Memphis

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of domestic abuse, racism, racist violence, and child sexual abuse.

 “The house looked living. Mama squeezed my hand as the three of us gazed up at it, our bleary exhaustion no match for the animated brightness before us. ‘Papa Myron selected and placed each stone of the house’s foundation himself,’ she whispered to me and Mya. ‘With the patience and diligence of a man deep in love.’”

The home motif becomes evident as Joan arrives with Miriam and Mya in the North family home. The house seems alive to Joan because it harbors the love between her grandparents. This offers them a sense of belonging. Myron contrasts the male characters whose aggression threatens the women in the story because he is a loving and protective man.

“I had out my pocket sketchbook, was already fumbling for the piece of charcoal somewhere in the many pockets of my Levi overalls. My larger sketchbook, my blank canvases the size of teacups, my brushes and inks and oils were all packed tight in the car. But my smaller sketchbook, I kept on me. At all times. Everywhere I went. I wanted to capture the life of the front porch, imprint it in my notebook and in my memory. A quick landscape.”

The novel’s beginning establishes Joan’s love of art. She always carries a sketchbook with her to capture the things that impress her and cause her emotional reactions. The landscape surrounding the family home immediately mesmerizes her and is something that she wants to keep in her memory. Joan’s inner world is inextricably connected to art, which defines her course throughout the story.

“My aunt looked like the taller, more regal version of Mama. Auntie August was nearly six feet tall. I had read Anansi stories. I knew that it was the women tall as trees and fiercer than God that ancient villages often sent into battle. If Mama was Helen of Troy, August was Asafo. She seemed to go on forever, seemed to be the height of the door itself. She had hips, the kind Grecian sculptors would spend months chiseling, big and bold and wide. Her skin was noticeably darker, darker than mine even, and I felt a welt of pride. I had always coveted darker-skinned women their color. There was a mystery to their beauty that I found hypnotizing, Siren-like. […] Most of the Black women the public pronounced beautiful looked like Mama. Black Barbies. Bright. Hair wavier than curly. Petite figures. So, when my Auntie August opened that door, and I saw that her skin was so dark it reflected all the other colors surrounding it—the yellow of the morning light, the yellow of the door, the peach tan of the calico cat weaving in and out of Mya’s short legs—I knew that the aunt I could barely remember was, in and of herself, a small, delicious miracle.”

Joan vividly describes her first impression of August. She compares her aunt to the African Asafo warriors, calling out her powerful Blackness. The passage highlights the pervasiveness of racism in social models and beauty standards that apply ideals of emulating whiteness to Black women. Joan expresses her admiration, love, and pride in Black skin while criticizing a society that values lighter skin.