If You Surrender to the Air: Folk Legends of Flight and Resistance in African

American Literature
Author(s): Gay Wilentz
Source: MELUS , Spring, 1989 - Spring, 1990, Vol. 16, No. 1, Folklore and Orature
(Spring, 1989 - Spring, 1990), pp. 21-32
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the Multi-
Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

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If You Surrender to the Air:
Folk Legends of Flight and Resistance
in African American Literature

Gay Wilentz
East Carolina University

Freud and Jung signify flight as a symbol of transcendence, an

escape from a disagreeable situation. Or as Jung is interpreted by John
Henderson: Flight as a symbol points "to man's [sic] need for libera-
tion from any state of being which is too immature, too fixed or final"
(149). In examinations of flight as transcendence, these interpreters of
myth persistently examine it solely in relation to the individual on on
hand, and humankind on the other. Jung makes bold assertions o
how these myths work on the collective unconscious, focusing primarily
on the experience of the individual (which we know by now represent
Western white male). But not nearly enough investigation has been
done on how this concept is applied in a culturally-specific structure-
how the collective unconscious (memory) functions for a particular
group of people with a unique historicity. Although the scope of this
essay does not permit a reworking of Western psychoanalytic thought
it does entail an examination of myth as culture-bound experience.
Black people of the African diaspora, as a group with linguistic, ethnic
and historical ties, share a common heritage, and with it, simila
myths, legends and tales. Writers in the diaspora have often incorpo-
rated these aspects of the orature in their work, as part of a cultural
milieu almost effaced and certainly distorted by the dominant culture
Through the reworking of the myths and legends of their culture,
these authors present an alternative reality in opposition to th
hegemonic myth-making of eurocentric white, Western culture.
For the purposes of this essay, I examine one myth/legend in the
African diaspora-that of the Flying Africans-and how this myth
legend functions in the writings of contemporary African Americans
Flight, in this case, functions not merely as an individual or "universal"
symbol of transcendence, but as a collective symbol of resistance by
specific group within a socio-historical context. In this case, flight
transcends a particular state of being-slavery-that was clearly "too
immature, fixed [and] final." Captured Africans who arrived on slav
MELUS, Volume 16, Number 1 (Spring 1989-1990)

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22 GAY WILENTZ

ships realized their position in the New World, so they flew back
Africa rather than submit to slavery. The issue of whether the slav
actually flew back to Africa raises a question, closely related to th
culturally-based interpretation of myth: Should this tale correctly
called a legend? If, in fact, a legend is "true" and happened in t
recognizable past, are we to believe that the Africans really flew or tha
this, as Jung suggests, is an earlier myth being replayed in the slav
conscious/subconscious minds? It is not my aim to attempt to answ
that question, but rather to look at how the writers themselves answ
it. How this issue is explored by these contemporary writers is clos
connected to each author's discourse and the manner in which the
myth/legend functions in their works. And in this case gender may
affect interpretation. First I examine how the use of flight as a symbol
of resistance functions thematically in Ralph Ellison's "Flying Home,"
Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada, and Richard Perry's Montgomery's
Children. Then I contrast it with the explicit use of the legend in Paule
Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon.
The legend of the Flying Africans is prevalent throughout the
diaspora-from the coastal areas of the southern United States to the
Caribbean and parts of Latin America. Slavers' reports during the
height of the slave trade indicated the need for nets to cover the bows
of ships because so many slaves committed suicide by jumping over-
board. But the legends of African American and Caribbean peoples
tell us that the slaves actually flew. Although there is not extensive
documentation on these legends, I have found evidence in both writ-
ten and oral accounts. (Problems with documentation stem from
eurocentric/scientific bias to the destruction of sites, such as the con-
troversy over the waste water plant at Ibo Landing in South Carolina.)
Writer and scholar Wilson Harris, in a speech at the University of
Texas, referred to the import of this legend and its existence through-
out the Caribbean, recounting the orature of slaves who "in their
anguish sought to fly back to Africa." Studies of slavery in Cuba,
Jamaica and other Caribbean islands also refer to Africans who escaped
slavery through flight. Monica Schuler mentions this phenomenon in
her study of Jamaican slavery (93, 96). Michelle Cliff, in her novel
Abeng, has the narrator recount this legend as part of a "corrected"
history of Jamaica: "The old women and men believed, before they
had to eat salt during the sweated labor in the canefields, Africans
could fly. They were the only people on this earth to whom God had
given this power. Those who refused to be slaves and did not eat salt
flew back to Africa" (63).
Many versions of the legend exist in the southern United States as
well. Two major renditions of the legend emerge. One concerns the
newly arriving Africans who take one look at their future, turn around,

