Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Nourishing breakfast. Nourishing book.

Author: Mildred D. Taylor

Category: Growing up, I was aware that this book existed. But when I was younger, I avoided reading it because I thought it would be too intense. So I didn’t read it until about three years ago. This is the second time I’ve read it.

My thoughts: It’s a crying shame that I didn’t read it as a child. It’s a wonderful book. Recently, I was talking to one of our interns at work, who had just read To Kill a Mockingbird. She said that found that it was hard to read, because of what happens to Tom Robinson. I told her not to avoid reading things just because they are difficult. I wish someone had told me that years ago, so I would have read this book…and several others. The “difficult” stories are some of the best and most important ones. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is set in 1933 in rural Mississippi. The story is narrated by Cassie Logan, a nine-year-old who lives with her parents, grandmother, and three brothers (Stacey, Christopher-John, and Little Man) on their own land. This makes them different from the other black families in the area, most of whom sharecrop. Because it’s 1933 in Mississippi, life is not easy for or kind to the Logans. Cassie and her three brothers walk to school each day because their school has no buses, and they are splashed with dirt and mud by the bus driver who drives the school bus for the white kids, who taunt the Logans from the school bus windows (my stepfather reported something similar happening to him on the way to school in rural Mississippi, some three decades after this story was set). In this environment, men in a neighboring town were burned alive by whites who accused one of flirting with a white woman, and night riders strike terror in the hearts of Cassie and her family. Cassie learns the hard way the deeply ingrained codes of behavior that she must adhere to—for her own safety and survival. However…her family owns four hundred acres of their own land. And this is what gives them pride and self-esteem in the midst of a very harsh reality.

This book has interesting secondary characters. One is Uncle Hammer, Cassie’s outspoken uncle, a World War I veteran who lives in Chicago (no doubt part of the Great Migration, like in The Warmth of Other Suns). Another character is Jeremy Simms, a white boy who wants to be friends with Cassie’s brother Stacey. Jeremy never rides the school bus, preferring to walk with the Logans on their way to school. Also, there is T.J. Avery, Stacey’s trickster, up-to-no-good friend. T.J. is sort of a foil to Stacey—T.J.’s family sharecrops, thus are entrapped in this cruel cycle of debt, and there’s an undercurrent of envy to his relationship with Stacey, whose family is a little better off than T.J’s. Unfortunately, T.J. meets a cruel fate by placing value in the wrong things.

One reason I like this book because it reflects some of the experiences of my family. I remember my mother telling me that at her school books were those that the white schools discarded—like those of Cassie, and all students at her school. I think it took reading this book for me to understand the importance, to a generation of Americans who grew up on farms, of owning one’s own land. My grandfather, after years of first sharecropping, then renting farmland, finally bought his own plot of land in Arkansas in the 1960s. I can only imagine that purchasing that land made him feel (maybe for the first time) part of the American Dream.

And I was right about my first thoughts about Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry—this book is not a lighthearted reading experience. Meredith Taylor does not sugarcoat the harshness and cruelty of Cassie Logan’s world. But, like To Kill a Mockingbird, this is an important story.

P.S. The characters, especially Cassie’s grandmother Big Ma, remind me of Sharecropper by the late, great Elizabeth Catlett.

Image via The Art Institute of Chicago

Great passage (after Uncle Hammer gives Stacey a severe dressing down): Christopher-John, Little Man, and I exchanged apprehensive glances. I don’t know what they were thinking, but I for one was deciding right then and there not to do anything to rub Uncle Hammer the wrong way; I had no intention of ever facing a tongue-lashing like that. Papa’s bottom-warming whippings were quite enough for me, thank you.

Next up: The House of Mirth

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Hello, Francie...

Author: Betty Smith

Category: I first read this book in 2007 (incidentally, about a month after I visited Brooklyn for the first time). This is the third time I’ve reread it.

