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chewdigestbooks 's review for:
Mustard Seed
by Laila Ibrahim
One of the most poignant and sometimes painful fictional reads taking place in the period just after the Civil War South.
While I say and it is fictional, Ibrahim really delved deeply into the history and some of the facts were new me, sending me down Google Rabbit Holes to learn more.
It is so hard for me and even more so the main character Lisbeth to see what the war wrought and how the attitudes of her youth in Virginia hadn't changed. Her attitude, having basically eloped prewar to near Oberon College has changed in ways that her mother and Southern neighbors would never understand and she struggles with explaining the vast differences and prejudices to her young children.
Usually, I read a ton of nonfiction about sociology and race, dealing with mostly the Jim Crow Laws and to today. This was supposed to be a break of sorts and while making my skin crawl, emphasized many of the problems that we still deal with today, while at the same time giving a lot of voice to the extreme (and almost continuing) vehemence the losers AKA the Confederacy felt. The "Cult of the Lost Cause" started then, was ugly, and I'm far from sure that we've come as far as we think we have.
Great book about an era and showing a juxtaposition in perspective that was unique and important.
While I say and it is fictional, Ibrahim really delved deeply into the history and some of the facts were new me, sending me down Google Rabbit Holes to learn more.
It is so hard for me and even more so the main character Lisbeth to see what the war wrought and how the attitudes of her youth in Virginia hadn't changed. Her attitude, having basically eloped prewar to near Oberon College has changed in ways that her mother and Southern neighbors would never understand and she struggles with explaining the vast differences and prejudices to her young children.
Usually, I read a ton of nonfiction about sociology and race, dealing with mostly the Jim Crow Laws and to today. This was supposed to be a break of sorts and while making my skin crawl, emphasized many of the problems that we still deal with today, while at the same time giving a lot of voice to the extreme (and almost continuing) vehemence the losers AKA the Confederacy felt. The "Cult of the Lost Cause" started then, was ugly, and I'm far from sure that we've come as far as we think we have.
Great book about an era and showing a juxtaposition in perspective that was unique and important.