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50books_poc2009-02-28 04:38 pm
sanguinity) wrote in 50books_poc2009-02-28 04:38 pm
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Sherri L. Smith, Flygirl
33. Sherri L. Smith, Flygirl.
Ida Mae Jones learned to fly from her father, a strawberry farmer who bought a JN-4 "Jenny" and sidelined as a crop-duster. He died in a tractor accident just before Ida Mae was able to get her pilot's license, but she's saving her money from house-cleaning around New Orleans to make the trip to Chicago to get her license -- she has to go to Chicago, because it's one of the few schools in the country that will license both "colored" pilots and women. However, before she finishes saving for the trip, Pearl Harbor is bombed and Ida Mae's older brother goes to war. Ida Mae has to mothball the Jenny; wartime rationing doesn't leave extra fuel around for crop-dusting.
A year into the war, Ida Mae is chafing to do something more for her brother than just collect nylons and recycle bacon fat, when she finds out about the WASP: the Women Airforce Service Pilots, a volunteer service designed to free up male pilots from transport flights and other non-combat pilot duties. Ida Mae has to join. Unfortunately, the WASP appears to be a segregated service (as is all of the U.S. military), and it is unlikely to be large enough to have a colored division. If Ida Mae is going to join, she's going to have to join as a white woman. And she's going to have to forge herself a pilot's license.
I liked this book a lot. Ida Mae is a joy -- she's got dreams, determination, and intense loyalty to the people who care about her -- and the challenges of WASP training, as well as the fellowship among the women she trains with, makes good reading. These women are creative and gutsy, finding ways to rewrite the rules of engagement and squeeze victories for themselves out of situations that sexist officers and instructors had planned for them to fail.
I especially liked the subplot about Ida Mae passing as white, and the ramifications of that choice. *mild spoilers* Passing brought to the fore old tensions and fears within her family (her own father was a light-skinned Creole who had, against his mother's wishes, married a dark-skinned woman, thus "ruining" his family's chances of passing, a choice which had deeply estranged him from his mother and her family; Ida Mae's mother is deeply afraid that her daughter is going to "cross back" to her father's light-skinned Creole, shunning her mother and siblings). I also liked the details about white people seeing who they expected to see, and how they interpret Ida Mae's flubs as if they were expressions of the observers' own issues. (More than once Ida Mae bites off a sentence that she was intending to end with a statement about race; each time, the white person she's talking to fills in the sentence ending with the non-racial issue that they had been thinking about: sexism, perhaps, or another power differential.) Ida Mae has similarly-founded disconnects with the white women who are her new friends and training partners: for many of the women Ida Mae trains with, the WASP program is their first serious taste of prejudice and discrimination, and they are unable to imagine having to deal with a lifetime of it; to Ida Mae, who has already dealt with a lifetime of prejudice and discrimination against herself and her family, their conversation is almost ludicrous. Passing also changes Ida Mae, despite her best intentions -- the privileges associated with passing go to her head, leading her to think of herself as better than her darker-skinned friends back home. And unfortunately, there are some things that, once said, can never be unsaid. *end spoilers*
Smith leaves one of the sub-plots open-ended, which (surprisingly) I actually appreciated -- tying that one up would have forced Smith to unnaturally compress another novel's-worth or two of consequences into a few "she lived happily ever after" paragraphs, which would have been a crying shame. Of course, if Ms. Smith should ever choose to take up that open sub-plot in a sequel, I for one would be very happy to read it... ;-)
Ida Mae Jones learned to fly from her father, a strawberry farmer who bought a JN-4 "Jenny" and sidelined as a crop-duster. He died in a tractor accident just before Ida Mae was able to get her pilot's license, but she's saving her money from house-cleaning around New Orleans to make the trip to Chicago to get her license -- she has to go to Chicago, because it's one of the few schools in the country that will license both "colored" pilots and women. However, before she finishes saving for the trip, Pearl Harbor is bombed and Ida Mae's older brother goes to war. Ida Mae has to mothball the Jenny; wartime rationing doesn't leave extra fuel around for crop-dusting.
A year into the war, Ida Mae is chafing to do something more for her brother than just collect nylons and recycle bacon fat, when she finds out about the WASP: the Women Airforce Service Pilots, a volunteer service designed to free up male pilots from transport flights and other non-combat pilot duties. Ida Mae has to join. Unfortunately, the WASP appears to be a segregated service (as is all of the U.S. military), and it is unlikely to be large enough to have a colored division. If Ida Mae is going to join, she's going to have to join as a white woman. And she's going to have to forge herself a pilot's license.
I liked this book a lot. Ida Mae is a joy -- she's got dreams, determination, and intense loyalty to the people who care about her -- and the challenges of WASP training, as well as the fellowship among the women she trains with, makes good reading. These women are creative and gutsy, finding ways to rewrite the rules of engagement and squeeze victories for themselves out of situations that sexist officers and instructors had planned for them to fail.
I especially liked the subplot about Ida Mae passing as white, and the ramifications of that choice. *mild spoilers* Passing brought to the fore old tensions and fears within her family (her own father was a light-skinned Creole who had, against his mother's wishes, married a dark-skinned woman, thus "ruining" his family's chances of passing, a choice which had deeply estranged him from his mother and her family; Ida Mae's mother is deeply afraid that her daughter is going to "cross back" to her father's light-skinned Creole, shunning her mother and siblings). I also liked the details about white people seeing who they expected to see, and how they interpret Ida Mae's flubs as if they were expressions of the observers' own issues. (More than once Ida Mae bites off a sentence that she was intending to end with a statement about race; each time, the white person she's talking to fills in the sentence ending with the non-racial issue that they had been thinking about: sexism, perhaps, or another power differential.) Ida Mae has similarly-founded disconnects with the white women who are her new friends and training partners: for many of the women Ida Mae trains with, the WASP program is their first serious taste of prejudice and discrimination, and they are unable to imagine having to deal with a lifetime of it; to Ida Mae, who has already dealt with a lifetime of prejudice and discrimination against herself and her family, their conversation is almost ludicrous. Passing also changes Ida Mae, despite her best intentions -- the privileges associated with passing go to her head, leading her to think of herself as better than her darker-skinned friends back home. And unfortunately, there are some things that, once said, can never be unsaid. *end spoilers*
Smith leaves one of the sub-plots open-ended, which (surprisingly) I actually appreciated -- tying that one up would have forced Smith to unnaturally compress another novel's-worth or two of consequences into a few "she lived happily ever after" paragraphs, which would have been a crying shame. Of course, if Ms. Smith should ever choose to take up that open sub-plot in a sequel, I for one would be very happy to read it... ;-)
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Wierdly, it was just sitting on the new books shelf, without anyone waiting to take it home.
Hope it comes in for you soon!
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