The Smokestack Mythology

Mythologies of 'Sinners'

Part 1

Homily for 'Sinners'

Last night, I went to see Sinners.
I do not know if everyone in that room caught it — I do not know if the numerous open and expectant white faces glimpsed what I glimpsed — I do not even know if, as a Black woman whose roots trail back to Nigeria, I caught it ALL the way a Black American whose blood remembers the lash and the fields, and in whose DNA the trauma of slavery and the abuses of Jim Crow, and the blues would have caught it and the blues would have caught it. In fact, I am sure that I did not.

But I caught enough.
Enough to know that I was standing before one of the most beautiful pieces of mythmaking, of art history, that has ever been wrought into this world.

Ryan Coogler created not just a film but a living mythology — a Smokestack Mythology, where Elijah and Elias Moore call memory back from the ashes.
It's the Mojo Mythology, where Wunmi Mosaku’s character stitched survival into cloth and earth and prayer without apology.
It's the Mythology of the Dance — where every soul who ever lost themselves to the music was called home, whether they were dancing in a kitchen, a clearing, a forest, a club, or a dream.
And it’s the Masquerade Mythology — where even the Chinese ancestors, the Irish ancestors, the spirits of every battered people danced across the screen, saying: we are still here, and we are still sacred.

And above it all — it is the Mythology of the Music — where the blues river carried grief and hope into one song called Sinners, sung only when the world was finally ready to hear it."

What Ryan Coogler did with Sinners was beyond race. It was about inclusivity at its most sacred.It validated what it means to be Black. It validated what it means to be Other.It validated the human spirit that survives, and dances, and sings, despite everything.

There are some works that do not merely tell a story — they birth a mythology.
And there are some mythologies so true that even if you are a thousand miles and a thousand years from the soil where they were first sown, you can feel the smoke in your lungs, the salt in your tears, and the drum in your ribs.

The Mythology of the Smokestack
Elijah and Elias Moore – Smoke And Stack are no mere men, no mere soldiers, no mere runaways from the Chicago smog; they are the twin pillars of a Smokestack Mythology. In their hands, the dream of freedom is a fire not of destruction, but of destiny and memory made visible.In their work of creating a juke joint is the song of ancestors rising into the sky, refusing to be forgotten.
Every step they took toward accomplishing their dream was a drawn breath woven from the old stories, the ones where gods walked and Black hands built worlds from ash and prayer, every triumph a step toward freedom. And they came so close.

This was the birth of a twin mythos —Smoke and Stack. In this mythology, survival is not singular. It is double-edged. It is to endure in the body, and to endure beyond the body. However unholy that survival turned out to be.
It is to be two at once — seen and unseen, tangible and intangible, broken and yet still whole.

Stack was rooted in people, in community, in emotion, in trust.
He was the heart beating openly in the brutal world, the one who could still find laughter, who could still find love. He moved more lightly, believed more easily, wore his hope more visibly.

Smoke was about the business. He was the protector. He was the wall between danger and home. He saw the threats before they arrived, smelled the betrayals in the wind. He was sharp, serious, and relentless.
With no patience for foolishness, because he carried the full weight of survival on his back.

Together, they were the Smokestack: Two brothers, two souls, one heart.
One to feel the world. One to guard against it.

It was inevitable — tragic but inevitable — that one would cost the other everything.

When betrayal came, it was Smoke who shouldered the final burden. At least in life. Warned of treachery, Smoke did not hesitate, mounting a lone assault against a murderous Klan mob — not out of rage, but out of duty, out of the promises he had made, out of the blood bond he carried. He put them down, a one-man army fueled by loyalty and loss, but felled by an opponents bullet.

But Smoke died on his own terms. He fulfilled his word. He honoured himself.
He remained about the business until his very last breath.

Two souls born as one. One to dream. One to defend.
And even when the world tried to break them, it could not sever the love that bound them. Nor make the protector, be he ever so much about business, become the death of the one he had loved and protected, be it ever so necessary.
Smoke fulfilled the pact of brotherhood. and held the line until the very end.

It was Stack who fell first — predictably, perhaps tragically — because his guard was down. Because his instinct for danger was softened by his instinct for hope. But death did not destroy his soul. In undeath, as a vampire, Stack faced a new battle, not against others, but against himself.
Against the hunger that could have betrayed his brother and the loss of what he once was. As we saw, Stack chose love even in darkness and kept his promise to Smoke and did not turn against Sam..He did not break the sacred pact.

Even when his nature screamed otherwise, even when pain and longing devoured him. Stack remained a brother; even beyond life, he had the final burden.