Retrospective for a Flying Man: 
 My first reading of Toni Morrison was nothing short of amazing, this book does so much, so well, so easily. We learn about three to four generations of one family and, in-fact, one culture. I won't be beating around the bush in this review. Though Macon "Milkman" Dead III was the default protagonist, he was also my least favorite character. The natural woman/superwoman Pilate was my second favorite character because she knew how to navigate time and space in her own way. The Dead family as a whole seems like an interesting archetype or counterpoint of The Sutpen family of Absalom, Absalom! (down to their sharing the same origins in Virginia--which are also my maternal family origins). This book shows a good example of Faulknerianism played straight and subverted in the hands of a Black writer. To be short: this is a great Black Southern Gothic novel. 
 But that leads to talking about the greatest character of this novel...its author. Morrison took me places that I had not realized I needed to go. Even my animosity to the main character did not hurt this book to me because it did everything so well. The chapters divided the story so well, I can only think of The Brothers Karamazov doing it better. The reason this book has struck me so well is how personal it is to African-American experience. This book alludes to White people and White supremacy, but you will be hard pressed to find a White person in it, much less with even a speaking line (I think a white nurse from the beginning is all we are told in 377 pages). This is the first book I have read in a long time written by Black hands only concerning Black people on their own terms (this is not accidental) and it is refreshing! I can hear the true cadence of how my family talks to one another and the number of cultural references and inside jokes were amazing and I would be amazed if most non-African-Americans can pick it up. This book was written to a specific audience much of the small things in it go unexplained and I was surprised to see it all there. This more than anything will make me have to read Morrison again. I believe the only other Black writer to come close isJames Baldwin in Go Tell It on the Mountain, but even he had to start "explaining" things that he would not have to do for a strictly African-American audience. 
 Names play a pivotal role in this story. Every significant character is given a symbolic name or nickname which is symbolic of how names play a role in African-American life. As is the truth in reality, if you are given a nickname it is rarely for a positive reason. This is taken further in that even the "real" names in this book are acquired in very unusual or strange ways. The one exception I see in this is the character Guitar, whose name is a misnomer from his infancy (though I am increasingly thinking it is a stealth pun/reference to a certain character from The Brothers Karamazov). 
 The locations of this story, particularly in the second half of the novel, are also very special to me as it shows the history of Black people's journey in-country. Though the story's main setting is Michigan, Milkman's "Roots" journey leads him not simply through a different land (the mid-Atlantic and eventually the origin of African- Americans: Virginia), but literally (in the magical realist sense) back in time. He goes back to his father and grandfather's time in Pennsylvania, but more importantly to me is that he went to central Virginia. When he talks about his journey into Virginia it hits me personally because my mother's family is from this land. I can see the landscape and almost the roads and shops of this area and I knew exactly what the climate was. This was another crucial factor in my reading this book--it is about the land of my ancestors as much as it is about the land of Milkman's ancestors. 
 The Southern Gothic nature of the novel is also worth talking about. Morrison is as much a fan of Faulkner as she is critic. This book takes the haunted nature of gothic fiction and manages to put it in an urban, mid-western environment. The city of Mercy, Michigan is as much haunted by slavery and its legacy as Jefferson, Mississippi. The difference is that the stakes are a lot higher and the fallout more severe for the Black inhabitants in Morrison's universe versus the White inhabitants of Faulkner's. 
 To conclude, if you want to read a story about one man's search for his place in the world in the middle of the 20th century, this is your book. 
 P.S. MAGICAL REALISM. Seems I would be fined if I did not mention that somewhere. It was a very well used trope.