"Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation"

(We originally discussed this text on 2/19/20. This post began as an email offering contextual information and light analysis of Toni Morrison's essay, "Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation")

This week, we are going to discuss Toni Morrison's 1984 essay, "Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation," which was originally published in Mari Evans' anthology, Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. Other writers profiled in Evans' collection include Toni Cade Bambara, Sonia Sanchez, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, and Gayl Jones. During her time as an editor at Random House in the 1960s and 1970s, Morrison pushed for the publication of Bambara's novel The Salt Eaters, as well as her short story collection, The Sea Birds Are Still Alive. Morrison also edited Clifton's poetry collection, An Ordinary Woman, as well as Jones' novel Corregidora, which she published when she was only 26 years old.

I include this context to emphasize Morrison's horizontal inheritances, in addition to the vertical ones she mentions in her essay. Thinking horizontal and vertical inheritances together makes it possible to identify the links and breakages between generations, as well as how qualities inherited from previous generations create cycles of trauma rather than straight lines toward wholeness. For example, Sula's behavior superficially appears to be in complete opposition to that of Eva and Hannah (her mother and grandmother), but her relationships with Nel and Ajax fall apart due to the Peace women's collective failure to identify their (self-)destructive coping mechanisms as manifestations of intergenerational trauma. Even the death of Sula's closest ancestor-- her mother-- does not give her the wisdom or freedom to resolve her childhood traumas and build healthy relationships with her friends and lovers.

I've also attached a fragment of a short story I wrote, titled "Daddy, Obliquely." In the story, I am working to address similar questions about the relationship between horizontal and vertical inheritances...how can the protagonist build the family she wants when her ancestors--dead and alive-- haunt her still?