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Beautiful Autumn at Home in New England

Life has once again stepped in to waylay my plan to blog monthly.  With apologies, this current post is almost a month overdue.  

Of the 4 books planned to read in October, I completed 3 and I declared a DNF on the 4th title.  I am not one who will DNF on a regular basis.  I am stubborn and almost always feel an obligation to finish what I start.  However, this strange holiday season, when sequestered at home, hearing reports of Covid-19 death tolls  rising hourly, I, like so many others, am already sad and anxious.  Taking on a read that will concentrate on the Israeli/Palestine conflict was more than I could manage.  "The Almond Tree" by Michelle Cohen Corasanti is a fictional account of one Palestinian family from the early 1950's to current times.  My DNF is no reflection on the quality of Ms. Corasanti's writing, merely the wrong book at this time.    

 

Her Own Place 💖💖💖 A Novel by Dori Sanders, A Fawcett Columbine Book, Published by Ballantine Books (1993)

I read Dori Sanders' "Clover" many years back, and cannot remember it in detail.  I do, however, remember thinking it was an uplifting story.  "Her Own Place" was a look at one women's life from girlhood to her senior years.  May Lee Hudson Barnes, born and raised in rural South Carolina, comes of age as the U.S. enters WWII.  The period of modernization and social change that marked the post-war years plays a significant role in this character's growth.  Much of the story centers around African-Americans in the rural south, and the social and economic disadvantages they face within a system designed to keep them down.  

May Lee, like her parents and grandparents, share the dream of land ownership and economic independence.  In their world, sharecropping for a white property owner is the norm for the majority of the African-American rural population.  It is a vicious system that never allows one to get out from under debt and put money in the bank.  Sam and Virgie Hudson, May Lee's parents, defy the odds by saving enough money to buy their own land from local white landowner, Jay Granger.  Granger is well-known for throwing as many roadblocks as he can in the path of Black people trying to get ahead.  Fortunately, May Lee finds that when she has saved enough to buy her own land, it isn't Jay Granger but his son Church she will be negotiating with to purchase a piece of property adjacent to her parents parcel.  Church, unlike his dad, is a fair and decent man, and over the decades he and May Lee will come to build if not a friendship, a mutual respect.

Like many young women, May Lee lets her heart lead her into an unfortunate marriage with the handsome, unreliable Jeff Barnes.  Barnes, a neighbor and schoolmate, take's young May Lee's fancy, but will prove an irresponsible partner and unworthy of May Lee' s love.  May Lee finds that to build a good life for herself and her children she must go it on her own, with help now and again from family and neighbors if she means to keep her farm going.  

To work hard, follow the rules and provide one's children with the opportunities to move up in this life was the dream of many in the post-war years.  While "Her Own Place" reflects the African-American experience, it is equally relatable to others, who recall their own parents and grandparents struggles.  Dori Sanders, a South Carolina native, knows the land and the people who cultivate the rich Carolina soil.  As an African-American woman, she is well-acquainted with the added burden of institutional and societal racism that adds to the burden of those desperately trying to eek out a living from the land.  Hers is an authentic voice depicting the people who with their strength, dignity, toil, sweat and prayers bring forth a viable crop season after season. 

South Carolina like much of the American South has changed significantly over the last half of the 20th century and it is encouraging to read of one woman's adaptation to a new and more inclusive society.  It is also interesting to see the adaptation of both the African-Americans and their white counterparts as they learn a new way to live and work together. May Lee Barnes is a woman of strength, character, and heart.  Her struggles are common to many African American women, who fought to give their children and grandchildren a better life than the one they have known.  I enjoyed this uplifting story and would add Dori Sanders without question to my list of recommended authors. 

