#14 - Mary Ann in Autumn

#14, last week, was Mary Ann in Autumn: A Tales of the City Novel, by none other than Armistead Maupin (New York: HarperCollins, 2010).

Summary: "A hilarious and touching new installment of Armistead Maupin's beloved Tales of the City series. Twenty years have passed since Mary Ann Singleton left her husband and child in San Francisco to pursue her dream of a television career in New York. Now a pair of personal calamities has driven her back to the city of her youth and into the arms of her oldest friend, Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver, a gardener happily ensconced with his much-younger husband. Mary Ann finds temporary refuge in the couple's backyard cottage, where, at the unnerving age of fifty-seven, she licks her wounds and takes stock of her mistakes. Soon, with the help of Facebook and a few old friends, she begins to reengage with live, only to confront fresh terrors when her checkered past comes back to haunt her in a way she could never have imagined. After the intimate first-person narratives of Maupin's last novel, Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn marks the author's return to the multicharacter plotlines and darkly comic themes of his earlier work. Among those caught in Mary Ann's orbit are her estranged daughter, Shawna, a popular sex blogger; Jake Greenleaf, Michael's transgendered gardening assistant; socialite DeDe Halcyon-Wilson; and the indefatigable Anna Madrigal, Mary Ann's former landlady at 28 Barbary Lane. More than three decades in the making, Armistead Maupin's legendary Tales of the City series rolls into a new age, still sassy, irreverent, and curious, and still exploring the boundaries of the human experience with insight, compassion, and mordant wit."

Opening Line: "There should be a rabbit hole was what she was thinking."

My Take: Read this one in a single sitting last week, one night when I was both bored and restless and just didn't have enough brainpower to slog through another chapter of Yellow. While not the strongest of the Tales series, this much-later sequel certainly stands solidly among them. The return of two characters from Mary Ann's checkered past was an intriguing, if not fully credible touch; I won't spoil the details save to say dead ain't dead until you've seen the body. And I really enjoyed seeing Maupin's take on the San Francisco of the early 21st century: DeDe and D'or now grandmothers, but still bickering or living and letting live over certain matters of taste; Jake and Ben's latter-day take on queer life and culture; the funky Gen X/ Gen Yer Shawna turns out to be. The one character I particularly missed seeing was Brian, who we learn is now RVing from national park to national park somewhere ... but I suppose what makes the story fairly plausible is that characters do grow, change, and move away from time to time. In short, I don't know if this book by itself would draw me into the series if I hadn't read the others ... but it was a decent evening's entertainment, and a fitting continuation of some old favorite characters' stories.

#12: Yellow

Yellow: Race in America beyond Black and White, by Frank H. Wu (New York: Basic Books, 2002).

Jacket Summary: "The days when racial dialogue in the United States was limited to a discussion of black and white are through. As the twenty-first century dawns, the Asian-American population is growing at a faster rate than any other demographic, increasing by 48% throughout the 1990s and altering the nature of American color politics forever.

"Writing in the tradition of W.E.B. Du Bois, Cornel West, and others who confronted the 'color line' of the twentieth century, journalist, scholar, and activist Frank H. Wu offers a unique perspective on how changing ideas of racial identity will affect race relations in the new century.

"Wu's description of the alienation faced by Asian Americans tackles key milestones in history, suc as the 1940s internment camps and the 1992 L.A. riots, as well as surprising statistics about the continuing presence of anti-Asian sentiment. In May 2001, a major national survey of highly educated individuals showed that almost half of all Americans believe that Chinese Americans are likely to pass secret information to China. About a third agree that Chinese Americans are probably more loyal to China than the United States, and few distinguish between Chinese Americans and other Asians.

"Yellow looks at the problems of racial diversity with a new focus, elevating the age-old debate from its formerly static terms. Wu examines affirmative action, globalization, immigration and other controversial contemporary issues through the lens of the Asian-American experience. Mixing personal anecdotes, legal cases, and journalistic reporting, Wu confronts damaging Asian-American stereotypes such as 'the model minority' and 'the perpetual foreigner.' By offering new ways of thinking about race in American society, Wu's work dares us to make good on our great democratic experiment."

Table of Contents:

• 1 - East Is East, West Is West: Asians as Americans
• 2 - The Model Minority: Asian American "Success" as a Race Relations Failure
• 3 - The Perpetual Foreigner: Yellow Peril in the Pacific Century
  
• 4 - Neither Black Nor White: Affirmative Action and Asian Americans
• 5 - True But Wrong: New Arguments Against New Discrimination
• 6 - The Best "Chink" Food: Dog-Eating and the Dilemma of Diversity
• 7 - The Changing Face of America: Intermarriage and the Mixed Race Movement
• 8 - The Power of Coalitions: Why I Teach at Harvard
• Epilogue - Deep Springs

My Take: Interesting, but in places, a bit too dense and philosophical for the layperson. Did offer a different take on race in American life, but I think I need to read about something else for a while.

#11: Native Son

Don't think I've mentioned this here yet, but I've been listening to an audiobook of Richard Wright's Native Son (New York: Random House, 1940).

Summary: "After 58 years in print, Wright's Native Son has acquired classic status. It has not, however, lost its power to shock or provoke controversy. Bigger Thomas is a young black man in 1940s Chicago who accidentally kills the daughter of his wealthy white employer. He tries to frame the young woman's fiance for the crime and attempts to extort ransom from the victim's family, but his guilt is discovered, and he is forced into hiding. After a terrifying manhunt, he is arrested and brought to trial. Though his fate is certain, he finds that his crimes have given meaning and energy to his previously aimless life, and he goes to his execution unrepentant. Wright avoids the trap of making his hero a martyr, for Bigger is a vicious and violent bully. But out of this tale the author develops a profoundly disturbing image of racism and its results that puts Bigger's experience in horrifying perspective." (-Library Journal Review)

Opening Lines:
"Brrrrrriiiiiinnng!

"An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room. A bed spring creaked. A woman's voice sang out impatiently:

"'Bigger, shut that thing off!'"

My Take: I'm just about halfway through the book right now (Bigger's just fled his employer's home, knowing his crime is about to be discovered). Incredibly disturbing, suspenseful, and surprisingly contemporary. I suspect this will be one of this books I appreciate deeply, but can't really say I like.

Wow. Maybe it's the way I took this book in -- a few tracks at a time over several weeks, while in the car or doing the dishes -- but when I finished it last night, I felt both bereft and deeply satisfied. The book's a classic, and synopses/ study guides/ Cliff Notes abound on the internet; I won't spend time providing another one here. But the way Wright unfolds Bigger's story is nothing short of masterful. Even now, having finished the novel, it's hard to wrap my brain around how I could feel at once appalled by the murders Bigger's committed and unconvinced that things could have gone any other way. His jail conversations with Boris Max, lawyer and eventual friend, bring about an ending that's simultaneously devastating, terrifying, and ever-so-slightly hopeful. Frankly, I can't do this book justice.

#10 - The Gendarme

The Gendarme, by Mark T. Mustian (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2010)

Summary: "What would you do if the love of your life, and all your memories, were lost -- only to reappear, but with such shocking revelations that you wish you had never remembered?

"Emmett Conn is an old man, near the end of his life. A World War I veteran, he's been affected by memory loss since being injured during the war. To those around him, he's simply confused, fading in and out of senility. But what they don't know is that Emmett has been beset by memories, of events he and others have denied or purposefully forgotten.

"In Emmett's dreams he's a gendarme, escorting Armenians from Turkey. A young woman among them, Araxie, captivates and enthralls him. But then the trek ends, the war separates them. He is injured. Seven decades later, as his grasp on the boundaries between past and present begins to break down, Emmett sets out on a final journey, to find Araxie and beg her forgiveness."

Opening Line: "I awake in a whispering ambulance."

My Take: A good story, but didn't quite live up to the potential it suggested at first. I'm reminded of one oft-offered criticism of the movie Julie & Julia: that Meryl Streep's performance as Julia Child was so compelling, the contemporary storyline featuring Amy Adams as the underemployed blogger seemed lacking by comparison. So it is here. By itself, the account of young Turkish Ahmet's service as a gendarme, overseeing the Armenian deportation to Syria, and then deserting the army to follow Araxie, the young Armenian woman who's somehow captivated him, is serviceable enough, albeit not completely convincing. As is almost always true of war stories involving genocide, the Turkish treatment of the Armenians was unimaginably brutal; we see this hear in Ahmet's descriptions of his comrades' behavior, and we simply don't learn enough about who he was before joining the army to know why he'd be any different. Why, then, does he become so enchanted with Araxie that he believes himself in love with her? Even more implausibly, why does Araxie seem to return his affections to some degree, when he's attempted to rape her and murdered her adoptive father in cold blood? And how, exactly, does Ahmet Khan find himself returned to the battlefield, wounded at Gallipoli, and eventually swept off by an American nurse to his new life as Emmett Conn?

Surprisingly, it's the story of 92-year-old Emmett, set in Georgia in 1990, that's far more captivating. Having lost his wife Carol (the aforementioned American nurse) to Parkinson's disease some years earlier, Emmett is alone, though daughter Violet visits often. At the novel's outset, he learns from the irrepressibly positive Dr. Wan that he's suffering from a brain tumor. Violet, Dr. Wan, and nearly everyone else in Emmett's orbit is quick to blame the tumor for the seizures and visions Emmett's been having, but in fact, Emmett is merely remembering, even reliving, his past. Violet and the doctors just assume these dreams need to stop, but Emmett needs them somehow -- desperate to remember who he was and what he did during the war, however shameful it may be, and to find out what became of Araxie. Ultimately, he is confined to a state psychiatric hospital for monitoring, but refuses medication after but one night when he realizes it suppresses his dreams.

