Progress. . . . Part 1 Reading Challenge
Posted by Deborah - 22/03/10 at 06:03 pm
Lots of fun things happening around here. I am sooooo looking forward to spring. It has been a long hard winter. I feel guilty complaining since I currently live in Atlanta. Still, it snowed here three times! YUCK. The cherry blossoms and daffodils are finally bloomind and I am already sneezing. Still spring is just toying with us. We went from the mid 70s to 39 degrees today and yes, I am pouting. Great weather for reading, though.
Reading Challenge:
I finished three books in the last 2 weeks:
1. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi L. Durrow
Many people compare this book to Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. I don’t quite see this. If I were going to compare Durrow’s novel to a Morrison book it would probably be Song of Solomon and maybe Beloved. Also, I couldn’t help but think of Nella Larsen while reading this book. I am not one of those people who has to see the tradition of American/African lit as linear (where one author has to supplant her literary foremother). In other words, I think there is enough room for every body. Durrow’s book is a coming of age novel about Rachel, a biracial daughter of a Danish mother and an African American G.I. father. Unlike Pecola Breedlove, Rachel has blue eyes. At times she wills herself to be invisible as a way to cope with others’ expectations and narrow definitions of her. Her aunty and a boy from the neighborhood are the only people who seem to really see her. Eventually Rachel pushes back — rebelling against narrow ideals about beauty, identity and community. I liked this book.
I love this video about the author’s grandmother. . . .
My Real Grandmother from Heidi Durrow on Vimeo.
2. Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
This is my last contemporary slave narrative for a while. It is just too hard to read about the abuse of women in this way. I had some mild knowledge of the tradition of enslaved women being used as concubines the way the novel describes. Perkins-Valdez crafts a compelling story. Once again I was reminded how things aren’t just black and white. The world we live in is much more nuanced than that.
3. Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo
As an artist, I know how hard it is to create and put yourself out there for the world to see. I suppose that this is the risk we are willing to take. So I ask myself, did I really compare this book to George Schuyler’s Black No More? Now granted, I made this comparison when I was only about 50 pages into the book. At that stage I was still mildly amused by the story. As I kept going I realized how wrong I was. Horse carriages with rims? Enslaved boys with “pants on the ground”? The white slaves referred to as “wiggers”? The historical and cultural references were all over the place. Satire? Not for me. As much as I wanted to I just didn’t feel the story. Maybe that’s my limitation and not the author’s.
Grayson Studios is the dreamworld created by Deborah R. Grayson, an artist, voracious reader and writer. Visit
March 27th, 2010 at 11:32 am
is durrow’s book biographical?
March 30th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
She doesn’t say so I don’t know. I do think she may have used her life and her family’s life as a model (what artist doesn’t).