Fire Shut Up in My Bones 💖💖💖 

A Memoir by Charles M. Blow 

First Mariner Books (2015)

The New York Times columnist, Charles Blow has written a powerful, unsparing account of his 1970's childhood in north Louisiana.  It was a childhood filled with violence, death and poverty everywhere he looked.  The children in Blow's neighborhood lived often in multi-generational households, where struggles were passed from father to son to grandson.  It was there, Blow had front row seats to violent confrontations between husbands and wives, neighbors and children upon other children.  He learned at a tender age to tread carefully to avoid physical confrontation, but to fight back when it was necessary. 

Blow paints a vivid picture of African-American life in the rural communities of Louisiana and Arkansas, where his people had lived for generations.  His memories of a grandfather not linked by DNA, but greatly loved, are some of his warmest and poignant memories.  This juxtapositions with Blow's father, a scoundrel who could not be counted on to provide the most basic needs for his children, and flagrantly engaged in extra-marital affairs .  Though he continually disappointed his children, Blow and his brothers continued to hope their Dad would change his ways.  Blow's mother, Billie, is complicated, passionate and determined to do everything possible to provide for her 5 boys.  At one point she races down a Louisiana highway hunting for a stalled tractor trailer filled with cattle, in hopes of securing a side of beef to feed her kids.  While in another high-speed chase down that same Louisiana highway, Billie with her small child besides her, goes gunning for her husband's latest femme fatale.    

Education in 1970s de-segregated Louisiana was far from what civil rights leaders marched for.  While black and white children could now attend the same schools, more often than not white parents opted to remove their children from public schools and enroll them in "all-white academies".  This effectively meant the public schools, like the one Blow attended in Ghibsland, where his mother taught Home Economics, was predominantly African-American students and teachers.  Blow was not only a good student, but popular with his classmates.  He blossomed as a student when he attended high school, where African-American teachers encouraged his intellect and fostered his belief in his own abilities.  

Yet, even as he grew in intellect and ambition, Blow continued to be tormented by the abuse experienced in his childhood.  Blow spent a great amount of time questioning his own sexuality and what he believed it meant to be a man.  He would question whether his bi-sexuality was a result of the sexual abuse he experienced or was it organic to his being.  

Despite the travails of his youth and childhood, Charles Blow has become a widely read columnist for The New York Times, where he writes about politics, race and social justice.  His is a voice that needs to be heard, especially as the nation re-examines race in America. 

While not an easy read, due to the subject matter, Blow's story was well worth the telling.  

Dreams from My Father 

💖💖💖💖  by Barack Obama, Three Rivers Press, New York, New York (1995)

During the years Barack Obama served as the 44^th President of the United States, his intellectual curiosity, compassion, affability and charisma were evident to his supporters and his opponents.  At home and around the world large crowds turned out to see the first African-American President of the United States -- and many believed, with his election, we entered a post-racial era.  That hope was not realized, evidenced by the events in Charlottesville and the death of George Floyd.  Yet we cannot say that progress was not made during President Obama’s 2-terms, for he changed the image of the American president that had existed for close to 250 years.

Born during the Camelot years, raised along the palm tree lined shores of America’s newest state, a child of a Kansas-born girl with deep mid-west roots and a brilliant Kenyan exchange student - Barack Obama was something we had not seen before.  In the years since his memorable speech at the Democratic convention that nominated John Kerry, the public has learned a great deal about the former Illinois legislator and U.S. Senator.  Yet beyond his political ideology and agenda, many wondered what was it that motivated Obama and what lit the flame of his political ambition.  This story attempts to answer those questions.  

“Dreams from my Father” first came about when Obama was elected the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review.  Publishers anxious to capitalize on this success story approached the young law student about writing a book.  Little could they know, this was the start of a career that would reach the heights never before achieved by an African-American.  Obama approached this book with the talent and drive that would characterize his political life, while the story he tells is not one of policy, but a deeply personal exploration of self.