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FOLK LEGENDS OF FLIGHT AND RESISTANCE 23

and fly back over the ocean. Interestingly, the people who have t
power to fly are most often identified in this version of the tale as Ig
from eastern Nigeria, and this is also true in the literature. The ot
legend is about an African who teaches the earthbound slaves to f
and they return to Africa together. In frequently recounted versions o
this tale throughout the South, a shaman has been captured (o
allows himself to be captured to find out where his people are di
pearing to) and is brought across the Middle Passage to a plantatio
on the coastal plains of North Carolina, South Carolina, or Georgia
knows the words which can induce the power to fly, and finding
people as slaves, teaches them what they have forgotten. In the m
of beatings by the overseer, they speak the words remembered,
flight, and return to Africa. An excellent example of this tal
recounted in Virginia Hamilton's collection of African American
folktales, The People Who Could Fly. In this version, the shaman passes
the first words to a young woman with a child. Sarah, the woman,
grabs her child, speaks the words, and takes flight: "She flew clumsily
at first, with the child now held tightly in her arms. Then she felt the
magic, the African mystery, she rose just as free as a bird. As light as a
feather" (169). In all of the versions, the emphasis is on the power of
flight that the newly enslaved Africans have and, in the case of those
already slaves, the words which help them relearn the ability they
have lost.
In Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal
Negroes (a 1940s WPA project), stories of flying Africans abound. The
tales collected in this folklore edition were passed down orally through
generations-usually told initially by a relative who actually saw the
Africans fly back. Most of the stories concern the first rendition I
mentioned-native-born Africans who spend little time on America's
shores before flying off. One variation of this tale, which surfaces in
Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow, is about the Igbos who started
slow in their attempts at flying so they walked on water from the river
to get to the sea to begin their flight (150). In recounting a different
version of this legend, "People Who Could Fly," Julius Lester also
refers to this variant: "Some of those who tried to fly back to Africa
would walk until they came to the ocean" (148). In analyzing the legend of
the Flying Africans as an introduction to the tales, Lester raises an issue
pertinent to this essay-whose version of reality are we to believe? Lester
states that whether the slaves actually returned to Africa or drowned
was not important-at least "they were no longer slaves." Alex Haley,
who also retells this story in Roots (326), has a more definitive answer.
Haley, for his part (and as I explore later-possibly as a reflection of his
gender), sides with Western interpretation by stating firmly that the Igbos
drown in the river they attempt to walk on to reach the sea.

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24 GAY WILENTZ

The issue of failed or successful flight, the implicit or explicit use

the legend, and its function as dead myth or life-giving legend ap
to be gender-based, at least in the five writers examined in this e
In two of the three male writers-Ellison and Reed-the use of this
legend is implicit rather than explicit. And it is very easy to read the
works without any reference to the legend itself. Rather, the emphasis
is on a more generalized "flying" as a means to escape oppression.
Although Jung's view of flight as transcendence may be a means to
interpret Ellison's short story, "Flying Home," a more precise reading
includes reference to the legend of the Flying Africans and flight as a
means to escape slavery-internal slavery. Ellison, in both his short
stories and Invisible Man, presents the modern Black man as one who
has internalized his sense of being a slave and in some ways does not
have the humanity of his enslaved ancestors. The use of flying in this
story is-as in everything Ellison writes-multi-faceted. From the use
of jet planes and birds to the folktale/joke of the Black man who enters
heaven (working out of Christian mythology here) and is forced to fly
on one wing, Ellison employs flight and fall as symbols of transcen-
dence and resistance.
In "Flying Home," the protagonist Todd is a World War II pilot, one
of the first Black pilots to train in the South. He is isolated from the
Black community and fearful that his white counterparts will see him
as they see the Black rural folks around the base. He is caught between
two cultures, incorporating the prejudices of the dominant culture
towards his own while realizing white society does not accept him as
equal. His dilemma is embodied in his uncomfortable position of
flying blind-literally and metaphorically: "Between ignorant black
men and condescending whites, his course of flight seemed mapped
by the nature of things away from all needed and natural landmarks"
(154). His dilemma is realized when he crashes; he takes off too
quickly and is hit by a buzzard in his ascent. Like Icarus, he has tried to
fly too high. But his fall is fortunate since it helps him to begin to break
away from the internal slavery that haunts him. He is found by two
men from the community, one old and one young, who try to help
him. The old man, Jefferson, immediately understands Todd's attempt
to prove himself. Todd is first embarrassed by what he sees as "this old
black ignorant man" (153); later, he thinks Jefferson is making fun of
him when the old man tells him the tale of a Black angel who is kicked
out of heaven for flying too fast. But in the course of the story, Todd
comes to realize that Jefferson's folk wisdom prepares him for a new
way of seeing, a way of transcending the internal slavery he has
imposed upon himself as well as the actual restrictions that white
society places on him. In this case, those restrictions are symbolized by
a racist white man who takes Todd away in a straitjacket because "the

