Book review: When People Were Things, by Lisa Waller Rogers

If I could give six stars to this remarkable text, I would. The author has written an engaging, thorough, and minutely researched chronicle of the fight to grant emancipation to the enslaved population in mid nineteenth century America. Full of quoted primary source material in the form of letters, newspaper articles, diaries, and other authentic pieces of history, yet the writing never wavers, is never disparate, and is always coherent, careful, and logically set down in a chronology that reads like fiction but is underscored with truth straight from the pages written by actual participants in the struggle. Gripping and marvelously detailed, the characters become as alive and vibrant as close friends and neighbors, yet authenticity is woven through every narrative, every description, indeed every detail of the story. In this, we can see the lives of everyday people, politicians, journalists, publishers, writers, and others who were affected by the enforced servitude of millions, both Black and white, and how they either rose to the occasion, or absolutely did not, with sometimes complicated and astonishing results. The voices and faces of the enslaved themselves weave in and out among the text, providing important details that have been buried in old newspapers, court cases, and family records, bringing these forgotten individuals to life. And unfortunately, as the book progresses, those who argued against, and even violently fought against emancipation paint a picture that is eerily similar to racist actions and arguments heard today - proving the systemic problem of our democracy still pervades our politics. It’s all too clear that we still haven’t learned these lessons.

Thanks to NetGalley and Barrel Cactus Press for the opportunity to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Originally posted at NetGalley

Book Review: Crudo, by Olivia Laing

 

Oof.

Two things. Two things you have to know about this book, before you get very far into it:
1. Kathy is dead. She never saw 2017, she died in the 90s.
2. Kathy wrote a lot of prose using cut-outs from other people's works. There is an index in the back of the book, it contains pertinent references from Kathy's, and other people's, actual writings. It helps if you look at it from time to time.

Kathy Acker was a punk poet, an author of stream of consciousness observations and diatribes about what was and longing for what could have been, but usually was not. To reimagine her writing in response to Twitter feeds and everyday occurrences and uncommon stupidity like the Trump presidency and Brexit is simply brilliant. But you have to know what youre getting into, you cant be ignorant of this woman and try to wend your way thru this book. It just won't work.

That said, the book is brilliant. It's raw and edgy, sure, but it also glitters with almost tactile vibrancy.

"Just let me learn that love is more than me."

"But all the distances had grown in the last year. The feeling of foreignness blew around the carriage. She liked the man, she smiled at him as they left. You make divisions between people, countries, races, and out of the gaps the warheads emerge."

So many times during this short, half-day read one must lay the work down, close one's eyes, and just breathe. Remembering, how 2017 was so long ago, and we thought it so hard, so strange, so downright *wrong.*

And yet, we knew nothing. We had no idea of the horrible ride we were in for.

But Kathy knew. Like Van Gogh, she says: he knew. And so did she.

Ghostlike, wraithlike, bright shadows on the wall of her home, she moves down the hall of that confused, painful time, cracking wise ass asides, drunk, self-medicated, missing nothing.

And she reminds us of her time, the 80s, and earlier, when people knew things were bad, when AIDS and the threat of nuclear war permeated everyone's consciousness, and as horrifying as things were then we had no idea how bad things would eventually be. The genius of Laing in using Acker's voice and style of writing about the first Trump year is breathtaking. It leaves me mostly wordless, it is impossible to say anything adequate to the purpose.

"I who would have and would be a pirate: I cannot. I who live in my mind which is my imagination as everything -- wanderer adventurer fighter Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces -- I am nothing in these times."

"Love is the world, pain is the world."

Ah, I cannot.

Originally posted at The StoryGraph

Book Review: Burn Down Master’s House, by Clay Cane

From 2005 to early 2014 I lived part-time, sometimes full-time, at the Borough Plantation in Stateburg, South Carolina, two doors up the hill from the home inhabited by the black man who owned nearly the most humans as property in the state of South Carolina, William Ellison and his family. This is one of the black slaveholders upon whom the character of Nathaniel William is based in Burn Down Master’s House. He is someone about whom I heard much.

The position of “Overseer” was still a thing at the Borough, although the job description was markedly different. My late husband, an archaeologist and historian, worked in that capacity and his duties not only included cataloging anything of historical significance found on the 5,000 acre historic site/tree farm/hunt club, but taking care of the grounds, planting gardens for the deer, serving as hunt master, scheduling tree harvests and controlled burns, ensuring the main house, 23 outbuildings, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and additional homes on the property were maintained and weatherized according to seasonal needs, giving tours, and hiring and managing the various craftspeople and laborers to help with necessary work.

