From “The Wounds Are the Witness: Black Faith Weaving Memory into Justice and Healing” by Yolanda Pierce
WIth the use of metaphorical flight in her novel, Toni Morrison provides one such possibility for soaring on earth. She insists that those who are heavy-laden can take flight if they are willing to give up the baggage that weighs them down. The main protagonist of the story, Milkman Dead, is able to fly at the end of the novel once he lets go of his pain, bitterness, and self-hatred. Morrison contrasts the successful flight at the end of the novel with the unsuccessful flight (and death) of someone who attempts to fly on the very day Milkman Dead is born. In a full circle moment, it is only Milkman Dead, who spends the entirety of the novel searching for and discovering his ancestral history, who can freely soar.
The Flying Africans can fly because they understand themselves as Africans: members of a community with a history, with traditions, and with a past. They are people with a home to which they can return. They are not objects, despite the weight of their legal definitions as such. By shedding their figurative and literal chains, the Flying Africans defy natural order, the laws of physics, and the legal restrictions of slavery.