and through his unconscious apprenticeship to the one person in his family who is open, unfettered, whole: the exiled one, his unkempt, mystical, bootlegging Aunt Pilate.

through Milkman's exotic and then imprisoning affair with his love-blind cousin, Hagar. through Guitar's mad and loving commitment to the band of seven, the secret avengers called the Seven Days. We see Milkman growing up in his father's money-haunted, death-haunted house with his silent sisters and strangely passive mother, and we watch his beginning to move outward - through his profound love and combat with his friend (his Biblical brother) Guitar. We enter it on the day of his birth (the first black baby allowed to be born at Mercy - popularly called 'No Mercy' - Hospital), the day on which the lonely insurance man Robert Smith, poised in blue silk wings, attempts to fly from the steeple of the hospital, a black Icarus looking homeward. (known as Milkman), son of the richest black family in a Midwestern town.

It is a world we enter in the present, through Macon Dead, Jr. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0.Announced on October, 18, 1996 About the Book Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, or RSS Feed Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read. 'Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009.' Retrieved on 17 Aug 01 from ĭoyle, Robert P. Students who don't wish to read it can read an alternative.Ģ010 - Indiana - Parents of Franklin Central High School's Advanced Placement English class in Indianapolis were concerned about language and sexual content, but the book was retained. The book was reinstated but parents are informed in writing and at a meeting of the books content. A faculty committee recommended the book be retained, but the superintendent removed the book from the approved text list.Ģ009 - Michigan - The superintendent of Shelby school suspended the book from the curriculum. #72 on ALA's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009ġ993 - Ohio - Challenged but retained in Columbus schools for 'language degrading to blacks and is sexually explicit'ġ994 - Georgia - Richmond County School District removed the book from reading lists and library shelves after a parent complained passages were 'filthy and inappropriate'ġ995 - Florida - St Johns County Schools in St Augustine challenged the bookġ998 - Maryland - Complaints to St Mary's County schools referred to the novel as 'filth,' 'trash,' and 'repulsive' and lead to challenges. A man in wings jumps off the hospital where an important baby soon known as Milkman is being born.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison