Toni Morrison, Barack Obama, and Difference

        

In the chapter of his book by the title above Stepto writes:
In this lecture series on reading the African American classics in the age of Obama, we are discussing themes and tropes that are not new (indeed they are "classic") but that are received anew because we have been reading and listening to Barack Obama's personal narratives, and because we have been observing him living out and, in a sense, performing his narratives often on a very public stage.  For example, narratives of the absent parent, and of the black father who has absconded, are in truth twice-told tales, but we read or receive those tales in new ways in the present moment because our president has shared with us his own versions of those stories.  Indeed, with African American folklore and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977) in mind, we can even say (with a bit of blues intonation) that Mr. Obama knows all about Africans flying off to Africa, leaving children who must try to find family and home in new arrangements and, often, new geographies.