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OTHER PEOPLE’S SKIN

Name: OTHER PEOPLE’S SKIN
Author: Tracy Price-Thompson
ISBN: 978-1-4165-4207-0

HEALING THE SKIN/HAIR THANG BETWEEN BLACK WOMEN: FOUR NOVELLAS

edited by Tracy Price-Thompson and Taressa Stovall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2007

Attempts are made to examine the source of misplaced self-hatred, but the characters are either so bad or good, and the...

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A clumsy attempt at exploring the complex issue of skin color in the African-American community.

Four novellas undertake a single agenda: to demonstrate the wickedness of intrarace bigotry. No stroke is broad enough for the authors, which is unfortunate, as the issue—how light is too light to be black, how dark is too dark to be pretty—is at once fascinating and heartbreaking. The first piece, “My People, My People,” by Stovall, involves an ad executive confronted by a racist client. Carmella has chosen the perfect model for a new cosmetics campaign called Hot Chocolate, but the owner of the company, the indomitable Helena, wants a lighter-skinned model. Carmella correctly suspects that Helena’s own self-hatred of her black features is the root of the problem. Price-Thompson’s “Other People’s Skin” begins well with the birth of Euleatha LaMoyne to the fair-skinned Peaches. Peaches rejects her dark-skinned daughter, leaving Eulie to be raised by her great-grandmother, Ma’Dear, a wise woman who tries to instill in Eulie a compassion for those who mistreat her. And boy is she mistreated—Peaches and her light-skinned daughter Paline behave as if Eulie is a monster they’re kind enough to house. Eulie decides to leave town after Ma’Dear’s death, but is instead transported back in time to a plantation, where, now light-skinned, she’s able to understand that pain and suffering come in all shades. In Desiree Cooper’s “New Birth,” Lettie, to help pay for a retrial for her wrongly convicted son, gets a job cleaning house for Catherine Rollins, a light-skinned attorney. Catherine, an unabashed proponent of the worst racial stereotypes, assumes Lettie to be a thieving, welfare-scamming, illiterate loafer, while Lettie thinks the worst of Catherine and her light-skinned kind. Lastly is Elizabeth Atkins Bowman’s “Take It Off!” about a biracial university student torn between proving her blackness to the other black students and retaining her integrity as a budding journalist.

Attempts are made to examine the source of misplaced self-hatred, but the characters are either so bad or good, and the plotting so overdone, that all subtlety is lost.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007

ISBN: 978-1-4165-4207-0

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MY BLUE SUEDE SHOES
edited by Tracy Price-Thompson & Taressa Stovall

- BOOK REVIEW
KNOCKIN’ BOOTS
by Tracy Price-Thompson

- BOOK REVIEW
BLACK COFFEE
by Tracy Price-Thompson

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.