Helpful Score: 1
This review was originally written for the audio version, but it holds true, obviously, for the print version. So I repeat it here with hopes it might help someone's choice of read.
Yes! This was an Oprah pick...but forget that. This is a great book anyway.
I spent the entire day listening to this 6 hour audio as I walked and gardened, then just sat on the stoop doing nothing but listening. Perhaps it was the readers, Shari Belafonte, Jo Marie Payton, and Edwina Moore, who seemed to take a generation each to read about. They breathed such life into the characters, such love and determination into their lives. Depressing--well, all Oprah books seem to be, at least those I've read. But this book was different. Of course it had its depressing moments, after all, a book about Black women set in the south during the 1800's would be, but then along would come these scenes that would lift you right out of that misery. Make you so proud and make you wish you knew these women.
Multi-generational, it somewhat reminded me of Roots, with the focus all upon the women.
And something I found very neat: the author, Lalita Tademy, did an introduction where she admitted that after finding the documents and such of these relatives, when she decided to write the story, she did not hesitate to use her imagination where things could not be proved.
Yes! This was an Oprah pick...but forget that. This is a great book anyway.
I spent the entire day listening to this 6 hour audio as I walked and gardened, then just sat on the stoop doing nothing but listening. Perhaps it was the readers, Shari Belafonte, Jo Marie Payton, and Edwina Moore, who seemed to take a generation each to read about. They breathed such life into the characters, such love and determination into their lives. Depressing--well, all Oprah books seem to be, at least those I've read. But this book was different. Of course it had its depressing moments, after all, a book about Black women set in the south during the 1800's would be, but then along would come these scenes that would lift you right out of that misery. Make you so proud and make you wish you knew these women.
Multi-generational, it somewhat reminded me of Roots, with the focus all upon the women.
And something I found very neat: the author, Lalita Tademy, did an introduction where she admitted that after finding the documents and such of these relatives, when she decided to write the story, she did not hesitate to use her imagination where things could not be proved.
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