My thoughts: I absolutely love this book. I wish I had read it earlier, but it was nice reading it after I had actually been to Brooklyn, because the novel mentions neighborhoods that I had just been in (Williamsburg and Greenpoint). Francie Nolan is the main character of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She and her family live in a tenement in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (now home to scores of hipsters) at the beginning of the 20^th century. They are a poor family, and Francie’s father is an alcoholic. Although this is often thought of as a children’s book, I think it’s a book for adults as well. Betty Smith doesn’t shy away from the reality that Francie and her brother Neeley sometimes go hungry, and that their father is drinking himself to death. But there are great lessons about the importance of survival skills, the rewards of education, and the joy and comfort of family.

One thing I love about this book is the descriptions of food. Francie’s mother, Katie, has to make do with next to nothing, and the family’s sustenance consists mainly of stale bread. Out of this, Katie made bread pudding, among other things. Having meat with a meal was special to this family. To the Nolans, food is precious and nothing is wasted (except coffee— Katie allows Francie to pour her cup of coffee down the sink, because it makes her feel rich to waste at least one thing). By the way, I am really fascinated with dishes that early 20^th century immigrants ate.

Francie is born, her grandmother Mary tells Katie, “In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.” This is such an old-school piece of parental advice. It’s easy (or maybe preferable) to forget this, but it’s true. Speaking of which, Katie Nolan is certainly not a helicopter parent. In one of my favorite passages, she sends Francie to negotiate with the hard-bitten butcher. It’s a little terrifying, but it’s the moment when, as a reader, you gain respect and admiration for Francie, who deals with the cursing butcher timidly, but she does what she needs to do. I don’t know if I would be able to do that now, much less as an eleven-year-old. In another moment in the book, Francie goes to the cigar store by herself to get a cigar for her father. This definitely would not happen today!

Another great passage is about the tradition of throwing leftover Christmas trees at people at midnight on Christmas Eve. If one could withstand having a tree thrown at them, they got to keep it. Francie volunteers herself and her brother to have a chance to get the biggest tree. I read an excerpt of this chapter back in 7^th grade, and I remember being a bit apprehensive that two skinny kids are able to withstand having a gigantic Christmas tree thrown at them. But they do—these kids are tough as nails.

I seem to keep coming back to this book. I like stories about tough people, especially tough children. Francie has a rough life, but she knows how to hustle. That’s what I like about her. She’s a fighter. A neighbor tells her, “You won’t die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.” Like I said before, I thought of Francie while reading A Hope in the Unseen. Francie, like Cedric Jennings, has both book smarts and street smarts, and fights to get a good education. I think they are both very American stories that embody the idea that hard work and higher education can lead to success. I also think Francie is similar to Maud Martha. Both Francie and Maud Martha are imaginative and strong, and both have to deal with the hard knocks of life, but don’t let those hard knocks defeat them. They both see beauty where others would not.

By the way, I’ve also read one of Betty Smith’s other novels, Joy in the Morning. Not as majestic as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but it’s very good.

Great passage: Happy that the meat business was over, Francie bought two cents’ worth of soup greens from the green grocer’s. She got an emasculated carrot, a droopy leaf of celery, a soft tomato and a fresh sprig of parsley. These would be boiled with the bone to make a rich soup with shreds of meat floating in it. Fat, homemade noodles would be added. This, with the seasoned marrow spread on bread, would make a good Sunday dinner.

Up next: I’m rereading another “traditional” children’s book that adults would get a lot out of—Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

Chocolate Cake!

n.b. Wait until the cake cools to cut it--or it will fall apart like this. But it's still good.

I used to think making chocolate cake was quite complicated. Turns out, it’s easy-peasy. It’s one of the simplest cakes I’ve made ever made. I used the recipe on the back of the cocoa box—the one I bought because I wanted cocoa after reading Maud Martha (that book is truly the gift that keeps on giving). The cake was yummy—even though I forgot to add vanilla extract! Also, chocolate cake goes wonderfully with strawberries—which I ate with the cake to add a semblance of being healthy. I halved the recipe, but I’m including it here in its entirety (I must say, halving it was maybe the hardest part—thank goodness I learned fractions!)

