Rising my story above the clouds
-Chelsy Dernault
When I read the title of the comic book, Meant to Fly, it immediately reminded me of the myth of flying Africans, of enslaved Africans. I had heard of it when I had studied Toni Morrison’s work. This myth is something that is deeply ingrained in descendants of black enslaved people culture in America. It is a salute legend that “under some circumstances, some enslaved people founded themselves” to have the ability to fly away from slavery and go back to the motherland, Africa. This story was meant to inspire hope and the possibility of a future, but even more to reconnect to what had been stolen, ripped away from them. This myth, even if its creation was a way to escape the horrors of slavery through the imaginary field. Imagining that someday, or someone did make it back home and that home, a safe place still existed.
But unfortunately, it was still unreachable, as the journey was also a synonym of death. When a person was able to fly back to the lost home, it meant that they would spiritually go back there and not physically.
In one version of the myth, it is said that a father managed to fly back to Africa. But he failed to teach his children how a man can fly. The secret of this ability being not the drink or eat salt, the salt weights you down. The children are condemned to stay on the hearth, grieving the loss of their father. For me, this particular version resonated with Riri’s story.
In this comic book, Riri, the hero of the story claims at the beginning “I was never meant to fly.” She has lost both her father and her best friend at a young age and has to deal with this grief. Even if we are introduced to this fantastic superhero female character, we can see that her backstory still has a strong grip on her future. Riri is still traumatized by the loss of the people she loved. She is this super-intelligent, compassionate, courageous young woman and yet the weight of her grief still holds her down. In Issue 2, she completely froze in the middle of a shooting she was trying to stop. Her memories of her own shooting experience and the loss that resulted from it overwhelm her. She might have this iron suit that protects her from the bullet and that allows her to be protected, but she is still not impermeable to the trauma that still leaves within her. She cannot “rise” away from it. In Ebony Thomas’s paper, The Dark Fantastic, she describes how her mother made sure she understood “that magic was inaccessible to” her, she rejoins this idea that magic is unreachable. The story of a prince charming that could come and save her was made for and by white people. She did not exist in this space. As Riri puts it into her own words “a no-name black girl.” The loneliness of not being represented in the story she loved is for me what really created this feeling that magic was not accessible. As for Riri, it is her lack of trust circle that really holds her down. The more she spends time with Xavier the more powerful she becomes and the less holden back by her past, she is.
What always intrigued me in this story of the flying African, and especially in the version where the father can fly away while the children have to stay on earth is how lonely and devastated the children must have felt. The legend talks about people that are not there anymore, what happens to the ones that are left behind?
The inability of the children to fly away was not because they were themselves the issue, but rather because they were not represented in the myth. The story was about the father, not the children. Ebony Thomas’s mother did not want her daughter to believe in magic not because it was unreachable for her but because Ebony had not accessed space where it was available to her. But that does not mean that they should renounce magic or flying. Ebony “needed magic” so created this world where a black girl could have magic. Riri did not have her father to tell her how to fly, that does not mean that she cannot fly. But this success and this creation did not come solely from themselves. Ebony Thomas argues that “today’s young people are as likely to be engaged in virtual social worlds as they are in face-to-face communication, the ways that stories are told and retold in convergence culture are more significant than ever for shaping the collective consciousness.” I think this is where the real magic is. People are creating the space they need to exist in, to be seen. How can you expect someone to fly, to “rise” if they can not tell their story? I don’t think that Riri’s freezing incident is proof that she can not fly as her father did and like the flying Africans. But rather a part of her own legend, story. Would have she become this superhero without this incident? Tony Stark would have not become Iron Man if he had not been abducted and almost lost his life.
Riri was “never meant to fly” and yet she is. Who can say anything against that? She did not grow up in a space where she could, so she created it. The agency that Riri has allows her to beat every probability. In a world that gives her less because she is a black middle-class woman she allowed herself to be nothing less than what she deserves.
