Book Review·Book Review｜Race and Social Class in Toni Morrison's "Chanting Tune"

The only short story Toni Morrison has ever written was published a few months ago - "Recital." As a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, many of Morrison's works are well known to us. What I like very much is that she later read out her self-published works on Audible. You can hear Morrison reading herself in the audio book The works are very lucky. I like her voice, that kind of sincere voice that seems to have gone through many vicissitudes but cannot be concealed.

The short story was a thin book, so the publisher published it together with a book review written by Zadie Smith. It just so happened that I discovered this book after reading Zadie’s book review (the review was first published in The New Yorker magazine) .

Morrison's books have always been about race, and this one is no exception. However, what is interesting is that no matter how readers analyze, understand, and guess, they cannot tell which of the two heroines in this book is African American and which is not. The imagination space that books give readers is unlimited, so there are various starting points for readers to guess, of course the most direct one is the name. These two girls are named Twyla and Roberta. If we start with the name alone, does Twyla look more like an exotic African-American name? However, Zadie Smith pointed out that from Morrison's description of the mothers of the two girls Twyla and Roberta, it is impossible to tell which one is African-American and which one has special traces of the times. That is, it cannot be seen from other era and personal traces of the addition. It’s interesting, then, that the various assertions and injustices imposed on individuals by systemic oppression seem to be completely impossible to place – on whose head should so many prejudices and stereotypes be placed? Twyla or Roberta? This also pushes the value of Morrison's only short story up a lot. As a reader, I found that once those prejudices cannot be placed on certain characters, then these prejudices are like ghosts, floating everywhere. So, will it be the same in real society?

Therefore, this story gives us more opportunities for reflection. If a society wants to systematically oppress a group of people, it will often have some similar patterns. Well, Morrison once gave ten methods in her speech, as follows 👇. These ten methods are interlocking and applicable in any society, whether democratic or non-democratic. If you come from a totalitarian or theocratic society The country is probably no stranger to it:

1. Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion.

Create an internal enemy that can serve as both a focal point and a diversion.

2. Isolate and demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting the utterance of overt and coded name-calling and verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that enemy.

Isolate and demonize that enemy through protective cathartic stigmatization and verbal abuse. Use a character assassination attack as a seemingly legitimate accusation against the enemy.

3. Enlist and create sources and distributors of information who are willing to reinforce the demonizing process because it is profitable, because it grants power, and because it works.

Establish sources of information and recruit disseminators who are willing to contribute to the diabolical process because it is profitable, because the process gives them a sense of power, and of course because it is easy to operate. .

4. Palisade all art forms; monitor, discredit, or expel those that challenge or destabilize processes of demonization and deification.

Pushing all art forms over the edge; monitoring and destroying their reputations, or banishing those that challenge and make the process of demonization & deification seem unstable.

5. Subvert and malign all representatives of and sympathizers with this constructed enemy.

Subvert or slander all representatives or sympathizers of the enemy.

6. Solicit, from among the enemies, collaborators who agree with and can sanitize the dispossession process.

Embellish the process of expulsion by recruiting some of your constructed enemies to agree to cooperate.

7. Pathologize the enemy in scholarly and popular media; recycle, for example, scientific racism and the myths of racial superiority in order to naturalize the pathology.

Pathologizing the enemy through academic or popular media; repurposing "scientific" racial discrimination and the myth of racial superiority to the extent that the pathology is packaged to appear more and more natural.

8. Criminalize the enemy. Then prepare, budget for, and rationalize the building of holding arenas for the enemy—especially its males and absolutely its children.

Treat the enemy like a criminal. Then, prepare, fund, and build a place to imprison that enemy, and provide a reasonable, seemingly rational explanation for the entire process—especially the men of that enemy group, and certainly the children.

9. Reward mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny seductions: a few minutes on television, a few lines in the press, a little pseudo-success, the illusion of power and influence; a little fun, a little style , a little consequence.

Reward the stupidity and indifference of monumental entertainment with a little joy, a little temptation: a few minutes on TV, a few sentences in newspapers and magazines, a bit of fake success, illusions of power and influence ;A little🤏a little fun, a little style, and a little consequence.

10. Maintain, at all costs, silence.

Maintain silence at all costs.

The above ten plus a little bit of my own trial translation are Morrison's overview. I was overwhelmed by its accuracy and detail. As a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, she has thoroughly summarized the continued oppression and persecution of her ethnic group in society. However, such a short fictional work fundamentally deconstructs the above ten methods. Although you can still vaguely see the shadow of each point, the vague racial settings make this "constructed enemy" impossible to implement and lock, and the above ten methods are wandering around for different characters. Perhaps this is Morrison's subtlety. She does not need any pretense and only gently blurs the identity of the characters, which will make us think about who is the next enemy after the separation of race in society?

Her answer seemed to be social class. That's right. To a large extent, communism promised people equal social classes, people, people, people. However, this society that seemed to be separated from race transferred its enemies to social classes, evolving class struggle, which was "as cruel as the autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves" between different social classes. The former Soviet Union was not a country with a single ethnic group. The differences between ethnic groups became a little bit of fun. The struggle between social classes occupied more positions. Many people fell and many people gained power. In the thirty years of Hedong, the Three For ten years in Hexi, no one felt safe, but silence has been maintained. Likewise, race can at any time become the "enemy" of the construct that replaces social class. This kind of power comes from dividing the people under its jurisdiction, demonizing different characteristics, and not allowing others to speak out and unite. Everything needs to be continuously maintained. Here, I also saw Xinjiang, Tibet, women in chains, Cantonese... The same model is still operating interlockingly with the same efficiency in many places.

I don’t know when, few people read books anymore. The two concepts of "enemy" and "enemy language" are constantly demonized. Of course, "enemy" can also be transformed as needed. What a terrible thing it is to lose (or never have original imported books to read) complete, uncensored and castrated texts and thoughts. What is even more terrible is that you have never known yourself before. What is lost.

I have always insisted on writing book reviews, hoping to introduce more books to people who have no time to read, or to inspire more people to buy and read books. Because there is reality in books, and books are never far from reality, no matter how fictional it is. Unfortunately, people's attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, and the quiet reading experience that books require has become increasingly rare.

It is precisely because of this that I cherish short stories even more, especially short stories by great writers, like a pearl.