Lalita Tademy left a successful corporate career to
research her family history in rural Louisiana. Around the nuggets of
historical fact and oral tradition she unearthed, Tademy produced a
well-written, engaging debut novel that covers 100 years in the lives
of four generations of black women. Beginning with a pre–Civil War
ancestor and extending into the 1930s with her great-grandmother,
Tademy chronicles Southern black life during slavery, the Civil War,
Reconstruction, and Jim Crow.
The story takes place along the Cane River in Louisiana, where
Elisabeth, Tademy’s great-great-great-great-grandmother, was brought as
a house slave on a French plantation. Succeeding chapters feature
Elisabeth’s daughter Suzette, Suzette’s daughter Philomene, and
Philomene’s daughter Emily. The circumstances of their each
bearing children by white men differ from rape to a love affair. Each generation becomes fairer-skinned, but none
of them can escape prejudice, racist laws, and white vigilantism. Tademy portrays her foremothers as survivors rather than
victims, however, and the overall message is about a family’s resilience,
determination, and dignity as its members fight for
economic independence and a secure future for their offspring.
Tademy used her genealogical research again for a subsequent novel, Red River (2007), about two black
families struggling to make a place for themselves in Louisiana just
after the Civil War.
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