Two books by Black women: Kindred and Tough Love

Kindred, by Octavia Butler

How have I never read Octavia Butler until now, for goodness sake?!?!? My dear friend Catherine gave me this book for Mother's Day, and it was the perfect distraction for a pandemic. It had been on my "to read" list for a while, but when it landed in my lap, I had to read it.

I have always loved time travel, but this time travel is far more serious than usual. Written and set in 1976, this book finds 26-year-old Dana suddenly flung back into the antebellum south to save a drowning white boy. It turns out that he is one of her ancestors. Over the course of several years (in the time travel south) or days in the present, Dana ends up back on this plantation over and over again, each time to rescue clueless and careless Rufus.

It goes about as you might imagine. Slavery was brutal and tragic and soul-destroying...but many enslaved people found the strength to attempt escape or stay captive and endure. Apparently Butler's critics said she softened the horrors of slavery in this book, but it was horrible enough to understand that it was often far worse.

I will remember this book for a very long time to come, and I stayed up late into the evening to finish it. So worth the read!

Tough Love, by Susan Rice

While I was reading Kindred, I was listening to Tough Love by Dr. Susan Rice. Tough Love represents the life of a highly successful, highly educated Black woman, 44 years after Kindred was written by another Black woman.

Truth be told, I didn't know much about Susan Rice until I heard her interviewed on a podcast. She struck me as incredibly bright, funny, and capable, so when I saw she'd written a book I was immediately intrigued.

Most people associate her with Benghazi, because unfortunately she was tasked with being the spokesperson for the Obama administration after the Benghazi attack and then she became a scapegoat for the right wing, in spite of all investigations finding that she did nothing wrong. She continues to be vilified by Republicans to this day. She's now on the list of potential candidates for VP for Joe Biden. Her parents were both highly accomplished educators...her dad was a Cornell professor and her mom was an educational policy scholar who helped design the Pell Grant system. Rice was raised amidst the political and policy world, mentored by Madeleine Albright, headed to Stanford for her undergrad degree (to the chagrin of her parents, who wanted her to go to Harvard), studied at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, and earned her M.Phil and Ph.D. there. She worked on the Dukakis campaign and served for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama while they were presidents.

This book is packed with stories about her childhood and young adulthood, diplomacy and policy work here and overseas, and family. She married her college sweetheart and has two children--one a diehard liberal and the other a Trump supporter. Yikes!

Susan Rice is a rock star, and I enjoyed learning about all she's accomplished in her time on earth.

The Invention of Wings

The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd

I love novels like this, when I learn about historical figures through fictionalized accounts of their lives. The Invention of Wings is based on the lives of Sarah and Angelina Grimke, abolitionists and feminists long before women's suffrage or the Emancipation Proclamation.

Sue Monk Kidd quotes Professor Julius Lester in her notes at the end of the novel, "History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own." Kidd expands beyond the facts and events to put flesh on the stories of four women.

The novel begins in the early 1800s, with Sarah Grimke turning 11 and her mother "giving" her ownership of her very own slave, Hetty, or Handful. From the beginning, Sarah is deeply uncomfortable with her family's legacy as slave owners, and she also chafes against her role as a girl and woman. All she wants in life is to study and become a lawyer and a judge, but her family throws cold water on her dreams. As a female, all she could hope to become is a wife and mother. She rebels in her own way, by teaching Handful to read and write.

The novel weaves the story of Sarah with that of Handful and her mother Charlotte. Both Handful and Charlotte are highly talented seamstresses, spunky and spirited and seeking a way out of their own lives. They are the most fascinating characters in this novel, and they are mostly made up. (Sarah's mother did "give" her a slave when she turned 11, and Sarah wanted no part of it, but that's about all that is known about the slave girl.)

While Sarah struggles to put a voice to her passionate thoughts, Handful and Charlotte have no problem expressing what's on their mind. They weave their own pains and desires in their quilts and pass on their family history through stories. They take chances for the sake of freedom, even if it might cost them their own lives.

Angelina is the sister with the gumption--probably because she'd been mostly raised by Sarah--but Sarah, too, eventually finds her own voice. I enjoyed reading about the sisters speaking out against slavery, even though their family and their own city (Charleston, South Carolina) were horrified by their actions. The schism in the early abolitionist movement between abolition and women's rights reminded me of the division in the 1960s, when women who fought for civil rights were not given their own voice in the movement.

Sarah, Angelina, Handful, and Charlotte are all trying to find their own wings and escape the prisons of their lives. Handful's and Charlotte's restraints were real, while Sarah and Angelina were bound by the cultural expectations of their time.

This novel is not an easy read--Kidd depicted the horrors of slavery without flinching. I was grateful for Kidd's notes at the end, and also for the Internet, so I could learn more about the Grimkes when I was done reading the book. Sarah and Angelina Grimke were pioneers of their time, standing up for what they believed was right, even if their voices shook.

