Reading Wednesday
Jun. 8th, 2016 11:25 amWhat did you just finish?
Finding Charity's Folk: Enslaved and Free Black Women in Maryland by Jessica Millward. Charity Folks was born into slavery around 1759. In 1811, she was set free. She spent the rest of her life working to have her children and grandchildren set free as well, and the family eventually became one of the richest and most influential black families on the East Coast. This is a nonfiction study of how exactly the complicated process of manumission worked.
One of the problems with writing history about the "subaltern" is that, by definition, they have been silenced in mainstream discourse. Trying to fill out someone's entire life when you only have three sentences to work with is going to leave a lot of empty space. Often this leaves such books feeling thin and patched over with unanswered – unanswerable – questions. Millward deals with this problem by including the stories of multiple people in similar positions, which is actually a really smart approach.
Most of the book is focused on the various approaches of enslaved women negotiating for manumission papers. I was particularly fascinated on the various stories of slaves who sued their masters, arguing that they were legally free (usually based on claims of an ancestor – sometimes as far back as 150 years previously – having been a white woman and/or free), which does not seem like a suit you can imagine succeeding, but which apparently did – if rarely.
There were a few problems with the writing style of the book, mainly that I really could have done with a family tree or list of personages featured to help keep track of who was who. Millward also had a tendency to introduce new people without any explanation of why they were important to the overall story, which added to my confusion.
Overall, I found it a fascinating and well-done account of this particular aspect of slavery.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Savage Season by Joe Lansdale. The first in the Hap & Leonard series. I've come around to this book in a very odd manner: first I read the two most recent books in the series (#12 and #13), then I watched the TV series based on Savage Season, and then finally made it to this book itself. So I had some preconceived notions going in, you see.
Here's the summary: It's the late 1980s, and Hap is an ex-hippie. Once upon a time he was a college student who went to jail for draft dodging, but now he's just a poor, white, sometimes-drunk East Texas guy. Leonard is his best friend and his total opposite in most ways: black, gay, a Vietnam vet and staunch conservative. But they work the rose fields together and enjoy arguing, and so have come to be the closest relationship in each other's lives.
Then Trudy, Hap's ex-wife (who encouraged him to go to jail as a statement, and then left him when she got bored of waiting for him to be released), shows up with a plan to make a million dollars by finding cash stolen and lost during a long-ago bank robbery. She has a gang of fellow "idealists" with her, who want Hap to join them in their plan to use the money to change the world. But things, as always, don't go as planned.
Hap and Leonard here are a bit more serious and less self-aware than in later books in the series (though they're still quite funny, and the book often veers closer to parody of noir thrillers than a straight example of the genre), but less so than in the TV series (which seemed pretty determined to make the tone much grittier and harsher). It was a fast, compelling read, and I already have purchased a copy of the next book to look forward to.
What are you currently reading?
I'm hopping back and forth between two books: On A Desert Shore by S.K. Rizzolo, a mystery from NetGalley that I am having quite a few issues with, and Turbulence by Samit Basu, which![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija recommended ages ago and that I'm really enjoying.
Finding Charity's Folk: Enslaved and Free Black Women in Maryland by Jessica Millward. Charity Folks was born into slavery around 1759. In 1811, she was set free. She spent the rest of her life working to have her children and grandchildren set free as well, and the family eventually became one of the richest and most influential black families on the East Coast. This is a nonfiction study of how exactly the complicated process of manumission worked.
One of the problems with writing history about the "subaltern" is that, by definition, they have been silenced in mainstream discourse. Trying to fill out someone's entire life when you only have three sentences to work with is going to leave a lot of empty space. Often this leaves such books feeling thin and patched over with unanswered – unanswerable – questions. Millward deals with this problem by including the stories of multiple people in similar positions, which is actually a really smart approach.
Most of the book is focused on the various approaches of enslaved women negotiating for manumission papers. I was particularly fascinated on the various stories of slaves who sued their masters, arguing that they were legally free (usually based on claims of an ancestor – sometimes as far back as 150 years previously – having been a white woman and/or free), which does not seem like a suit you can imagine succeeding, but which apparently did – if rarely.
There were a few problems with the writing style of the book, mainly that I really could have done with a family tree or list of personages featured to help keep track of who was who. Millward also had a tendency to introduce new people without any explanation of why they were important to the overall story, which added to my confusion.
Overall, I found it a fascinating and well-done account of this particular aspect of slavery.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Savage Season by Joe Lansdale. The first in the Hap & Leonard series. I've come around to this book in a very odd manner: first I read the two most recent books in the series (#12 and #13), then I watched the TV series based on Savage Season, and then finally made it to this book itself. So I had some preconceived notions going in, you see.
Here's the summary: It's the late 1980s, and Hap is an ex-hippie. Once upon a time he was a college student who went to jail for draft dodging, but now he's just a poor, white, sometimes-drunk East Texas guy. Leonard is his best friend and his total opposite in most ways: black, gay, a Vietnam vet and staunch conservative. But they work the rose fields together and enjoy arguing, and so have come to be the closest relationship in each other's lives.
Then Trudy, Hap's ex-wife (who encouraged him to go to jail as a statement, and then left him when she got bored of waiting for him to be released), shows up with a plan to make a million dollars by finding cash stolen and lost during a long-ago bank robbery. She has a gang of fellow "idealists" with her, who want Hap to join them in their plan to use the money to change the world. But things, as always, don't go as planned.
Hap and Leonard here are a bit more serious and less self-aware than in later books in the series (though they're still quite funny, and the book often veers closer to parody of noir thrillers than a straight example of the genre), but less so than in the TV series (which seemed pretty determined to make the tone much grittier and harsher). It was a fast, compelling read, and I already have purchased a copy of the next book to look forward to.
What are you currently reading?
I'm hopping back and forth between two books: On A Desert Shore by S.K. Rizzolo, a mystery from NetGalley that I am having quite a few issues with, and Turbulence by Samit Basu, which
rachelmanija recommended ages ago and that I'm really enjoying.
