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A review by briandice
Ramona by H. Jackson
3.0
Go with me on this.
It’s the year 2060. We have our flying cars, vat-grown replacement organs and Kim Kardashian’s Skanky Grannies reality TV – but you know what we don’t have? Anybody that remembers The Great Gatsby. Not the book, not the movies – nothing. That seems like an almost impossibility, right? Having finished Ramona, and then reading about the success of this novel and its almost complete obscurity in 2014, I’m not so sure.
This is a romance novel, no doubt about it – my first foray into that genre. Helen Hunt Jackson’s book was pulled on my random selection of the 500 Great Books by Women, and despite that I can now say that romance novels aren’t my thing, I’m very glad I read it. Racial discrimination against Native Americans (first by Mexicans, and then by white Americans) is a theme played large against the backdrop of the love story that moves the action of the book – and it is what HHJ does with the oppression of the natives of Southern California that is the best part of the story.
Written in 1884, Ramona has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and has never been out of print. It has been adapted into a film four times and an outdoor play based upon the novel has been in production since 1923. The book’s impact on southern California was significant – as the railroads into that area began to open in the early 1900s, fans of the novel traveled across the country to visit the land of Ramona. HHJ’s depiction of the mission-era SoCal environment is beautifully written; you can almost smell the sage and trail dust.
Have you ever heard of this book? I hadn’t, nor had any of my well-read friends. It is an important work – I really hope people continue to read it and it doesn’t go the way of 2060 Gatsby.
It’s the year 2060. We have our flying cars, vat-grown replacement organs and Kim Kardashian’s Skanky Grannies reality TV – but you know what we don’t have? Anybody that remembers The Great Gatsby. Not the book, not the movies – nothing. That seems like an almost impossibility, right? Having finished Ramona, and then reading about the success of this novel and its almost complete obscurity in 2014, I’m not so sure.
This is a romance novel, no doubt about it – my first foray into that genre. Helen Hunt Jackson’s book was pulled on my random selection of the 500 Great Books by Women, and despite that I can now say that romance novels aren’t my thing, I’m very glad I read it. Racial discrimination against Native Americans (first by Mexicans, and then by white Americans) is a theme played large against the backdrop of the love story that moves the action of the book – and it is what HHJ does with the oppression of the natives of Southern California that is the best part of the story.
Written in 1884, Ramona has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and has never been out of print. It has been adapted into a film four times and an outdoor play based upon the novel has been in production since 1923. The book’s impact on southern California was significant – as the railroads into that area began to open in the early 1900s, fans of the novel traveled across the country to visit the land of Ramona. HHJ’s depiction of the mission-era SoCal environment is beautifully written; you can almost smell the sage and trail dust.
Have you ever heard of this book? I hadn’t, nor had any of my well-read friends. It is an important work – I really hope people continue to read it and it doesn’t go the way of 2060 Gatsby.
3rd book read of 500 Great Books by Women