Bluebird Bluebird: Better Reading than Listening

Some notes I took to help me figure out Bluebird Bluebird, by Attica Locke: Wally lived across the street from Geneva’s store. Did he love Geneva? Yes. Did they have an affair? No. Wally killed her husband, Joe Sweet. Wally loved Geneva, and Joe knew. Joe and Geneva bought Geneva’s store from Wally. Wally said, “Daddy should have let me have her.” There was a son, Joe and Geneva’s. Isaac saw that Wally had shot Joe Sweet. Wally took the money from the register, so Isaac told the sheriff and then Geneva, that White men had stolen the money and killed Joe. Wally had also put the dead fox in Darren’s truck. Keith loved his son, who was actually fathered by Joe’s son.  Wally’s and Keith’s lives revolved around the Black people they wished to avoid.

Though the “Bluebird Bluebird” song, by John Lee Hooker, didn’t fly much for our group, everyone seemed to enjoy reading the book. The story was complex. With the audiobook, it was sometimes a little hard to tell who was involved in conversations and events and histories.

Michel said that she had suspected Wally all along and that she noticed systemic racism throughout the story and the characters. We talked about implicit bias, stereotypes of White and Black cultures that are often attributed to individuals, and how racism is entrenched in Texas. Ken said he had noticed, through a job he had long ago that involved traveling throughout Texas, that West Texas has its own atmosphere, and that East Texas, the locale of the story, seemed a lot like Louisiana, next state east of Texas. Carla noted that when public school integration was instituted, it seemed to work in Texas, but that it has evolved into a mixture of wealthy (White) families enrolling their children in private schools and everyone else going to the public schools. I believe current news includes a law in process that Texas government created that will use public funds to pay for private school vouchers…to give people more choice. Nominate a novel about this topic, and we’ll discuss it more!

Patricia guided the discussion with questions, some from our list and some generated by the discussion itself. When we had decided we liked the book, Carla said it was “…not quite a thriller.” This was an apt description, because the story took place after the action was over; but in the telling, the questions and answers developed slowly and kept us guessing. Question #1 asked who was your favorite character. For almost everyone, it was Darren.  He was the most developed character, and he was a good man. Lydia mentioned Darren’s mother. Marcia suggested Geneva. Cindy noted Geneva’s granddaughter, Faith.

The book introduced concerns, and we had a lot of commenting about related things. Suzie said that things aren’t black and white. Flo reminded us that there is a lot of blatant racism in the news in the USA and all over the world. Ken noted that racism is not just in the south. Suzie said social media is being blamed for a lot of things. Marcia was reminded of the Jodi Picoult book, Small Great Things, and Carla mentioned Just Mercy, by Brian Stevenson, which had been nominated but not chosen by our group. Joyce said that where there’s harmony, it’s because everyone knows and obeys the rules of the society. There was some discussion of examples of racism some of us had seen.

One theme in the book is about Darren caring about East Texas because he is from there and feels that it’s home, in spite of the racism he encounters. We talked about places we were from and which mean “home” to us, and also where we have lived in Texas. Joyce began in the Northeast; then spent time in Lubbock, TX and then Los Angeles, before her current time in Central Texas. Flo is from New York, and I think she said Connecticut. I grew up in New York, met my Texan husband in Washington, DC, moved to Texas with him, and then moved around the south for a while before settling in Round Rock in the 1990s. Cindy, our Hula dancer, lived in Hawaii as a child and spent some years in California before moving to Round Rock. Ken’s family was from Ohio, and he lived in Waco, Midland, Dallas, Austin, and East Texas as an adult before joining us in Round Rock. Lydia is from England. Carla is from Missouri, moved around, I think mostly in the Midwest, when she was young, and lived in New York before Texas. Patricia is from Indiana and Arizona and some time in New York before moving here. Suzie was born in Texas and lived in California for much of her life before moving to Round Rock. Michel, from Amarillo, went to college in Lubbock and lived in West Texas before here. If I erred, please let me know. It’s easy to edit the blog.