Book Description
In this dazzling, hilarious memoir, best-selling author ofKinflicks Lisa Alther chronicles her search for the missing--oftenmysterious--branches of her family tree.Most of us grow up thinking we know who we are and where we come from. LisaAlther's mother hailed from New York, her father from Virginia, and everyday they reenacted the Civil War at home in East Tennessee. Then one nighta grizzled babysitter with brown teeth told Lisa about the Melungeons:six-fingered child-snatchers who hid in cliff caves outside town.Forgetting about these creepy kidnappers until she had a daughter of herown, Lisa learned that the Melungeons were actually a group of dark-skinnedpeople--some with extra thumbs--living in isolated pockets in the South.But who were they? Where did they come from? Were they the descendants ofSir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony, or of shipwrecked Portuguese or Turkishsailors? Or were they the children of European frontiersmen, Africanslaves, and Native Americans? Theories abounded, but no one seemed to knowfor sure.Learning that a cousin had had his extra thumbs removed, Lisa set out todiscover who these mysterious Melungeons really were and why hergrandmother wouldn't let her visit their Virginia relatives. Were thereMelungeons in the family tree? Lisa assembled a hoard of clues over theyears, but DNA testing finally offered answers.Part sidesplitting travelogue, part how--and how not--to climb your familytree, Kinfolks shimmers with wicked humor, illustrating just howwacky and wonderful our human family really is.
Customer Reviews:
Irresistible!.......2007-09-18
Lisa (LYE-ZA) Alther's latest, Kinfolks, falling off the family tree, is irresistible!
Kinfolks is the most humorous and entertaining book I have read in years! (And I've probably read 15,000 in my lifetime of 81 years.) It also introduces you to a very interesting woman who is unafraid to reveal her weaknesses and foibles. She is also a marvelous role model of openness and self-effacement for the young as well as a reassurance for all senior citizens.
Do not be fooled this is only about ancestors or genes. The genealogy and DNA searches provide the structure for very wise and unhurtful humor--a very rare quality.
Most Americans no longer live where they grew up. What they gained by living among strangers, what they lost by uprooting, and what they may profit from by accepting ALL their roots, traits, and history are hilariously illustrated.
The Melungeons, interesting as they may be, only provide a vehicle for Alther's search for more self-knowledge by a very gifted writer. The writing draws one on as Alther reminds us of cogent points through artful means: she contrasts northeast Appalachia church message boards' weekly quotes with Vermont bumper stickers to give us insights into two very different responses to extremes of the Appalachians. She teases her family who seem recognizably familiar, and she tantalizes us with the potential of what DNA may one day tell us about ourselves and others.
Great Story of Climbing the Family Tree.......2007-09-08
This was a great book. It is styled like an autobiography and tells the tale of the authors childhood through adult years, focusing on family, culture, and the things she learned about her family through the years.