Again, the elderly Emmett's story is well-written and gives the reader a lot to chew on, but I was left feeling like I myself was confused and drifting in and out of the story line. Perhaps this was deliberate on Mustian's part, but it seemed more like there were just plain pieces left out of the puzzle. It's the author's first novel, so I'm inclined to think maybe he just hasn't hit his stride yet. Be that as it may, I still think the book was a bit overrated. The horrors of war have been done many times before in literature; making the perpetrator an old man who now looks back with some horror on what he's done is an interesting spin, but doesn't by itself overcome the novel's shortcomings. In short, liked the book well enough, but wasn't overwhelmed.

#9: The Race Card

The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, by Richard Thompson Ford (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).

Jacket Summary: "What do Katrina victims waiting for federal disaster relief, millionaire rappers buying vintage champagne, Ivy League professors waiting for taxis, and ghetto hustlers trying to find steady work have in common? All have claimed to be victims of racism. These days almost no one openly expresses racist beliefs or defends bigoted motives. So, many are victims of bigotry, but no one's a bigot? What gives? Either a lot of people are lying about their true beliefs and motivations, or a lot of people are jumping to unwarranted conclusions -- or just playing the race card. As the label of 'prejudice' is applied in more and more situations, the word loses a clear and agreed-upon meaning. This makes it easy for self-serving individuals and political hacks to use accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other types of bias to advance their own ends.

"Richard Thompson Ford, a Stanford Law School professor, brings sophisticated legal analysis, lively and eye-popping anecdotes, and plain old common sense to this heated topic. He offers ways to separate valid claims from bellyaching. Daring, entertaining, and incisive, The Race Card is a call for us to treat racism as a social problem that must be objectively understood and honestly evaluated."

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - Playing the Race Card
• 1 - Racism Without Racists
• 2 - The Wild Card: Racism by Analogy
• 3 - Calling a Spade a Spade: Defining Discrimination
• 4 - The Clash of Ends: Contested Goals
• 5 - Post-Racism: Why the Race Card Is a Crisis of Success

My Take: Interesting and more balanced than I expected, if a bit muddled in places. Based on the jacket flap I expected to find this book maddeningly inflammatory. It's actually not; it's a complex, well-reasoned exploration of what racism looks like and doesn't look like in 21st-century, allegedly post-racist America.

Having spent so much time working on The Perfect Review for Some Sing, Some Cry, I had to return this one and several others to the library before I finished the review, so I'm going to cop out: William Grimes's 2008 review from the New York Times is here, and provides a good overview for those so inclined.

#8 - Big Girl

Big Girl, by (yes, it's true) Danielle Steel (New York: Delacorte Press, 2010)

Jacket Summary: "A chubby little girl with blond hair, blue eyes, and ordinary looks, Victoria Dawson as always felt out-of-place in her family, especially in body-conscious L.A. Her father, Jim, is tall and slender, and her mother, Christina, is a fine-boned, dark-haired beauty. Both are self-centered, outspoken, and disappointed by their daughter's looks. When Victoria is six, she sees a photograph of Queen Victoria, and her father has always said she looks just like her. After the birth of Victoria's perfect younger sister, Gracie, her father liked to refer to his firstborn as 'our tester cake.' With Gracie, everyone agreed that Jim and Christina got it right.

"While her parents and sister can eat anything and not gain an ounce, Victoria must watch everything she eats, as well as endure her father's belittling comments about her body and see her academic achievements go unacknowledged. Ice cream and oversized helpings of all the wrong foods give her comfort, but only briefly. The one thing she knows is that she has to get away from home, and after college in Chicago, she moves to New York City.

"Landing her dream job as a high school teacher, Victoria loves working with her students and wages war on her weight at the gym. Despite tension with her parents, Victoria remains close to her sister. And though they couldn't be more different in looks, they love each other unconditionally. But regardless of her accomplishments, Victoria's parents know just what to say to bring her down. She will always be her father's 'big girl,' and her mother's constant disapproval is equally unkind.

"When Grace announces her engagement to a man who is an exact replica of their narcissistic father, Victoria worries about her sister's future happiness, and with no man of her own, she feels like a failure once again. As the wedding draws near, a chance encounter, an act of stunning betrayal, and a family confrontation lead to a turning point.

"Behind Victoria is a lifetime of hurt and neglect she has tried to forget, and even ice cream can no longer dull the pain. Ahead is a challenge and risk: to accept herself as she is, celebrate it, and claim the victories she has fought so hard for and deserves. Big girl or not, she is terrific and discovers that for herself."

Opening Line: "Jim Dawson was handsome from the day he was born."

My Take: It's a Danielle Steel novel; what can I say that you can't figure out on your own just by reading the dust jacket? Appreciated the gay best friend as a nod to contemporary sensibilities (hey, for the most part, these books haven't changed, but that is one thing you wouldn't have found in the ones I used to borrow from my mom when I was in middle school), but other than that -- a few hours this afternoon's really all I want to spend on this one.

