“Education is the passport to the future,” Malcolm X said, “for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” In Tanya Barfield’s thought-provoking Blue Door, education is the path by which four generations of African-American fathers and sons rise above social marginalization—but it’s also a trap for the last living member of that clan, whose success has cut him off from his roots.
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As the two spar, Rex transforms into their ancestors—great-grandfather Simon, grandfather Jesse, and father Charles—and each in turn tells his own story. Simon, a slave who saw his father shot and the rest of his family sold at auction, recalls that despite rules prohibiting the education of blacks, he was taught “book learning” by his master’s teenage son, Jonathan, a repressed homosexual and closet abolitionist. Jonathan molested him, Simon reports, but also encouraged him to believe he’d ultimately be free. After emancipation, Simon’s education stands him in good stead, but horrific oppression remains. His son Jesse was lynched, we learn, for trying to vote—an atrocity witnessed by Jesse’s son Charles, who grew up to become an abusive alcoholic. When Charles died, Lewis refused to go to his funeral.