Some LOL moments but..........2007-08-19
"Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree," I had very mixed feelings about this book at points loving it and at other points just about abhoring it. I am a scholar on race studies and I found it refreshing to take a break from heady academic reading to this colorfully written biographic memoir. Two things stood out that annoy me about the book: 1. Sometimes I felt as though I was listening in on the conversation of a batty lady because she doesn't edit her thoughts very often and # 2. is the dwelling on the Melungeon--Turkish connection. Not to make this review too convoluted, issue #1 is what left me laughing out loud (the LOL mentioned in the review title) at points--Lisa Alther has an easy to listen to, storyteller's voice as a writer that immediately pulls the reader in. Issue #2 grated on my nerves because while I'm sure there is some Turkish blood in the Melungeons just from understanding the population distributions in early American history I bet that quantum is lower than the African or Native American content. It seems as though exotic ethnicity that is non-African is the flavor of the day, sadly showing a hint of racism still existent even in highly mixed raced group of Americans. Moreover, I find the tendency to explain away several Native American customs and languages of the various indigenous groups of what is now Appalachia as originating in Turkey and parts of the Middle East disturbing and insulting to these long-standing, well developed cultures. It also just plain seems like a stretch toward the ridiculous that she and her distant cousin, well-respected expert on the subject of Melungeons, Brent Kennedy continue to take. Melungeons such as Lisa Alther have a unique opportunity to step above the fray of a largely racist America by virtue of their mixed blood lines--rather than doing so Melungeons whose beliefs are aligned with Alther's are showing us by clinging to the romantic idea of having Romany blood, ample Turkish and other Middle Eastern heritage that even they despise Blackness even it is mixed right into their DNA and to some extent into their phenotypes (physical appearance such as brown skin and curly or wavy hair). Lisa Alther had a unique opportunity while researching for "Kinfolks" to reach out to her African American neighbors and Native American communities, breaking new ground right in racially charged Tennessee, the Carolinas and Virginia--visiting and interviewing people in her blood lines with the same surnames that have culturally blended into the "Black" or "Indian" communities right under her nose to get some answers as well but instead she mounted an international search for answers from exotic lands for answers to ethnic and cultural questions that might well be right here in America in her own backyard.
Not a History Book.......2007-06-13
Well written, easy reading. But if you are looking for the history of the Melungeons, take this book very lightly. Borders on "Cultural Genocide". As with the works of Brent Kennedy and Elizabeth Hirschman, a very poor attempt at rewritting the history of the Melungeons.
What did Noah do with the woodpeckers?.......2007-06-05
I had never heard the word 'Melungeon' before, so I had to go look it up on the web. It appears that no body else really knows what a Melungeon is either. Therefore, what a great thing to go searching for. You can find it if you wish. (662 people claimed to be Melungeon in the 2,000 census).
Ms. Alther's search among her family roots lead her to about as confused a family as, as, as, well most families. The particularly amusing aspect of her family, especially among the older members is the refusal to admit even the slightest possibility that there might be a small percentage of African American blood running through their veins.
Ms. Adler is able to take her investigation into the upper bounds of comedy. She reports a church sign, 'What did Noah do with the woodpeckers.' Upon her father finding out that he might have some Indian blood he tells a fund raiser who calls, 'Sorry, but I'm Cherokee, and I need to give my money to my own people.' I'm going to try to remember that line.
Customer Reviews:
Kinfolks: The Wilgus Stories.......2000-03-24
Gurney Norman spins yarns as well as any of the authors of this genre. He is able to add classical elements to his stories. You will find well-developed characters and some of them even have tragic flaws. This is fantastic reading beginning to end. Great book.
Wonderful without the sap!.......1998-11-10
This unique, realistic collection of short stories presents the reader with psychologically complex characters threaded throughout one Appalachian family. Norman's greatest success is that he is able to access Applachian life with an unflinching eye and yet treat it with a tenderness that is neither maudlin nor overdone. This short book puts certain more popular Kentucky writers to shame, for it adamantly refuses to fall into Appalachian stereotypes and treats its characters as the complex, often flawed, but dignified people that they are. Say what you will about Mason and Offut; Norman represents the finest short story writing in the region and remains one of Kentucky's best known secrets
A finely-honed, hilarious portrait of life in Kentucky........1998-11-09
For many years as a Freshman English instructor, I assigned this book to students from all over the country. Though many of them groaned at the thought of reading a book "about hillbillies" when they first heard the title, Gurney Norman's wonderful comedic touch and unique, likeable, well-rounded characters never failed to win them over. Though Norman's book, in the best tradition of Southern fiction, is strongly rooted in "place," the author succeeds in transcending his stories' locales, making Wilgus and his family seem like people any of us might know and many of us would wish to know. You don't have to be from Kentucky coal-mining country to enjoy this book. You only have to love fine writing, powerful characterization, and sharply-honed humor in the best tradition of Faulkner, O'Connor, and Norman's friend and fellow Kentucky author Ed McClanahan.