Descendants of enslaved persons were employed there and held in high regard by everyone; whenever they spoke, everyone stopped to listen to what they had to say. Stories and fond memories of Aunt Renda, who was a cook in the early to mid-twentieth century and who lived with her family, including her sister, in the beautiful two-story, four bedroom home known as “Aunt Renda’s” that lies directly adjacent to the main house were often related by the descendants and members of the Anderson family who still lived there and in the neighborhood. Sometimes there were no words - only silent looks, the puff of an indrawn breath, the tight fingers that you would grasp with both hands to try and communicate empathy and some form of apology. As one of the family says, “History is messy. It twists and turns. There are so many questions with no easy answers.”

The Borough is at least as much a monument to the enslaved as it is the home of the family who has lived there since the late 18th century. The Anderson women are consummate curators and record keepers, and many original furnishings and ancient belongings as well as ledgers, trunks, filing cabinets, and letter boxes fill the rooms of several of the buildings: the Library, the doctor’s office (where the first successful surgery to treat cancer of the jaw was performed on an enslaved man); the main home, the “Chicken Coop” which is actually the office but housed poultry in the 19th to early 20th century, the wash-house, the detached kitchen. There are photographs, paintings, journals, memories carefully written down, unfortunately sometimes years after the fact.

Some of these records include documents relating to William Ellison, their former neighbor. He is remembered as “good at the cotton gin but not too nice of a man,” one of those semi-polite euphemisms common in southern speech. His name is spoken in hushed tones. The descendants of enslaved folk do not mention him at all: even though the cemetery where the man and his family are buried lies beside his house at the corner of the entrance to Garners Ferry Road and is a well-known landmark, many people will simply point out the road itself and pretend not to notice the cemetery. They still call his home “Governor Miller’s Home,” or simply “Grainger’s Place,” as the artist Grainger McCoy and his wife live there now and have for many years.

And about that cemetery: its very existence is odd. Members of the Church of Holy Cross, where Ellison attended and is located directly across the road from the Borough’s southern entrance, are both black and white to this day and many, many of them are buried in the church cemetery, which wraps the building on both sides.

But not Ellison, or his family. They had their own burial grounds, down the hill and in the woods. It’s an anomaly, without a reason - questions with no easy answers, indeed.

The life stories upon which this book is based upon likewise highlight many, many questions, but the author’s words are a remarkable effort to answer a lot of them. Mr Cane dives deep into the records of history and brings up songs, breath, love, light, and laughter - along with the terror, the heartbreak, the suffering, and resilience of those who were the property of other human beings. He uses the word “souls” to refer to them, which breathes life into their portrayals. You cannot read the stories in these pages and not hear and see and feel some of the things that they experienced. There is raw emotion, cruel pain, gripping hunger, bleak exhaustion, triumphant joy.

The stories such as are in this book are some of the most important we need to read today in this sad, broken America. Burn Down Master’s House is a terrifying read, but so necessary to be told. It is vital that the truth not be forgotten or brushed aside, and these truths are told in the only way possible: by a descendant. The descendants own the stories. We need to listen. And learn. And validate by recognizing their importance.

My family tree is more of a vine; every branch goes back to colonial Virginia and England, cousins marrying cousins. Today if you’re a white American with nothing else in the DNA you’re by definition inbred. White supremacy is therefore pretty incestuous. Even so, I am the descendant of over 25 people who owned other human beings, and also the descendant of people who fought against the very idea of that ownership. But those stories have all been told, many, many times over. The world doesn’t need more of those stories. We need to know the stories of the souls who resisted, who fled, who died fighting in whatever way they knew. These people deserve restitution and recognition. They, and their descendants, deserve justice.

Their stories matter. Their lives mattered.

The writing in this book is clear, very descriptive, and powerful. Clay Cane is an excellent writer, and the ancestors’ stories are well told. Their experiences are safe in his hands: authentically related, skillfully crafted, meticulously woven into a narrative that does not let the reader go, does not allow the reader to look away or ignore what is being stated. Their voices whisper in your ears, their feet pound a ready earth, their tools - poison, hammer, bellows, fire - blaze forth out of history to surround you in the heat of tragedy, where you must look them in the eye, and recognize their presence.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the chance to read this important book in exchange for an honest review. A grateful, thoughtful five stars, humbly written. Thank you.

Book Review: North Country, by Matt Bondurant

Phenomenal read. Matt Bondurant (full disclosure - a wide swath of my family tree lies in Franklin County and includes Bondurants, so he's likely a third or fourth cousin) has taken the torch flung by Ron Rash, Lee Smith, and Charles Frazier, and carried it aloft into the literary stratosphere.