#7 - Some Sing, Some Cry

Some Sing, Some Cry, by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2010).

Jacket Summary: "From Reconstruction to both world wars, from the Harlem Renaissance to Vietnam, from spirituals and arias to torch songs and the blues, Some Sing, Some Cry brings to life the monumental story of one American family's journey from slavery into freedom, from country into city, from the past to the future, bright and blazing ahead. Real-life sisters Ntozake Shange, award-winning author of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, and Ifa Bayeza, award-winning playwright of The Ballad of Emmett Till, achieve nothing less than a modern classic in this story of seven generations of women, and the men and music in their live.

"Opening dramatically at a sprawling plantation just off the South Carolina coast, recently emancipated slave Bette Mayfield quickly says her good-byes before fleeing for Charleston with her granddaughter, Eudora, in tow. She and Eudora carve out lives for themselves in the bustling port city as fortune-teller and seamstress. Eudora marries, and the Mayfield line grows and becomes an incredibly strong, musically gifted family, a family that is led, protected, and inspired by its women. Some Sing, Some Cry chronicles their astonishing passage through the watershed events of American history."

Opening Line: "The first orange light of sunrise left a flush of rose and lavender on Betty's hands as she fingered the likenesses of her children."

My Take: I've long acknowledged my fondness for grand, sweeping family sagas, so this one was on my Must Read list from the moment I read the review. Though parts get a bit confusing, the book as a whole is a good read -- enough action to keep you reading, but meaty enough to be satisfying. Tracing the seven generations of the Mayfield family from the end of the Civil War up to the present day, Some Sing, Some Cry takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of American history as experienced by Bette and her (mostly female) descendants. It's always difficult for me to sum up the plot of multi-generational epics like this one -- heck, it's hard enough even to explain who the main characters are and how they relate to one another -- but I'll give it a shot:

Already a grandmother when the Civil War ends, Bette Mayfield remains at Sweet Tamarind, the Carolina Low Country plantation where she's lived her entire life, until she absolutely can't stay any longer. Although her late ex-master, Julius Mayfield, was both her own father and the father of all but one of her children, Bette nonetheless seems to have loved him, and considers herself his "slave wife." (Not surprisingly, Julius's legal, white wife was far less enamored of her.) After saying goodbye to all her loved ones, past and present, she and granddaughter Eudora set out for Charleston, expecting to begin their free life by moving in with Bette's married daughter Blanche. Blanche, however, has fought long and hard to claim her place among Charleston's black elite, and having a countrified, Geechee mother and niece in residence doesn't quite fit her lifestyle. Under considerable pressure from her husband, Roswell Diggs, and young children, Benny and Francina (who are thrilled to have a Nana), Blanche relents, but Bette is too proud and stubborn to stay where she's not welcome. Instead, with the help of Blanche's stepson, Roswell Jr., Bette and Dora rent an apartment the Diggs's own in the poor but vibrant black neighborhood of Little Mexico. Here, Bette establishes herself as a conjurer and fortuneteller who is simultaneously scorned, revered by younger generations.

Eudora arrives in Charleston on the threshold of womanhood, with dreams of being not a mere seamstress but une modiste -- a designer and dressmaker whose talents are sought after by the very best of Charleston society. She gets her start operating a sewing machine for Yum Lee, a Little Mexico neighbor who runs a Chinese laundry and shirtmaker's shop, but quickly gains enough money and experience to strike out on her own. While she enjoys a budding friendship with Tom Winrow, hack driver by day and enthusiastic horn player/ card sharp by night, she aspires to better things, and politely ignores his romantic overtures. When she is hired to make a wedding dress for Miss Matilda, a debutante from one of white Charleston's best families, she earns even Blanche's grudging respect, and is invited to a book party for Ida B. Wells. Here, she meets the mysterious Yves Desallines, a Haitian diplomat turned sailor. When Yves sends her a bolt of exquisite lace, she is both flattered and shocked, knowing she ought to refuse the gift ... until Yves explains that he wants Dora to make a wedding dress for his fiancee back in Haiti. In time, though, the two grow closer, and Yves sets sail intending to call off his Haitian engagement and marry Dora. Unfortunately, Eudora has also caught the eye of Miss Matilda's brother, and is brutally raped during the course of the bachelor party. She tells no one, but the wedding is inexplicably called off. By the time Yves returns to Charleston, the pregnant Dora has already married Tom Winrow, and does her best to heed Bette's advice:

"'We got nothin' but to choose life. Find the honor in it. Make it so. Will it so. You a fighter, Eudora May -- in life, there is hope. In life -- choose not to give up. New day means a new day's battle begun. This child is the child of your womb, and if she is born of this hell all the more power to deliver us from it. To the seventh generation.'"

