39 pages • 1 hour read
Pearl CleageFlyin' West
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Inheritance and Racial Identity
Flyin’ West takes place a mere 33 years after the abolition of slavery. The play creates a dichotomy between characters born into slavery and those born free, demonstrating how the trauma of slavery didn’t simply end with emancipation but continues to reverberate in younger generations, intertwined with new manifestations of racial violence and trauma. Cultural identity and practices evolved over time, passed down through generations. However, slave owners worked to systematically obliterate Black cultural identity, undermine the organization of Black family and community, and deny Black humanity. After emancipation, Jim Crow laws and the legalized racial violence in white-dominated cities became the next mechanism for teaching African Americans that they should feel fear and shame for being Black. Black identity, history, and cultural pride could only be cultivated and passed down within Black-only social spheres.
For Sophie, Miss Leah, and Wil, the trauma of slavery created a need to immerse themselves in an all-Black community. Owning property is a way of triumphing and celebrating the progress from once being treated as property. They have no interest in integrating or assimilating into white society. Miss Leah, who was alone, has chosen Sophie and her sisters as family to inherit her stories, her wisdom, and her land. Fannie and Minnie, who were never slaves, don’t fully understand the significance of an all-Black community or the agency that comes with land ownership. Miss Leah’s stories can’t be written down because they’re meant to be told, shared with a closed audience as their family birthright. Fannie and Minnie must be taught to understand and honor the trauma that is inextricable from their family histories so that they can learn to protect and appreciate their freedom.
Frank was born into slavery to a mother who was a slave, but his white slaveowner father warped his Black identity, teaching him to look down on his own Blackness. Frank imagines an illicit love story between his parents, ignoring the implications of slavery. Frank’s relationship with his father (mentioned only in reference to a trip to Europe) was complex and twisted: His father financially supported his life in London yet refused to attend Frank’s local wedding, which suggests that Frank’s father kept their relationship private, perhaps a secret from his family entirely. When his father dies, Frank inherits nothing but an internalized sense of white supremacy. He can’t be white, so he takes his self-hatred out on those who embrace their Blackness. He marries Minnie, who is young and Black, as a stand-in for his mother, who was likely also young, and he punishes Minnie for the Blackness he inherited from his mother.
Family and the Cycle of Growth
One way that slaveowners maintained control over slaves was through the destruction and separation of families. As a slave, Miss Leah began giving birth at age 14, paired like breeding stock with James, a man who was forced to act as a stud and impregnate many other slave women. For Miss Leah, creating family was like pouring water into a bottomless cup. The 10 sons she bore by James were all sold before he could even see their faces. James was kind, but their relationship was forged out of force, not love. They remained together because they’d otherwise be alone. After burying their other five sons and then James, Miss Leah is truly alone and sets out to find her own home, where she can choose her own family. Centuries of slavery and separation made it nearly impossible to reunite with one’s biological family. One had to create family by breaking new ground within Black communities.
In Kansas, homesteaders faced the arduous task of growing and cultivating unbroken ground. Knowledge and experience were less important than fortitude and the willingness to do backbreaking work. Miss Leah builds a home for herself and gains a family. The play demonstrates that blood doesn’t create family and family doesn’t require blood. When Sophie has no one, she meets young Fannie, who’s caring for an infant (Minnie) alone. The three girls become sisters out of a desire for family and a need to care for and support each other; Fannie and Minnie never treat Sophie as less of a sister because she isn’t related by blood. Similarly, the women bring Miss Leah into their family out of love and a desire to take care of each other. Frank’s father’s family, on the other hand, proves that blood is not an obligation to be family.
The play is about the cycle of growth. The hardship and work of planting seeds and enduring winter reap the abundance of spring. While the women in the story grow wheat, Fannie also plants flowers that bring beauty to their lives. However, as Miss Leah tells Minnie, the most important reason for cultivating this fertile ground is to create a place for the family to grow through children. They struggle through a difficult winter, fighting and conquering the threat that Frank presents to the life they’ve made. At the end of the play, it’s finally spring. The family is safe. The seeds of Wil and Fannie’s love have finally taken root, and Minnie’s baby girl is thriving. Miss Leah finally has a grandchild, who is the newest in what Miss Leah describes as a long line of strong, powerful Black women who fought and sacrificed to make room for her in the world.
Flying and the Geography of Freedom
One of slavery’s most violent effects was that it forcefully separated Africans from their homes and ancestral roots. During the centuries of enslavement, generations became further removed from Africa, eventually becoming an entire people who had never set foot in their homeland. Wings and flight are common motifs in African American spirituals, folklore, and mythology that depict flying home as either death or returning to Africa. After the abolition of slavery, making a new home in the US was complicated. Most African Americans were in southern states, where slavery gave way to Jim Crow laws and anti-Black violence. Many moved to northern cities but found it difficult to obtain work that was any better than the jobs they’d done in the South. Wil describes growing up in Florida and living in Mexico, but as much as he misses them, he’s found purpose and freedom in Kansas.
Flying typically evokes imagery that romanticizes journeys. In Flyin’ West, however, the journeys are extremely arduous. Miss Leah articulates the play’s title of the play when she remembers setting out on foot after her husband’s death: “If I’d had wings, I’d a set out flyin’ west” (61). When Sophie meets Fannie and Minnie Dove, Fannie is terrified and alone with a baby to care for, but Sophie tells her that she’s “free as a bird!” (33), and Fannie feels better. Freedom and flying, while more difficult than complacency, are still worth the effort. Before long, Sophie is part of the Dove family. After a lynching in Memphis, Sophie leads her two sisters to flee to Kansas with plans to never return. As Wil comments, “If I never set foot in the Confederacy again, it’s too soon for me” (32).
Frank tries to find freedom too, but even moving halfway around the world can’t free him of his own Blackness. For Minnie, moving to London seems thrilling at first, but Frank’s hatred for his Blackness holds her down as well. She’s trapped in a white world, forbidden from acting like herself. No matter how much Frank panders to white men or hurts his Black wife, he can’t escape the fact that to white people, including his father’s family, he is Black. Frank could embrace his Blackness and be liberated through home and community in Kansas, but he refuses. At the end of the play, with Frank gone and her family safe, surrounded by land she owns, Sophie spreads her arms like wings and spins around, flying without leaving the ground.
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By Pearl Cleage