Hershey’s “Perfectly Chocolate” Chocolate Cake

2 cups of sugar

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup Hershey’s cocoa
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 ½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 cup of milk
½ cup vegetable oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

 1. Heat oven to 350ºF. Grease and flour two 9-in. round baking pans.

 2. Combine dry ingredients in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla.; beat on medium speed for 2 minutes (I just stirred it with a spoon). Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour into pans.

 3. Bake for 30 – 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in the center comes clean.

 4. Eat it up!

A Hope in the Unseen

There's a book in my lap!

Author: Ron Suskind

Category: I first heard about this book two years ago. I filed it away in my mental “to read” list. I recently came across it again, and this time I actually decided to read it.

 My thoughts: This is a wonderful and inspiring book! A Hope in the Unseen is the story of Cedric Jennings, a star student at Washington, D.C.’s troubled Ballou High School. Being the star student makes Cedric a target, and he is pretty much a loner there. Also, Cedric’s father has been locked up for armed robbery and drug dealing for most of Cedric’s life. Cedric and his mother live in a rough neighborhood where drug dealers hang out on every corner. Before his senior year, Cedric participates in a summer program at M.I.T. Then, he is accepted into Brown University. But his journey does not end there. At Brown, he has to negotiate relationships with people who come from very different backgrounds than him, and grapple with knowledge that others have long been exposed to (Cedric had never heard of Ellis Island before he went to Brown). But Cedric, though flawed, is not only a fighter—he’s a survivor.

 The book exposes issues of race and class in the Ivy Leagues, and how lower-income minorities being accepted into and enrolling in Ivy League schools can be something of a double-edged sword. It’s a big victory, for sure, but there are some intangible roadblocks that these students have to overcome in addition to dealing with being away from home and handling with a rigorous courseload. So, Suskind mentions, the dropout rate among minorities is high (I don’t know if this has changed in the 14 years that this book has been published). Cedric absorbs all of this and fights against it.

 Although Cedric makes you want to root for him, sometimes his behavior is frustrating. He had to be a loner to survive his rough-and-tumble high school, but he continues his behavior of solitude at Brown, where people clearly want to get to know him. However, he manages to make a friend, Zayd Dohrn (whose parents are none other than Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, former members of the Weather Underground). Like I said, Cedric is a fighter, which is very admirable. He’s powered by faith, hustle, an iron will…and more than a little stubbornness. Cedric reminded me of Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—she was also a tough, impoverished kid who didn’t let obstacles defeat her (yes, I know that Francie is a fictional character). I’m glad that the story did not end with Cedric’s acceptance to Brown, as if the acceptance itself is a happy ending. It’s important to see the highs and lows of Cedric’s Brown experience.

 A couple of interesting things: Cedric goes to Brown in the fall of 1995, and there’s such a sense of that time in this book. There’s mention of SWV (who are making a comeback!), Smashing Pumpkins, the Million Man March, Jerry Garcia’s death, and the O.J. Simpson verdict. Also, Cedric discusses the Notorious B.I.G. with one of his fellow students, and I recalled, with a slight jolt, that Biggie was very much alive at this point. Also, before the first chapter, Suskind includes a quote from Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” As I’ve mentioned before, I love a good Tennyson allusion (or, in this case, a direct quote). So after seeing that, I knew I’d like this book. Speaking of “Ulysses,” the last line of the poem is “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” This, it seems, is Cedric Jennings’s mission.

 Great passage: He still hears the echo from rutted Southeast Washington and presses through gusts of thankfulness and survivor’s guilt to figure out why he escaped when so many—who are so much like him—did not. As he searches and learns more in classes and discussions about the country’s immigrant past, the phrase “a hope in the unseen” continues to resonate.  

 Up next: Since Cedric reminded me of Francie Nolan, I’m rereading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Off topic: A Letter to Three Wives and Gingersnaps

Recently, I had a nasty case of conjunctivitis, also known as pink eye (how very 4^th grade). For the most part, I felt perfectly fine, but since it’s very contagious, I missed a day of work. Sometimes, if I’m sick, I’ll put the television on just to have some background noise while I lie around in misery. But on this particular sick day, I watched A Letter to Three Wives. This is not a movie you want on in the background. It’s one you want to pay attention to.