Wonderful stories about a boy and Appalachia........1998-05-06
Norman spins his story telling magic again. He returns to his roots in eastern Kentucky and beautifully tells the tale of Wilgus and his struggle to grow and search for meaning. The characters are teeming with life and the prose is fluid enabling one to travel along with Wilgus. If you have read Divine Right's Trip and yearn for more Norman this is it.
Book Description
Ms. Buck tells us that East and West can meet on the ground of affectionate understanding and that human similarities can prevail over the gulf between cultures....She has something to say and she says it with lucid ease....If she has a mission she can also tell a story. She writes consistently and successfully to be read; she writes consistently; and she writes successfully.
Customer Reviews:
Probably my favorite.......2007-02-14
This could well be my favorite of Pearl Buck's books...right up there with PEONY. One thing I liked was that there was no war in it, just family relations. Oh, there was mention of communism rising, but that was incidental.
Richly textured bi-cultural family fabric.......2004-12-13
This is Pearl S. Buck at her most bewitching. At first she draws figures as clear as those in a coloring book. But soon, no one is quite who they seemed at first. The wise father is a bit cowardly and impure. The pesty little sister has great emphathy. The unsophisticated mother displays immense insight, and so on. Through their travails in New York, and in their ancestral village near Peking, the 4 Liang children and their parents will stay in your mind as fully-fleshed characters you were happy to know, and learned something in the process.
Four American-born Chinese children come of age.......1999-09-18
This story covers the coming-of-age of four American-raised Chinese young people in the early 1900's. James, a talented young surgeon, decides to devote his life to serving the poor in China, and his siblings follow him. His teacher-sister Mary is equally devoted, but their younger brother Peter is disillusioned by the China he sees & listens sympathetically to the growing communist party. The youngest sister, Louise, has become very westernized & can imagine no home for herself but America. The story paints an interesting picture of how these brothers & sisters struggle to find their own identity in a world that is no longer simple.
Book Description
Meet Linda Breland, single parent of two teenage daughters. The oldest, Lindsey, who always held her younger sister in check, is leaving for college. And Gracie, her Tasmanian devil, is giving her nightmares. Linda's personal life? Well, between the married men, the cold New Jersey winters, her pinched wallet and her ex-husband who marries a beautiful, successful woman ten years younger than she is - let's just say, Linda has seen enough to fill a thousand pages.
As the story opens, she is barreling down Interstate 95, bound for Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the land of her ancestors. Welcomed by the generous heart of her advice-dispensing sister, Mimi, Linda and her daughters slowly begin to find their way and discover a sweeter rhythm of life.
And then there's Brad Jackson, a former investment banker of Atlanta, Georgia who hires her to run his restaurant on Shem Creek. Like everyone else, Brad's got a story of his own - namely an almost ex-wife, Loretta who is the kind of gal who gives women a bad name.
The real protagonist of this story is the Lowcountry itself. The magical waters of Shem Creek, the abundant wildlife and the astounding power of nature give this tiny corner of the planet its infallible reputation as a place for introspection, contemplation and healing.
As in all her previous work, you'll find Shem Creek to be compulsively readable, irreverent but warm and blazingly authentic - and you'll dread reaching the last page. It is her vivid writing, colorful characters and rich narrative that have made Dorothea Benton Frank one of our nation's greatest storytellers. Shem Creek is a triumphant novel that proves we are all entitled to a second chance. The challenge is to learn how to recognize it when it comes and to know which chance to take.
Customer Reviews:
MAKES ME WANT TO TAKE A TRIP TO SOUTH CAROLINA ~~~.......2006-08-29
This was an enjoyable book. The characters were all good. Who wouldn't love to have a group of loving, caring, go out-of-their-way-for-you family and friends always there for you? What a support group!!!!
The move from New Jersey to South Carolina, the new job, new school, new friends, and experiences brought forth in this book all added up to a good read!!! Can't you just imagine being transplanted from NJ to SC? That would be a huge difference in everything! The language differences alone were fun to read! You know -- y'all as oppossed to you guys!!!!
