Wench

Historical Fiction

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

My daughter asked me what this book was about and I told her to look at the cover. She lost interest pretty quickly when she sensed she was getting a "learning opportunity" instead of a straight answer. But I took my own lesson to heart and looked more closely at the cover than I had in the library.  The evocative title is what caught my eye originally, but the bird and cage as a clear image of freedom is what has lodged in my soul (and throat) right now.

Wench is a fictional account of four slave women, focusing on the one named Lizzie, who meet when their white male owners bring them to a resort in Ohio. The women are described as the men's mistresses, and while some of them do have a loving relationship (as in Lizzie's case), they are still slaves. The heat of the story is in the complicated relationships the women have with each other and their masters, as well as the tantalizing taste of freedom in the North. There is a murky quality to the writing, sort of like being underwater and watching events occurring above the surface, perhaps befitting the women's feelings as they occasionally attend fancy dinner parties like white women and watch the free blacks work around the resort.

The bird and cage analogy for freedom is so much simpler than the lives these women share over four summers. Freedom can mean teaching yourself not to care for your children anymore so when they are sold, you don't mourn. Freedom can mean escape from slavery, either legally or by running away. Freedom can mean death. It's different for each of the women, and I can't say it is very satisfying for any of them. They have known too much suffering to be at peace anymore. For me, it was a disappointing ending. It was probably very realistic, but I like my historical fiction to come with a dash of hope for the future.

I'm also just plain tired of death in books and movies. Life is not only about death, and even if it were, there is enough all around us. Time to turn to whatever is the happiest looking book on my shelf right now, which is probably Real Simple magazine. Sounds about right.

One Thousand White Women

Historical Fiction
By Jim Fergus

Look closely at the cover of this book. It tells so much of the story. The beat up library copy I read made it hard to see but notice the script, the quality of the paper, the necklace, the bullet hole... it's rich with detail, like this book. I have to say I loved this one and read it in three or four days.

The books starts a re-imagining of history: in 1854, a Cheyenne Indian chief asked US army officials for 1000 white women as brides for his tribe, which would help assimilate his people into the white world. That did not happen, but in this book it did. May Dodd is the fictional journal writer who accepts this offer, escaping an unfair incarceration in an insane asylum to go marry and have the baby of an Indian. The story is told as if May's ancestor is finding her journal and telling her story for the first time. To the white world, that is. She is a legend already to the Cheyenne.

The fact that I just wrote the end of that paragraph with consideration of how the whites and Indians perceive the story, shows that this book has got into my brain.  While it's a totally engrossing story, and full of really hilarious and lovable (or despicable) characters, it's also so much about how the two different cultures collide. May Dodd really becomes an Indian, and thus is able to present much of the story from both points of view. I found myself really torn with who to "side" with at times. I think it's a really balanced telling of a pretty horrible time in American history. But also, the story doesn't get lost in the history. This is about May and her family, which is really comprised of both the white women she goes west with and the Cheyenne family she marries into. It's a love story and an adventure and I got lost in their world. I want to get "Dances with Wolves" on Netflix now and watch it. Probably my husband won't want to watch it with me, though, and there are some scenes in that movie (like this book) that are too horrible to watch alone.

Never Let Me Go

Sort of science fiction novel
By Kazuo Ishiguro

Have you heard of this movie? With Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan and that guy from the new Spider Man movie. I haven't seen the movie but it's always kind of a bummer to me when I read a book after the movie comes out, because I picture the actors rather than use my own images. The same thing happened with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It also means I know a little about the story, and it's a dang good thing or I would have quit reading this book. It's...well it's kind of science fiction, kind of memoir, kind of coming of age story. It would have been very confusing to start with no knowledge of what the narrator, Kath, is remembering.

I can't discuss this book without giving a little away, and you probably already know from the movie previews, so here it is: she's recalling growing up at a privileged boarding school for...well...clones. They're all clones, created for the sole purpose of donating their organs as adults. That's the sci-fi part of the book. But we find out about the kids' purpose very slowly, as Kath remembers with excruciating, painful detail every emotion that she and her two best friends experienced at different stages of their childhood and adolescence. She focuses on scenes in which they are figuring out what it means to be who they are. Since Kath is looking back, we also learn what her adult life is like and what happens to the two best friends.

Suffice it to say, this is not a happy ending book, so it does not rank high on my list of favorites. And the clones-destined-to-die-so-another-can-live philosophical question is obviously the part we're supposed to dwell on and be concerned about--I mean, could our world really come to that? But another reason it was disturbing to me is the severity of the introspection. Ishiguro writes about the pains and thrills of different stages of life with such honesty that it made me relive some of my more painful moments of adolescence and shed an interesting light on parts of my college experience (made all the more real by the fact that my college roommate was visiting). It's a masterpiece of writing, really. But not very...comfortable. I suppose the upside is that I also did a little current introspection about why I'm feeling a certain way about a friend's situation and realize I'm jealous and I owe her an apology for not being very supportive.  That's probably something every author would wish for--making an impact in someone's life.