Nat Turner

Toussaint L'Ouverture has not been the only revolutionary I have wanted to study more.

I don't remember exactly when it kicked in; it's been at least a few years. At some point it felt important to read more about the actions people of color took on their own behalf than what was done for them, especially in situations of fighting slavery.

At first I tend to think of books that I have heard of, and I remembered that there was a book, The Confessions of Nat Turner. Perhaps it could be a good book for one of my Black History months.

No. It couldn't.

It was a Pulitzer Prize winner, which seemed like a recommendation, but it was a novel. I don't automatically eliminate novels, but it was by William Styron and apparently highly sexual, and it just didn't seem like it would be helpful.

That was a few years ago. This time around, my Native American Heritage and Black History studies for 2014 and 2015 got pretty crammed together, and that may have affected my viewpoint. Still, most of it probably comes from At the Dark End of the Street.

I read McGuire's book because of that initial goal of remembering that there are people who do a lot of work and don't get credit for it. It covers Black women organizing and male leaders getting the credit, but it also focuses on how sexual assault against Black women was used at the same time when the stated construct was that the big fear was Black men raping white women.

Maybe the news played a role too, with Damon Wayans - whom I have liked - calling Bill Cosby's accusers unrapeable, regardless of how often that very word was used to justify the sexual assault of Black women.

There is a lot that can be gone into with rape and race, and about sacrificing victims (no, I didn't watch Confirmation but it could relate), but that's not where I'm going with this now. I remembered Styron's novel and got curious.

No, that didn't mean reading it; it meant looking at a plot summary, but apparently a lot of Turner's conflict focuses on his desire for a fair and pure white maiden, and killing her is his only regret.

Okay, there is no reason that a white man born in Virginia in 1925 and writing about Black people in 1963 would go that way. Actually, he might have seemed pretty progressive for some of the other plot points. I'm still pretty disgusted, including with the award.

You probably know that there is a new movie coming out about Nat Turner. I am not positive that I will see it, because it sounds like it will be pretty violent, and I usually don't go to see rated R films.

I might see it anyway because I find it to be an important act of reclamation. I am thrilled that D. W. Griffith's ugly, lying, racist film, based on an ugly, lying, racist novel, is having its title appropriated for something else. I am glad that Nate Parker is reclaiming Turner's story. Early reviews are good. Sight unseen, I have to feel that it will be something truer and better than how Styron saw it.