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FOLK LEGENDS OF FLIGHT AND RESISTANCE 25

nigguh brain aint built right for high altitudes" (168). Even th
he is in a straitjacket by the end of the story, he has escaped a s
of the mind and his soul has taken flight. As he feels the rene
bonds of community with Jefferson and the young boy, Todd
at the sky to watch the buzzard he once found hideous soar
him: 'Then like a song within his head he heard the boy's
humming and saw the dark bird glide into the sun and glow li
bird of flaming gold" (170).
For Todd, the buzzard which arrests his flight and helps cau
fall at the beginning of the story, becomes an image of transce
at the end. By placing himself in his community without being e
rassed by it, Todd is able to break away from the mental slaver
debilitates him. Although Ellison makes no mention of the lege
the Flying Africans, there are resonances of it in his use of flig
means of escape. Furthermore, there is one aspect of the story
echoes a variation of the legend. One of the informants in Drum
Shadows refers to the Africans turning themselves into buzzard
flying "right back tuh Africa" (151). Still, it is evident that Elli
working out of numerous traditions, such as the Christian tra
and Milton's "fortunate fall"; moreover, he presents a dialectical
of flight. The buzzard is seen at the end of the story as an im
transcendence, but the plane which crashes ultimately symboliz
transcendence but failed flight as well as the limitations of we
technology.
In examining contemporary versions of the "flight as transcen-
dence" myth, Jung comments that jet planes may be modern symbols
of "release or liberation" (157). In Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada, as well
as in "Flying Home," the use of planes illustrates the character's
dilemma as well as desire to transcend internal and external slavery.
Reed's comic novel spans a century by using a commercial airline as a
metaphor for physical flight from slavery and oppression. Raven
Quickskill is an ingenious slave who transcends the bounds of slavery
by flying away in a jet. The opening poem of the novel reflects the
novel's aims: "Dear Massa Swille:/ I have done my Liza Leap/ & am
safe in the arms/ of Canada, so/ Aint no use your Slave/ Catchers
waitin on me/ At Trailways/ I won't be there/ I flew in non-stop/
Jumbo jet this A.M./ That was rat poison I left/ In your Old Crow"
(11). Reed, who calls himself a "stand-up novelist," blends two genres
for this work-the moder comic novel and the slave narrative.
Quickskill escapes from slavery, physical in this case, by flying
Canada, and his flight is a modern rendition of the undergro
railroad the slaves traveled to reach a place where they could be s
than in the North with its fugitive slave laws. His flight on a jet p
is a technological replication of the Flying Africans who can fly

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26 GAY WILENTZ

their own wings, but here Quickskill flies to Canada, not back
Africa. To reinforce the flying motif in the novel, characters have bir
names. For example, Quickskill's Indian girlfriend Quaw-Quaw's na
has the sound of a crow, and Uncle Robin, the plantation house slav
is a bird who stays rooted to his own nest. Robin, despite his nam
does not fly; rather, he is the redeemed "Sambo" who waits
slavery, changes his master's will, and becomes the owner of
plantation. The name of Reed's persona, Raven Quickskill, not onl
reveals his propensity for flight, but also his speed and mastery. H
also a trickster who subverts his master's intentions. He retells his
escape from slavery, twisting the tales about well-known players of
history-Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe-and confounding notions
of time/space continuum. Quickskill appears to represent the trickster
figure in African mythology who can fly (without the use of props like
jet planes), but Reed may also be playing off Tlingit (Native American)
mythology which honors the raven as a trickster deity (Weixlmann
205). To present the multiplicity of cultural influences, Reed, like
Ellison, alludes to a number of traditions, particularly Native and
African American. And implicit references to the legend of the Flying
Africans are layered with other historical, popular, and traditional
allusions. Still, the novel, in slave narrative form, takes the motif of
flying as a means to escape oppression. Yet here, too, Reed subverts
the image, because Quickskill's flight to Canada is in the end a
failure. It is consistent with Reed's middle-class vision for Black
American life that he sees no African home to return to. The impli-
cation is that the legend is one of escape without option; the answer
for Reed appears to be grounded in America and in forcing change
within that context. For Quickskill, "Canada" is just another white
man's mess, for by the end of the novel he has realized what the
cagey Uncle Robin (the redeemed Sambo character) has known all
along-that "Canada, like Freedom, is just a state of mind" (191).
Quickskill, who returns from his journey to tell his people the trip's
not worth taking, comes back to Virginia to join Robin who now
owns the plantation, earthbound but on his own terms.
If Reed envisions this legend of flying as a journey which inevitably
leads back home, Richard Perry in Montgomery's Children reworks the
legend as that of failed flight. Unlike Ellison and Reed, Perry employs
a more developed articulation of the myth. Yet despite the fact that
Perry's novel is the closest of the three to an explicit reference to the
legend, it most overtly questions any possibility of transcendence/
resistance for twentieth-century African Americans. The novel takes
place in Montgomery, New York, and concerns the Black community
which, according to the street sermonizer Norman, is waiting for a
prophecy and "poised for flight" (153). Although the story is interwo-

