Jazz

Golden Gray (2nd exhibit)

This entry was posted in Jazz and tagged bi-racial black male white on by

jazz_cover2Character: Golden Gray

Source Text:  Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Vintage International, 2004.

Entry Author:

The majority of Jazz’s narrative takes place in a lower class African American community in Harlem during the 1920s. The plot centers on the violent love triangle formed when Joe, married to Violet, began an affair with a young girl named Dorcas. However, as the pasts of the various characters are explored, the narrative extends back to the mid-19th century American South. The novel introduces Golden Gray, the son of a rich white Aristocratic woman, Vera Louise, and her family’s African American slave, Henry LesTroy. He unites the past of Violet and Joe: He was raised by Violet’s grandmother, True Belle, and as an adult saved Joe’s mother while searching for his father, Henry.The narrator connects the anxiety Vera Louise’s father experiences upon discovering his daughter’s pregnancy by a slave to the fact of there being seven mulatto children on the plantation. Those mulatto children represent the unspoken, yet well known secret about the transgressions in Southern society wherein white male slave owners had sexual relations with their black female slaves, creating mixed race generations. The anxiety stems from the possibility that Gray’s mother would’ve unknowingly committed incest with one of her half siblings, who was born to one of the female slaves.

Gray’s racial identity threatens the structure of the society because his racial mix is identical to those born as slaves to African American mothers, and yet his mother’s racial identity directly connects him to the supposedly elite white family. Golden Gray brings up interesting questions: by law he could be a slave, but his upbringing has created permanent features in his way of carrying himself that translates into whiteness.

Superficial aspects of his appearance create a thin veil hiding his identity. His mother would have regretted him just as she did her affair and given him away if not for his “golden” aspect.

“When [they] bathed him they sometimes passed anxious looks at the palms of his hand, the texture of his drying hair. … True Belle just smiled, and now he knew what she was smiling about, the nigger. But so was he. He had always thought there was only one kind – True Belle’s kind. Black and nothing. Like Henry LesTroy. Like the filthy woman snoring on the cot. But there was another kind – like himself,” (149).

When Gray confronts his father, he seems to project on him all the anxieties and the cognitive dissonance and desires that his newfound knowledge burdens him with. Lestroy narrows in on his fears and confronts him by saying, “‘I know what you came for. To see how black I was. You thought you was white, didn’t you?’” Lestroy offers him ways to be comfortable with his identity and Gray retorts, “’I don’t want to be a free nigger; I want to be a free man.’” He is sensitive to the psychological impact of the categorization even though the reality is the same for him.  Lestroy replies, “‘Be what you want – white or black. Choose. But if you choose black, you got to act black, meaning draw your manhood up – quicklike, and don’t bring me no whiteboy sass,’” (173).

Morrison takes care to note that Gray’s torn identity comes not only from the mix of his race alone, but from the way it locates him in between classes and races, making his full membership/authenticity in either group contested.

“What was I thinking of? How could I have imagined him so poorly? Not noticed the hurt that was not linked to the color of his skin, or the blood that beat beneath it. But to some other thing that longed for authenticity, for a right to be in this place, effortlessly without needing to acquire a false face, a laughless grin, a talking posture,” (160).

The reality is that he can choose which race he performs, but the knowledge of his parentage has made him confront the reality that race is a performance. Gray’s crisis results from having become a self-conscious actor in this broadened playing field of racial identity. Being aware of his choice and the fiction of race, but still afloat in the world of identity politics, he no longer feels naturalized in the choice of either identity.

Golden Gray

This entry was posted in Jazz and tagged black part black white on by

jazz_coverCharacter: Golden GraySource Text:  Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Vintage International, 2004.

Entry Author:  Shalyn Hopley

Golden Gray is the son of white Vera Louise Gray and black Henry LesTroy. Jazz is not really a story featuring Golden Gray, yet his presence in the story is potent. Golden Gray is the product of an illicit relationship between the daughter of a wealthy Colonel from Vesper County, Vera Louise, and “a Negro boy out from Vienna” (140). Golden Gray is conceived during one her rides with the boy out to the woods, and when Vera Louise tells her parents she is pregnant, wordlessly her family gives her money to “die, or live if you like, elsewhere”, disowning her and her child. Vera and one of the novel’s main character’s (Violet’s) grandmother, True Belle, a slave woman belonging to her family, go to Baltimore and raise the child.Golden Gray is an enigmatic presence in the novel, his real personality and significance hard to determine as he is described over and over by different characters, at times the narrator even restarting her tale of Golden Gray to rewrite what she has already written of him. Golden Gray is named Gray for his mother and the color of his eyes, and golden for his skin tone (139). He is raised as an adopted white child, rather than the son of a black slave and Vera, by Vera and True Belle and is said to be the “light of both their lives” (139). When Golden Gray is told the story of his mixed race heritage, he leaves home to meet and confront his father, Henry LesTroy. Yet on his way there, he happens upon a dark-skinned pregnant woman in the woods who he startles, her attempt to flee ending in her injury. He brings the unconscious woman to the house of his father, where she births the child she is carrying. When his father returns home, he helps Golden with the woman and quickly disarms Golden’s potentially murderous intentions, asking Golden Gray what he expected when he came to find his father (172). Instead, Golden Gray runs away with “Wild”, the woman. Wild is implied to be the mother of Joe Trace, Violet’s husband. Henry LesTroy becomes a father figure for Joe.

While the general content of Golden’s story remains the same, the narrator begins her tale of his venture to Virginia three times, only being satisfied the final time after berating herself for not seeing his motivations:

What was I thinking of? How could I have imagined him so poorly? Not noticed the hurt that was not linked to the color of his skin, or the blood that beat beneath it. But to some other thing that longed for authenticity, for a right to be in this place, effortlessly without needing to acquire a false face, a laughless grin, a talking posture. I have been careless and stupid and it infuriates me to discover (again) how unreliable I am. (160)

The narrator’s claims to know Golden Gray’s story are erased by this passage. She is unreliable, unable to know the true complexity of even this minor character.

Why is Golden Gray present in Jazz? He is connected to all these characters from the main plot, but his own story can at best be considered a supplement, and at worst a tangent. Yet his story is there, highlighting the complicated interwoven histories of the main characters and highlighting the unknowable nature of humanity and human love.