Song of Solomon Writing Style

A Jacob Lawrence painting engages Homer’s Odyssey over ginger tea.

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) is one of the most renowned American painters of all time whose artwork examines, explores, and engages over four generations of the black experience in America. He is famous for his paintings capturing life and culture in Harlem, but he is also celebrated for painting works of art inspired by the oral storytelling he heard around him. He created a sixty-panel narrative called The Migration of the Negro, which combined the stories, songs, and folklore he’d researched and collected about the migration of black Americans from the rural South to northern cities after the Civil War.

Mr. Lawrence is definitely conversing with Homer’s Odyssey, that oft recycled classic tale of a hero’s (thorny) journey to get back home to his lady after many years of battle, and they are definitely drinking ginger tea. The presence of gingery smells, as we know from reading Song, heralds a dreamy, creative state packed with human longing, desire, and hope – emotions perfect for these two most reverend works of art as they converse with one another. Check out Mr. Lawrence’s life and art.