In 2002, Cane River by Lalita Tademy was on my Grandma Eva's bookshelf.
That the book was on her shelf, and that she had apparently read it, were both interesting facts.
She is the grandparent who, when I was in junior high, after we had seen a couple - he, black as blackest night, she, white as lily-white - looked me straight in the eye and said, with more force than I had ever heard from her before or since, "Don't you EVER get any ideas like that."
And yet, five or so years later, there was Cane River on her shelf. And she told me I could borrow it.
I read the book. Maybe that's not the right way to say it. I devoured the book. It was equal parts eye-opening and affirming of things I already knew. I was in awe over the amount of history Lalita could find 5 generations back. I was fascinated by the stories of the women, by how long some of them lived, by the way they kept living and even thriving through the horrible circumstances they were forced into. I identified with some of the mother-daughter interactions. I wanted to see myself more in Lalita's family, but knew that I had the capacity to be the snobbish and horrible plantation owners. I felt shame when reading about the rapes of enslaved girls by white owners and the friends or relatives of the owners. I was shocked by the pictures of the Lalita's ancestors - how many of them did not "look black" to me at all. Lalita's grandmother and great-grandmother could have passed for white if everyone in the area didn't know who they were.
I remember being so sad, my spirit so torn, while reading the end of the book; I read the final sentences while tears coursed down my cheeks.
I wish that I would have talked to my grandma about the book after I finished it. But I didn't. I put it back on her shelf without inviting conversation. And the words and stories that I had read, I processed on my own. Words to think on, to digest, to fold into my ways of knowing, my ways of thinking, the things I learned about the world.
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In 2020, the world is falling apart? Exploding? Imploding? Becoming very peculiar?
A year ago, I contemplated re-reading Cane River, but didn't dig the book out of the box in the garage.
A month ago, when lots of friends and acquaintances and a lot of the people on my IG and my Facebook feeds started posting books that would be helpful / eye opening / worth reading, I went out to the garage and dug through the boxes, cut a gash in my thigh on the corner of one, and while blood welled, I found Cane River and a whole stack of books that I will share with you here over the next few months. Books that I have read over the past twenty years.
After I found my stack of books, my friend Shanna and I decided to read Cane River together (even though we are 1,385 miles apart). It is interesting to reread almost 20 years later, to revisit Lalita and her family, to see through more years of living and learning, and also to have Shanna's comments as she reads the book for the first time.
After the Civil War, Lalita's great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother both become land owners. Shanna's comments, "It feels so weird for them to have freedom now. I never really thought about the confusion and uncertainty (but also JOY) that comes from being able to choose their future and how to use their time. And yet the white/black racist ideas still run deep." Yes, the racist ideas continued to run deep for the white people and for the freed Black people.
Because of the interracial rapes and liaisons, many of Lalita's ancestors were 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 Black. And yet, any Black ancestor was enough for them to be treated as less-than, to be considered "mongrel" and "evil" and "tainted" and "inferior".
Some of Lalita's ancestors wanted to keep becoming more and more white - they wanted to erase the blackness. Others decided to purposely marry darker and embrace the deepening color and the social constructs that came with dark skin.
The very French overtone caught my attention as I read this time - I guess I always assumed that all the white people in the states always spoke English ... Even though I have learned about the French trappers and fur-traders in the mid- and north-west. Even though I know the Spanish people conquered parts of the Americas. I guess I pictured everyone who enslaved Black people speaking English. But in Louisiana, most of the white people were French. So, as I thought about this more, I wondered how in the world English came to be the dominant language in the US. (That is a question to research another day.)
And finally, as I came to the end of the book a few days ago, I was struck again with how the ways people related to each other seemed to ease at the end of the Civil War, but as times became more modern, the discrimination became more and more pronounced, the racism and bigotry and segregation louder and uglier. I didn't cry this time. I was too angry, too sad, and too filled with the need to continue working for change.
There are still plenty of people who tell their white children how superior they are to anyone who is not just like them. And there are still too many reasons for people to tell their Black children to quietly acquiesce to those who would remind them of their socially constructed place. There need to be more and more of us who are willing to hear, willing to see, and willing to become uncomfortable as we change the social constructs around skin color, as we change the narrative to love and appreciation.
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God has made of one blood all the peoples of the earth. Acts 17:26