Works in Progress Volume 18:1 Winter 2005 ISSN 1075-0029
Self Knowledge - by Kathryn L. Morgan

Self-knowledge is information necessary in the development of one's self. Na'im Akbar writes "that self-knowledge results in four general outcomes: selfacceptance, selfhelp, self-discovery and self-preservation, and that "the foundation for most of human productive activity is found in these four processes which are direct outcomes of self-knowledge. [1]

I am convinced that my family stories, my fiction, and some of my poetry are important sources for insights into self-knowledge. To illustrate this point, in the essay that follows, I use examples which I have written. I provide a brief background for each example, tell a story through narrative or poetry, and demonstrate how each example relates to self-knowledge. I speak only for myself.

When my brothers and I were growing up in Philadelphia in the 1930s and 1940s we were constantly told stories about slavery. [2] My mother told us tales about how my great-grandmother Caddy was born free and kidnapped and sold into slavery when she was eight years old. She also told us stories about children in Africa, awakened in the middle of the night, dragged screaming, kicking, blind with terror, who were thrown into slave ships and brought to the strange land.

My mother Maggie acted out these stories; she cried; she hugged us; she put us to bed. She always reminded us of how lucky we were to have a wonderful mother like her, a nice bed to sleep in, and the knowledge that nobody could come to drag us out of bed in the middle of the night to send us to a strange land. Maggie always gave us something to make us thankful and we were taught to value freedom and to never forget what slavery was like. I remember those stories, about the night raids, the murders and the rapes. And long afterwards, I wrote about a fictional village in Africa called Camino:

"Camino, a coastal city, was attacked in the middle of the night.... The raiders crawled out of the sea like a body of locusts, obscuring the moon and stars, swarming over the land, destroying green things, killing black warriors who raised spears against them; filling the air with the moans and groans of the dying, chaining together the black bodies of men, women and children, their wails and screams mingling with the clanking of chains; turning Blackness against Blackness in a maddened struggle for self-survival, leaving emptied souls frantically searching for their lifeless black bodies, swinging wild whips in passionate fits of hate, leaving hearts of black men, women and children barren of movement, piled high in mounds beside pathways strewn with vomit and decaying flesh, leaving bodies stretched out in the darkness of night grinning up at the moon." [3]

One of the almost ageless beliefs among Africans and their descendants throughout the diaspora is the belief in life after death. The souls and spirits of the ancestors could not only whisper in the wind, they can sing. If you listen with your heart, you can hear them. Maggie believed this. She taught us to believe it. And we were taught that some of our African ancestors chose death by drowning rather than enslavement in the strange land.

I vaguely remember a childish whisper one night that always haunted me. "Mommy, what does it feel like to drown?" This question was never answered by Maggie. And, as far as I know, despite the intensity of the academic arguments about how many Africans perished at sea, no academic has been able to answer it either, And so I attempted to answer it in "Song of Nino, the Young Bride" whose spirit sings:

I saw the ship of death. I remember my decision to die. I jumped and felt the rush of unknown waters commanding my breath, running like blazing fuel through my mouth, my nostrils, my brain. A limitless terror washed through me. I struggled. I strangled. I saw the myriad waters vibrate like a rainbow of flashing claws joining in the suffocating wetness penetrating, possessing, devouring beast flinging me with a roar within, without. I was gone. [4]

My work with my family stories, slave narratives, ex-slave narratives, oral and written history, literature about black folk, and first hand experience with the terror and violence of the racial status quo in the United States helped me to shape the following fictional conversation with my ancestor, Caroline Gordon of Lynchburg, Virginia, affectionately called Caddy. If she could speak to me about her life what would she say? How would she describe her contemporaries, those trapped in the terror of the slave labor system? What does this have to do with self-knowledge? I called the piece "The Sage":

"Weep not for me because I am dead and you knew me not. Remember only that I lived long enough to discover that I was not one but many. If you attach yourself only to my suffering, I become nothing but the residue of oppression. Remember, I lived long enough to discover that I was part of a hurricane, part of the twirl of lust, passion, joy, sorrow, cruelty, kindness, hate, love, laughter, birth and death that make up human existence. I knew wind, rain, water, fire and clouds. I discovered the beauty and ruthlessness in nature.

Weep not for me because I am dead... Remember, I lived long enough to discover my own internal contradictions. I discovered my own strengths, weaknesses, lies, truths, falseness, and sincerity. I experienced the constancy of internal change within me. So I was both hero and coward, conqueror and conquered, king and subject, owner and slave. Negative and positive like everything else, everywhere.

So you see, if you put my suffering above all else, you stress only one part of me, only one part of the whole. If you glorify my beauty, then you deny my ugliness. If you thus simplify my existence, you desecrate my complexity.

Weep not, for you have neither time nor energy... to waste. Remember you are at war. A war started long ago. But do not abandon emotion. For life is empty devoid of emotion. But in war, emotion must be backed up with intellect, power, discipline.

Tears, curses, passivity and escapism never won battles, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, housed the homeless, weakened the enemy, or... cut through chains." [5]

The life patterns, beliefs and customs traditionally valued by the storytellers in my family include: Remember the horrors of slavery. Never forget it. Cherish freedom. Listen to the wind for the whisper of the ancestor's song. Listen with your heart and you will hear it. Weep not, we are at war. A war started long ago.

What does all this say? Fantasy can be used to reflect the outcomes of self-knowledge. However, it can be used to revitalize history, not to replace it. It can be used as one instrument in the mass of weaponry needed in the struggle for black liberation from racism and injustice in the United States. It functions to free the image of black folk behind the famous from their burial in a sea of undifferentiation. It functions to stir up the "mass" and capture the kaleidoscopic sense of complexity and diversity reflected in African American experiences in the United States. It makes no pretense of conformity nor omnipotence. It values difference and does not deem it a hindrance to ultimate unity. It creates rather than documents and is based firmly upon the conviction that as much can be learned about self-knowledge from fiction as from fact.

Dr. Kathryn L. Morgan is Sara Laurence Lightfoot Emerita Professor of History and Senior Research Scholar at Swarthmore College. Formerly on the board of the Philadelphia Folklore Project, she is part of this year's Local Knowledge project. For more information about Dr. Morgan, visit the PFP website.

Notes

1 The Community of Self. Jersey City, New Jersey: Mind Production, 1985. p. 31

2 Some of these stories are recounted in Kathryn L. Morgan, Children of Strangers: The Stories of a Black Family. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980

3 Adapted from Kathryn Morgan, "More Excerpts from the Midnight Sun," Journal of Ethnic Studies 5:1 (1977), pp. 86, 88.

4 Adapted from Kathryn Morgan,"More excerpts from the Midnight Sun," Journal of Ethnic Studies 5:1 (1977), p. 89.

5 Ibid "On black images and blackness," Black World (December 1973), pp. 84-85.