16. Alice Walker - The Third Life of Grange Copeland

[pauraque]

This was Alice Walker's first novel, and it's also the first novel by her that I have read. It tells the story of a black Southern family, particularly the titular Grange, who, as the title suggests, starts his life over twice: once by deserting his wife and child, and then again by returning to raise his granddaughter. Grange seeks to save her from the cycle of grinding poverty and self-loathing that has plagued the Copelands for (at least) three generations. But her embittered, violent father -- Grange's son -- isn't going to make it easy. Nor is the harsh reality of smothering racism, viewed here from the 1920s right up to the beginning of the civil rights movement.

( No real plot spoilers (I don't think), but discussion of characters and themes )

Mostly on the strength of the latter half of the book and the characterizations there, I enjoyed this novel and would recommend it. Looking forward to reading some of her other works. (I wanted The Color Purple, but it was checked out.)


tags: a: Walker Alice, African-American, novel

2.19 - Toni Morrison, *Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination* (1992)

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

2.19 - Toni Morrison, *Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination* (1992)

This is a fascinating exercise in literary analysis - looking at how blackness functions in American literature.

I'll quote Morrison, because she writes so beautifully even when not writing fiction.

'What I propose here is to examine the impact of notions of racial hierarchy, racial exclusion, and racial vulnerability and availability on nonblacks who held, resisted, explored, or altered these notions. The scholarship that looks into the mind, imagination, and behavior of slaves is valuable. But equally valuable is a serious intellectual effort to see what racial ideology does to the mind, imagination, and behavior of masters....

When matters of race are located and called attention to in American literature, critical response has tended to be on the order of a humanistic nostrum - or a dismissal mandated by the label 'political'. Excising the political from the life of the mind is a sacrifice that has proven costly. I think of this erasure as a kind of trembling hypochondria always curing itself with unnecessary surgery. A criticism that needs to insist that literature is not only 'universal' but also 'race-free' risks lobotomizing that literature, and diminishes both the art and the artist.' (p.12)

2.20 Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone, Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White (2001)

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

2.20 Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone, Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White (2001)

In 1924 Alice Jones, a former domestic and the daughter of a cab-driver (among other things), married Leonard Rhinelander. She became the first coloured woman to be listed in the Social Register as a member of one of New York's wealthiest families.

Once the news became public, a scandal of race, class and sex broke out, and there was an annulment trial.

Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone explore the trial. Interestingly, the trial transcript has disappeared so they 'read' the case through contemporary newspaper reportings. This means they are subject to the same omissions that original readers experienced. For instance, Alice and Leonard wrote letters to each other discussing their pre-marital sex, including something which was too dreadful to name in the 1920s. (One tabloid mentioned the part of the legal code which prohibited it, so either oral or anal sex).

Lewis and Ardizzone have no access at all to Alice's original words. Her testimony remains a blank - a state she continued in after they separated. The legal arrangement gave her a lifetime annuity in return for never using the Rhinelander name or speaking on the matter. She remains a cypher, at the centre of the trial, but never speaking.

It's a fascinating read.