“My Lord and I”

“My Lord and I” is a devotional song whose significance lies in the history Sharon hears within it. Remembered as part of her family’s past in Birmingham, it connects religious music to her parents, the kitchens and mines of their world, and the inheritance she carries into a very different present.

Identity and Background

Sharon recalls “My Lord and I” not simply as a song she once heard, but as a piece of her own formation. The words evoke walking in the company of the Lord, while the song’s associations reach beyond its devotional meaning: it belongs to Birmingham, to her parents, and to the kitchens and mines that shaped her family’s life. She may not have especially liked the song, but its place in her memory makes it part of her.

A Song Held in Memory

The novel sets Sharon’s recollection beside Tish’s musical memories. Tish associates “Uncloudy Day” with sitting on her mother’s knees at Abyssinia Baptist, while “Blessed Quietness” recalls Fonny’s church and his mother. Those songs attach religious sound to particular people and places; Sharon’s memory of “My Lord and I” likewise carries family history, though hers reaches back to Birmingham. Music becomes a way of keeping origins present without reducing them to a simple account of the past.

Recognition in the Nightclub

At a nightclub, Sharon listens to young musicians perform a song that she recognizes as bearing the shape of “My Lord and I,” though in different words, if words are there at all. The recognition is not shared: the performers seem not to know the older song or the history they are touching. Sharon wonders whether they know themselves, hearing in their sound a despair that cannot be brought home as nourishment but still deserves respect. She applauds and prays for them. The remembered song thus becomes a measure of both distance from inherited experience and the possibility of hearing that inheritance inside unfamiliar music.

Religious Inheritance and Care

The song’s devotional memory sits within a novel where religious language can express sharply different ways of responding to hardship. Alice Hunt invokes faith to condemn Tish’s relationship with Fonny and to predict harm to her unborn child; Sharon, by contrast, comforts Tish and urges her to hold on to the baby, while promising that the family will support her and work to free Fonny. Against that conflict, Sharon’s recollection of “My Lord and I” is neither a rejection of faith nor a guarantee of rescue. It is a durable link to family and place, and a source of attentive recognition that lets her hear despair without turning away from those who express it.