Not long after Dora's daughter Elma is born, gossip about Yves and Eudora reaches Tom's ears. Already suspicious about how little the baby's coloring resembles his own, he erupts in fury. This turns quickly to tenderness, however, when Dora breaks down and confesses everything; the result is the Winrows' second daughter, Lizzie. Sadly, over time, the tenderness and affection Tom and Dora share is strained by the repeated failure of Tom's farm to produce a viable crop, his insistence on staying out late to play his horn, and their disagreement over just how much one ought to curry favor with the white folks. Their bills mount ever higher. Shamed and broken by his inability to support his family, Tom sells his father's farm without telling Dora, and abandons them to work in the mines of West Virginia, his state of mind recalling that evoked by Langston Hughes' "A Dream Deferred"

"Tom's anger stirred. Folks all day telling him no to every simple request he made. He was a man. He didn't need to beg for groceries. He needed to stay in this game to turn his luck around."

Owing to her brutal beginnings, Elma is quite light-skinned -- so much so that when she enters a whites-only train car by mistake, the conductor asks her not to leave. Dora takes pride in Elma's color and singing talent, and is determined that her daughter will succeed where she herself did not. The two work hard to make this happen; Elma adopts Diggs as a surname to capitalize on her wealthy relations, and the family makes considerable sacrifices to send her to Fisk University, where she sings with the Fisk Jubilee Singers. As her freshman year ends, she is on top of the world, and expects to do great things with her voice. When her biology teacher, Professor Minor, tries to steer her toward a more practical career, she insists that "[s]inging is a gift from the Lord, not a profession." When she meets Minor's nephew Raymond, an architect, the two are instantly smitten with one another -- so much so that when Elma leaves for Charleston the next day, Ray follows without her knowing.

The grand homecoming Eudora had planned is tarnished, however; not only has Tom abandoned the family, but they've been evicted from the farm they no longer own. Not wanting to see her mother spend more money on her education at a time like this, Elma elopes with Ray, and the two move to the Great White Hope that is early twentieth-century New York.

"A wave of great inventions -- electric lights, moving pictures, telephones, phonographs, human flight, automobiles for the common man -- had made the world suddenly exhilarated and confusing, wide-eyed with hope and an unconditional faith in possibility, speeding into the future."

As Elma's vague letters to Lizzie reveal, though, the promised land isn't quite what it's cracked up to be:

"Elma's letters were always cheerful and short. Life with Raymond was getting better. New York, where buildings touched the sky, things were always looking up. Lizzie could read through the lines. She could see within the picture ... Her sister was gaunt, a smile forced on her thin lips, her large dark eyes wide and frightened, one fist clenched at the end of an arm seemingly bound to her side, her beautiful mane of hair pulled close to her head. Elma, too proud to ask, but always tacitly accepting the few dollars her mother dutifully sent."

The Minors' first two children die in the 1919 influenza epidemic, Ray loses a plum job under suspicious circumstances, and the whole country seems caught up in the exhilaration and fright of the 1920s:

"Between 1919 and 1929, the world exploded, expelling grief, death, and rage. The highways bled and flooded upstream with refugees from Southern weevils, blight, and terror. Death Riders and riots swept St. Louis, Tulsa, Charleston, Chicago. Red Scare, Red Summer, Red -- the age was hot! Burning the gut with liquor, feet slashin' up the dance floor. A perpetual party and ticker tape parade -- on borrowed time and borrowed money. With underground economies propping things up, the Depression came as no surprise to the criminal class. Their trauma came later with the repeal of Prohibition."

In partnership with a neighbor, he supports his family as a bootlegger, making enough money to turn some profit from the Harlem Renaissance.

Lizzie Winrow is as much Tom's daughter as sister Elma is Dora's. She's inherited his love of music and showmanship, but his wild and ornery streak, and is devastated by his sudden departure. "Running away, leavin' behind what you love, Pa, what made you? She could not believe her Pa would do that."

"Since her pa was gone, she felt disobliged to obey anyone. She was full of anger with no place to put it but into trouble. She could win most any fight, but she rarely had to. She'd made an early discovery -- get loud and improvise a barrage of epithets to make your assailant shrink from blows of pure sound.

Together with her lifelong best friend, Osceola Turner, she plans a career as a songwriter and entertainer, but these plans are derailed when Ossie's foster brother, Deke, steals their savings for a can't-miss business opportunity. Inspired by his idol, bandleader James Reese Europe,
who insists that war "condenss and compresses a whole lotta manhood into a veryshort period of time," Ossie enlists in the Great War, hoping for a chance to play in the army band with Reese.