The first third of the book Obama dedicates to his maternal side, without holding back for propriety sake.  He describes in detail the three people who created the sturdy base on which he built his life.  Stanley Ann Dunham (known as Ann), 18 years old when she gave birth to Barack and a student at the University of Hawaii.  Ann would go on to become an Anthropologist specializing in economics in developing nations.  It is her insistence on learning and study, not popular with her young son, that would prove vital as he grew into manhood.  Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, Ann’s parents, come from middle-America, and as young people they eloped in the early days of WWII.  In the post-war years, Stanley came to believe that Hawaii would be a land of abundant opportunity for a salesman like himself.  He packed up both wife and teenage daughter and decamped to Oahu in search of the American dream.  Though Stanley never realized his dream of economic success, his wife, Madelyn, known as Tutu (Hawaiian for grandma) or Toot for short, with just a high school diploma rose from secretary to vice president of a local bank.  The Dunham household was not without its conflicts, challenges and struggles, but it was in the apartment occupied by Obama, his grandparents, mother and younger sister, that his ambition was fostered.  Obama propelled himself from Hawaii to California where he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, from there he would take advantage of an opportunity to attend Columbia University in New York.

Obama’s understanding and emergence as an African-American man took shape during his college years, and set him on the path to becoming a community organizer in the south side of Chicago.  Grappling with the intricacies of the Chicago Housing Authority, was an invaluable lesson in government bureaucracy.  Obama as an advocate for the residents of Altgeld neighborhood, hoped to make a difference in the lives of those struggling with the “system”.  During his years in Chicago working with community groups he learned that the most important skill is to listen.  Obama listened to the community residents, and came to understand their needs.  He encouraged Altgeld residents to speak out at community forums so that government officials would hear their voices and understand their issues.  He learned to effectively organize meetings that would garner press attention to spotlight the lack of services available to residents of inner-city Chicago.  A mutual respect grew between Obama and many in the community.  Many Altgeld residents came to regard Obama like a grandchild, or a brother.  They encouraged his law school ambitions and when he returned to Chicago to take up a legal career, it was this community that inspired his leap into the political arena.

The last third of “Dreams from my Father” is both sad and compelling.  Obama seeks to understand the father (Barack Obama, Sr.) who had been absent for most of his life.  By the time Obama would step foot in Kenya, Obama Sr. would have met an untimely death in a car crash some months earlier.  The man Obama knew all too briefly was an enigma to him.  In Kenya, Obama hoped to solve the mystery that was his father.  Obama's trip to Kenya found him surrounded by the African people, most of the Luo tribe, who were his closest paternal relatives, though they were mostly unknown to him at the time.  Auma, his half-sister and he would build a relationship prior to Obama's Kenya sojourn with her visit to Chicago.  In Africa he would meet his five half-brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents and several former wives of his father.  The siblings ranged in age and economic circumstance across a wide spectrum, from educated, business-oriented people, to those barely scratching out a living and getting by on hand-outs from more successful relatives.  

In Obama's narrative, he takes the  reader into Kenya's heartland, where he learns about the people from whom he is descended.  He is able to make connections between people with seemingly nothing in common, such as his Dunham grandparents and the Kenyan uncles and aunties living in native huts.  It is the gift of seeing the common humanity that unites all people, and the idea that we have more that unites us as human beings than what divides us by race, religion, nationality.  This insight served Obama as president and gave people across the globe a feeling of connection to his message of hope. 

When I first approached “Dreams from my Father” I wondered if I would understand (or be bored) by policy wonk language.  This proved not to be the case, because President Obama is more than a capable writer.  His ability to communicate translated well to the written page . I look forward to reading “The Audacity of Hope”, as well as Obama’s latest title “The Promised Land” about his presidential years. 

Rating System

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Upcoming Blog:  December 2020 - January 2021 Reads

 What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell, Picador, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York (2016)

Dancer from the Dance, Andrew Holleran, Perrenial an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers (2001)

The Stranger's Child, Alan Hollinghurst, First Vintage International (2011)

Currently listening to Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, translated by Daphne Hardy, and read by Frank Muller.  An Audible edition from Recorded Books Classics Library.