“On the 19th of July, in 1943, my father died,” begins James Baldwin’s 1955 essay “Notes of a Native Son” in which he parallels his father’s death with the destruction of racism in America. Within the essay, Baldwin expresses uncertainty in his relationship with his father. In one respect, Baldwin writes that his father David was “indescribably cruel” and “the most bitter man [he had] ever met.” Yet, in the same account, Baldwin argues that racism humiliated and embittered his father, heightening the paranoia of his tuberculosis. Baldwin’s attempt to remember his father offers us a complicated portrait of mourning: How should we mourn those we did not like? What does it mean to grieve for family members who harmed us? What if we do not feel like mourning? While Baldwin’s account of grief places us in 1940s New York, the Analects speaks to the shared human experiences of loss, pain, and uncertainty. Filial piety, or reverence for one’s parents, is central to Kongzi’s recommendations for human flourishing. Scholar Erin Cline argues that the rituals in the Analects which concern mourning one’s parents are among the most important within Confucian practice; these rituals act as guideposts in navigating life after loss when our minds and hearts are overwhelmed. The Analects sets forth specific rituals that children should practice upon the passing of their parents. For example, during a three-year mourning period, the children should not change their parents’ traditions, eat rich foods, or wear fine garments. They should maintain the somberness of the mourning period. But what happens when a parent-child relationship is less than ideal? Taking James Baldwin’s strained relationship with his father as an example, we might consider what the Analects offers children who hold mixed feelings after the passing of their parents. Would the Analects consider James Baldwin a pious son?
James Baldwin and his father David did not get along. Baldwin often wrote of their strained relationship: his father’s distrust of the outside world, James’s desire to be better than him, and their shared stubborn pride. The dislike of David Baldwin extended to his younger siblings: “I do not remember, in all those years, that one of his children was ever glad to see him come home.” At home, David’s interactions with his children were plagued by “the absolutely unabating tension which emanated from him” and his subsequent anger at the children’s fear of him. When David was institutionalized after suffering mental decline from tuberculosis, Baldwin writes that his younger siblings found his father’s departure a relief. They had more freedom and could finally invite their friends to visit the family home. While Baldwin portrays a complicated image of his father against the backdrop of societal and mental illness, many would agree that this is not an ideal parent-child relationship. In his “Notes of a Native Son,” James Baldwin records the challenges of piety when it comes to saying his final goodbye. He spends the morning downtown, miles away from his family’s home in Harlem, drinking whiskey with a friend to celebrate his nineteenth birthday. He arrives at his father’s funeral that evening “slightly drunk” and wearing a black shirt that a friend found for him after he realized that he had nothing black to wear. He visits a nightclub after the funeral, recalling how uncertainty led him there: “I imagine I decided it, since, as the funeral hour approached, it became clearer and clearer to me that I would not know what to do with myself when it was over.” Baldwin is uncertain of what to feel, act, or say in the wake of his father’s death. His awareness of the expected funeral rituals, and yet, his half-hearted attempts to perform them correctly, demonstrate his conflicting feelings over his father’s legacy.
Within the Analects, filial piety is considered the root of Ren, which is often translated to complete goodness or flourishing. Confucian tradition asserts that maintaining good relationships with parents and loved ones is important to our flourishing. This practice of deep-seated respect and devotion between relatives even continues into the afterlife. In mourning for parents, Kongzi asks children to “grieve deeply” rather than be worried about small details (3.4). They should instead be concerned with having the right intentions. As Erin Cline has written, people are expected to have the “right feelings, attitudes, and motives” when performing rituals. The Analects offers us the prerequisite of intentionality and emotional depth rather than simply going through the motions.
When disciple Zai Wo asks Kongzi if mourning for three years is necessary if a person only wants to mourn for one year, Kongzi remarks, “if you are at peace, you should do it” (17.21). If Zai Wo only feels grief for the loss of a parent for one year, he should stop his mourning rituals. However, for Kongzi, this is not the makings of a flourishing person. Kongzi then states that people who are truly flourishing could not properly enjoy the finer things in life when they are in mourning. As the three-year mourning period represents the first three years of life that children were cared for by their parents, Kongzi questions, did Zai Wo not receive care from his parents in his first three years of life? While filial piety is the root of Ren, the Analects tells us that emotional depth is required to reach this ideal. If the feeling is not there, we should not do it. Yet, taking time to feel is vital to our flourishing.
Would James Baldwin have been considered a pious son by the standards set forth in the Analects? The short answer is probably not. Baldwin did not want to maintain the ways of his father in the immediate years of David Baldwin’s passing. He believed that his father was a bitter man and worried that he too would become bitter and worn down by racism in America. He instead desired a different path. Five years after his father’s passing, Baldwin gained recognition for his writing and won a fellowship that allowed him to escape to France, where he would spend the next decade writing away from home. This “critical distance,” as scholar Eddie Glaude has argued, allowed Baldwin to gain a different perspective on race, the nation, and his father. Years later, Baldwin showed a twinge of regret regarding his father. In “Notes of a Native Son,” Baldwin writes, “When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to him. When he had been dead a long time I began to wish I had.” Baldwin even remembers that during his childhood, his father held pride, love, and care for him, long before his final troubled years. It took several years for Baldwin to recognize that his father was more complicated than he originally gave him credit. It was only through reflection that Baldwin realized what more he could have done. While perhaps it is not the exact form of piety that the Analects speaks about, Baldwin’s regret points to their shared truth: in the complicated practices of mourning, we have the potential to become better, flourishing people when we choose to feel deeply, even for imperfect parents.
Amber Stanford (C'21) is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work investigates the relationship between Black religion, migration, and politics in twentieth-century United States. She currently teaches in the English department at Anne Arundel Community College. Amber holds graduate degrees from the University of Bristol, Cambridge University, and Princeton University.
