Tours and Museums

Tours, museums, and guided observation are symbolic of detachment from reality. In “Control Negro” (1), the narrator recalls when his son was a child and cared for in a nursery on the campus where he worked: “And faculty, like me, could take guided tours and observe through mirrored one-way glass.” This situation is representative of the distance the narrator maintains from his son throughout his life, as he seeks to manipulate the circumstances of his existence for research purposes. In “My Monticello” (62), Da’Naisha observes that when she previously went to Monticello, ahead of the time when she and a group of her neighbors and loved ones took refuge there during a violent white supremacist uprising, she would not touch any of the items. However, when she establishes a home there, she makes use of what she needs and feels connected to the history of...