The Legacy of Slavery
The overarching theme of this novel is the long-term consequences of the practice of slavery in America. The story is structured as the multi-generational history of one family. That family becomes a metaphor for all of America. The story plumbs the depths of ancestral legacy right from the start with a complex family tree showing the interrelationships between characters. As time passes, characters become more complex in their genetic makeup with so-called intermixing of racial bloodlines. This is positioned as the true legacy of slavery. America is comprised of a population splintered into two groups distinguished only by the color of skin pigmentation that ultimately proves so-called racial bloodlines are a socially constructed myth.
Black Feminism
Although male characters play major roles in the narrative, it is really a story that focuses on its female characters. That narrative traces the rise of females within the social structure of slave legacy. Black Feminism is portrayed as differing from feminist principles in general as a direct result of the historical subjugation of women owned as slaves and the generations which followed. The concept is explored primarily through the characters of Ailey and Lydia. Ailey is able to take advantage of progressive movements of the 20th century to attain a higher level of success. Lydia represents the termination of those dreams of advancement through systemic sexual abuse and subjugation of gender through physical dominance and threat by all men, regardless of pigmentation.
Double Consciousness
The title of the novel references the defining philosophical concept forward by leading civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois. Double consciousness is a term that Du Bois defines as a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” Blackness and what it means lies at the heart of this concept. The characters must navigate through a society in which every aspect of their expectations have been designed and mandated by white society. Doctors and teachers cannot identify themselves as professionals first within a society that views everyone born with dark skin as genetically inferior. Therefore, throughout the multiple generations, there is always present this two-layered structure of self-identity which, through the specific stories being told, becomes an indictment of America’s own double consciousness which espouses a moral foundation as its origin while at the very same time instituting a system of designed always to label a specific subculture as inferior from birth.
