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Summary: What a Book!
Review: This is one of my favorite books. A beautifully written & loving history of a family's journey through time. From early America to present day history, Lalita Tademy guides us through a world that would be otherwise unknown to us. What an amazing book & an interesting read.
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Summary: Come Meet the Remarkable Women of Cane River!
Review: This is quite a touching story. The author, Lalita Tadema, embarked on a journey to uncover the story about her family history. While searching she discovered that she was descended from a long line of very remarkable and strong women. She introduces each of her anscestors with feeling and love and allows the reader to get to know and love them too. The story tells of five generations of Cane River women. Elisabeth, Suzette and Philomene all served as slaves in various households around Cane River. They all had partly white families after each had come to the attention of various landowners in the area. It is a case of history repeating itself, but the women had no choice in the matter and had to suffer these sometimes unwanted attentions. Some found true love, some didn't, but all grew stronger through their experiences. In the book we see the life of the slave and the slave owner, the life the people had to live during the Civil War, the time when the blacks received freedom, and the hatred and mistrust displayed by white people towards these people after they gained their freedom. We see families growing up (all made up of women, girls and young boys). Fathers lived with their white wives and children, and only visited their coloured mistresses. Sometimes they provided for them and their children, but sometimes they didn't. These women knew to take what life had to give, and try to make the best of things. They also understood the importance of families to make them grounded and centred. In the last section we get an intimate look at Emily (Lalita's grandmother). Almost white enough to "pass", she didn't feel that she fit in either world. Her longtime lover provided love and security for her for the first years together, but even he had to bow to pressure to not live with his negro mistress and to find a white wife. Emily is strong enough to survive that and much more besides. This is a wonderful, heartwarming story, and I am glad that I met these women.
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Summary: I cannot say enough good things about this book
Review: This is the author's fictionalized account covering her matrilineal line for several generations from slavery, through the Civil War and the Great Depression era in central Louisiana. I liked that she provided authentic family photos, baptism and Census records, bills of sale, newspaper articles and other bits of real information she uncovered while researching her family tree.I'd been meaning to read this book for a couple of years, but there was a part of me that was apprehensive, believing there would be aspects which would really upset me. I both looked forward to and dreaded this book because my matrilineal heritage has similar origins. Pleasantly, what I found was a story of triumph rather than victimhood. That's not to say she whitewashed any of the horrible things that happened, she simply did not choose to make them the main focus. Rather than detailed accounts of rapes and beatings, Tademy focused on how the family endured, and how these women used whatever was within their means to make things a little better with each passing generation. She also did a good job of portraying the complex, and often contradictory, relationships between the whites, blacks, mixed race, and freed people of color, and the ways in which these relationships evolved over time. This is one of the most important books I have ever read.
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Summary: Mesmerizing Mixed Bag
Review: This novel intrigued and disturbed me at times. Fascinating, the knowledge that the characterisations were based on actual people and events with a rich assortment of photos and documentation to back it up. Ms. Tademy's eloquent style struck notes in my psyche. I don't think I could have stopped reading if I'd wanted to.
At the same time, this book carries the same "stamp" on it that other books of its kind share. While based on real life people and events it is a work of fiction and it's disturbing to me that the story repeatedly accents a negative response towards whites and Creoles in the story. That's understandable but it's not always convincing or realistic. It's difficult for me to understand why a slave woman would engage in an illicit affair with a man who did not own her who she did not really have any respect or regard for, then opt to remain in that relationship for two decades after the Emancipation and have several children with this man she neither liked nor wanted. It's easy enough to say she had no choice (as a slave) but what about after slavery when choice and consent can certainly be offered or withheld? Nor do I think it reasonable to assume her protector cared nothing for her when he presented her with a vast tract of property and provided lavishly for her and their children. That sounds like a family to me.
The antebellum slave system is a stain upon our country's conscience. But realistically, it was a system accepted by people at the time and it's unreasonable to depict all of one class as being too evil, jaded, or stupid to see this. It is equally unrealistic to depict the slave class as continuously exploited and miserable.
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