Julia Mood PeterkinRecensioni

Thoroughly enjoyable.

Written by a white Southern author who found the lives of blacks more interesting than whites'. Sixteen-year-old Mary is two months pregnant with July's child when they marry. A year later, July disappears with another woman. Mary falls into a depressed funk but manages to overcome it with the help of Maum Hannah and Budda Ben who both raised Mary from her youth. Mary goes on to have 8 more children with different men, doing what she pleases despite being kicked out of Heaven's Gate church and the disapproval of the community. For its time, the book reveals the humanity of blacks but not without some condescension on the part of the author (again, reflecting the times). Pullitzer Prize winner in 1929.

This is a book that won the 1929 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

It tells the story of Southern Life and describes the life of Mary who still lives in the Blue Brook Plantation.

She doesn't have any memory of her parents but thinks of Maum Hannah and Buddah Ben as those being as close to parents as can be.

She marries a wild man and soon bears his child. Then she begins a life that is wild and has many lovers.

There is also realistic dialogue and setting descriptions so that the reader can visualize the action as if they were there.

Also, faith comes into the story where after years of a wild life, Mary turns back to her childhood faith.½

I don't know how to review Black April without trying to set some groundwork by explaining the South Carolina Lowcountry and the people whose families have lived on the coast and on the sea islands for 300 years. They are/were descendents of slaves on the rice plantations. They have their own language, folklore, recipes, and crafts and their history is incredibly rich. The Lowcountry's landscape is diverse, unique, and beautiful as to be almost a mystical realm. That the wife of a plantation owner in the 1920s could have written novels plotted around and peopled entirely by Gullah characters and do so with such natural ease, depth, and skill defies stereotypes of race, gender, geography, and timeframe.

Plot:April is the foreman of Bluebrook, a working plantation owned by a family that lives up North most of the year. April is a physically powerful and daring man who is a natural leader. Married, he's a ladies man. He's also fearless to the point of arrogance, a true alpha male who gives no other male leader one inch of the spotlight no matter where they're standing. It is telling that, although April is not the novel's protagonist, he is the one around whom this plot revolves. You may know a man like this. Some of us have fathers like this. He's the sun. We're planets; it may be our story but it wouldn't exist as it does if he didn't exist first. The protagonist is Breeze, a boy of about 8 who meets April because Bluebrook's cook, a larger than life personality named Miss Big Sue, simply showed up on a nearby island one day and talked his weak-willed, overwhelmed mother out of him. Her reasons for this seem to be that she wanted someone to raise and to run and fetch for her, but also Breeze is April's illegitimate son and April is Big Sue's lover. I think she meant to bind April to her. Rival females and April's arrogance combine to bring April from the pinnacle to the pits in a way that resembles Job's downfall in the bible. We see this through Breeze's eyes, but the characters are so real and vivid that I never felt limited by his child's point of view. April speaks the last line of the novel and I closed the book feeling sad for him and very moved.

I want to read Julia Peterkin's other novels, especially Scarlet Sister Mary, which was banned as obscene in South Carolina but which won the Pulitzer Prize.

I didn't dislike this book but it was a bit of a chore to get through. It told the tale of a black community trying to figure out their new freedom. It followed the life of Sister Mary and her dozen children. None of the characters particularly stood out to me and I wasn't really taken in by the narrative. It was interesting from a historical perspective, but I would have liked to see more emotion coming from it, or being elicited from me.

In summation : I can't say that I'm particularly thrilled to have read this, nor do I expect it to stay with me for long. This is one of those books that a year from now I will be unable to recall much about.

I'm not really sure what I thought of this book. Mary was an interesting character, and watching her go through life, raising her kids, and dealing with a somewhat harsh life was interesting. I wasn't bored while reading the book, but I wasn't devouring each page either. The ending was a little abrupt, and due to the religious nature of the book, I'm not really sure that I got the overall message. It was an easy read though, and a relaxing one.½

200. 1st ed. Rare DW. Many AfAm illustrations. Born October 31, 1880, Laurens County, SC. Died August 1st 1961 near Fort Motte, SC. Won Pulitzer Prize for Scarlet Sister Mary 1929. This was her last book of sketches. Copyrights 1929 but this is first publication.

541. Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (read May 1958) (Pulitzer fiction prize for 1929) This was the Pulitzer prize winner for fiction for 1929, and was read when I was doing all such winners.