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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
Jane Pittman is a wonderful character with a distinct and compelling voice. This was a great book.
Ernest Gaines can tell a story in a seemingly understated way and make such a clear point.
When my sister-in-law was going to be on bed rest after foot surgery, I collected a bunch of books for her to read. I included this one because I thought she might like it, but I wasn't sure. She read it pretty quickly and sent it back to me, saying how much she had loved the movie with Cicely Tyson when she was young and how much she enjoyed the book and I should read it. It went on the stack. And then Cicely Tyson died and Black History Month was coming and I decided it would be a good time to read it. I think it was a good choice, particularly as a companion to the other book I read for Black History Month, a memoir by a child soldier from Africa. Fiction and nonfiction, written years apart and dealing with two continents, and yet the story threads are the same -- mistreatment of others because they are different, the continual contest for dominance and hierarchy, the inhumanity of man, and the resilience of the human spirit.
Miss Jane Pittman's story begins in slavery during the Civil War and continues up through the Civil Rights movement and covers many an horrific event and a continuity of oppression motivated by racism. Throughout the book, she is the same spunky and determined and resilient woman who sees herself clearly and continues to move forward with hope for a brighter future. A part of me wonders if the story would have been different if she had made it out of Louisiana and reached Ohio, but another part knows that the pulse of race hatred still beats strongly in this country in all places, but in some areas the blood fire is closer to the surface and in other places it is more subtle and deep-seated. So, things might have been different, but they would not necessary have been better, and certainly the root of the problem would not have changed. A sobering truth, but in 2021, it cannot be ignored.
Miss Jane Pittman's story begins in slavery during the Civil War and continues up through the Civil Rights movement and covers many an horrific event and a continuity of oppression motivated by racism. Throughout the book, she is the same spunky and determined and resilient woman who sees herself clearly and continues to move forward with hope for a brighter future. A part of me wonders if the story would have been different if she had made it out of Louisiana and reached Ohio, but another part knows that the pulse of race hatred still beats strongly in this country in all places, but in some areas the blood fire is closer to the surface and in other places it is more subtle and deep-seated. So, things might have been different, but they would not necessary have been better, and certainly the root of the problem would not have changed. A sobering truth, but in 2021, it cannot be ignored.
A 100+ year old African American woman tells the story of her life, from her pre-1860s birth as a slave in Louisiana, through emancipation, attempted flight to the north, life in the reconstruction and Jim Crow eras in the South, and into the mid-20th Century. Beautifully written, terribly sad, a reminder of how far we have come and how much farther we all have to go as a people.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Anyone who calls this book slow-paced would puzzle me; it's a generational novel under 300 pages, it's amazing how much time and history it has to fly through! I thought the first half was really strong, and the second half would ebb and flow. I do wish that we had gotten to learn more about Miss Jane Pittman herself, though. For an "autobiography," she tells a lot about the people around her, which is how we often reflect on life and makes for sensible fiction, but many times that turned her into just a narrator. The author spent so much time on everyone else, so I kept longing for a deeper understanding of Jane herself, of her personality and fears and excitements. She mentioned she had some flings with men, for instance, but we don't get to hear about them. We don't get to hear what she liked to cook, or who it was she was even writing to when she had the school-going children write letters on her behalf. We only see her as a side character in everyone else's story and I just would have appreciated some intimacy. I think that's a compliment, though, because everything else was so engaging and detailed that I wanted even more for our long-lived narrator. Otherwise, the individuals' stories are indeed curious and clever, with lots of grief and humor to constantly balance once another out. I also liked that the use of Jane's voice as narrator successfully gave us beautiful, sophisticated diction that still believably came from someone with no formal writing education.