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A review by beatniksafari
Guardian by Julius Lester
Stark, dark, and spare: this short book visits a southern town during the 1940s. The narrator, Ansel, a white teenaged boy, witnesses a lynching of a black veteran who has been wrongfully accused of a crime. The events leading up to and following the lynching are outlined in powerful prose.
I won't rate this book, in part because I'm not really sure how to view it critically given its subject matter. I would have liked more development of the characters, who were mostly portrayed as one sided, either good or evil. It's impossible to defend those, such as Ansel's father, who watched lynchings and did nothing. Yet how much of his character was a result of the time and place in which he lived, rather than inherent evil?
I won't rate this book, in part because I'm not really sure how to view it critically given its subject matter. I would have liked more development of the characters, who were mostly portrayed as one sided, either good or evil. It's impossible to defend those, such as Ansel's father, who watched lynchings and did nothing. Yet how much of his character was a result of the time and place in which he lived, rather than inherent evil?