Great Black Hope: Great Expectations
Audacious Book Club Discussion
Let’s talk about the book’s title, Great Black Hope which was informed, in part, by a Vanity Fair profile of Colin Powell. Smith and many of his friends have successful parents who have bestowed upon their children a pressure to be good and successful and respectable to the greater public. What do you think about the political ambition of Franklin’s novel and the ideas he is grappling with?
Have you had to deal with parental pressure to succeed? Do you have parents who are notable in their community? What was that like and how did you handle it? What do you think this novel has to say about that kind of pressure? How do the characters in the novel balance the expectations of their parents and the desire to be young and messy? How do we make space for ourselves to be young (or not so young) and messy, human?
YES! Throughout my life, I was always under pressure to succeed. I’m not sure if that was because I was the 1st male in my family for some time, my parents and relatives' own narcissistic traits and personalities, especially from that woman who called herself my mother. Or that they believed and expected me to redeem myself to make up in their eyes for the deficit that I was born Gay. Who knows? Perhaps it was a combination of all of these.
Being under all that pressure was overwhelmingly exhausting! However, in retrospect, I realize
that many of my accomplishments were driven by the desire to seek their approval. Therefore, they were achievements in life that I was not permitted to own. Most importantly, their outrageous and ridiculous expectations left me feeling invisible to the very people I expected and prayed would love me for who I am.
I think Franklin is saying that a parent’s lack of fulfillment is too commonly passed on to their children, so that they may fulfill their own selfish needs, thereby accommodating some emptiness that exists within themselves.
As a former college professor, I would always tell my students, “Life is a journey and not a race! These years you have within these walls and classrooms are a gift and opportunity to fuck up as much as you like before you grace our world stages. Never forget that every person has the right to fail and to learn from their mistakes and shortcomings. It is not a fatal flaw to do so.”
I think the novel is somewhat heavy handed at times but I do appreciate how Franklin is illustrating how capitalism drives his parents/his family and the pressure they put on him. They aren't "wealthy enough" where their kids can afford to make mistakes or be messy (another perk of white generational wealth! when one error doesn't set your family back). I see his parents has somewhat fulfilled but wanting to ensure their hard work isn't lost both out of selfishness and love, they don't want their children to suffer