Even though you can pretty much figure out parts of the book; ie, who would end up loving who, where things were headed -- there were plenty of surprises and a good plot to keep your interest.
Ms. Frank never disappoints! Linda's life change at a time when she sorely needed it probably hits home to many a woman! Her relationship with her teenage daughters DID, I am positive, hit home with everyone and anyone who has ever had a teenager living with them under the same roof. Lord help us all!!!
This book was very enjoyable and I would highly recommend it to anyone. Ms. Frank's description of the beaches, weather, smells, and sights makes me want to shuck it all and move to a slower, easier life-style. Thanks Ms. Frank!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks -- Pam.
a brilliant story of friendship, love and making fresh starts! .......2006-08-04
With her trademark casual and conversational style of writing, Dorothea Benton Frank has the magical knack of pulling the reader directly into the setting, making it feel as though the characters are friends and neighbors, and the low country of South Carolina is home. I have a particular fondness for stories that are centered around a restaurant, and the Italian flare added a special touch. As someone in a similar stage of life as Linda, I held a special appreciation for her plight, especially in her relationships with her daughters, which was very realistically portrayed when compared to the interactions of my daughters with myself and with each other. I don't understand the negative comments in other reviews, as I loved this book and thought it provided wonderful and heartwarming reading!
Location, location, location.......2006-07-01
That about sums it up. I was sooooo looking forward to this one coming out. The cover is beautiful and beckons with such promise. South Carolina - what could be better? Unfortunately, this was probably one of Dottie's most boring novels.
disappointing.......2006-06-27
I wish I had read the reviews before purchasing this book. This is one I won't pass on to or recommend to anyone. The messy dialogue itself is a reason to skip this one.
Misses the mark.......2006-05-15
Although I enjoyed Pawley's Island, I found that Shem Creek was not in the same category. It was disjointed and unfocused. I couldn't identify with the characters who went from one tragedy to another. The book just did not have the flow of Dot Frank's other books. There also seemed to be several unresolved issues and a continuing chain of lucky coincidences. Not very believable, in my opinion. The book is still entertaining and some readers may enjoy it, but I believe that Ms. Frank's other books have more merit.
Amazon.com
The abduction of teenager Elizabeth Smart by a fundamentalist Mormon preacher placed a renewed focus on renegade offshoots of the Church of Latter Day Saints and the culture surrounding the religion in the state of Utah (which, like the church, formally opposes polygamous marriage, though state and religious leaders both seem well aware that the practice continues, and they often turn a blind eye toward it). Like Natalie R. Collins's 2003 novel SisterWife, Dorothy Allred Solomon's Predators, Prey, and Other Kinfolk couldn't seem more topical, but it is an even more powerful book because it has the weight of truth behind it. "I am the daughter of my father's fourth plural wife, twenty-eight of forty-eight children—a middle kid, you might say," her frank memoir begins, and Solomon (a freelance writer who now lives in a happily monogamous marriage in Park City, Utah) maintains a similarly gripping and poignant tone through the book. Her family's story is a fascinating one: Her father, the physician Rulon Allred, was also a fundamentalist preacher and a closet polygamist who went to great lengths to keep his plural marriages and sprawling family a secret from society at large. In 1977, he was shot to death by assassins from a rival fundamentalist sect, the bloody end to a misguided lifestyle that had already taken a severe emotional toll on many around him. His daughter does not hesitate to expose the violent and sexist behavior that permeates many of these cultish offshoots of the Mormon Church, but she does not reduce the believers to one-dimensional caricatures, either, and in the process of sharing a very personal tale, she often steps back to place it all in the much broader context of religion and society, charting the history of the Mormons and the contradictions between ideals and actions on the part of both church and state. --Jim DeRogatis
Book Description
"I am the daughter of my father's fourth plural wife, twenty-eighth of forty-eight children—a middle kid, you might say."
