Blood on the Forge [SEP] narrative location
Blood on the Forge
Blood on the Forge is a migration novel by the African-American writer William Attaway set in the steel valley of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during 1919, a time when vast numbers of Black Americans moved northward. Attaway's own family was part of this population shift from South to North when he was a child.
His novel follows the Moss brothers as they escape the inequality of sharecropping in the South only to encounter inequality in the mills of the North. Their story illustrates the tragedy and hardships
Attaway were responding to the failures of Harlem Renaissance writers to express the first wave of African American migration.
One important aspect of the migration narrative is its emphasis on the differences between the traditional (or folk) and the modern. Migration narratives typically include references to ancestors and strangers, with ancestors being linked to the South and strangers to the North. In "Blood on the Forge," the immigrants the Moss brothers work with in the mills would be considered strangers. Ancestors are also linked with folklore and tradition,