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sbn42 's review for:
A Painted House
by John Grisham
1952 started like every year for the Chandler family on their cotton farm, filled with optimism and hope. The town of Black Oak, AR was like so many others, all white, very conservative Baptists that considered hill people barely human and Mexicans even lower. Blacks didn't even exist in these rural enclaves of overt racism.
This story was written from the perspective of 7 year-old Luke. The growing season started out well, but then things began to deteriorate. Temporary hill country workers were wanting more money this year than last, Mexican laborers were badly mistreated on the way up from Mexico, Uncle Ricky was still fighting in Korea, and worse, the much beloved Cardinals had slipped out of contention for the World Series. But as long as the rain held off, there was still hope to make enough to scratch by into next year. All of the miseries of being a tenet farmer, or even worse, a sharecropper, make you question why anyone would EVER want to do that.
It is labelled as fiction, but rings too true to believe that Grisham hadn't actually lived it. Coincidentally, the New Your Times Magazine had an interview with him on June 17 2022 as I was reading this, in which he confirms as much.
Seventy years later, unfortunately little has changed from this gut punch of reality.
This story was written from the perspective of 7 year-old Luke. The growing season started out well, but then things began to deteriorate. Temporary hill country workers were wanting more money this year than last, Mexican laborers were badly mistreated on the way up from Mexico, Uncle Ricky was still fighting in Korea, and worse, the much beloved Cardinals had slipped out of contention for the World Series. But as long as the rain held off, there was still hope to make enough to scratch by into next year. All of the miseries of being a tenet farmer, or even worse, a sharecropper, make you question why anyone would EVER want to do that.
It is labelled as fiction, but rings too true to believe that Grisham hadn't actually lived it. Coincidentally, the New Your Times Magazine had an interview with him on June 17 2022 as I was reading this, in which he confirms as much.
I grew up in the Jim Crow South. A very segregated, racist society was almost in my DNA. It’s a long struggle to overcome that and to look back at the way I was raised and not be resentful toward my parents and other people who helped raise me for their extreme racism. It was such a hard right-wing, racist society that I grew up in. The Baptist Church was that way too back then.
Seventy years later, unfortunately little has changed from this gut punch of reality.