So begins this astonishing memoir of life in the family of Utah fundamentalist leader and naturopathic physician Rulon C. Allred. Since polygamy was abolished by manifesto in 1890, this is a story of secrecy and lies, of poverty and imprisonment and government raids. When raids threatened, the families were forced to scatter from their pastoral compound in Salt Lake City to the deserts of Mexico or the wilds of Montana. To follow the Lord's plan as dictated by the Principle, the human cost was huge. Eventually murder in its cruelest form entered when members of a rival fundamentalist group assassinated the author's father.
Dorothy Solomon, monogamous herself, broke from the fundamentalist group because she yearned for equality and could not reconcile the laws of God (as practiced by polygamists) with the vastly different laws of the state. This poignant account chronicles her brave quest for personal identity.
Customer Reviews:
Obscurity Brought to Light.......2007-08-25
What a scintillating assertion of a lifestyle so foreign to most people. People are often in awe of the idea that such practices are still observed. This book matches personalities to the unnamed faces so often seen in the media relating to polygamy. Losing the idea of "polygamy is good/polygamy is bad," Ms. Solomon does an excellent job of turning individuals into protagonists and antagonists, making these characters live for all readers.
Fascinating Account - Keep In Mind, it's an Autobiography .......2006-04-28
I recently discussed this book with a friend whose an avid reader and an active participant in a women's book club. She was afraid the younger women wouldn't care for the book because it lacks dialogue. Such a shame and yet I wonder if it's that glamor and glitz that so many autobiographers interject into today's books (such as James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces") that contemporary readers look for and are disappointed when it isn't provided.
I, on the other hand, found this a fascinating tale that really delved into the mindset of those involved, regardless of how they were involved, in polygamy. Dorothy Allred Solomon, the daughter of a polygamist, writes about her experiences and recollections of life on the compound that expands into a detailed historical account of the polygamist movement, the fight to disband and abolish polygamy, the covert movement in the polygamist following and the shame that the by-products of polygamy, which includes Dorothy, had to come to terms with as they began blending in with monogamist families to escape the persecution that ensued.
The author writes the majority from the viewpoint of when she was a child, so I felt there was a fair amount that may have been influenced by the age she was when these events occurred. As the author recounts events that occurred later in her life, I felt some important elements may have been left out as it became devoid of the detail, bereft with the emotion that pummelled the first portion of her life and the book.
Yet, it's still a moving book that while it's dry in dialogue, allows the reader to get a good sense of what the author's family and the author herself had to deal with whether it was raw emotions and confusion or the outward reproach of society.
Good in som spots, but mainly a bore.......2006-03-26
This book started off strong and with much promise, but soon deteriorated.I really could have done without the 3-4 chapters of great-great-grandmothers and other ancestors. The story never really recovered after that and I kept reading in hope that the power from the begining would show up.
However, the story was interesting and the author's brash honesty was refreshing. While it is not pertinent to the book itself, it is easy to see that this woman is a genuinely good person and has ever turned out normal despite such an unusual upbringing. She has the traits of forgiveness and tries to really see the best in people-- something we could ALL use a lesson in.
Loved it!.......2006-03-12
I loved this book. I love that she spoke her truth. I love the inside look into this fringe community. I think her writing style is beautiful and I found myself writing down some lines written so well I wanted to remember them. The added stories at the end were my favorite. Bravo! This book inspires me to take that creative writing course I keep thinking about. I love reading and I love writing and this book is an example of someone else who feels the same way.
Predators, Prey and Other Kindolk: Growing Up in Polygamy.......2005-11-24
Soloman does an excellent job being as objective as possible. This is a wonderfully writen autobiography that does not try to persuade for or against polygamy, but educates you on an idea totally foriegn to most of us. I was amazed at how common and close this practice is. I am recommending it to all my friends for the sake of awareness.
