A Mercy
I have been reading Toni Morrison’s A Mercy. Let me say, if you read this book, your heart will want to break. It has been a long time since I’ve read such a vivid, nuanced portrayal of humanity.
Of all that is in this book, you see how people given their circumstances come together and later turn against each other. One of the things that she identifies as a source of this human dilemma is implicit pain and hurt and brokenness and deception in a common bond. For example, in the book, Lina, a slave and Rebekah, a free person, become friends out of necessity, later on Rebekah forgets that she once needed Lina. The bond they formed was under the false presumption…that Rebekah would not otherwise be in a relationship with Lina.
This relationship reminds me of others in literature, particularly that of Huck & Jim in Huck Finn.
But, I think about my relationships with people who are “other” to me, and wonder…