The Kitchen House

The Kitchen House, by Kathleen Grissom

I am ambivalent about this book. It took me awhile to get into, partly because I have been in the process of recovering from ear surgery, and  partly because at the beginning I had troubles keeping all of the various characters straight. Kathleen Grissom has a narrator form of voice--more telling than showing--and that probably contributed to my initial boredom.

After I became more familiar with the characters, I was gradually drawn into the story of Lavinia, an indentured Irish servant, and her adopted family of African-American slaves on a plantation in Virginia. After finishing the story I was interested to read Grissom's explanation of how she came up with the story and did research to write the novel. 

During the course of the novel, Lavinia grows up from a 7-year-old girl who has lost her whole family and the world she knows to a young woman with a child. She becomes very close to the household staff, and in fact views them all as her family. This book, set in the post-colonial era, clearly demonstrates how few options women of that era had. And African-Americans, obviously, had even fewer. Lavinia benefits from privileges and affection from the master's wife's family, and eventually she is set apart as "Miss Lavinia" instead of the friend, family member, and lowly servant she had previously been.

Unfortunately, this book does resort to stereotypes and one-dimensional characters. The slaves are uniformly  good, while the white men are mostly evil (with the exception of two--Mr. Madden and Will Stevens). Lavinia is so completely obtuse and naive that it's unbelievable. She's the classic perfect white girl heroine in this story, who tries to save everyone in the end (white savior complex, very much like The Help). Another reviewer pointed out the inconsistency of her character. At times she had more guts and gusto, but most of the time she didn't have much energy or independence.

SPOILERS BELOW






One thing that does not make sense to me is this: how could Lavinia marry Marshall after he violently lashed out at his own sweet sister, causing her death? She was incredibly naive and unrealistic. 

The book reads almost like a soap opera at times--crazy woman with an opium addiction, horrible child abuse, constant rape by the white men of the slave women, hangings, wife batterers, evil overseers, alcoholism, gambling, and incest. It might have been a true depiction of the times, but it seemed a bit over the top altogether. The final, fiery ending was predictable and although there was a bit of redemption at the end, the book was mostly a tragedy...and I felt relieved when I was done with it. 

I enjoyed reading about Lavinia's adventures in Williamsburg with the spirited Meg. Beyond that, all of the story takes place on the plantation. I found myself wondering, "Doesn't Lavinia ever go into town?" Why was there nothing about what else was happening in the country at that time? She didn't have contact with anyone outside of the plantation or Meg and her family in Williamsburg. Perhaps this is normal? It was also difficult to tell when the novel took place; I would have been lost without the dates and might have guessed the mid-1800s. 

The most redeeming aspect of the book was the close relationships Lavinia developed with Mama Mae, Belle, Papa, Uncle Isaac, and the twins. They became family across the color lines, and they retained those bonds and loyalty at the end. Overall, this was a good book, especially for a first novel, but it had its flaws. 

Song Yet Sung

Song Yet Sung, by James McBride
Runaway slave Liz Spocott has been captured by a brutal slave stealer and squirrelled away in an attic with many other slaves. Hit on the head as a young girl, Liz has the ability to dream the future and is soon named "the Dreamer." Soon she escapes the clutches of the evil, legendary slave stealer Patty Cannon and her henchmen (including Cannon's son-in-law, Joe) and she's on the run.

Set in the dark, mysterious, and mucky swamps of Maryland's eastern shore in 1850, the story also involves a widow, her sons, and her slaves; a slave catcher, Denwood, who Liz's master lures out of retirement; and a mysterious man who lives in the swamps, the "Woolman" and his son. Amid the wars over runaway slaves and the disturbing violence associated with slavery were the stubborn, rough-and-tumble watermen who fished the bay for oysters and were distanced from the slave owners and catchers.

McBride, who wrote The Color of Water (which I read and enjoyed many years ago), felt inspired to write this novel after studying the story of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, and much of the book is based on historical events and figures (such as Patty Cannon). Liz Spocott shares the same condition Tubman did (the serious injury to the head resulting in vivid, futuristic dreams), and Tubman is referred to indirectly as "Moses."

Although others urge her to flee north, Liz does not want to leave Maryland (I'm not entirely sure why). She is taught about "the Code," the hidden clues and signals leading to freedom. Many of the slaves, while miserable in their bondage and feeling that their lives had no value, were conflicted about attempting to make an escape. Others involved in helping slaves escape found themselves facing horrendously difficult decisions about turning one slave in to save many others. Some of the whites, too, had moments of moral dilemma, when they wondered whether they were doing the right thing.

I look forward to discussing this book with my book group tonight. McBride gives us a chilling, sensory glimpse into the lives and losses of slaves and the horrors they faced when they tried to run away.