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dinasamimi's review against another edition
4.0
This book is intense. I've never read anything like it. Corregidora is my first, much delayed, reading of Gayl Jones -- it's a swift but rich read on intergenerational trauma, abuse and intimacy. Jones has a gift for dialogue, internal monologue and compelling readers to bear witness, a heavy ask here.
nobigdeal's review
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
2.5
caitlingb's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
bethanwx's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
3.75
An important story to tell, with clever flashbacks to convey how the past repeats itself.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Racism, Drug use, Domestic abuse, Lesbophobia, Racial slurs, Rape, Alcoholism, Misogyny, Slavery, and Toxic relationship
lilycarotherss's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Sexual assault
raulbime's review against another edition
4.0
Ursa is a blues singer in Kentucky. Being the descendant of both slave and slave-master, her upbringing was such that bearing witness and keeping memory–that of the exploitation, pain, and the existence of slavery itself, is instilled in her since childhood, and she's charged with passing down this information to the next generation through her children and their children afterwards, so that what happened isn't lost. The brutal abuse of Ursa's husband, Mutt, changes the order of this . Ursa through her art of storytelling and singing blends what she calls private memory (that which is more individual) and collective memory (that which involves a larger group of people).
Corregidora is the Portuguese master who sexually abused and exploited the bodies of his slaves personally and commercially. After slavery ends, the enslavers, in typical criminal fashion, burn the evidence of the brutal enterprise they were engaged and profited in. Ursa’s great-grandmother begins the tradition of oral record-keeping:
"And then that’s when the officials burned all the papers cause they wanted to
play like what had happened before never did happen. But I know it happened, I
bear witness that it happened."
Truthfully, in its theme, this book struck too close to home for me. While none of my ancestors were victims of the TransAtlantic slave trade, the whole enterprise of those in power unleashing brutality as means to whatever ends and covering it up, was too familiar. Burundi, as well as Rwanda and Congo (D.R.) were Belgian colonies. The records of the horrifying suffering in that period (the villages pillaged, the massacres, the fields razed and the starvation and deaths caused, those maimed, the sexual abuse and rape suffered) cannot be accessed by the average Burundian, Congolese or Rwandan. Of course this isn’t to mention the political assassinations carried out, the divide and rule policies, and all that has caused more suffering. Not that Belgium burned all these records, but they took all records (and artifacts as well of course) with them after independence and if I wanted to learn of certain events I would need to book an appointment with the archives department in Brussels to access the records. There were talks of digitizing the records, but I didn’t see any change last I checked. Which of course means the way information from this period trickles for many is through the memories of those who endured the suffering and the few (often white) academics who’re able to access these records. They didn’t do this only with their own records, but were kind enough to cover up the massacring, killing, and raping their German predecessors did before them, and before they lost the first world war and their colonies, some of which Belgium took. The Belgians (with the help of the Catholic church) were so thorough in their cleaning up that they abducted tens of thousands of biracial children fathered by Belgian colonizers and settlers in Burundi, Congo and Rwanda, and only apologized for it three years ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/03/belgium-apologise-kidnapping-mixed-race-children-from-congo
The transience of memory makes it a fragile vessel for record. This is a fact the powerful know and depend on. Ursa, tasked with keeping memory passed down, is faced with a crisis when it becomes clear that the memory of the suffering could be lost forever.
It’s unbelievable that this book was written while Gayl Jones was twenty five. The incredible depth and breadth this book bears and its ideas on memory, pain, loneliness, unfulfilled desire and desolation as well as the aftermath of something so big and painful as slavery conceived and told in such language at such a young age is just astounding.
Spoiler
when injuries she suffers in his hands means she wouldn't be able to bear children anymoreCorregidora is the Portuguese master who sexually abused and exploited the bodies of his slaves personally and commercially. After slavery ends, the enslavers, in typical criminal fashion, burn the evidence of the brutal enterprise they were engaged and profited in. Ursa’s great-grandmother begins the tradition of oral record-keeping:
"And then that’s when the officials burned all the papers cause they wanted to
play like what had happened before never did happen. But I know it happened, I
bear witness that it happened."
Truthfully, in its theme, this book struck too close to home for me. While none of my ancestors were victims of the TransAtlantic slave trade, the whole enterprise of those in power unleashing brutality as means to whatever ends and covering it up, was too familiar. Burundi, as well as Rwanda and Congo (D.R.) were Belgian colonies. The records of the horrifying suffering in that period (the villages pillaged, the massacres, the fields razed and the starvation and deaths caused, those maimed, the sexual abuse and rape suffered) cannot be accessed by the average Burundian, Congolese or Rwandan. Of course this isn’t to mention the political assassinations carried out, the divide and rule policies, and all that has caused more suffering. Not that Belgium burned all these records, but they took all records (and artifacts as well of course) with them after independence and if I wanted to learn of certain events I would need to book an appointment with the archives department in Brussels to access the records. There were talks of digitizing the records, but I didn’t see any change last I checked. Which of course means the way information from this period trickles for many is through the memories of those who endured the suffering and the few (often white) academics who’re able to access these records. They didn’t do this only with their own records, but were kind enough to cover up the massacring, killing, and raping their German predecessors did before them, and before they lost the first world war and their colonies, some of which Belgium took. The Belgians (with the help of the Catholic church) were so thorough in their cleaning up that they abducted tens of thousands of biracial children fathered by Belgian colonizers and settlers in Burundi, Congo and Rwanda, and only apologized for it three years ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/03/belgium-apologise-kidnapping-mixed-race-children-from-congo
The transience of memory makes it a fragile vessel for record. This is a fact the powerful know and depend on. Ursa, tasked with keeping memory passed down, is faced with a crisis when it becomes clear that the memory of the suffering could be lost forever.
It’s unbelievable that this book was written while Gayl Jones was twenty five. The incredible depth and breadth this book bears and its ideas on memory, pain, loneliness, unfulfilled desire and desolation as well as the aftermath of something so big and painful as slavery conceived and told in such language at such a young age is just astounding.
ralowe's review against another edition
5.0
plantation violence is sexual violence is state violence. girl, this is some drama. i don't know how i feel about the ending. it's all a mess. i was kind of shocked that after the clear analysis that it settled. but was it really settling? is it just an ongoingness that is familiar, and comforting in its familiarity? i felt comfort in this harrowing intergenerational storytelling of plantation sexual violence? is it because it played toward a truthful account of history? was recognizable? or was it the body, that familiarity, that weight and gravity, inertia. the text has a living body. i loved her language. she is a master of the language of the body, living experience, lived-in life. yet it is truly strange of me to invoke "mastery" here, since the point of this tale of black bodies is a parable of what lies eternally beyond mastery, in a familiar dramatic and messy place. she depicts this intimacy and weight with precise, elegant prose. the rhythm of living is all here. and of course a crucial plot point is the body as the medium of transmission of the story of us all. the blackness of a ongoing living past is here precisely a feminist understanding bringing fullness to the partial enlightenment subject. we are the times before us and they live in us now. we live the stories that brought us to where we are. our bodies are the document. this knowing seemingly defies literacy, and the beauty of her writing is a black feminist intervention on literary scholarship people use "economic" as a merit when describing black prose, and it kind of irritates me. what i appreciated was the depth in writing silence, all the 'i didn't say anything's that happen, or 'i told him no' or 'yes,' i appreciate something about how it's narrated rather than written as dialogue. 'i said that i didn't know.' i was drawn to these descriptions of silence.
quitobowen's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
One of the most breathtaking and brutal novels I've ever read. I will never forget Corregidora.