Magical Negro by Morgan Parker
by Stephanie Tobia
Morgan Parker’s Magical Negro wields every day language to capture a range of human emotion. The three-part collection plays on the cinematic term “magical negro” which is the use of a black character with mystical powers who aids a white protagonist. Seven of the collection’s poems are titled “Magical Negro #” as an important reminder of the various “magical negroes” utilized by white culture: Denzel Washington, Diana Ross, Jesus Christ, Gladys Knight and a myriad of others. Her use of varying line length and lowercase punctuation reads as a nod to lucille clifton.
The speaker in these poems is funny (in a satirical bent), insightful, and thoughtful. The narrative weaves the mundane with social issues, personal demons and frantic internal dialogue. The speaker interrogates her African American womanhood under a magnifying glass — she travels the inner workings of her mind and fears few places. The poem “What I Am” offers:
I consider buying chips and Ebony
and dog-earing every page that says
hallelujah. I keep saying I’m black
so I don’t forget. I twist my hair
in my fingers and watch time go silk.
I drink the glamour and offer myself.
These confessional details about sexuality, blackness, politics are weft and warp among the life of the female protagonist. Parker’s collection speaks to readers like long time friends allowing them to cling to poems like “a fly behind/my eyelid.” Her poems are happening in everyday places like Walgreens, at home and on the streets.
The speaker draws on experience to demonstrate sensitivity to and to subvert the stereotypes that affect her blackness and her gender. The poem “Magical Negro #89: Michael Jackson in Blackface on a Date with Tatum O’Neal, 1970s” offers:
I’m picking out parsnips. I imagine
telling my dad I’m buying parsnips
and laugh at the way he would say Girl
Don’t you know you’re a Negro? What
in the hell? A confession is: in this moment
I do not know precisely how parsnips taste,
only that I’ve had them before — some dinner party,
some New American Brooklyn situation —
The poem humorously explores what it means to live in the shadow of a constantly gentrifying Brooklyn, an ever whitening white America.
Magical Negro is a powerful, keen dialogue that deliberately offers more questions than answers.
