“Solomon’s Leap”: Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon

Abstract

Toni Morrison gestures symbolically to the cultural memory of Africa in Song of Solomon (1977) through the trope of flight—first, in the twentieth-century history of African Americans in aviation and, second, through the mythical story of the “flying African”. Morrison situates the memory of Africa in the “nonlinear, nonliterate spaces” of language, as a response to a hegemonic discourse on Africa which is deeply entrenched in imperialism. Through her partial approach to the African past in language, Morrison vividly illustrates an economy of signification which apprehends, even if only in flashes, the possibility of moving free of the inequities of imperial relations, to a space in which the past is vibrantly alive.