Lizzie, who already blames Deke for his role in her father's disappearance, is furious, and a chain of events that begins with Deke trying to rescue Ossie from the recruiting station and ends with him jailed and sent out to work on a turpentine plantation makes him enraged. When he finally escapes and gets back to Charleson, he sneaks into Lizzie's home and rapes her. By the time Ossie returns, she is visibly pregnant, and Ossie can only assume the worst. Sadly, before the two are able to explain themselves, the combination of "black folks naive enough to think that the 'war for democracy' would make a place for them at the table" and "white ire at such audacity" proves deadly:

"Pumped-up soliders were comin' home wantin' sensing it, feelin' it -- something changed. Colored weren't colored. They were 'Negroes.' On the street, they looked new, acted new, proud and entitled. Expecting the war over there would change something over here, they had a new way of walking in the world, and these Southern soldier-boy soldiers weren't havin' it. They trashed the billiard hall, then like bees, a swarm of blue jackets came flying down the boulevard. They stormed out the tavern, knocking black fellahs in the head, throwin' them to the ground. They then spilled into the side streets and alleys, looking for anybody black. Their numbers grew to a thousand. The swarm blew over the city and formed a swath of rage and lust and fun. ... he city that had been the gem of the South was never the same afterwards."

Neither is Lizzie, as Ossie is killed in the riots. Two wrenching years later, she and daughter Cinnamon Turner head north to join Elma in Harlem. Here, she takes the stage name of Mayfield Turner and achieves some success as an entertainer, but eventually finds the U.S. too constraining.

"On the road half the year, the permanent exile found no world to her liking. Paris at least was a life of her own design. Paris was where she was staked and where she was going to stay. My worthless friends, my sorry club, my lousy bookings, but mine. She was tired of runnin'."

And stay she does, leaving Cinnamon in the care of Elma and Ray while she goes on to achieve near-legendary status as a chanteuse suspiciously reminiscent of Josephine Baker. Her heyday lasts until World War II dawns, irrevocably altering the character of her adopted city. "Paris was no longer a city of light but a city haunted by shadows, the Lost Generation replaced by a constant traffic of lost souls."

Not surprisingly, Cinnamon is forever haunted by her mother's abandonment, despite being raised with love by the Minors. Although hers is perhaps the most promising musical talent in the Mayfield family to date, she is determined to sing opera and opera alone, insisting "I already know that my life won't be involved in that gaudy, vulgar Negro jazz life my mother's chosen for herself. No, that's not for me." She overcomes considerable discrimination to study music at Hunter College and later, Julliard. But her single-minded focus on opera proves problematic. Most operatic roles are reserved for whites, so the only gigs Cinnamon can get are with the National Negro Opera Company -- even as she resists singing the old Negro spirituals that are coming back into fashion. Her contempt for jazz and swing remains unshaken, even at the price of a broken heart; at a rare nightclub appearance -- a favor to cousin Memphis, who doesn't share her mistrust of the night life -- she meets jazz musician Baker Johnson. The two fall deeply in love, yet Cinnamon categorically dismisses the music Baker plays and loves:

"I am singing opera. ... And I'm going to continue to sing opera. I'm not going to wallow in the gutter with this swing, this 'jazz,' like you and Memphis. Don't you see there's nothing hallowed about swing? It's colored folks doing what colored folks have always done, making things up as they go along. Just noise and pelvis grinding is what it is ... "

Stung by her rejection, Baker turns instead to the all-too-willing Memphis. Cinnamon's focus, however, garners the attentions of two unlikely patrons: Harlem kingpin Deacon Holstein and his wife Iolanthe. While Deacon admits immediately that he used to go by Deacon Turner ("'When I married into Mr. Holstein's family, I took the name on -- for the sake of the business"), he does not tell Cinnamon that it's he who bankrolls the National Negro Opera Company that gives her a stage -- or, until he's on his deathbed, what he meant to Lizzie and who he was to Cinn herself:

"I'm dyin', Cinn. But before I do, I must tell you somethin'. I have wronged your family. Run off the father, deceived and betrayed my brother, but the greatest wrong was to Lizzie. Broke her body, her heart, warped her spirit. I cannot undo that. I cannot give these things back to her, but maybe I could give her back her daughter. ...

"When I was a young man, I was a wild one, a roustabout -- got so the police arrested me before the crime, sayin' 'I know you gonna do it,' ... "We both loved Osceola. Competed. I came outta prison, took your mother by force. Your mother. Hurt her, hurt her bad. Most likely, you my daughter. ...

"Please, please. Hear me out. I cannot rest while there is distance between you and Lizzie, distance that was caused by me. When she left, she wasn't runnin' from you, she was runnin' from me. ...

"I cannot undo that night. Would not want to. You are my pride, Cinn Turner. I have done my best to do right by you."

Under the Turners' tutelage, Cinnamon travels to Washington, D.C. to hear Marian Anderson's famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial; to to Chicago. Here, she meets labor activist and Tuskegee airman Lawrence Walker, who embarks on a gentle courtship, even though he knows Cinnamon is still in love with Baker. Sadly, her nascent career is cut short when she develops a case of laryngeal dystonia. Lawrence's unflagging, unconditional love and support as this tragedy unfolds ultimately win her over, and the two are married, finding in each other a mutual, tender affection that grows steadily deeper over the years:

"Cinnamon wrapped her arms round her husband, feeling his weight and warmth. She thanked the Lord again that he'd come home unscathed from the war, giving her a chance to discover how much she loved him. How precious his life was to her! When she lost her ability to sing, he had stood by her through the sorrow and anger. The emptiness had been filled with love and laughter and three rambunctious children. At the same time Lawrence hoped his wife understood that while he couldn't play a horn or piano like most of her family, he had tried to surround her with creativity. ... [S]he missed her own voice. He knew that. Still, to him, Cinnamon's music was never lost. It lingered in the way she walked and laughed and smelled, in how she loved. She was every woman Ellington ever composed for, every lady Prez ever serenaded, every girl Smokey ever crooned to."

