Not Just Sonny's Blues

I feel like there's a lot more to "Sonny's Blues" than just a story about Sonny and the narrator and their relationship. It's the plot, yes, but what I felt myself thinking while the narrator was describing things (such as his reflection on and reaction to Sonny's performance) so vividly, was the circumstances of all the people around him and the realities they have to face. 

One connection that I think would be helpful to make would be how the narrator comments on the boys at his school:

"They were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which has blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone."

I know how we discussed in class that it seems like the narrator doesn't really seem all that empathetic (or willing to be empathetic), but I feel like his insight here, if it isn't empathy, is still very keen. He grew up in Harlem, and he's still in Harlem, and while he's now an Algebra teacher who doesn't do drugs and has a nice family, I feel like there's also this sense of loss, or resignation. It's so true that these boys have such limited possibilities in life, and it's also probably true that our narrator wanted more out of his life as well. 

When the narrator was describing Sonny's music, and all the feelings it evoked, I thought it was extremely well-put. Yes, there is so much darkness and suffering out there, and it will be there for a very long time, if not forever. Yes, no matter what Sonny does, whether if it's music or drugs or some other way to make his life a little bit better, he'll never truly escape or break free. However, his music acknowledges the darkness, and it provides these moments of hope and beauty. Of course, Sonny will continue to struggle and hurt, and he'll keep doing that forever--"I heard what he had gone though, and would continue to go through until he came to rest in earth". The world will remain "as hungry as a tiger" and trouble will continue to stretch above them, "longer than the sky". But in those moments, our narrator recognizes the hope and the freedom that Sonny's music provides, and that helps him accept Sonny and his fight. 

After carefully considering everything, I feel like Baldwin's story is really also a way to talk about the struggles of black people in the United States. I feel like Sonny's struggles with heroin and his music acts as a vehicle for this conversation. If Baldwin were more explicit, I feel like it might have made people (more so during that time period, probably?) defensive or dismissive*. I find the most compelling parts in our narrator's language when he describes Sonny's music. Honestly, I kinda felt like I was out of my element thinking about this stuff, since we didn't really discuss it in class all that much. The things I was thinking about seemed... Not exactly like a reach, but there was this worry that I didn't really get the full extent of what Baldwin was trying to do? I guess that's because I am in unfamiliar territory. Just like how the narrator can try to work on his empathy, and try and understand Sonny's experiences, I can think about these things hard, but I won't really get what exactly he meant to do. There might even be more distance. And I think identity and historical context plays a big part--he's a black man in the 1950s, and I'm an Asian girl in the 2010s. One thing that hasn't changed (of many, I suppose), though, I think, is the darkness, which is still here. 

* I get part of this idea from reading one of Baldwin's essays that I stumbled across, while I was trying to find PDFs of his stories. Here's a link if you'd like to read it--it's pretty nice. 

Sonya and Rebecca

Honestly, when reading "The Toast", I thought the whole thing about Sonya quitting her job at an Ivy League university to become a health coach was absurd and a satirization of people in real who do that. After all, people who talk about fluoride rotting your brains out and everything are all quacks, right (slight exaggeration, but still)? I mean, you can't take

"I offered free consultations to all the fat, hormonally imbalanced women I met in local health-food stores and sent “You need a health coach” emails to all my former Ivy League colleagues."

seriously. It seems at least a bit exploitative, and also brings to mind MLM schemes--the likes of Herbalife, belly wraps, and various homeopathic remedies.

Later in the "The Toast", we are brought to 2008, where Professor X (Sonya's clever disguise) is suffering from Lyme disease. It's six years before the story starts off, and we can see that she wasn't doing much better then either. She's behind on payments, being harassed by debt collectors, and her rent (which she probably doesn't have) is due the next day. And yet, we witness a phone conversation between her and a (supposed) nutritionist, who tells her that tap water gives people dementia due to the fluoride content, and is giving Sonya aluminum poisoning (a quick search on Google leads me to quite a few questionable sources). This nutritionist tells Sonya that she needs a good water filter (and heavy-metal chelation, which apparently is another big alternative medicine thing), and Sonya obliges, expenses be hanged. We can interpret this scene a bit more graciously, since we do see how sick Sonya is and how awful it must be to suffer from Lyme disease. We can understand her desperation to get better, and sympathize with her plight. And yet, something still seems a bit off, right? 

If we go back to Sonya and her sister's childhood, we can see the abuse they went through and infer how much they had to endure (both emotional and physical). One interesting thing is that Sonya never really mentions what exactly she does in the household or what verbal abuse her mother throws her way. Leala is portrayed as the responsible one and the one taking the brunt of things, being the oldest child. Sonya, on the other hand, seems to not get a lot of that variety of abuse (though she is threatened with physical punishment). But this isn't to say that she isn't affected just as much. For example, having your Barbies rape other Barbies or have sex with horses can be pretty indicative of having a messed up childhood. I'm not saying that everyone who plays with toys with the intent of rape/bestiality had a shitty home life (obviously it'll depend on things like age and previous exposure to those sorts of concepts; and sometimes you can just attribute things to curiosity and not really getting the seriousness of such topics), but it is pretty dang suggestive of such experiences. Especially if you find other indicators, which we do. Sonya manipulates her older sister's attention and feelings pretty fluently, and manages to get what she wants every time (animal abuse is another great sign of childhood issues). Even the stories Sonya writes in the present don't seem very typical of someone that well-adjusted. The evil older sister trope can get pretty questionable, especially since Sonya does have an older sister (who honestly doesn't seem that bad!).

Right, so we take Sonya's issues seriously, but we also see her as sort of ridiculous. Maybe it'd be too strong of an act (plain mean, really) to call her pathetic, but something similar to that would probably fit (but we are sympathetic). Okay, now here's the kicker: Rebecca Curtis, the author of the story, in real life, is a holistic nutritionist. She had (has) Lyme disease. She has a sister who has a husband and two kids. She used to teach at Columbia. How much of "The Toast" is coming from personal experience, and how much of it is just because of how literary fiction works--"the need for drama, the use of distortion, and the distinction between fiction and reality"?

Note: here's an interview with Rebecca that I read, if you'd like to see it