50books_poc | #41-43: Truth, Painter, Ishiguro (Reply)

Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth; Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol: Sojourner Truth was born Isabella, a slave, in New York just before 1800. She was emancipated when New York abolished slavery in 1827, and a few years later, she took a new name for herself and began a new career as an itinerant preacher. She quickly became famous for her stirring speeches and her championing of the rights of black people and women, and today she's one of the most famous African-American women of the Civil War period (along with Harriet Tubman).

The 1884 edition of her Narrative is made up of several parts. First, there's the Narrative of Sojourner Truth itself, dictated by Truth to her white friend Olive Gilbert. Then, there's "The Book of Life", one of Truth's scrapbooks which was added to the Narrative by her friend Frances Titus (also white), containing articles about Truth, correspondence with her, and a set of autographs of famous people she had collected. After Truth's death, Titus added "A Memorial Chapter", containing obituary notices and poems and an account of Truth's funeral.

This accruing of material and editing by Truth's friends results in a multilayered story of her life, often surprisingly obscure, and I was glad to have Painter's biography of Truth to read after the Narrative. (Painter also provides an extremely useful introduction to the Penguin edition of the Narrative, so it's not absolutely necessary to read her biography; I just liked the expanded analysis there.) I was especially impressed by Painter's discussion of the difference between the real Truth and how her friends and editors portrayed her. For instance, lots of articles about her quote her as speaking with a Southern dialect she wouldn't have used, since she was from the North; many white people would have thought this the normal way for all black people to speak, since black people were associated so strongly in their minds with Southern slavery. Yet Truth wasn't simply content to be seen as others wanted to see her; Painter examines also how she chose to portray herself and how she created her own persona.

The strength and intelligence of Truth's personality shine through all of the multiplicity of sources of the Narrative; Painter's incisive analysis helps make clear the outlines of Truth's life and provides an even more vivid portrait of her character. I was pleased to have read the Narrative and gotten to know more about a woman I really knew only by name, and I was even more pleased to follow that up with such an excellent biography.

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day: Stevens is the perfect English butler, dignified and devoted to the house and the master he served for decades. Yet after World War II, his perfect world has faded, and as he looks back over the years, he sees, as the reader does, that perhaps it wasn't so perfect after all: Lord Darlington was not as virtuous as Stevens would like to believe, and Stevens sacrificed much in order to serve properly.

Ishiguro uses the first person, speaking with Stevens' voice, and his style is unfalteringly pitch-perfect as Stevens recounts the years of his career. Stevens is a prisoner of his dignity and his position, and his constrained mind, soul, and heart cannot reach out to others, even to Miss Kenton, whom he could love, or to his father, an old servant himself. On the surface, The Remains of the Day is often very funny, a comedy of manners; deeper down, it's almost unbearably sad, though with a touch of hope at the end. It's a wonderful, perceptive character study, both of Stevens himself and of postwar England.