Jesse Minor, Elma and Ray's eldest surviving child and only son, survives the flu that killed his older sisters, but his speechlessness and overall slowness greatly worry his grief-stricken parents. Healing comes from a surprising source, however, when Lizzie and Cinnamon arrive in New York, and Jesse slowly but surely learns to walk and talk from watching and playing with his slightly-older cousin. Years later, when the Minors journey south to attend Grandma Bette's funeral, Jesse remains in Charleston at Dora's urging, and finds himself thriving on the slower pace of southern life. He eventually marries a young woman named Mabel and becomes a pastor. Their only son, Joshua, is killed before their eyes in 1953 when an Alabama voting rights protest march turns violent.

Jesse's younger sister Memphis is born to Elma and Ray after the flu epidemic, and named by her aunt Lizzie (who mistakenly thought it was Memphis, rather than Nashville, where Ray and Elma had met). She inherits her mother's singing talent and Lizzie's wild streak, and idolizes her older cousin Cinnamon. After her fling with Baker fizzles, she weds one of his bandmates. Their marriage lasts just long enough to produce a daughter, Alelia, before dissolving. Memphis then follows in Lizzie's footsteps, decamping for Paris while leaving Alelia behind in New York.

Each of Cinnamon and Lawrence's three children, Abbott, Tokyo, and James, is shaped in his or her own way by two watershed events. The first is their service on the front lines of Chicago's busing controversy:

"It was an ominous fall morning, like a heroin haze kind of day, like a lazy Charlie Parker day, taut, delicate, and spiraling to God knows where. Trash dropped into the gutters was thrown at the lil mess of colored children. But the Walker family was prideful ... They'd seen burning crosses and KKK parades before, but this was different. It was their backs that carried the weight of the race and nobody had said a word. ... They'd been so proud this morning and here they were now, disheveled and soiled. How could they explain that the white grown-ups just didn't want them there? That any Negro youth found west of Halsted was imperiled? The first day of school -- turned away at the door. They hadn't done anything. Just being colored and trying to learn. What could they possibly say? They were now the ones to be ashamed or beat with a cat-o'-nine tails, that's how fearful they were of messing up their parents' dream."

The second is, of course, witnessing their cousin Joshua's murder.

Abbott finds an outlet for his anger in Elijah Muhammad's Black Muslim movement, and becomes his volatile sister Tokyo's rock, reminding her "that the only freedom for black people was liberation and they were busy enslaving themselves to cocaine and booze." Tokyo becomes the family's most successful musician, winning several Grammys and even seeing her biggest R&B hit used in a presidential campaign (unspecified, but obviously 2008), despite a lifelong struggle with drugs and alcohol.

Memphis's daughter Alelia becomes a singer in her own right, although her instrument of choice is the guitar, and she finds herself drawing on both her ancestors' sounds and the new strains of folk music she encounters. As a young woman, she travels to Paris to see her mother and now-venerable Aunt Lizzie, and immerses herself in that city's emerging beat/ folk scene. Here, she meets Raoul Johnson, son of Lizzie and Memphis's former paramour, Baker, and his Algerian wife, Raschel. (In an even-smaller-world coincidence, Raschel's mother Genya was an old friend of Lizzie's who died at Nazi hands in World War II.) Alelia and Raoul quickly discover that they're on the same wavelength emotionally as well as musically; they fall in love, marry, and have a daughter, Liberty, a deejay and cancer survivor who struggles to define her own place in the by-now-august Mayfield family pedigree.

"Sweet memories ... Each generation had its collector. For her Great-Nana Dora it was swatches of fabric and buttons, photos and shoes. For Lizzie it was costumes and poster, a kaleidoscope of stuff from her ragged, rollicking life. Rare LPs from Uncle Ray and her grandmere Memphis. Always the music. Aunt Cinn's precious librettos. The last time she had visited her beloved Cinn, the woman was just a grip of shaking bones, the skin soft, holding fast to her hand. Memories dissolving, even her beloved arias. Aida, Carmen, Butterfly, the heroine always dying. Cinn ... clinging to her with desperate fingers, one last grasp at life. Liberty had gone to confide in her, seeking that quiet solace she had always found. I can't do this alone.

"She reminded herself that she wasn't alone. .. Though her blood family was scattered all over the globe, she had family. People who loved her for all of her eccentricity. ...