Average customer rating:
- Shem Creek: A Lowcountry Tale
|
Shem Creek: A Lowcountry Tale (Lowcountry Tales (Brilliance Audio))
Dorothea Benton Frank
Manufacturer: Brilliance Audio on CD Value Priced
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ASIN: 159600410X
Release Date: 2005-05-28 |
Book Description
Meet Linda Breland, single parent of two teenage daughters. The oldest, Lindsey, who always held her younger sister in check, is leaving for college. And Gracie, her Tasmanian devil, is giving her nightmares. Linda's personal life? Well, between the married men, the cold New Jersey winters, her pinched wallet and her ex-husband who marries a beautiful, successful woman ten years younger than she is - let's just say, Linda has seen enough to fill a thousand pages.
As the story opens, she is barreling down Interstate 95, bound for Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the land of her ancestors. Welcomed by the generous heart of her advice-dispensing sister, Mimi, Linda and her daughters slowly begin to find their way and discover a sweeter rhythm of life.
And then there's Brad Jackson, a former investment banker of Atlanta, Georgia who hires her to run his restaurant on Shem Creek. Like everyone else, Brad's got a story of his own - namely an almost ex-wife, Loretta who is the kind of gal who gives women a bad name.
The real protagonist of this story is the Lowcountry itself. The magical waters of Shem Creek, the abundant wildlife and the astounding power of nature give this tiny corner of the planet its infallible reputation as a place for introspection, contemplation and healing.
As in all her previous work, you'll find Shem Creek to be compulsively readable, irreverent but warm and blazingly authentic - and you'll dread reaching the last page. It is her vivid writing, colorful characters and rich narrative that have made Dorothea Benton Frank one of our nation's greatest storytellers. Shem Creek is a triumphant novel that proves we are all entitled to a second chance. The challenge is to learn how to recognize it when it comes and to know which chance to take.
Customer Reviews:
Shem Creek: A Lowcountry Tale.......2007-02-04
Dorothea Benton Frank tells a wonderful story of intertwined lives in the lowcountry around Shem Creek. She is a great storyteller. This is the second of her audiobooks I have read and enjoyed. I highly recommend this as an authentic southern, lowcountry tale.
Book Description
In Claims of Kinfolk, Dylan Penningroth uncovers an extensive informal economy of property ownership among slaves and sheds new light on African American family and community life from the heyday of plantation slavery to the "freedom generation" of the 1870s. By focusing on relationships among blacks, as well as on the more familiar struggles between the races, Penningroth exposes a dynamic process of community and family definition. He also includes a comparative analysis of slavery and slave property ownership along the Gold Coast in West Africa, revealing significant differences between the African and American contexts.
Property ownership was widespread among slaves across the antebellum South, as slaves seized the small opportunities for ownership permitted by their masters. While there was no legal framework to protect or even recognize slaves' property rights, an informal system of acknowledgment recognized by both blacks and whites enabled slaves to mark the boundaries of possession. In turn, property ownership-and the negotiations it entailed-influenced and shaped kinship and community ties. Enriching common notions of slave life, Penningroth reveals how property ownership engendered conflict as well as solidarity within black families and communities. Moreover, he demonstrates that property had less to do with individual legal rights than with constantly negotiated, extralegal, social ties.
Book Description
Beloved novelist and playwright Thulani Davis takes a journey through her ancestral history-and finds tartan plaid, unlikely lovers, and Confederate soldiers
Starting with a photograph and some writings left by her grandmother, Thulani Davis goes looking for the "white folk" in her family-a Scots-Irish family of cotton planters unknown to her-and uncovers a history far richer and stranger than she had ever imagined.
When Davis's grandmother died in 1971, she was writing a novel about her parents, Mississippi cotton farmers who met after the Civil War: Chloe Curry, a former slave from Alabama, married with several children, and Will Campbell, a white planter from Missouri who had never married.