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FOLK LEGENDS OF FLIGHT AND RESISTANCE 27

ven with the lives of many of Montgomery's residents, it focuses

Norman, who can fly, and his attempts to pass on to the children
Montgomery this skill that their African ancestors had. He has visio
of lynching and pursuits in which Black men escape by flying. In ea
vision, he quickly becomes the escaping man: "When he felt th
breath hot and sour on his neck, he gave one mighty leap and began
fly, soaring out to the moon" (22). These visions become so strong t
Norman leaves his family. He sets out on a shamanistic journey
learn to fly and to teach others how to capture this transcendent powe
which was once theirs.
Unlike Quickskill, who is clearly the trickster image of those who
fly, Norman is a modem shaman-like the one in the folktale-who
wants to teach his people what they have forgotten through generations
of oppression and the imposition of the dominant culture. Norman not
only flies, but he can see the future from his flights above the city of
Montgomery. But as shamans are so often viewed through present-
day myopia, Norman is considered mad and no one pays him much
attention. In searching for a willing ear, Norman picks one of
Montgomery's children-Gerald, a young, intelligent boy abused by
his father-by the distinguishing mark on his eye and chooses him as
the recipient of the legend that Black people could fly. Norman explains
to Gerald that, through the use of their minds, Black people developed
tremendous power in their bodies, but during slavery, they had to
pretend they had no minds and therefore they forgot their power: "As
a result, the children grew up mistaking mask for matter, never won-
dering where the marvelous grace in their bodies came from, never
questioning its possibilities. So they only danced when they could
have flown" (109). Norman chooses to teach Gerald this power of
transcendence so that the legend as well as the flight itself is passed on
to the future generations of Montgomery's children. But unlike the
actual legend in which the shaman passes on the power to fly, Norman
fails at imparting this life-giving force. At the end of the novel, Gerald
returns to Montgomery with his mark exorcised by cosmetic surgery
(it marred his good looks), and Norman does not recognize him. Here
Perry moves from African to Christian mythology. By not recognizing
Gerald as the prophet to carry on the legend and the power to fly,
Norman, like the Jews, misses his "messiah" (since Jesus also did not
look as the Jews supposed he would). Without a recipient for his tale,
Norman loses his ability to fly midair and dies, first revealingly im-
paled on the Star of David of the synagogue, then smashed on the
cement street. No one learns the legend of the Africans who could fly
and, in this novel, there is no redemption.
In each of the three works, Jung's view of flight as transcendence is
articulated in relationship to external or internal slavery and the