Movie: A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

My thoughts: Movies like this embody the word “classic.” It’s such a great film. It’s directed by Joseph L. Manciewicz, who also happened to direct my all-time favorite film, All About Eve. This movie is the story of, well, three wives: Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain), Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell), and Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern), who have a frenemy in their circle named Addie Ross (who narrates the story and is voiced seductively by Celeste Holm). Deborah is a farm girl who married up and feels as if she doesn’t fit in among her husband’s wealthy friends. Rita writes for a radio soap opera, and makes more money than her English teacher husband (which qualified as a serious issue at the time…hopefully not now).  And Lora Mae is a bombshell from the wrong side of the tracks who marries her former boss, the owner of several department stores. One afternoon, as all three ladies are ready to go on a boating trip with a group of children, they receive a letter from Addie, who all of the ladies’ husbands view as a sort of ideal woman. Addie informs them that she left town—with one of their husbands. Only Addie doesn’t say whose husband… Each woman ponders her relationship in a series of flashbacks.

There is an interesting-in-a-21^st-century-way scene where Deborah, Lora Mae, and Rita notice and stare longingly at a payphone—their only chance to call their husbands and ask, “Have you left me for Addie Ross?”— as the boat they are on sails away. And since the trip is an all-day thing, they won’t be able to find out whose husband has left until that evening. As I watched the scene, I couldn’t help but think that it would have been so different if cell phones had been around. Of course, the title of the movie would be different as well (A Text to Three Wives?) Also, we as the audience never see Addie Ross, which adds to her mystique.

While writing this, I started to think about why this movie is so great. The script is amazing, and Manciewicz crammed this movie with great actors. Kirk Douglas is great as Rita’s husband, an English teacher who corrects the grammar of those around him (I must say that I saw myself in him in this regard). And Thelma Ritter, the great Thelma Ritter, is the sarcastic Sadie, who works for Rita. This is a genuinely funny movie. It’s such a cliché to say this, but they really don’t make movies like this anymore.

Great lines:
Lora Mae: How do I look?
Sadie: If I was you, I'd show more of what I got. Maybe wear somethin’ with beads.
Lora Mae: What I got don't need beads.

Days later, after my eye turned back to its natural color, I decided to use up some leftover molasses and make gingersnaps from this recipe I saw on seriouseats.com. I hadn’t made these since Christmas 2010, which is a crying shame because they are SO GOOD.

Great way to use up leftover molasses!

P.S. I’m still reading A Hope in the Unseen, which, like the gingersnaps, is very good.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

More waiting-room reading

Category: This is a bit lengthy. I first read this book in 12th grade AP English. See, our teacher assigned my class this book after we had taken the AP exam. We expected to basically do nothing in AP English after the exam (because part of the point of the class was getting ready for the exam). So we were not at all enthused at being assigned a book after the exam was over and during our final weeks of high school. Most of us changed our minds and came to really love the book once we began to read it.

Fast forward to earlier this year. Where I work, we have interns from a nearby high school. One day, I saw that one of our interns was reading Things Fall Apart, which made me want to reread it.

My thoughts: This is a good novel, but I didn’t like it as much on the second reading, to be honest. Maybe that is because the first reading was one of my first introductions to the African experience of European missionaries and colonization, and that had a deep effect on me at the time. Although I remember the Rwandan genocide in 1994 (which happened when I was in 7th grade), I never realized that it was linked to after-effects of colonization until much later.

The main character of Things Fall Apart is Okonkwo, who is well respected in his Ibo village, Umuofia. After an accident results in tragedy, he’s banished from his village for seven years. During this time, he hears about and is personally affected by European missionaries who have come to set up shop. Much to his chagrin, his own son becomes a convert. Upon his return to the Umuofia, Okonkowo finds things have greatly changed, because of the missionaries and the forms of government they brought with them. And he does not like it one bit.