In this compelling intersection of genealogy, memoir, and Reconstruction history, Davis picks up where her grandmother left off. Her journey takes her from Missouri to Mississippi to Alabama, back to her home town in Virginia, and even to Sierra Leone. The Campbells lead her to locate not only their pioneer history but to find the previously unknown roots of her mother's family; to Civil War archives, where she discovers the records of the Campbells who fought with Confederate troops; to the Silver Creek plantation in Yazoo, Mississippi, where the two branches of her family history became one; and to a county near her Virginia hometown where both families started their American journey, completely unknown to each other.
My Confederate Kinfolk examines the origins of some of our most deeply ingrained notions about what makes a family black or white and offers an immensely compelling, intellectually challenging alternative.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting personal historical.......2007-06-19
A beautiful and very accessable history on the pre and post civil war period.
What made it easy was it's grounding in Thulani Davis family.
A learning experience for me.
It's Mostly About the Confederate Kinfolk.......2006-12-16
Just as it says, this book is mostly about the author's Confederate kinfolk. As she says, it's easier to find out information about them. A lot of them left diaries and letters. I kept waiting to learn more about her tremendous great-grandmother, but by the end of the book, I realized that it truly was about her white kinfolk. She'll have to write another book to detail the story of her black kinfolk. I was fascinated by this book because I have relatives of that same era that I am trying to find out about, but there is so little documentation. Only one of my great grandparents could read and write. He was a Union soldier, but since his future wife could not read or write, there would have been no point in him writing to her, and so there are no existing letters from him to her from which we could learn about their experiences at the time.
This book goes into great detail about the comings and goings of her white ancestors, at least some of whom tried to write "family" histories. Of course, they made little direct acknowledgement, or at least written acknowledgement, of their non-white kin, namely the author's grandmother.
I love family pictures. Unfortunately, we don't have pictures of some of the people in our family that I would most like to see. There are pictures of the author's white kin, and of her great grandmother, and oblique references to her by the white kin, but it is difficult to document the story of people who were prevented and penalized from reading and writing. The oral history died with the participants, and some stories that were passed down sometimes went no further than a hearer who declined to pass those stories on. This, for me, is one of the saddest legacies of American slavery.
I enjoyed this book because I have been in the same boots as the author trying to find out family history with very little documentary information to go on, and deep regret that I was not interested enough, or old enough, or knowledgeable enough to ask the oldest family members about their memories of those who went before while they were still alive.
Disappointed........2006-07-19
My Confederate Kinfolk was extremely hard to read. It took me three trys to read the first three pages. I felt the writer was not writing about her people as the title indicates. I felt the beginning of the novel had nothing to do with the author's kinfolks. I only finally completed the book because I was required to do so; otherwise I would not had. The last three chapters is what I wish I had only read.
Black Liberation Struggle is More Than Just the Civil Rights Movement.......2006-07-14
When most of us think about Black liberation struggles, the first thing that comes to mind is the American Civil Rights Movement of the `50s and `60s. Numerous women and men used their creativity and ingenuity to challenge nefarious Jim Crow laws and the de facto segregation that permeated every aspect of life in this country. In doing so, they often endangered their lives, and the lives of those who loved them - a risk they deemed ultimately worth the reward of social, political and economic equality they were fighting for.
Although this is a period of history which certainly deserves our attention, writer Thulani Davis suggests that the history of American Reconstruction is just as, or even more deserving of study, because of the world that the newly freedmen and freedwoman tried to form, against opposition that was many times more formidable and vicious than that of their descendants a century later.
In her new book, My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty-first Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots, Davis writes, "The first women and men to walk away from bondage reinvented the race, redefined the terms of American citizenship, and spread the blend of African and EuroAmerican culture created in bondage in the American South. Never has one group of people acted on such a large scale in so many regions of the country at once to push the society to honor its foundational principles. They taught the rest of us how to do it and yet there is no cultural memory of those millions," (pg. 6).
