Literacy in the Song of Songs Through literacy will come emancipation. But empowerment comes in many forms, as does literacy. The various aspects of academic literacy are quite evident in relation to empowerment, especially when faced with exclusion from belonging to the dominant culture. Most, but not all, of Toni Morrison's characters in Song of Songs appear to have achieved at least a modicum of literacy. But what role does literacy play in the progress of the individual, and how far will it be achieved?" But if the future did not arrive, the present expanded, and the uncomfortable boy in the Packard went to school and at twelve years old met the boy who […] could set him free […]” (Songs of Songs 35-36) says Toni Morrison of Milkman Dead, the Packard boy, in Song of Solomon Milkman's street mentor Morrison tells us little else about Milkman's formal education, but we can assume he is in high school because Guitar is in high school when she introduces him. We learn that Milkman's sisters attend and graduate from college, but the Their education isolates them from the rest of the community. In fact, at the age of forty-four, Corinthians goes to work as a maid and begins a relationship with Porter, one of her father's tenants, much to her father's dismay class of "haves" and "have-nots", Corinthians finds the "haves" side abhorrent, the "have-nots" side attractive, but cannot cross the socioeconomic line drawn by his father. She must remain within the paradigm that separates her from the lowest and most uneducated part of their society. Milkman is more... halfway through the paper... with the earth and at the conclusion of the novel when he discovers he can fly. Is the state of supermetacognition he enters during these episodes a metaphor for an innate attachment to the past? something like a shared history? something rooted and transferred with roots deeply rooted in African traditions? Morrison leaves the answer to these questions (and many others) to his readers, but it is obvious that Milkman finds more in historical culture than he ever received from his formal education. Milkman sees hope for the future through a connection to the past. In a sense, he finds emancipation through his relationship with literacy. Works Cited Middleton, David. The Fiction of Toni Morrison: Contemporary Criticism. New York: Garland, 1997. Morrison, Toni. Song of Songs. New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1987.