On June 24th this year I had the honor of presenting the paper “Green Lumumba: Identity and Nationalism in Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby and Aimé Cesairé’s A Season in the Congo. I was invited by the Toni Morrison Society to present at the Toni Morrison Symposium this year in Fort-de-France, Martinique. It was a surreal experience.
(Photo credit: Kris Yohe)
In this paper I discussed the theme of betrayal in both Morrison’s fourth novel Tar Baby and in Césaire’s stage play A Season in the Congo. Specifically, I discussed how Morrison’s character Jadine Childs in her romantic experience with Son Green, betrayed Son Green in her relationship by her inability to respect Son Green’s U.S. Southern culture (WARNING: THERE ARE SPOILER ALERTS IN THIS POST). I discussed in this paper the factors that attracted Son to Jadine, but also, how the novel chronicles his moral responsibility to stop pursuing Jadine once he was advised by Thérèse to do so because Jadine “has forgotten her ancient properties.” I find this such a common dilemma among many Americans: loving the sexual attraction but being misled by the individual’s modern soul-killing values.
(Cover illustration by Thomas Blackshear)
I chose to compare this betrayal to the betrayal by Césaire’s Mokutu character of Césaire’s Patrice Lumumba in his play A Season in the Congo. I based my read of this play from my attending the 2013 performance of this play stage managed by Lazette McCants and directed by Rico Speight. While in Martinique I met the niece of Aimé Césaire, Murielle, who granted Rico permission to produce the play in 2013. In the play, Mokutu pledges allegiance to Lumumba to work towards “dipenda” or an independent Congo.
However behind the scenes Mokutu is plotting with the banking class, the U.N. Ambassador and with Belgians to overthrow Patrice Lumumba. This is based on what actually happened in 1961. The dramatic irony of Césaire’s play is that everyone in the play knows this impending betrayal including Patrice’s wife Pauline, except Patrice. It is clear that Césaire intends for Lumumba’s ignorance of Mokutu’s plans to overthrow him to be highly dramatized on the verge of delirium. Both Morrison’s Son Green and Césaire’s Lumumba are lured by the promise of a lasting relationship. However both are deceived by individuals who betray because of their being socialized to desire safety in a Western world. Jadine betrays Son heads for the material safety of her modeling career (the narrator of the novel tells us she was promised thousands in Europe). And Mokutu who betrays Lumumba in the material safety of his role as a neocolonial puppet for Belgian and American banking interests. To this day the coltan in our smartphones comes from the pillage that Césaire wrote about. He intends his audience to see Lumumba’s death as a sincere tragedy. Conversely, in Morrison’s novel, Son has an opportunity to escape the claws of Western colonization. When instructed by Thérèse to follow the horsemen on the rural side of Isle-des-Chevaliers, the novel ends with him taking her advice.
We visited a monument whose origin story had an uncanny connection with the myth Morrison creates of “the horsemen” in her fictional Isle-des-Chevaliers (island of horsemen) in Tar Baby. This monument is called in French Memorial de L’Anse Caffard and on our trip to this memorial we met the sculptor Laurent Valere who told me personally that the Martinican poet Edouard Glissant was instrumental in its creation. This is a monument to the enslaved who lost their lives drowning on a wayward slave ship in 1830. In Morrison’s story, “the horsemen” are descendants of enslaved Africans who were on their way to “Isle des Chevaliers” who were struck blind upon seeing the island. These are “the horsemen” who live like maroons on her island. Thérèse tells Son to join the horsemen at the end of the novel, instead of pursuing Jadine. The horsemen live in the woods and not according to the Western plantation model that Morrison’s Valerian Street lives by. I appreciate the connection that our symposium keynote speaker, Edwidge Danticat (pictured below with myself), made between Morrison’s “horsemen” and the spirits of those who L’Anse Caffard is dedicated to.
The lesson from the novel, the play and the experience in Martinique for me was to NOT forget your ancient properties. This includes not being used as a tool for Western interests. Morrison writes Tar Baby in a way where the reader is supposed to celebrate the psychological freedom of Son because he is not pursuing an individualistic lifestyle like Jadine; Césaire writes A Season in the Congo in a way where the audience member is warned not to be like Mokutu. The audience member is warned not to be the proverbial wood used against other wood in the annihilation of the forest.
I could not help but notice how Western media continues to attempt to promote colonial values in Africa, specifically NBC’s use of a Black reporter to goad African Stream into admitting that African Stream “targets Black audience with misinformation” as African Stream’s July 1st IG post reveals.
African Stream has been first and foremost in reporting news from an anti-Western and African perspective. They continually report on the efforts of the people on the ground to resist Western imperialism and MUST NOT be considered as targeting Black audience with misinformation. As that July 1st post later reveals in promoting the policies of the Biden administration, specifically in goading Kenyan President Ruto to accept the repressive policies of the International Monetary Fund, NBC News is the true culprit in promoting misinformation. I wrote about the difference between industry journalism and advocacy journalism in my first book in 2019 and African Stream is clearly on the side of advocacy journalism.
It is our duty not to be used to decimate the forest of indigenous people. Like Morrison’s Son Green and Césaire’s Lumumba, our spirit guides are waiting for us to make the right decision of moving away from Western colonization and to pursue truth. Special thanks to Dr. Carolyn Denard and the Toni Morrison Society for inviting me to Martinique. -RF.