It is this cultural amnesia that Davis seeks to cure, through an in-depth exploration of the tangled cords of her own family and ancestors, many of them freedwomen and men, some of them White planters, all of them striving to reach their individual, familial and societal goals through the often contradictory terrain of nineteenth century America.
"Researching family history in this country puts you face to face with that seminal American habit of leaving the past behind for a new self, new wealth, new chances, and all their complications - name changing, multiple migrations, and the constant repetition in the naming of towns, churches, graveyards, and slaves," (pg. 9.), Davis writes, in an introductory chapter filled with brilliant insights and revelatory connections.
She adds in a later chapter, however, that finding information about her White ancestors was infinitely easier than finding information about the Black ones. "My dogs have more documentation of their existence than most of my forebearers. Considerably more," (pg. 69), says Davis. While this didn't surprise her, it did take its emotional toll. "I have been extremely lucky [in my research], and luck is important, yet sometimes I have had to just cry when five minutes on the internet can turn up over 500 Mississippi lynching victims on one site, and days of research can result in no information whatsoever on the individuals who were lynched," (pg. 71).
Although the narrative sometimes gets overburdened by the weight of too many names, third cousins, small Mississippi towns, and incidental Civil War skirmishes, Davis succeeds in her task to lay out the daily struggles that both her White and Black ancestors faced during the Reconstruction period. In doing so, she simultaneously reveals how the options these people faced were absolutely over-determined by their race, and how the category of race in America is largely false.
"One cannot be completely explained by anything, thank God, but it would be easier to build selves less fictional and community less mythical if the truth of American heritage was accepted. This country has been crazy to make people black or white ever since Thomas Jefferson thought a system should be devised and made law," (pg. 12), writes Davis, whose grandmother was the product of a rich White Mississippi planter and his Black house "servant."
True to her stated intent, the bulk of My Confederate Kinfolk centers on the African Americans who strived to make a life for themselves in the wake of Emancipation - specifically those freed people in Mississippi gained political power in the "reformed" state legislature, only to be killed for it in what the White elite of the day termed "the Redemption." Indeed, Davis narrates a shocking and gruesome story of the state elections of 1875, in which "all the black office holders were hunted down or run out of town," (pg. 38). Local organizers, teachers, church leaders, and even state representatives were lynched, shot, stabbed and/or beaten. Some narrowly escaped this fate. One man, James G. Patterson, a Republican member of the Mississippi House of Representatives (one of its first Black members) is suspected of being lynched at the home of one of Davis' ancestors.
Davis argues that the history of Mississippi, and many other Southern states that faced a similar backlash from white racists after emancipation would have been quite different if Blacks had been able to keep office there, and build up some political and economic power. She also says that not knowing our history is what keeps African Americans, and other marginalized groups, continually at a disadvantage.
"If I told someone tomorrow that white supremacists ran black people on their tickets in 1875 to get black people to sign on for the worst possible agenda of their lives, most people wouldn't believe it. Do we even know black people in Mississippi could vote then? If I said it happened in Chicago this year, they would. These scenarios continue to be utilized because we continue to ignore our past," (pg. 14), she writes.
Davis' book, although digging in deeply to just one moment of American history, could go a long way towards making that past real to this generation. I certainly have not encountered a story as mutifaceted and vital on Reconstruction as the one Davis puts forth in My Confederate Kinfolk. The lives and determination of the freedwomen and men she documents are as inspiring as they are tragic. Still, the only hope for their ultimate redemption would seem to lie in the here and now.
A memoir and a history.......2006-06-24
When author Thulani Davis' grandmother died in 1971, she was writing a novel about her Mississippi cotton farmer parents. Her grandmother left a photo and writings, prompting Davis to look for the 'white folk' in her family: a genealogical odyssey which was to uncover many riches. MY CONFEDERATE KINFOLK is at once a memoir and a history: it tells of a journey across the South to uncover truths, connections, and a rich set of roots, and reveals many political insights as well.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
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