Summary

In “Judges,” a mysterious chorus of “seven voices” opens the novel by means of direct address (1). “Proverbs” also employs the present tense and first-person direct address, this time featuring a single voice – that of Middle Anna – with a specific addressee: her lost son, Kayode. She has not seen him since the slave master sold him away, but the “old dark voices” (the speakers in the first chapter) tell her that he is now in Mississippi (3).

“Psalms” takes us to Mississippi, where young lovers Samuel and Isaiah lived together in a barn, on a slave plantation belonging to the Halifax family. Isaiah had a flashback to when he arrived there as a child. One of the men he was chained to had helped him off the wagon, saying he had promised Isaiah’s mother that he would tell him his true name. A...