"Emma Lou's maternal grandparents, Samuel and Maria Lightfoot, were both mulatto products of slave-day promiscuity between male masters and female chattel. Neither had been slaves, their own parents having been granted their freedom because of their close connections with the white branch of the family tree. These freedmen had migrated into Kansas with their children, and when these children had grown up they in turn had joined the westward-ho parade of that current era, and finally settled in Boise, Idaho."

Who are Emma Lou's people? We find out in this brief overview of her mixed family tree, which is full of slave masters and slaves. Kind of a difficult combination, no? But a very common one in those days.

The narrator also reveals to us how Emma Lou's family of freedmen traveled from Kansas to their final destination, Boise, Idaho. So the set up here is really all about Ms. Emma Lou's personal history. But it's also representative of many slaves' family trees.

Are you thinking "Boise, Idaho? How did they end up there?" If you are, we wouldn't blame you. The Great Migration is usually taught as a trip from the South to the North. No one really mentions the West as part of that migration, but we're here to tell you the northern cities weren't the only ones experiencing an in-migration of ex-slaves.

Which is maybe why this passage is important. It reminds us that the Great Migration covered much more ground than most people think. There were plenty of black men and women who willingly moved west and not just north, in order to establish new, free lives for themselves.

Now, before you think "Yeah, but… Boise?" it might help to recall why a westward migration pattern wasn't such an odd idea. After all, if you were used to farming on a large plantation, places like Idaho—where farming skills could come in handy—were obvious destinations for people seeking jobs. Like, way more obvious than New York City or Boston, in a way.

Plus, the Midwest and West offered ex-slaves the opportunity to own land. That was (and still is, for all of us that aren't billionaires) far tougher to accomplish in the big cities.

At first glance, you might think Thurman's writing is nothing special. He's got his subjects, verbs, and objects all in their rightful places. The information seems pretty straightforward as well.

Emma Lou's great-grandparents were slave owners who slept with their slaves and later freed them and offspring from slavery. Then the family moved to Idaho. Nothing surprising there, exactly.

But if you look at the choice of the narrator's words, the whole passage seems almost too objective. "Mulatto products of slave-day promiscuity between male masters and female chattel"? Is it us or does that sound like a line from a(n outdated) history paper?

When you think about it, the narrator actually sounds really detached here, as if he's adopting an uncomfortably scientific view of the whole slavery ordeal. Many readings of this tone are possible, but here's one possibility: maybe the language helps the narrator distance himself from the traumas of slavery.

"Mulatto products of slave-day promiscuity" is the phrase used to deny the brutal reality of slave owners who raped and impregnated their female slaves. And even if the women weren't physically forced to have sex with their masters, it's not like the whole slavery scenario really allowed for a slave to say "no" to what her slave master wanted.

But the narrator makes it seem as if the slave woman or the slave master were just being "promiscuous," as if the slaves were on equal footing with their masters… as if it were simply natural for masters to want to sleep with their slaves, and vice versa.

And hey, maybe both of Emma Lou's great-grandmothers were lucky enough to be in the position to make these sexual choices themselves. But we're betting that wasn't the case. And making it sound like her great-grandmothers had any agency in this "promiscuous" behavior makes it a lot easier to blame the slaves themselves for having "mulatto products" as kids.

Of course, we don't think being mixed-race is a negative thing. But in the course of the novel, Thurman is pretty clear that he believes one of the greatest tragedies in the black community is how everyone seems to favor light-colored ("mulatto") skin over Emma Lou's dark skin.