"Life, Liberty ... or death. All of this rich history, this past I'm supposed to be able to stand on and draw from. Instead I'm already part of the past even before I've begun. The Seventh Generation. The what? ... New life. To the seventh generation. What then? What now?"

As is probably evident from the epic-length book report this has become, I really enjoyed this book. I don't know that it quite lives up to the "modern classic" status the dust jacket proclaims, though. For one thing, a story this long and convoluted gets confusing real fast if some important points aren't made crystal-clear ... and occasionally, this is a problem. The chief example is whether Julius Mayfield truly was Bette's father as well as her master/ lover. The authors hint at this, but don't come out and confirm it for certain -- not a trivial issue, as there's otherwise no way for the other characters to blame their much-hyped unusual (read: white) coloring on his genes (given that Eudora's mother, Juliet, was the only one of Bette's children fathered by a fellow slave rather than by Mayfield).

For another, I like my historical fiction best when the history lessons don't detract from the narrative. There are passages here, like the long aside that interrupts Marian Anderson's concert, where it feels like I just clicked a hyperlink and ended up on Wikipedia by mistake:

"The Norwegian composer Dvorak in 1893 had declared American Negro spirituals the root of truly new American music. Since the end of the Civil War, the Fisk Jubilee Singers had stunned the world with their repertoire of these indigenous songs by anonymous composers. The great baritone Paul Robeson and tenor Roland Hayes in concert performances across the globe had through their renditions of American Negro spirituals ... "

I also had a similar reaction to that expressed in Mike Fischer's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel review, which suggests that the authors "dutifully [checked] all the boxes. The end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. World War I and the 1919 race riots. ... " and points out that the history presented is often sloppy and inaccurate.

That aside, there's a lot to enjoy and appreciate about Some Sing, Some Cry, and its 558 pages are crammed with complex and compelling themes. Most obvious among these is the complicated definition of success in the black community. Especially in the novel's earlier years, the characters can only get ahead by denying their pasts and their very selves. Certainly this is evident during Reconstruction; Blanche can't hurry her freed-slave mother and country Geechee niece out of her home fast enough, and even groundbreaking author Ida Wells is judged for her dark skin and nappy hair. A generation later, Elma's light skin and ability to "pass" gain her entree into the better colored circles in Charleston, and her husband Raymond is respected as the son of a higher-class black man. However, the price of their success is "[erasing] from consciousness facts and experiences they could not face, inventing stories more to their liking;" Elma is the product of rape, and Ray the son of a prostitute.

In addition to denying their pasts, generations of Mayfields find themselves denying their dreams in order to survive. After becoming pregnant with Elma, Dora is forced to give up on being an esteemed designer and work merely as a seamstress; the difference between her dreams and Tom's, and his unwillingness to give his own up, ultimately cause their marriage to collapse. Dora finds herself in the still-familiar position of working her fingers to the bone to send Elma to college, only to find that education changes her daughter in a way that can't help but separate her from the family. Many years later, Cinnamon explains this to Deacon, describing how "at school the white students are always yapping at me" while "at home, even at home, it's not my home." Cinnamon, at least, fares better than most; despite being abandoned by her mother (who saw in her daughter's face the rape that robbed her of a future with Ossie), and having to abandon her own dreams of being an opera singer, she does manage to build a loving, honest relationship with Lawrence and their three children.

In contrast to those who deny their pasts and their dreams, the characters who embrace them seem to lead far happier and more authentic lives. When the family travels to Charleston for Bette's funeral, Eudora embraces the chance to be "Nana" -- undoubtedly remembering her Aunt Blanche, who had ordered her own children to call Bette "Grandmother." On the same trip, Dora proudly tells Jesse that the slaves are in the family's blood, and that their history keeps the Mayfields strong. Similarly, Memphis emphatically rejects Cinnamon's insistence that only opera is good music: "If you got an idea you never let it go and never present it as if you understand it to be an opinion ... Just cuz I don't like that white folk shit make me ignorant?"

Through all their trials and varied history, the characters of Some Sing, Some Cry share a reliance on music as a solace in hard times and a means of preserving their history. Tom tells Eudora this with great earnestness shortly after they meet, explaining that while he makes his living driving a hack by day, the music he plays in Little Mexico at night is what makes his life. Years later, his daughter Lizzie is both inspired by and makes her mark on the Harlem renaissance and ultimately, the Paris jazz scene. Jim Europe is vehement about the importance of music not just to the individual but to society, telling Ossie during World War I that "the world is changing ... What has captured it is the music," and then acknowledging on his deathbed that words "take away from a man everything that he knows [so] what is he to do? He sings." Hearing Marian Anderson sing in D.C., "Cinnamon's faith in the power of voice to draw people, to awaken them, was reaffirmed. More than speeches, more than protests;" later, at the height of the Chicago busing crisis, her nonmusical husband Lawrence reminds their children that "the music of our forebears ... tells us that we can survive anything."