“Let your mothers hear you laugh” she told them, and the woods rang.
The adults looked on and could not help smiling. Then, “Let the grown
men come,” she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the
ringing trees. “Let your wives and your children see you dance,” she
told them, and ground life shuddered under their feet. Finally she
called the women to her. “Cry,” she told them. “For the living and the
dead. Just cry.” And without covering their eyes the women let loose.
It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and
then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down
and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until,
exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and
gasping for breath. in the silence that followed Baby Suggs, holy,
offered up to them her great big heart.”
-Beloved, Toni Morrison