Slave songs, blues, and rock music are part of the fabric of American culture. Racist oppression provided potent artistic stimulus and inspiration. The same is true of Antwone’s art. The musicality of the poem at the end of the Prologue hints at this tradition, especially in the rhyme between “strife” and “life.” While the allure of this kind of cultural production is its relatability, Antoine is born out of strife. Not only his parents’ difficult lives, but the heritage of suffering that contextualizes theirs. When Antwone is still in utero, his mother imagines him dancing to “her favorite Fats Domino song” (19). Music soothes, and its structure connects Antwone with a heritage he longs for, as in the celebratory African drums in his childhood dream.

Later, music becomes a reprieve from an intolerable reality: “I close my eyes–like the song by Peaches & Herb, and take a deep breath [...] in my mind’s story, we love each other. To me, she’s ‘My Girl’ in the Temptations song” (69). Though he rejects the church, Antwone’s relationship with music has a discernably spiritual dimension: “Music was my refuge, a place for me to lay my burdens down, and the singers were the preachers and teachers I cared to hear” (122).