There is a way to write gritty, human-centered prose without the grit and gore overtaking the message, so the reader feels the character's experience without the story becoming lost. It's a delicate balance that can elude even the most accomplished writers. Bondurant brings the reader directly into the tale without losing focus, without the distraction of overly descriptive passages that can derail a carefully constructed momentum. And yet, you feel the cold, slicing wind off the Lake and the enveloping, suffocating shock of frigid water, the subliminal thrill of anticipation, the yearning disturbance of complicated sexual desires; the dearth of hope in the miasma of poverty that strangles some of the neighborhoods near the local prison, and the livid disgust of some of the people who have to live there.

Each chapter limns the world of the small, cold border town of North Chazy from the perspective of one or more of its residents in a way that we know is leading toward something horrifying, and yet we live with each of these people in a way that feels real and authentic and causes the reader to lay bets on who will survive, and who will be indelibly changed by the experience - for good or ill. I especially appreciated the ability of the author to give his characters resilience in the form of empathy or knowledge where one doesn't expect it - as in Phil's self-discovery about his relationship with his baby daughter Juliet, as with the strongman Kaiser's almost obsessive affinity for science, with the sorority women's sisterhood that watches for other women in danger and their neatly orchestrated plan for lifting them gently out of it.

Honestly grateful for the opportunity to read this incredible story, thanks to Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for a review. Five-plus stars, and the hope that Matt Bondurant will keep writing, keep storytelling, keep traveling the route of the human mind and its history, and bring those things to light and life on the page.

a dry retribution

he hears the wind ruffling the pines,
soaring up the mountainside
tossing the chickens over the fence
and into the dog's breakfast.

cock and hen alike had always
clucked cheekily between the roughened boards,
refusing to share even a daily ovum,
quibbling merrily over the the latest bug.

fateful diligence spared them not
and it came to pass, in an instant,
that they were merrily consumed
by all who knew them.

and on and on and on
said she, skipping through the grass
skirts lifting, apron cupped and
running smack into bedlam

where she sees the fine sharp
teeth glinting in the sunlight
with the damply clinging feathers of
gold, and white, and green

she whirls, in the swing of time
upward shrieking in a slice of sky
and the errant muddy fiend's appetite
is gone forever, leaving only a trace

of rheumy fleabitten cowering
faintly shadowed by the fall,
into the ready and vacant dust beside
an angry, sodden puff of red-encrusted white.

Image source: Reijo Telaranta, Pixabay

Book review: Splendid Liberators

My god, what a history, sorely needed at a time like this.
In carefully, explicitly documented detail, the author lays out the horrifying, inexorable journey the American government took to Imperialist conquest of people who were seen by a white-centric public as lesser, undeserving of equitable freedoms or self-determination and stripping human dignity and life itself from tens of thousands of people. All in the name of “saving “ them from Spanish colonialism, the US blasted its way across Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in a blood-spattered cloud of corruption and hubris. This history is still not well taught in American schools, but it is a history well known to those whose countries were permanently altered by it.
Like Suzy Hanson’s Pulitzer-finalist “Notes on a Foreign Country,” Jackson’s “Splendid Liberators” reveals with exquisite clarity why the United States is rightfully hated by much of the world. We need to know and understand this history. Without these stories, we Americans will continue to wither in ignorance on the vine of history, and deservedly so. The sickening truth is part of us, and illustrates our deep, carnal debt to those we have conquered in the name of democracy, but in truth were merely living flesh to feed our capitalist hunger, justified by an ethnocentric eugenicist ideology that stripped the humanity from those whose lands we lusted after, whose natural resources and strategic locations we coveted. Nothing more.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, for a free copy of the pre-release text in exchange for an honest review. I will be purchasing copies of this book for several friends and family members, because it is that important.

Book Review: Poet’s Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats

Cats as praxis. Because of course.

About 3/4 of the way thru this, I realized that while the author may not realize it, her story is anarchy at work, and shows why this is the only way anything meaningful has ever been accomplished. With practical hard work and attention to doing what she could, every single day, the author built a beautiful new life for herself amidst responding to the needs she saw all around her. In it she encountered a whole new world that she never knew existed, and made a real difference in her community.

A beautiful story and absolutely not what I expected. Much love and May the cats be with you 🥰

Many thanks to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: Custodians of Wonder

I enjoyed reading about the author’s fascinating studies of rare methods, practices, and customs all around the world. The author spends several days or longer with each location or group, fully immersed in the culture. He eats, sleeps, and when invited, attempts to practice some cultural customs of these local practitioners of special craftsmanship. Authenticity and respect for the people involved in preserving these lifeways seemed to be the main goals of the author, aside from clear and simple descriptions of the methods, equipment, and results he observed.

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for the advance review copy in exchange for an honest review.