Jubilee

Walker prefaces each chapter with lyrics from a song that is particularly relevant to the content of the chapter. Songs help both to capture the mood of sections within the narrative while also providing historical context. Within the chapters, people sing spirituals that signal the slaves’ hope of salvation and better days, as well as Christian hymns. Songs were black people’s means of expressing their feelings or even of carrying messages to each other without white people knowing what they meant.

In other instances, Walker features songs designed to mock and terrorize black people. This occurs when Missy Salina forces the slaves to sing “Dixie” while her son, John Jr., rides off to fight the Civil War. He is going to defend the Confederacy and its insistence on keeping black people in bondage. By forcing the slaves to sing a song about undying devotion to the South, Salina reasserts her control over them, which she thinks will be everlasting.

Later in the novel, a group of white boys threatens Minna and Harry with a razor and sings, “Eeny, meeny, minie, moe” (417). The song has since become a children’s

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