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28 GAY WILENTZ

collective oppression of Black people in hegemonic Euro-Ame

society, but the legend of the Flying African is implicit in the first
and is reworked without attention to the orature in the third. Even
more revealing is the issue of failed flight. In Ellison and Reed, the
failed flight is a positive step. Ellison's pilot Todd has a fortunate fall
which brings him to his senses and Reed's Quickskill realizes that
being earth-bound in the material world is what will improve the lives
of African Americans. For Perry, the vision is darker: Although the
legend is more clearly articulated in this novel, the strength and
resistance gained by learning the tale or learning to fly are lost both
metaphorically and literally. The male writers, through their male
characters, do not pass on the legend in its entirety; moreover, with
the possible exception of Quaw Quaw, the Indian princess in Flight to
Canada, women have little to do with the legend or with the propensity
for flight.
But the women writers tell a different tale. Historically, in Africa
and the diaspora, women have been the heritage bearers; they have
passed on the orature to the children. It is this cultural heritage which
has been handed down from grandmother to grandchild across time
and the Atlantic. Contemporary women writers, following a pattern
from often undocumented African and African American women
storytellers, aim to pass on cultural values and tradtions-including
tales and legends-to help build more integrated and healthier com-
munities. The two women I examine here, Paule Marshall and Toni
Morrison, use variations of this legend as a major motif in Praisesong for
the Widow and Song of Solomon, respectively, and they present the leg-
end in its entirety as a life-giving force to build community strength
and resist oppression. It is through the acknowledgment of one's
African heritage and the learning of the power of the ancestors that the
African American community can achieve wholeness. In these two
novels, that power is associated with the African ancestors' ability to
transcend slavery and fly home. Paule Marshall, who calls herself "an
unabashed ancestor worshipper," centers her novel on one of the
variants of this legend-that of "Ibo Landing" and the slaves who
walked on water till they reached the ocean and flew home. For
Praisesong, Marshall drew upon a version of this legend she read in
Drums and Shadows: The Igbos, as recounted by a slave who saw them
land, all started singing, marched first to the ocean and then across it,
although the speaker (from a Western perspective) tells us that they
never made it back to Africa-they drowned (185). In conversation,
Marshall told me that her reading of this legend so resonated in her
consciousness that she knew a novel would come out of it. In the
resulting Praisesong, Marshall takes a step further by accepting the
literal meaning of the legend as the central metaphor for the novel. For

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FOLK LEGENDS OF FLIGHT AND RESISTANCE 29

Avey Johnson, the protagonist in Praisesong, her own spiritual p

sage back to Africa occurs when she, emotionally distraught, jum
the Caribbean cruise ship she is on and attempts to fly home. The
of plane reservations leaves her stranded in Grenada, and an out-
the-way excursion to the island of Carriacou becomes a voyage bac
her African past, mirroring the journeys of the Igbos at Ibo Lan
and the Flying Africans. During this experience, she returns to t
memory of childhood summers in Tatem, South Carolina, and her G
Aunt Cuney, with whom she used to visit Ibo Landing. Each year t
would enact the ritual of their communal heritage as Avey wo
listen to the stories of the Igbos. Great Aunt Cuney would tell h
grandniece about her own gran', a slave, who witnessed the Ig
disembarkation at the Landing. Horrified by what they foresaw as
future of enslaved Africans, they decided to walk back to Afr
"When they realized that there wasn't nothing between them
home but some water and that wasn't giving them no trouble they
so tickled they started in to singing.... Those Ibos! Just upped
walked away not two minutes after getting here" (38-39). One ye
steeped in public school indoctrination, the young Avey asks if t
drowned. Aunt Cuney responds by demanding if Christ drow
when He walked on water in the Sunday school books? As fa
Cuney is concerned, the legend of the Flying Africans is no
believable than Christ's miracle at Galilee; through Cuney's im
cable logic, we as readers begin to rethink what perceptions of rea
are valued. Marshall reminds us that certain legends are privil
while others are not. By reaffirming the values and traditions, pa
on to her by her great aunt in childhood, Avey comes to accept h
African heritage, hidden for years by the hegemony of mainstr
cultural values and the ironic pressure to assimilate into a restric
society. Moreover, it is this legend of transcendence which inspires
middle-aged, middle-class Black woman Avey to reclaim her herit
and pass on the story of Ibo Landing to her children and fu
generations.
The legend of Africans who either flew or walked on water
according to Barbara Christian, "a touchstone of New World B
folklore. Through this story, people of African descent emphasiz
their power to determine their own freedom, though their bo
might be enslaved" (151-52). This tale, passed on by the women an
now the women writers, is part of an orature which affirms stre
and positive action in the midst of oppression. In Toni Morrison's
of Solomon, it is also a woman-Pilate, the Africanized aunt and sp
tual mother of the protagonist Milkman-who preserves the legac
his great-grandfather, Solomon the Flying African. Song of Solomon i
complex novel, which has been seen as a biblical allegory, a detect

