The Book Club gathered on
Martin Luther King Day to discuss Cane
River, by Lalita Tademy, a fictionalized history of 7 generations of a real
family descended from Negro slaves in the United States. The book told the
stories from 1790 to a few years past the author’s birth in 1948. The book
included copies of written documents the author had available; the fiction was
obviously researched to represent the likely relationships, life events, and
personal stories of the family members in such a way as to form a readable
story.
The most important theme that
Pam noted from the book, as she led the discussion, was the relationships
between the characters. Pam asked us to discuss mother/daughter relationships,
father/children relationships, those among siblings, and master/slave
relationships. The combination of the master/slave relationship with all the
other relationships made the book unique and historical.
Carla started the discussion with comments about about
T.O., who wasn’t born until toward the end of the book. T.O. was unique in that
he had a somewhat contentious attitude toward the rest of the family after
emancipation. By the time T.O. was born, the family had evolved to include more
member of later generations with lighter skin colors. Although there was a
tacit and spoken preference in the family for the younger generations to
continue to perpetuate the pattern toward lighter skin, by marrying spouses
with lighter skin and thereby having lighter-colored children; T.O. purposely chose a
dark-skinned black woman to marry. The narrative about T.O.’s introducing this woman
into the family was a fascinating compilation of some of the complex attitudes
the black family lived with. The mothers in the family, especially, valued
lighter skin for their children, because they loved their children and wanted
the easiest life possible for these children. Life was indeed easier for those
with lighter-colored skin, especially those who could “pass for white” some or
all of the time in post-slavery society. But the family also evolved with lots
of familial love; so, the matriarchal treatment of T.O.’s choice of wife was
subtly accepting and loving, even with and especially at first, a reluctance to
embrace and accept the new darker woman as a young daughter and mother of the
next generation.
Pam noted the relationship
between 2 half-sisters in the family, Bet and Emily. The 2 girls didn’t meet
until Emily was already grown. Bet had been taken away from the girls’ mother,
Philomene, early and without Philomene even knowing that Bet was alive. Emily
had grown up in the family with Philomene, her mother. The young ladies’
relationship showed that each envied the other from the time they met, but
there was also a lot of respect and love between them. Emily felt Bet
had every reason to envy her (Emily light/Bet dark; Emily could read/Bet could
not), yet it was Emily who felt jealous because Bet had a bond with their
mother and “the Greats”, a bond Emily did not have with them (quilting together
etc). As grown women, after emancipation, Bet and Emily
learned to appreciate each other’s individuality.
These relationships were
described with a lot of subtlety as the family evolved. The chapters with
masters and slaves included Oreline, who was a white daughter of slave owners,
who grew up with Philomene sleeping on a palate in her bedroom. The
relationships depicted included those between the women in the family and male
slave owners and other men who were white and privileged, such as Narcisse, a
Frenchman. As Peggy mentioned, Narcisse forced Philomene into pregnancy over and over again. He mixed
love and lust in fathering 8 children with Philomene and then mixed love and
pride with the raising of these children. Joyce noted that
slaves’ relationships, whether with family or whites, were fragile, because
slave owners could destroy their own relationships with the women through
brutality or could destroy the women’s relationships with friends or family, by
selling slaves and moving them away from loved ones. Carla gave an example of
when someone asked about the apparent disappearance of slave Clement,
Philomene’s beloved mate; the answer was, “Oh, we sold him.”
Pam gave us a chart to help
us understand the history of color and the Census. When the matriarch of the
family in Cane River met the Census
taker who knocked on the door, it was the Census taker who decided what colors
of people to list on the Census. Pam reminded us how closely the Census rules
were related to rules of property and inheritance. The rules were also behind a theme in the
story, when the father of Emily’s children and then Emily and her son, T.O., tried hard to allow the children to inherit the father’s wealth and property. A
bystander at the Barnes & Noble café even offered the comment that under
the Napoleonic code, an illegitimate child acknowledged by the father can
inherit from that father. Anyone get the bystander’s email address so we can
invite her to another book discussion?
Our group had some discussion
about the history of the Census and the changes over the years as to how
various skin colors were described. Dennis remembered that the census in Nazi
Germany had rules about how to describe Jews similar to the rules in the United
States about the Negroes and also about native Americans. Pam’s chart said that
it was in the Census for the year 2000 that the term “African-American” was
used for the first time.
Thoughts continued to the end
of the discussion. Jay liked our discussing this book about racial history on
Martin Luther King Day. Shirley wondered whether blood transfusion changes
someone’s DNA. A quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. says, “If I cannot do great things, I can do
small things in a great way.” Carol told us a quote from Mother Theresa: “Not
all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
Media Programming mentioned during the discussion:
Lemony Snicket’s ‘Series of Unfortunate Events’, on Netflix
‘Emerald City’ on NBC
Hidden Figures – Feature Film
Notes written by Pam are in
red. Thanks to Pam
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