Song of Solomon is often classified as an impressionistic coming-of-age novel, or bildungsroman, that merges elements of fantasy and reality. According to Morrison, the novel is about a man who "learns to fly and all that that means. But it's also about the ways in which we discover, all of us, who and what we are. And how important and truly exciting that journey is." In part, Song is a wakeup call for young black males struggling to survive in white America. Given Morrison's insistence that a strong family and community are the means to black survival, we can surmise that the novel's abbreviated title — SOS — is no accident.
Although Morrison dedicated this novel to her father, we can also read it as a love song to young black men who, as Morrison illustrates through the character of Milkman, are doomed to spiritual death and self-alienation unless they read and understand their history.
Historically, Song of Solomon was published in the wake of the Black Arts/Black Power movements. Advocates of the Black Arts movement — including Larry Neal, Etheridge Knight, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni — believed that the primary objective of all black artistic expression was to achieve social change and moral and political revolution. Consequently, if art fails to make a political statement, it is irrelevant. The movement's philosophy — which countered the "protest literature" movement of the 1940s and 1950s led by such writers as James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright — is best summarized by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), who believes that art should be "fists and daggers and pistols to clean out the world for virtue and love."
