24
Aug
2010
Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
In Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s debut novel, Wench, Lizzie, Sweet, Reenie, and Mawu are all brought to the Tawawa resort in southern Ohio for the summer by their masters. Perkins-Valdez researched the real retreat where it was common for Southern gentlemen to bring their slave-mistresses. Of course, being in a free state has a certain lure, and for the first time, their eyes are open to real possibilities of living free. An edifying friendship forms, one that none of the women have ever been able to have with other slaves, due to their status as the master’s mistress.
27
May
2009
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
This book is a metaphor within a metaphor, wrapped in an enigma. It’s not that you don’t know what’s going on, it’s just that you’ll have to follow it slowly, carefully, in order to pick up what Johnson’s laying down.
18
May
2009
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
I remember learning in my high school International Relations class about Sierra Leone. We, suburban kids of various backgrounds, were shocked when we heard that not only do they chop people’s limbs off, but they conscript children to do it by forcing them into the army getting them addicted to “brown brown”, which is cocaine mixed with whatever else the army had (usually gunpowder).
5
May
2009
Sula by Toni Morrison
What I love about Toni Morrison, is the way she flirts with Magical Realism without losing the grit of her characters. Is it wrong of me to say, as a white person, of an older African-American that she “keeps it real?”
28
Apr
2009
Pagan Spain by Richard Wright
Part of what gives Richard Wrights portrayal of Franco’s Spain, is the fact, prevalent in most of his work, that he’s black. The Spaniards don’t seem to care that much about that fact (fascists though they may be). Then again, it seems like Europeans didn’t care about a lot of things that weighed down America, and that’s why so many writers fled there during the first half of the 20th century.
