BarbaraNeely and Wendy Lee
Mar. 24th, 2009 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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50books_pocLast month I happened to read two novels about women of color working in the homes of white women.
6. BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 1992
This is the first in a series of mysteries starring Blanche White, a black woman who works as a maid, struggles to make ends meet, takes care of her kids, and solves crimes! I had heard good things about these books from several places and knew they'd won some big awards. I liked the idea of them, including the fact that Blanche is able to find out as much as she does because the rich white people she works for are so busy ignoring her or treating her as a non-person that they don't think to hide their secrets.
Sad to say, I didn't actually enjoy reading this book. :/ I found the writing plain and most of the characters two-dimensional. I wasn't too interested in the plot either, but then I don't read a lot of mysteries, so someone who's more into those might like it more. Blanche is a very interesting character and like I said, I know a lot of people have liked these books, so, yeah.
8. Wendy Lee, Happy Family, 2008
The narrator of this novel is a young Chinese woman named Hua who's recently moved to New York. After working for a few months at a Chinese restaurant she becomes a babysitter and then full-time nanny for an affluent white couple who have adopted a Chinese baby. Most of the action takes place in the States but there are also flashbacks to her life in China.
All the relationships in this are very complicated and painful and felt very real to me. I really loved Hua's POV, how observant she was about this family and the other white and Chinese-American characters and how different they are from her as a woman who grew up in China. In particular I thought the relationship between Hua and the adoptive mother Jane was fascinating. Jane hires Hua partly because she wants Lily to have a Chinese role model and educator in her life, and also because Hua reminds her of herself as a young woman who had just moved to New York. Hua has her own ideas about how wrong this Jane's assumptions are but she keeps them to herself. I was not thrilled with where the plot went in the last 30 pages or so, but in general I really enjoyed reading this. Happy Family is Wendy Lee's first novel but I'll be looking for more from her.
6. BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 1992
This is the first in a series of mysteries starring Blanche White, a black woman who works as a maid, struggles to make ends meet, takes care of her kids, and solves crimes! I had heard good things about these books from several places and knew they'd won some big awards. I liked the idea of them, including the fact that Blanche is able to find out as much as she does because the rich white people she works for are so busy ignoring her or treating her as a non-person that they don't think to hide their secrets.
Sad to say, I didn't actually enjoy reading this book. :/ I found the writing plain and most of the characters two-dimensional. I wasn't too interested in the plot either, but then I don't read a lot of mysteries, so someone who's more into those might like it more. Blanche is a very interesting character and like I said, I know a lot of people have liked these books, so, yeah.
8. Wendy Lee, Happy Family, 2008
The narrator of this novel is a young Chinese woman named Hua who's recently moved to New York. After working for a few months at a Chinese restaurant she becomes a babysitter and then full-time nanny for an affluent white couple who have adopted a Chinese baby. Most of the action takes place in the States but there are also flashbacks to her life in China.
All the relationships in this are very complicated and painful and felt very real to me. I really loved Hua's POV, how observant she was about this family and the other white and Chinese-American characters and how different they are from her as a woman who grew up in China. In particular I thought the relationship between Hua and the adoptive mother Jane was fascinating. Jane hires Hua partly because she wants Lily to have a Chinese role model and educator in her life, and also because Hua reminds her of herself as a young woman who had just moved to New York. Hua has her own ideas about how wrong this Jane's assumptions are but she keeps them to herself. I was not thrilled with where the plot went in the last 30 pages or so, but in general I really enjoyed reading this. Happy Family is Wendy Lee's first novel but I'll be looking for more from her.
