Author: JWF

MOMENTOUS WEEK

Sunday, November 8, 2020

The 2020 presidential election is one for the history books. For many women, it was an especially momentous one. After the long wait all week, the afternoon was suddenly brighter. Watching Kamala Harris deliver her first speech as Vice President-elect last evening was simply marvelous. Then, after President-elect Joe Biden’s stirring call for unity, the sky was lit with their names midst a smashing array of red, white and blue fireworks. With all of that, putting Harris’ image at the top of this post seemed just right.

RECENT NOVELS—MARRIAGE & RACE

Monogamy by Sue Miller

In this novel, bookseller Graham co-owns a store in Cambridge, Mass.  He’s a big man with big appetites.  Appetites for reading and meeting literati, for food, and for women.  He’s a gregarious guy, enveloping and dominating those around him.   This is his second marriage as well as Annie’s.  Annie, a professional photographer and his wife of thirty-odd years, is more reserved and inward looking than he.  Between them, there are two adult children: Lucas, son of his first wife Frieda, and Sarah, his and Annie’s daughter.  Comparing herself to Graham, Annie laments her own lack of feeling, sensing a sort of coldness at her core.  

When Graham dies unexpectedly, Annie is initially devastated.  She and the children separately struggle to fill the gaping hole he has left.  Strangely, Annie and first wife Frieda have been friends for years. They attempt to console each other.  When Annie learns more about Graham’s relationships with other women, her grief at first morphs into anger.  Marriages in this novel are not all monogamous.

I loved this novel and read it slowly to savor the richness of Miller’s prose and her profound grasp of human emotions. Here’s a passage I particularly liked.  Annie has been reflecting on her childhood friendship with Sofie and how they had drifted apart in high school and college.

     But the residue of that friendship lingered for Annie, lingered especially in the newly sharp eye with which she regarded her own family—that gift that often comes in adolescence, when you’re suddenly old enough to be conscious of how another family works, of the possibility of other rules, other ways of living, from those you grew up with.  That gift can open a window, a door, into the world.  Let air in.

    Let you out.

   As this gift was at work in Annie, she slowly came to understand that what she had been feeling in her family for a long time was I don’t belong here.  That had helped to free her, to end her puzzlement about her family and her place in it.  It had opened up her life, though she hadn’t known for years what that would mean for her.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

A highly praised new novel, The Vanishing Half is about identity and race and takes place over several decades.  Identical twins, Desiree and Stella, grow up in a small Southern town.  In their late teens, Desiree convinces her sister to leave home with her. They run away to New Orleans.  For a few years, they both work in a laundry, but Stella bolts and Desiree loses contact with her.  Later, Desiree flees an abusive spouse with her little girl and retreats back to Mallard.  The twins are light-skinned, and the reader sees that Stella has chosen to re-make her life as a white woman.  

The book raises questions about how one identifies oneself, and about what is required to present one face to the world while inside living another.  Not only does the book concern itself with racial identity, but for several characters the gender assigned at birth is not the one they feel most at home in—or they relish the fluidity of moving back and forth between genders. 

 I found the first section, set in 1968, a bit slow and it didn’t flow.  Subsequent sections, which I’m now reading, are more engaging.  A thoughtful novel and one relevant for these times. (~JWFarrington)

VIEWING—TENSIONS IN THE MINISTRY

Greenleaf (Netflix)

We happened upon Greenleaf when browsing streaming options and have now watched eight episodes of Season 1.  It’s about a Black mega church in Memphis and the Greenleaf family that runs it.  Bishop James Greenleaf is exuberant, manipulative, and rich.  His wife, son, brother-in-law, and other family members work for the church too. And the entire family lives together in a sumptuous mansion.  

When daughter Grace, also a pastor, and her teenage daughter return, family tensions escalate.  Grace has been gone for years, and her mother is not happy having her back.  Mae sees Grace as a threat and supplanting favored son Jacob.  Grace also puts some credence in the rumors of irregularities in Uncle Mac’s private life.  

Add in adultery, lies, and questions about church finances, and you have the makings of a complex drama with many threads.  Overall, the series is about religion and relationships peppered with lots of Bible-quoting.  At times, I find it uncomfortable to watch, but I am intrigued by Grace’s character. She stands apart from the family as both observer and somewhat reluctant participant.  

Greenleaf is an Oprah Winfrey production and Oprah plays Mavis McCready, Grace’s compassionate, non-judgmental aunt.  In all, there are five seasons.

Note: Header photo of Kamala Harris courtesy of APnews.com