Weathering the (Anti-Black) Weather

Throughout two of Toni Morrison’s most well-known works, The Bluest Eye and Beloved, the theme of weather, and climate in general, seems to be prevalent. In her essay titled “The Weather” for The New Inquiry, Christina Sharpe argues that in Morrison’s work, “the weather is the totality of our environments; the weather is the total climate; and that climate is anti-black.”

Martin Johnson Heade, Thunder Storm on Narragansett Bay (1868)

Here, the visual contrast of the ships set against an inky black sea and sky grabbed my attention and evoked one word: hostile. These ships sail on the bay despite the ominous storm looming overhead threatening to sink them; they seem to be set on the border between two dark worlds, both above and below, emphasizing the precarious nature of their situation—darkness and danger surrounds them in every direction.

I immediately thought of the dangerous journey enslaved people were forced to undertake in the Middle Passage and how they faced two undesirable choices: continue on their journey to enslavement and oppression, or attempt to escape by jumping into the sea and embracing death. Though most of us could never truly understand why some enslaved people would choose the latter, Sethe in Beloved understands this all too well, viewing killing her daughter as a desirable alternative to letting her live enslaved. Like the ships depicted in Heade’s painting, Sethe faces a terrible choice. Yet, choosing to kill her daughter could be read as an act of free will within an environment that’s restraining her.

Dawoud Bey, Night Coming Tenderly, Black: Untitled #4 (2017)

Dawoud Bey is one of the artists of interest we discussed in class. Although looking at this image might not make the viewer immediately think of weather itself, it was the title that caught my interest. Describing night as “coming tenderly” made me think of nighttime as a continuously moving process, rather than a singular event. In a sense, the title personifies nighttime itself, bringing it alive in a way that reminds me of the phrase “Black Aliveness.” What does it mean for the night, for darkness itself to be alive, a living thing? I think this throws an interesting wrench into the discussion of weather as anti-Black. If weather can indeed be tender at times, then perhaps the weather, and landscape itself, is neither inherently good nor bad, but what we create it into.

Kara Walker, Middle Passage #5 (2004)

Like the rest of Kara Walker’s work, this piece is visually striking in its minimal use of color, with a focus on portraying its subject as a silhouette. Perhaps her use of shadow in depicting the human figure this is intentional, emphasizing that she does not depict any one person in particular but a range of people and their experiences. In this case, a lone figure seems to be set adrift in the sea; the strokes of paint then become gusts of wind blowing her along on what appears to be a kind of tree branch. Though she seems powerless in controlling where she ends up—she is resigned to whatever fate the branch that carries her has decided—one could also read this silhouette in a more positive light. What looks like the leaves or top of the tree branch also look a bit like wings; the figure’s outstretched hands could be trying to grab onto something to keep her anchored, but she could also be stretching them out in a carefree ease, like a bird gliding along with the wind. Thus, Walker’s work could paradoxically be seen through the lens of either powerlessness or freedom; the ambiguity of the silhouettes adds credence to this. Reminiscent of the racial ambiguity in Morrison's short story “Recitatif,” it's really up to the viewer to fill in the gaps of how they perceive the scene.

Lorna Simpson, Specific Notation (2019)

At twelve feet tall, this piece is incredibly large and dwarfs the viewer, perhaps intentionally. The image of a Black woman peers through a dark blue landscape that is seemingly frozen or underwater—my initial assumption was that she was placed in a tank or aquarium of some sort. She is completely surrounded in what by all means should be an inhospitable, even alien environment; and yet, she holds her gaze towards the viewer. Her expression recalls bell hooks’s concept of the oppositional gaze, wherein the act of a Black person gazing at their oppressor becomes an act of rebellion. Here, the woman’s gaze at the viewer seems almost to challenge us, as if we were the one who submerged her in the water, or wherever it is she’s in. Simpson’s submerged figure also recalls Beloved herself—emerging from water and Sethe’s past, confronting her mother with a knowing gaze. If, as Sharpe writes, “the weather is the totality of our environments,” Simpson’s woman shows us what it means to live within that environment and still be able to stand tall.

Floyd Newsum, After the Storm CNN (2008)

This final piece was created in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a storm that disproportionately affected Black people. This painting represents the 24-hour news cycle that documented the storm’s destruction, with colorful objects strewn about seemingly at random representing the fragmented landscape left behind. Something I find especially interesting is the representation of ladders, which seem to appear everywhere in the painting. (Apparently, ladders are a recurring motif in Floyd Newsum’s work.) I see the ladders as visual representations of the Black population’s ability to “climb” and rise up in the aftermath of the hurricane, demonstrating resilience and Aliveness. There are so many examples of characters in Beloved reaching and “climbing” towards life and joy, such as Baby Suggs’s sermon where she encourages everyone in attendance to dance, laugh, and love their flesh.

Textual Analysis

Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, is divided into four sections based on seasons, with the weather in each section often influencing the narrative in some way. This may seem like an insignificant, if creative, structural choice—as I thought at first—but when viewed in a larger context, it makes much more narrative sense. The novel is framed with the story of marigold seeds that Frieda and Claudia plant out of hope that Pecola’s baby will live; however, the effort is (literally) fruitless, the seeds don’t sprout, and the baby is lost. As the narrator says, the soil is “bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear…” (206). The use of seasons in guiding the narrative takes on a dark meaning, because although Spring and Summer arrive near the end, the flowers they planted don’t bloom, suggesting that an environment can be an inherently hostile thing towards some, but not all. The revelation of the land being hostile to the flowers becomes a haunting metaphor of a society rooted in racism, a society that treats some well but refuses to treat a poor Black child like Pecola fairly.

Morrison’s later and arguably more famous novel, however, has a less morbid outlook on weather and memory. In Beloved, there is a mention of weather at the very end of the novel that encapsulates my entire argument: “By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather” (275). This final passage grabbed my attention because I was so transfixed by the comparison of people, memories, and the “breath” of those lost to time to an immovable, natural, and ever-present force such as weather. Weather is generally invisible, something quotidian that we barely even think about; and yet, it plays such a key role in guiding the daily events of our lives. For Toni Morrison, weather can represent an oppressive social environment, and yet also contain the memories of those who have lived before and the breath of those who persevere through it.