Chinua Achebe, the author, was born in Nigeria, which became a British colony during Queen Victoria’s reign. Colonization is a pretty big theme here, and it’s an issue that I have strong feelings about. At the end of the story, one of the Europeans, while contemplating writing a book about Africa, ponders naming a chapter, or maybe a “reasonable paragraph” about Okonkwo. As a reader, it’s an upsetting thought—you’ve experienced this rich story about a fully embodied, powerful, but very flawed man and his society and its traditions. And someone thinks about how the story of his life might make a great…paragraph. I like and respect this novel because Chinua Achebe seems to say that stories about the real-life Okonkowos are worth telling. I think, generally, when we think of colonization, we think of Queen Victoria, King Leopold of Belgium, Stanley and Livingstone, even Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Or maybe the after-effects of colonization, as seen in the brutality that happened in Rwanda. But what about the people who were going about their lives, and then became subject to colonization? What about the societies and traditions that were in place before the Europeans determined that theirs were better?

One thing I noticed upon rereading, that I didn’t notice before, is an allusion to a line in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam in Things Fall Apart: Achebe writes about “the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw.” While I love a good Tennyson allusion, it again reminded me of colonization—Tennyson was poet laureate during Queen Victoria’s reign. Speaking of literature, Chinua Achebe also writes about the Ibo tradition of storytelling. People in the story often tell fables to get a point across, which appealed to me because I love storytelling and oral traditions.

Great passage: Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king. For three or four moons it demanded hard work and constant attention from cock-crow till the chickens went back to roost.

Up next: A Hope in the Unseen

Off topic: Roman Holiday

In The Portrait of a Lady, Gilbert Osmond and Isabel Archer live in Rome after their marriage. This reminded me of Roman Holiday, which I decided to watch again (for the umpteenth time).

Category: One of my favorite movies

 My thoughts: What a great film! It’s genuinely funny and sweet but not saccharine. Audrey Hepburn is Princess Ann, a young royal from an unnamed European country who is on a tour of goodwill throughout the continent. In Rome, she decides to play hooky from her stifling royal duties. Here, she meets Joe Bradley (played by a gorgeous Gregory Peck), an American news reporter living in Rome. He tags along with her, and the two traipse around postwar Rome and slowly fall for each other. Here’s the catch—Joe knows Ann’s true identity and could potentially make a lot of money selling his story about his adventures with a runaway princess. While watching this movie again, I started to wonder, in this age of social media and paparazzi, if a princess could get away with such a thing these days.

 Both Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck are great in this movie (in fact, Hepburn won an Academy Award for her role as Princess Ann). It’s interesting that these aren’t the “iconic” roles for these two—that being Breakfast at Tiffany’s for Hepburn and To Kill a Mockingbird for Peck. In fact, it’s kind of funny to see Gregory Peck play a character that’s not so morally perfect as Atticus Finch. Joe Bradley is a bit rogue-ish. At one point, he tries to steal a young girl’s camera!

 Eddie Albert (from Green Acres) is also in Roman Holiday, playing Joe’s photographer friend Irving. Also, the city of Rome is very much a character in the movie. I read somewhere that the director wanted to shoot on location in Rome, which was more expensive than filming the movie at the Hollywood studio, so, to cut costs, he filmed to movie in black and white because it was cheaper than filming in color. The architecture of the city is really beautiful.  I’m really struck by the fact that the movie is set in postwar Rome. It gives a sense of gravitas to the movie—there is a sense that the city was trying to get back on its feet. However, this movie is not as serious as another movie set in postwar Rome, the incredibly brilliant The Bicycle Thief.

 In writing this, I thought of a similarity between Roman Holiday and The Portrait of a Lady. Like Isabel Archer, Princess Ann makes a grown-up decision—that is, to return to her duty of being a royal and not run off with the handsome American reporter. The end of the movie is bittersweet. But it reminds me of a quote I once read by Catherine Deneuve—“Pleasure is something you can cultivate, even if the rewards are strong but fleeting.”

 Great line (uttered by Princess Ann): "Rome. By all means, Rome."

 If that line doesn’t make sense, by all means, you should watch the movie!