I had it in my post above, but then deleted it for fear of it being read as Aimee is a Shitheel.
I think that the reason I have avoided reading a lot of African-American literature is that there is so much of it that, well, hurts my heart. Cruelty, rape, racism, torture, etc. I know that avoiding reading about these things doesn't make them not have happened, because they did, and those sotries should be told, but ...
Reading
Roll of Thunder
gave me nightmares last night and I wasn't even to a part that was particularly cruel or mean. I think that by avoiding these books, I've been trying to save myself some grief and pain. A miserable excuse for not being better read in this genre.
I couldn't finish Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. I was 10 when I tried to read it; I couldn't believe that people could be like that to each other.
I still kind of can't. I think it's okay to be so overwhelmed by human cruelty that you can't go on reading about it. At least, I hope so. I mean, if I had to think about that stuff all the time, I would honestly, seriously, kill myself.
Aimée, black Americans are happy too. I'm not going to tell you that you have to sit through any particular horrific story, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Even that sounds like a value judgment on the bathwater, which I don't mean to convey.
I'm going to have to re-acquire
Roll of Thunder
when I'm next home. I probably haven't read it in 20 years, but it was on repeat for quite a while. I can vividly recall the images of the land, structures and books (oh, the books) it drew in my mind. I wonder if they'd change. I have a clear impression of red dirt.
I don't know if it is just that I read them all at the same time and they are all oh the humanity, but Sadako, Return to Manzanar, a non-Anne Frank authored Anne Frank-book, a YA about someone named Liese during WW2, a YA about deportation to the Steppes during Stalinism and The Great Gilly Hopkins all share a common area in my head.
With few exceptions, I can't put anything down, no matter how upsetting or unsettling the story.
Probably took me a box of kleenex and liters of water to get through
Four Spirits.
(Fictional novel wrapped around the 16th Street Church bombing in B'ham .)
I've never read Roll of Thunder. There was another book that hit me hard, though ... and of course I can't remember the name of it now. Something about the redfern? Or the lilies?
Damn it. I have to Google now. Ah! Where the Lilies Bloom was the title.
There's also
Where the Red Fern Grows
but that's about dogs.
Amy, I remember that one too! Appalachia, poverty and orphans. With the mentally challenged sister, right?
