Sacrifices in Solider

Sacrifices in Solider

June Jordan’s memoir, “Solider, A Poet’s Childhood,” is a story about a family told through the unusual lens of a very young child. The narrator brings to attention the complex and contradictory feelings she has for her father and her mother. Her father has a rigid and thorough view on how his only child can make it in the world. He raises his daughter through what he calls “military reconnaissance training” and he explained to me that one could never get too good at this sort of exercise: It might save your life.” Reading this sentence, I think about what her father survived and what he did not survive. Why did her father feel that parenting meant training a solider, rather than bringing up a daughter? Was he only a tyrant and bully to his daughter?

The narrator successfully weaves images of intimate and tender-hearted moments where her father is just that a father who takes her to Carnegie Hall where she ends up curling up into his lap and falls asleep in his lap (p. 52) or a father who would lavish the shaving cream on his face then for play lavish it all over his daughters face (p. 58) or tenderly shares a schooling about boys in the lesson of the apple tree:

“You didn’t ever want to become an apple on the ground. Apples just lying there would begin to rot. Or somebody would step on them, crushing their pulp.
But if you hung there up on that tree—then! Then “the young man him must reach up high,” and aspire to your elevated, inaccessible position. “Him must prize and pine for you.”

The portrait of her father is a man who cannot be easily characterized. “It was hard to settle my father into a steady frame of reference (p.4).” Throughout the story the father is loud, violent, mean, angry, political, intelligent, loving, opinionated, frugal with money, the master in his castle, and someone who could never give up as well as a be good provider. The narrator reflects from the age of two years old to twelve about how it like growing up as his “good little solider.” “He was forever loquacious, argumentative, and visionary in his perspective.” “And he was addicted to beauty, which is probably why he married my mother.” It was not difficult to comprehend the father’s behavior because the narrator revealed pressures and struggles “colored” people in America faced daily.

“In New York City there were very few places anybody not “white” could live. Landlords and realtors openly and legally discriminated against “colored” applicants.” In Part 2, Brooklyn-the narrator paints a militaristic design of the Harlem Housing Projects: “a coherent, planned community with look-alike buildings, look-alike Black American and West Indian families bustling among look-alike pathways that curved among look-alike patterns of planted grass and trees. Our apartments were uniformly neat and modern, with solid white walls…”Even though the narrator speaks about the housing projects being a safe harbor for Black families institutional racism seemed to foster an atmosphere that was uniform, rigid or jail-like.
“And I never heard the word sacrifice until we moved to Harlem. (p. 45)”
“I turned completely against sacrifice. But nobody asked me.”

I find it interesting that the narrator introduces the issue of sacrifice on the next page following the descriptions of the Harlem River Housing Project. There seems to be an allusion to systemic racism. Perhaps underneath the given sacrifices that parents make every day for their children, which is good and responsible to an extent, the reader listens to the defiant voice of a child warning us that sacrifice is not a good idea:

“Suddenly I had to listen to my mother and my father talking about sacrifice, day in and day out. I was told to remember sacrifice or to be worthy of sacrifice or to be grateful for sacrifice. “

“And as far as I could see, sacrifice was not a good idea. It never made anybody laugh. I would never bedevil a hard-boiled egg.”

“But nobody asked me.” I think what makes the above statements profound is that there are serious sacrifices made throughout the story by the father, mother and the daughter but at what cost? On page 17 the daughter is viewing her mother’s wedding picture and says: “This young woman is no one I ever knew.” Her mother in the story seemed unaffectionate and cold. She never knew the side of her mother that was vibrant and young. The father sacrificed materialistic pleasures like a car because he felt a house was more important which I would have to agree, but sacrificing his daughter’s childhood so that she may survive in a Whiteman’s world is hauntingly tragic. And the many instances where the daughter could not feel pain, physical and emotional pain was equally unsettling.

For instance when she got her foot operated on, or when her arm and wrists got tangled and torn in the barbed-wire fence, or when he father would beat her, or when she was asked to help her mother in the bathroom, she was told: “Be a Big Girl.” She would not cry - she would be a good solider - she would become her father’s right hand man – she would take it like a man he father would constantly school her to take it like a man. And soon thereafter the surprise beating attacks, she’d requested a gun and slept with a knife under her pillow. At what cost to keep the appearance of a warrior or a big girl or how he father had designs on them to about “The Way Great People Go Through Life” (p. 11). I think the narrator is leading the reader to examine how systemic racism might have played a role into the hard sacrifices her family made. How the impact of racism affected her family. Even though throughout the story I was relieved when the narrator found her joy in the books, the bible passages, her Nanny and Uncle Teddy I felt that she deeply loved her parents, but she didn’t know how to do the things they wanted her to do the first five years of her life.

The narrator was never sentimental about her “military reconnaissance training.” There wasn’t self-pity or victimization. She asked questions and resisted when both her father and mother contradicted themselves. For example, when her father kept putting off buying her a bicycle after getting straight As and or when her mother embarrassed her in front of her Nanny when her arm was tangled and mashed in the barbed wire, she demanded that June stop crying and “Be A Big Girl.” I think June felt betrayed in that moment that her mother should have kissed her and showed some affection, but her mother turned her back in front of Nanny. That’s when June decided that she needed a gun.