Paule Marshall's Brown Girl Brownstones VMC No. 87 (1959) Without knowing anything of it, I chose Paule Marshall's novel Brown Girl, Brownstones to read with Black History Month in mind (along with Hannah Crafts' The Bondwoman's Narrative and Zora Neale Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine). It was kind of a random
Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine VMC No. 276 (1934) Two of Zora Neale Hurston’s published works are books of folklore and perhaps it was her background in anthropology that led her to recreate dialogue just as it was heard rather than consistently in “the King’s English”. It was a
In some ways, this reminds me of Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky which is another instance in which the story behind a book is just as interesting as the book itself. My first online search for information about The Bondwoman’s Narrative pulled up not information about the narrative itself, but
Even though it was described as "easily the wittiest novel of the season" when it was published in 1931, I wasn't expecting to find Poor Caroline so amusing. Not laugh-out-loud hilarity, no, but many quiet chuckles, gentle hrumphs, and the occasional indignant snort at Mr. Johnson's impressions of women, which
I’ve been making Readolutions for as long as I can remember, but my handwritten reading lists have been lost. It wasn’t until 2003 that I started to make the lists on the computer rather than crouched on the floor next to the bookcases, scribbling furiously, certain that the year ahead
