{"id":33545,"date":"2013-09-09T04:49:53","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T04:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33545"},"modified":"2015-02-07T02:35:13","modified_gmt":"2015-02-07T02:35:13","slug":"finding-the-silver-lining-hair-mixed-race-and-identity-politics-in-toni-and-slade-morrison%e2%80%99s-little-cloud-and-lady-wind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33545","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Silver Lining: Hair, (Mixed) Race, and Identity Politics in Toni and Slade Morrison\u2019s Little Cloud and Lady Wind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finding the Silver Lining: Hair, (Mixed) Race, and Identity Politics in Toni and Slade Morrison\u2019s Little Cloud and Lady Wind<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Lion and the Unicorn<\/a>
\nVolume 37, Number 2<\/a>, April 2013
\npages 173-187
\nDOI: 10.1353\/uni.2013.0016<\/a><\/p>\n

Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of English
\nFlorida Atlantic University<\/em><\/p>\n

rainclouds
\nwe are
\nnature
\nnature
\nnature
\nnatural!!!
\nblack people, we rainclouds
\ncloser to the sun and full of life.<\/p>\n

\u2014Marvin Wyche Jr., \u201cWe Rainclouds\u201d (1974)<\/p>\n

As a little girl I dreamed freely, often on the top step of the back porch\u2014morning, noon, sunset, deep twilight. I loved clouds, I loved red streaks in the sky. I loved the gold worlds I saw in the sky. Gods and little girls, angels and heroes and future lovers labored there, in misty glory or sharp grandeur.<\/p>\n

\u2014Gwendolyn Brooks, Report from Part One<\/em> (1972)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Happy to Be Nappy<\/em> (1999), bell hooks<\/a> describes black girls\u2019 unprocessed hair as \u201csoft like cotton, flower petal billowy soft, full of frizz and fuzz.\u201d In addition to being described as puffy, spongy, kinky, crinkly, wooly or cotton-like, \u201cnatural\u201d unprocessed hair is often associated with clouds. \u201cFlower petal billowy soft\u201d immediately evokes the image of lightness but also brings to mind billow clouds, layers of water vapor that create fluffy wave-like patterns in the sky. The trope of black-hair-as-clouds is especially noticeable in descriptions of black hair in twentieth-century African American literature. In Jessie Redmon Fauset\u2019s<\/a> \u201cDouble Trouble\u201d (1923), Angelique shakes her \u201cshort, black, rather wiry hair til it misted like a cloud\u201d (32); Fran Ross\u2019s<\/a> mixed race protagonist in Oreo<\/a><\/em> (1974) is told: \u201cKinky hair\u2014like that beautiful fuzzy cloud you have\u2014is not really kinky\u201d (49); in Paule Marshall\u2019s<\/a> Praisesong for the Widow<\/em> (1983), Avey Johnson\u2019s daughter\u2019s hair \u201chad stood massed like a raincloud about to make good its threat\u201d (13); in Dorothy West\u2019s The Wedding<\/em> (1995), Clark Cole thinks of his mistress: \u201cThere is no beauty like that of a brown skinned woman when she is beautiful: the velvet skin, the dark hair like a cloud\u201d (97); and in John Edgar Wideman\u2019s<\/a> Hiding Place<\/em> (1998), Tommy\u2019s hair is described as, \u201c[c]ombed so high it\u2019s a cloud over his head, a bushy cloud making him taller than his brothers\u201d (77). Toni<\/a> and Slade Morrison\u2019s<\/a> children\u2019s book Little Cloud and Lady Wind<\/em> (2010), illustrated by Sean Qualls, focuses on a young female cloud whose image appears as a black or biracial girl; she sports a giant blue Afro (cloud), striking feature and a continuation of the hair\/cloud analogy. In fact, some of Morrison\u2019s novels also equate African American hair with clouds. In Tar Baby<\/em> after Jadine complains about the effect of the island\u2019s foggy weather on her hair, \u201c[s]he pressed her hair down with both palms, but as soon as she removed them her hair sprang back into a rain cloud\u201d (Morrison, Tar Baby<\/em> 64) and in Love, the narrator, L, describes the transition black hair goes through when wet as she recounts the actions of a woman on the beach: \u201cHer hair, flat when she went in [the water] rose up slowly and took on the shape of the clouds dragging the moon\u201d (Morrison, Love<\/em> 106). Little Cloud\u2019s hair and her lavender tan skin act as racial signifiers in this children\u2019s book about independence, belonging, and community.<\/p>\n

In the beginning of the story, Little Cloud separates from the other clouds, \u201cnot wanting to blend into a group and lose her freedom, [but] not wanting to frighten the earth\u201d (Toni and Slade Morrison). A visit from Lady Wind shows Little Cloud that her cloud duties of providing mist and dew are important, teaching her to respect both her individuality and restoring her place in the sky community. The story is reminiscent of Eric Carle\u2019s<\/a> Little Cloud<\/em> (1996), which also features a \u201cLittle Cloud\u201d that chooses independence: \u201cThe clouds pushed upward and away. Little Cloud pushed downward and touched the tops of horses and trees\u201d (Carle). Toni and Slade Morrison\u2019s book seems to signify on this Little Cloud<\/em> predecessor who does not take a human form (and thus remains a white cloud). On one level, Little Cloud and Lady Wind<\/em> encourages children to express their individuality while honoring \u201cthe whole is far mightier than any single part\u201d (Little Cloud, inside flap). On another level, the story is a subtle treatise on mixed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finding the Silver Lining: Hair, (Mixed) Race, and Identity Politics in Toni and Slade Morrison\u2019s Little Cloud and Lady Wind The Lion and the Unicorn Volume 37, Number 2, April 2013 pages 173-187 DOI: 10.1353\/uni.2013.0016 Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins, Associate Professor of English Florida Atlantic University rainclouds we are nature nature nature natural!!! black people, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8],"tags":[11226,11227,15686,569,1240],"class_list":["post-33545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-sika-a-dagbovie-mullins","tag-sika-dagbovie-mullins","tag-slade-morrison","tag-the-lion-and-the-unicorn","tag-toni-morrison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}