Showing posts with label James Baldwin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Baldwin. Show all posts

Saturday, February 6, 2021

My #ReadSoulLit Start-Ups

 

So I would start a James Baldwin book the weekend before taking my Grandmother to two specialists the following week. Then the week after is my birthday week, as well as my return to the classroom. Busy little beaver, I suppose. Not the best time to find myself waist deep in Baldwin’s level of immersion and gripping engagement. Yet, I chose to pick up his book, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone. But who am I kidding? It is always the perfect timing for a Baldwin book. As I write this, I am fifty pages in and on my second cup of coffee for the evening. His work is that absorbing; I always want to be alert to his offerings. And here it is about to start raining! The right vibe. The right move. The right night. As I have stated, perfect timing.

I’m halfway through Tammye Huf’s A More Perfect Union. It is the book chosen for the #ReadSoulLit read-along of 2021. So far, I am liking the book. It is a fictionalized retelling of the author’s ancestors' love story, seeded in a Virginia plantation around 1849. You take a slave named, Sarah, and her Irish immigrant beau named Henry; imagine the peril involved. One thing I enjoy is Henry's narrative insight into the Irish immigrate experience. I also enjoy the parallel of family pain and trauma both Sarah and Henry share, though the overall illustrations of those shared traumas are fairly "light" (if you will). Nevertheless, their pain is something that draws them to one another. To keep a balance, Sarah and Henry do alternate shifting his or her narrative throughout the book. Yet, there is a third character named Maple that is as desperate to share her painful narrative as well. And an interesting one it is, considering she is the half-sister of the plantation’s mistress.

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