I remembered all the details who did a paper about all of the covers of Morrison’s novels and and actually did research and how the covers were chosen and how they little they have to do with the books. Because I just noticed this doesn’t tell me anything. I think it’s this is a cover that says Tony Morrison is winner of the Nobel Prize so you should buy this book but the cover doesn’t feel like it feels like anything relevant to the to the not

Traci Thomas 50:47
do any should have been the house.

Imani Perry 50:50
The house should have been the cover. Or like because this

Traci Thomas 50:52
looks like on a boat or like a swamp or something. But that doesn’t feel northern either. It doesn’t. Yeah,

Imani Perry 50:58
no. And the plant life doesn’t look doesn’t look northern to me. And it looks like they’re like in a lake like they’re not in the ocean. Like it’s not the ocean. Yeah, right. So,

Traci Thomas 51:08
Lake or lake or like, yes. Chill river or something. Yeah, I’m going with you.

Imani Perry 51:13
But it doesn’t. Yeah.

Traci Thomas 51:15
But the title on the other hand, Oh, yes. Holy shit. I mean, that moment. And I mean, it’s the last, it’s like the second to last paragraph, I’m gonna just read it. So she’s talking for people who haven’t read the book who are listening to this. So what’s wrong with you, but she’s talking. This is Florence as mother finally getting to talk. And she’s talking about why she sent Florence away with Jacob. And she says, hoping for a miracle. He said yes. And then and then the paragraph starts. It was not a miracle bestowed by God. It was a mercy offered by a human. I just

Imani Perry 51:53
and here’s what I this. Here’s a question about punctuation since you raised punctuation because there’s periods here, period, not a miracle period bestowed by God, period. It was a mercy period. And I love this because it’s not, it wasn’t a miracle bestowed by God. Like there’s not a comma there. Right. So is it like was it bestowed by God? Or it wasn’t a miracle bestowed by God? Right? Like, right, you know, like this, what she does with the punctuation like, actually raises questions about, about God as the source of mercy.

Traci Thomas 52:23
Right. Because it could be it wasn’t a miracle bestowed by God. Yeah. Or it could be it wasn’t a miracle, bestowed by God.

Imani Perry 52:32
bestowed by God calm, it was a mercy, right? Like to make these three separate sentences is a question about like, it’s a theological challenge. It can you put this in God’s hands. Oh, my God, I just think it’s a genius. Move.

Traci Thomas 52:46
it’s so good. And and it’s so late in the book, because I’m always waiting for the title, especially. Because often in nonfiction, the title isn’t necessarily said in the book. Or it’s like a theme of like the idea of the book, but in a novel, I am waiting for that moment. Yeah. And I about 80% through the book. I’m like, What is a mercy though? Like, I really getting that. And then I finally get to the end of the book. And there it is. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, it was worth every word to get there. Like it was. It was one of the best title payoffs I think, of my life as far as reading like, I’ve never been so I can’t think of a time I’ve been so struck by a title. In the book. I just a thought it was so good. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Is there anything else you wanted to say or talk about about this book? Before we get out of here?

Imani Perry 53:48
Well, I would just say, you know, it’s short. But I think it’s one of those books, that’s also a slow read. So for people reading, and for the first time, to take time with it. And also to keep in mind that here’s an entry into a world that we literally don’t know, like, we don’t get taught this world in history. So you have to like you have to suspend all of your assumptions about history to like to delve into it but its payoff is huge, because it teaches so much to me about how things got to be the way they are like even just really quickly, there’s this moment when the free black man is being paid and this indentured white man sees this free black man being paid and it infuriates him. And you know, you see oh, right, this is like part of the formation of race right? Like I mean, just there’s all these perfect little moments like that.

Traci Thomas 54:44
So that’s how I feel like in reading the book, I missed sort of that I like that as like the formation of how things are done. So I’m so glad we talked to you because I feel like now this book is like making more sense. Okay, good any in that way, because Yes, of course. It’s like we. Yeah, no, it’s it’s like of course now we’re seeing like we’re seeing the we’re seeing race happen. We’re seeing like there’s the line that’s like, I think it’s famous. I feel like I knew it when she says to be female on this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Yes. Like so. You know, we didn’t even really talk about this about like the the woman, the women. Yeah, America. Like what that was like, but I think we also see gender crystallized Absolutely. Jen American. Yeah, yeah, crystallize. And yeah, and like you said it also about Sally and Willard, like the queerness gets crystallized and like, I hadn’t thought about any of it in that way. And I think it’s really interesting. And I also think like, Llinas closeness to Rebecca is also saying something about like, color.

Imani Perry 55:52
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Traci Thomas 55:54
I mean, you’ve really you’ve really bumped up Tony Morris. Mercy for me. You didn’t you did what you needed to do.

Imani Perry 56:04
I know, everybody, every time I’m like, I love mercy before like, really? It’s like a no, yeah, it’s now

Traci Thomas 56:10
I went and read a review in the New York Times of this, like from when it came out, and whoever I can’t, I actually didn’t finish the review because I was so irritated. But whoever wrote it was like, this book is better than paradise. Paradise sucked. And I was like, Whoa, they mean to her.

Imani Perry 56:24
I think it was Michiko Kakutani, but yeah, they so but here’s this, here’s a little tidbit for the I know, lots of writers listen to your, to you. So just as a little tidbit, if you want to, like feel bolstered after a bad review, read Tony, the reviews of Toni Morrison’s books, because people went in on her over and over again, constantly.

Traci Thomas 56:45
They were just shitting it’s like, Whoa, I mean, but obviously, it was about way more than the book.

Imani Perry 56:52
But it’s also like, you know, that’s the the reviews are not for writers. Right? I have to keep that in mind at the time.

Traci Thomas 57:00
Yeah, I that’s a conversation we have a lot around here. I don’t write my reviews for the writer. I write my reviews for other readers.

Imani Perry 57:08
That’s what they’re for. Right there for other readers to readers. Yeah. And what and what read information for and but writers are very precious about them. And I get it I am too. But as a writer, you have to maintain your focus on what it is that you are here to do.

Traci Thomas 57:23
yeah. Good lesson for you writers out there. Because writing is impossible. Everyone if you haven’t read it yet, please go out and get south to America by Imani Perry. If you have read it. She’s got six more for you to read. Also a mercy if you haven’t, or we might all have to reread it anyways, who knows? Imani, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Tracy, and everyone else we will see you in the sack.

Thank you for listening and thank you to Imani Perry for being my guest Thank you also to Caitlin Mulroney. Lisicki for coordinating both of the manies appearances on the show. All right, now it’s time to announce the stats book club pick. In honor of April being National Poetry Month we are going to tackle another poetry collection. We’ll be reading doppelganger banger by Courtney Lamar Charleston. We’ll be discussing the book on the show on Wednesday, April 27. And you can tune in next Wednesday to find out who our guests will be. If you love the show and want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join The Stacks Pack. Make sure you’re subscribed to The Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you’re listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. For more from The Stacks, follow us on social media at thestackspod on Instagram at thestackspod_ on Twitter and check out our website thestackspodcast.com. This episode of The Stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas, with production assistance from Lauren Tyree. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight and our theme music is from Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

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