#12: Jacobs; #13: Butler; #14: Liu

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

#12: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

I read Frederick Douglass' autobiography way back in college; besides that (which I don't remember well and should reread), this is the first slave narrative I've read. What especially struck me about Jacobs' retelling of her experience was her emphasis on slavery's impact on black women and how that differed from (and in many ways was harder than) men's experience: she herself was seen as a sexual object by more than one white man and had essentially to choose to give up her chastity in order to protect herself from a worse fate. It's beautifully written: restrained and formal, yet emotional, often cuttingly sarcastic in Jacobs' comments on her owners and their habits and hypocrisies, full of anger against the institution itself and against those who perpetuated it.

I'm especially glad I read it before reading Kindred, because Butler is similarly concerned with the particular effects of slavery on women; having Jacobs' experience in the back of my mind as I read Kindred made Butler's novel even more affecting for me.

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#13: Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

Given that this was this month's book club book, I think I've no need to include a plot summary, right? :) As I expected, this was outstanding. Butler's prose is spare yet powerful, as her protagonist grapples with the horrors of being sent back in time and experiencing Southern slavery. Butler pulls no punches; it's easy to write a time travel novel in which the protagonist is never really in danger, but from the first lines -- "I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm." -- we know this isn't going to be the case for Dana. I finished it several days ago, and I'm still thinking about it; I think it will be a book that stays with me for a long time.

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#14: Marjorie M. Liu, Tiger Eye (#1 in the Dirk & Steele series)

When Dela Reese acquires a riddle box from a Beijing vendor, she doesn't expect it to contain a seven-foot shapeshifting warrior, the exotic Hari. Of course, they fall in love; of course, there are dangers, as both are pursued by different enemies. I'm glad I followed various advice to start with the second book of the series (Shadow Touch), because although I didn't dislike this one, I think I might not have kept on with the series afterward. I rather liked Dela and Hari and the interesting reversal of power, but the plot was just all over the place -- it felt like the second half of the book barely belonged to the first half, and a lot of the second half seemed to be set-up for later books, introducing characters I assume will be featured later. (Is there a book about Eddie yet? I liked him best.)

Comments

[vegablack62.livejournal.com]

I read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl some years ago and was impressed by it. I was glad to see it reviewed here. I wondered if her teenaged self was as able to avoid rape by her master as she claimed or if this was what she wanted to have happen. The reasons she gives for her consentual relationship with a white man, (when she was less than 16 and he was in his late twenties) were very insightful. I was interested in the Northern black communities reaction to her history as well.

She was a very brave woman.

[rosalux.livejournal.com]

I go back to Incidents over and over, and it's always a puzzle. Given that Jacobs was such a skilled writer with a clear view of the affect she was writing for, it's hard to take it at face value, but it seems disrespectful to spend the whole time reading between the lines...and her style is so rational when the events are so awful, it almost (to me at least) makes her seem like an unreliable narrator. Which I don't think she was, at least in the larger sense.

[vegablack62.livejournal.com]

Maybe an attack by her master was the one thing Jacobs held back; the one thing she couldn't talk about? Either way she is remarkably honest about her relationship with her lover, his family's attitude toward her children and her own attitudes.