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30 GAY WILENTZ

novel, and a young man's search for his roots. The novel has a mult
faceted plot, but it is Milkman's relationship with Pilate, who fun
tions as the female ancestor, which transforms his search for gold in
an acknowledgment of his African heritage. In his quest to learn h
family history, Milkman repeats Pilate's journey to the South where
uncovers the legend of his ancestors-that of the Flying Africans.
From Pilate's name to Robert Smith's flying on his own wings an
the Shalimar children's rendition of the folksong with the sounds of an
airplane, the desire and execution of flight is a major motif in the
novel. This song which accompanies Milkman's birth helps him
realize that he is descended from the Flying Africans who refused
exist under the constraints and humiliation of slavery. When Milk
man, who since four has been bored because he would never fl
realizes what his great-grandfather did, he understands his potent
and challenges the dominant culture which only allows you to f
through technology: "My great-granddaddy could fly...! He didn
need no airplane. He just took off.... No more cotton! No more shit
He flew, baby. Lifted his beautiful black ass up in the sky and flew
home" (331-32).
Morrison reminds us that the men who flew off would not be
remembered had the women not remained behind to tell the tale. In
her dedication, Morrison writes: "The fathers may soar/ And the
children may know their names." But there is a group missing in the
dedication whose presence is overpowering in the novel-the mothers.
When the father soars off, there must be someone to teach the children
their names. In this novel, it is the women who have kept track of the
names and stories so that the men could soar and the children learn
and remember. In this context, Morrison states: "There is a price to pay
and the price is the children.... All the men have left someone, and it is
the children who remember it, sing about it, make it a part of their
family history" (Watkins 50). Pilate, who teaches Milkman his ances-
tral name and the legend of the Flying Africans, lives her life with a
commitment to bear witness. Just as the spirituals transformed the
slaves' misery into music, Pilate and the other women storytellers turn
their "pleas into a note" (321) and pass on the memory of the names
stolen and the legends suppressed. The unresolved ending to this
novel includes a loaded question for the reader: Did the enslaved
Africans drown or did they fly back to Africa? What version of reality
are we to believe? Like Marshall, Morrison exposes this conflict in
Western and African cultural perceptions, revealing the importance of
African heritage and values for Black Americans. In the reincarnation
of his great-grandfather, Milkman flies as his ancestors flew, leaving a
legacy for women's tales and children's songs.
Tales of the Flying Africans and the stories of endurance in the face

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FOLK LEGENDS OF FLIGHT AND RESISTANCE 31

of slavery and oppression have been encapsulated in the orature

women-left behind not only to sing the blues but to sing of h
But, as Morrison suggests in this novel, there is a price to pay for f
and that is the fate of those who are left behind. Revealingly, i
regard, it may be useful to look at the actions of the escaping s
one female, one male-in the folktale, "People Who Could Fly,"
Song of Solomon. In Virginia Hamilton's retelling of the legend
slave Sarah flies back to Africa with her child in her arms, but Solo
drops his son. Taken together, we may perceive these two confl
actions as a metaphor for the ways in which the legend is recrea
the fiction of the men and women I have examined here. In effe
male writers "drop" the baby by abandoning the life-giving qu
of the legend. The characters in the novels by men remain earth
the legend is generalized, ends in failure, or is finally rejected. T
of the legend of flight as resistance does not work, except to
extent in Ellison, and that is the most generalized of the three. Poss
this is because Black women, who have historically been the her
bearers, are not realized as characters in the novels. However,
Sarah who holds her child as she flies, the women writers, desp
imposition of the dominant culture, pass on this tale in its ent
presenting both the verity of the legend and the possibility for
In this way, the women writers are following a tradition of A
women as the "custodians of the culture" (Arhin 92) and maintai
of the orature, passed on to future generations. Whether we wa
look at it metaphorically or literally, these women writers cre
world view which accepts Morrison's premise: "If you surrende
the air, you could ride it" (341).
In The Dynamic of Folklore, Barre Toelken states that a tradit
mode in literature is "a conventionalized ordering of lit
design...according to the expectation of tradition" (338). The expr
of this mode, the traditional metaphor, "differs from the usual con
of metaphor [in that] traditional actions, colors, images, symbo
so on, have culture-based connotations" (339). In all the works dis-
cussed, the legend of the Flying Africans functions as part of this
traditional mode, whether it is as a failed quest or as a vision of
empowerment. In the same sense, Jung's theory of flight as a symbol of
transcendence in our collective unconscious here has indisputable
culture-based connotations: This legend is a symbol not simply of
humanity's collective unconscious and desire to fly, but of the collec-
tive resistance of those in the diaspora to a system which denied their
humanity. And the legend has been passed on through the culture-
from the South of the United States to the Caribbean and Latin
America-to aid in the struggles of the descendants of those who
refused subjugation and flew.

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32 GAY WILENTZ

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