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Shu Yi
In “Railton Road,” Solomon is a young college graduate whose been teaching Black History classes to young Black revolutionaries at Railton Road, a London squat house the Black Panthers have taken over. At first, Solomon is swept away by the cause and believes he’s fully invested in seeing real social and systemic change. Yet Solomon’s views and commitment to social change are decidedly more passive and academic than other members of the London Panthers, a fact that becomes clear after he meets De Frankie, an important and infamous leader from the Black House on Holiday Road. At the start of the story, Solomon is up for a job as Minister of Culture for the London Panthers—but only if he receives De Frankie’s approval. De Frankie has more extreme, unnuanced views than Solomon and is more willing to resort to violence to make the revolution happen. He thus is skeptical of Solomon, whose university education, De Frankie claims, may have indoctrinated Solomon with the “lies of Babylon”—that is, mainstream views that uphold the status quo and white supremacy. When De Frankie tasks Solomon with helping to attack, apprehend, and punish a Black woman (the kept woman) who’s in a relationship with a white man (De Frankie is vehemently opposed to interracial relationships), Solomon finds that he can’t go through with the job. Solomon wants to be as merciless with the woman and as wholly committed to the revolution as De Frankie, but he finds himself wanting to let the woman go. He hates himself for thinking this way, as it reveals that he’s not as invested in bringing forth radical change as he once thought he was.
Solomon Quotes in Foreign Soil
The Foreign Soil quotes below are all either spoken by Solomon or refer to Solomon. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Railton Road
Quotes
The other girl had offered him a lift home in the car her father had bought her, the leather seats cold under his furious hands as she batted those long brown eyelashes at him. They’d parked behind the Tech. He’d gone at her gentle, not like the other one, but it soon became clear it was all an experiment. Egyptian eyes, she’d called them, Medusan hair. Until Solomon had felt dissected, scalpel-carved on the ethnographer’s table and no more than the sum of his African-originated parts. He had been a foreign country she was apprehensive about visiting but itching to explore. He’d felt her filing the fuck away to reminisce about when times were dull, postcard snippets of the exotic.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Solomon hated her, and he hated himself. He wanted that key in his pocket. De Frankie was right about him. Much as the thirst kept rising in him, it lulled and peaked, dipped and climbed. And when Solomon’s commitment wavered, Babylon came a-calling.
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Solomon Quotes in Foreign Soil
The Foreign Soil quotes below are all either spoken by Solomon or refer to Solomon. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Railton Road
Quotes
The other girl had offered him a lift home in the car her father had bought her, the leather seats cold under his furious hands as she batted those long brown eyelashes at him. They’d parked behind the Tech. He’d gone at her gentle, not like the other one, but it soon became clear it was all an experiment. Egyptian eyes, she’d called them, Medusan hair. Until Solomon had felt dissected, scalpel-carved on the ethnographer’s table and no more than the sum of his African-originated parts. He had been a foreign country she was apprehensive about visiting but itching to explore. He’d felt her filing the fuck away to reminisce about when times were dull, postcard snippets of the exotic.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Solomon hated her, and he hated himself. He wanted that key in his pocket. De Frankie was right about him. Much as the thirst kept rising in him, it lulled and peaked, dipped and climbed. And when Solomon’s commitment wavered, Babylon came a-calling.
