Though the end dips into the maudlin, first-novelist bandele delivers an eloquent message about the tragedy of dreams—and...
A potent mix of familial strife and racial injustice in Brooklyn, by Essence editor, poet, and memoirist bandele (The Prisoner’s Wife, 1999).
Aya’s story begins things: how the 19-year-old is reshaping her life after a year in juvenile detention (a heavy penalty in a case where she was arguably the victim.) The beautiful girl is a straight-A student in college and keeps an early curfew to appease her mother Miriam, a tight-lipped woman who has showered Aya with rules instead of love. When Aya is shot by a white policeman on her evening jog—her hooded sweatshirt similar to a robbery suspect’s—Miriam is left at her daughter’s bedside wondering whether she was all the mother she could have been. Miriam’s own mother, suffering five miscarriages before the birth of her daughter, considered Miriam a miracle and protected her like a relic: Miriam’s life was a warning of what not to do, who not to talk to, how not to think. When Miriam is 16, she meets Bird, a janitor at her high school, newly back from Vietnam. With Bird, Miriam begins to think and feel for herself, and the two begin a secret and chaste love affair. When Miriam’s parents discover the relationship, she must move in with Bird and the loving grandmother he supports. The two build dreams for the future—despite Bird’s Vietnam nightmares and the police harassment he endures, simply for being black in America. bandele’s agenda, via Bird—the inequities of the black soldier, the long history of racial profiling, living with injustice and the effects of that on Miriam and those around her—finds a balanced voice in the short and angry life of Bird Jefferson. While Miriam is pregnant with Aya, Bird is “accidentally” shot by the police, and Miriam switches to emotional autopilot for the next 19 years, until the shooting of her own daughter.
Though the end dips into the maudlin, first-novelist bandele delivers an eloquent message about the tragedy of dreams—and life—deferred.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-1184-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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