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50books_pocThis 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.
I was expecting a tough read, and it was to an extent. Bleak hopelessness pervades much of the book until Ruth (Grange's granddaughter) becomes a major character, and Grange's hopes for her bring a sense of urgency and suspense, where previously there was only grim inevitability. Most of the other characters are people whose world throws them by the wayside, and we know there is no hope for redemption, which made it hard for me to feel attached to them. Grange and Ruth have by far the most agency and complexity, and I cared about them.
By contrast, I wasn't sure what to make of the character of Brownfield, Ruth's father, who seems set up to be a sympathetic or at least multi-faceted character (he is the first person we meet on page one) but fairly quickly becomes a monster, and a pretty flat and predictable one at that. He is a sociopath -- the narration tells us he is evil, and I don't disagree -- and at times he seems to symbolize internalized racism bearing down on the characters. Sometimes temporarily receding, but always plotting to bring his family down. He is barely even a person. He doesn't have a person's name; he is named after the brown field that represented his parents' slavery to the sharecropper life. Grange tells us that racism was able to engulf Brownfield this way, to erase his humanity, because Brownfield was inherently weak. Whether this is Walker's own viewpoint speaking, I'm not sure.
In the later parts of the book, the characters spend a lot of time directly discussing and debating racism and how to combat it, particularly the effect it has on the heart. Is the answer to hate those who hate you? To love them? To ignore them? Is there any hope for the U.S. or would it be better to leave? Where is the line between demanding personal responsibility, and victim-blaming? There are moments when these meta-conversations threaten to overwhelm the characters and become an essay instead of a novel, though generally Walker finds her way back from that edge. I don't think the characters' journey would be as plausible without these conversations, which bring so much out into the open that was previously only implied, and show what happens (both frightening and hopeful things) when it is confronted and grappled with.
Walker has one of those narrative voices that is a character in itself, that you *notice*. It is both poetic and direct, and by the end betrays an optimism for the future that now -- four decades after the book's publication -- reads as prescient. The characters skeptically discuss whether a black man could ever be President, and what it would mean if that were possible. I don't know how this read in 1970, but now it sounds like knowing irony. The whole book has a modern-feeling sensibility; if you'd told me it was written recently, I'd have believed it.
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
I was expecting a tough read, and it was to an extent. Bleak hopelessness pervades much of the book until Ruth (Grange's granddaughter) becomes a major character, and Grange's hopes for her bring a sense of urgency and suspense, where previously there was only grim inevitability. Most of the other characters are people whose world throws them by the wayside, and we know there is no hope for redemption, which made it hard for me to feel attached to them. Grange and Ruth have by far the most agency and complexity, and I cared about them.
By contrast, I wasn't sure what to make of the character of Brownfield, Ruth's father, who seems set up to be a sympathetic or at least multi-faceted character (he is the first person we meet on page one) but fairly quickly becomes a monster, and a pretty flat and predictable one at that. He is a sociopath -- the narration tells us he is evil, and I don't disagree -- and at times he seems to symbolize internalized racism bearing down on the characters. Sometimes temporarily receding, but always plotting to bring his family down. He is barely even a person. He doesn't have a person's name; he is named after the brown field that represented his parents' slavery to the sharecropper life. Grange tells us that racism was able to engulf Brownfield this way, to erase his humanity, because Brownfield was inherently weak. Whether this is Walker's own viewpoint speaking, I'm not sure.
In the later parts of the book, the characters spend a lot of time directly discussing and debating racism and how to combat it, particularly the effect it has on the heart. Is the answer to hate those who hate you? To love them? To ignore them? Is there any hope for the U.S. or would it be better to leave? Where is the line between demanding personal responsibility, and victim-blaming? There are moments when these meta-conversations threaten to overwhelm the characters and become an essay instead of a novel, though generally Walker finds her way back from that edge. I don't think the characters' journey would be as plausible without these conversations, which bring so much out into the open that was previously only implied, and show what happens (both frightening and hopeful things) when it is confronted and grappled with.
Walker has one of those narrative voices that is a character in itself, that you *notice*. It is both poetic and direct, and by the end betrays an optimism for the future that now -- four decades after the book's publication -- reads as prescient. The characters skeptically discuss whether a black man could ever be President, and what it would mean if that were possible. I don't know how this read in 1970, but now it sounds like knowing irony. The whole book has a modern-feeling sensibility; if you'd told me it was written recently, I'd have believed it.
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
