Amy, I remember that one too! Appalachia, poverty and orphans. With the mentally challenged sister, right?

...Really? He had a sister? Really? They definitely weren't orphans, though. Er... maybe not definitely, but I'm pretty sure. The dogs were Old Dan and Little Ann, and he carried them home in a flour sack and that much I am pretty sure I am not making up. Shit, you are making me question everything I believe about that book.

And not for the first time. My grandparents had a copy and I read it when I was very very young (1st grade?). Or, it turns out, I thought I did. Because then a couple of years later I was visiting and read it again and was all, "I don't remember any of this! Holy crap!" I think what actually had happened was that on the previous "read" I had skimmed past the beginning because it was all about people doing things and not about dogs at all, BORING, and then I got to the big coon hunt with the snowstorm and read all of that, and then I stopped. So essentially I read a couple of chapters in the middle. It wasn't depressing at all that way!

Which made actually reading the whole thing kind of a bummer.

I think you're talking about Where the Redfern Grows, Strega. Where the Lilies Bloom has a girl narrator.

Oh! Yes, I was, but I thought y'all were, too; on reread I see where things got murky. Maybe I should process more. Oops.

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.

You're absolutely right. And it didn't come off as whatever.

Joe and I had an interesting conversation about it on the way home. He posits that the reason I can read books like "Schindler's Ark", "Anne Frank", "Number the Stars", and other books on the Holocaust is because I can relate to them in a "Look at the horrible things that were done to people who like me" whereas it might be harder for me to read books on blatant racism and cruelty to African-Americans, or any minority of color because those acts were done *by* people who look like me, and I have displaced guilt. I can't help but think that there's a lot of truth to that. Probably very naive and not at all healthy.

That being said, I finished Roll of Thunder and really liked it. It wasn't as bad as I thought - no one in the main family died, they didn't lose their land, and while horrible things happened and were done to them, the ending didn't make me feel sad. Except for poor T.J. who was used and probably didn't get a fair anything in the afterward.

Aimee, you want me to do your homework for you?

Sure! You can help me with my final project.

I can relate to them in a "Look at the horrible things that were done to people who like me"

This is a complete tangent, but one of the more chilling moments I've had recently was viewing some of those photographs that came out a few years ago of SS guards on their time off. One of the guards looked so much like the picture of my dad in his Army uniform in 1951 that it gave me chills--how could evil look like someone as good as my dad? I mean, logically I shouldn't have reacted that way. Dad was a tall blue-eyed blond of northwestern European descent, and in that picture he's wearing a uniform with the same basic lines as European uniforms of the 40's. Of course there were Nazis who looked like him. I'm sure I could easily find RAF pilots or Norwegian resistance fighters who resembled him just as strongly. But it still sent uncomfortable shivers down my spine.

You can see people who look a lot like me guarding the gates that keep people in the Gaza strip trapped and starving. As are those dropping the bombs on Gaza. Of course the people launching crude rockets out of Gaza that kill Israelis (including Israeli babies) also look a lot like me...

Re: Sir Arthur.

Damn. That's a whole era of history gone now.

It wasn't as bad as I thought - no one in the main family died, they didn't lose their land, and while horrible things happened and were done to them, the ending didn't make me feel sad.

Reading this I realise that whether it happened to the main family or not didn't matter, and if they lost their land or not it didn't matter, and I am pretty sure I pushed the ending out of my mind within days of finishing the book.

It gutted me and still guts me because it doesn't have to be the title characters. It happened to people beyond the scope of the book. Some works are like macros of man's inhumanity to man. Or any implacable horror. I can't distract myself from the reality of the pain suffered with the narrative. The storyline won't trump history.

When I was in England I saw reports on the arrest of a Ulster loyalist paramilitary/terrorist leader who shared my last name, and I couldn't help wondering if he was a distant cousin.

I really can't explain why the picture of that SS guard bothered me so much. Maybe it even had something to do with the fact it wasn't long after my father died, because it was almost an angry reaction--sort of, "how DARE that Nazi look like my dad?"