African-American author | Beauty is a Sleeping Cat

Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights era. Blending fact and fiction, Glorious is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and ultimately revival offers a candid and true portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.

What an entertaining and well written book! I always say that I don’t like historical novels but I really liked this one a great deal. I had a feeling I had only just started when it was already finished.

Glorious tells the story of the fictitious Harlem Renaissance writer E.V. Gibbs whose maiden name was Easter Venetta Bartlett.

Easter’s story is a blend of fact and fiction and from what I can judge McFadden put a lot of effort into the research of her topic and manages to weave it artfully into the story.

I was drawn into the book from the first pages on. In the prologue we read about the tragic beginning of Easter’s story. I liked the way McFadden did this in adding a long list of sentences and paragraphs all starting with “If….” It exemplifies something that is on my mind a lot, namely the one single instance or occurrence in which a fatal or happy series of events is triggered, the one crucial point that determines the course a life will take.

If her father hadn’t won a boxing match, Easter’s sister wouldn’t have been raped. If that hadn’t happened her father wouldn’t have had an affair and her mother wouldn’t have died. If her mother hadn’t died, Easter wouldn’t have left her hometown and if….

But it did happen and Easter leaves. First she stays with relatives in the Jim Crow South until she witnesses a lynching. She escapes and joins a travelling circus where she meets the charismatic, lesbian Rain. Easter will not stay very long with the circus and moves on. After some more trials and tribulations she arrives in New York.

She settles down in New York, finds a job that pays he bills, meets a man from the Caribbean and gets married.

Since her early days Easter has always written stories. In New York, after having met Rain again and been introduced to Meredith Tomas, the rich wife of a Cuban plantation owner, she is discovered as the great hidden talent she is. All the prominent people of the Harlem Renaissance like her writing and she is very influential.

Chance however is not on her side. Her husband who attempts to murder Marcus Garvey, dies soon after her talent has been discovered and Meredith, consumed by envy of her talent, steals Easter’s novel.

The last chapters fast forward some 4o years and we see what has become of Easter who is now an elderly woman working as a maid in her hometown.

As I said, this book is based on a lot of facts and I’m pretty sure, that it is to a large extent inspired by Nella Larsen’s biography whose career did also end with an accusation of plagiarism.

The beginning in the Jim Crow South is maybe the best part of the novel. The descriptions are very powerful and almost cinematographic. What a monstrosity the South of those days was. It made me think of the song Strange Fruit. I have been collecting versions of it for years now.

Glorious will not be my last Bernice McFadden novel. She really is a very talented writer and it was a highly entertaining read. I already got her first novel Sugar here.

I’m amazed that she hasn’t been translated into German. If there is one market for which her novel would be perfect, it is the German one.

I wouldn’t have read this book if it hadn’t been for a comment by Anna (Diary of an Eccentric) who mentioned it on my first Nella Larsen post.

Here is the link to Anna’s review and to my first Nella Larsen post on Quicksand and to the second on Passing.

Last but not least here is the link to Bernice McFadden’s Blog.

I couldn’t resist and have attached one of my favourite Strange Fruit versions sung by Nina Simone. The video is worth watching as well. It’s very shocking.

Passing (1929) tackles the sensitive issue of black people who ‘pass’ for white. It also explores the desire of one woman for another – a new and daring theme for the writing of the time.

I just reviewed Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and since I liked it great deal I thought I will read and review her second novel Passing right away as well. Some details on her life can be found on the review of Quicksand.

As said, I liked Quicksand, the main character is so fascinating, still I was surprised how powerful Passing is. It’s an extraordinary story. I was hooked from the first sentence and found it extremely captivating, almost as gripping as a thriller.

Irene, a woman of mixed origins, gets a letter from another woman, Clare, with whom she grew up. The woman has a similar back ground only she has no parents. She isn’t only very light-skinned but her father was white. The two women had met in Chicago, a few years back, after having lost contact for twelve years. They met in an expensive tea room to which black people aren’t allowed. Irene is often ‘passing’ as she is very light-skinned. While she is sitting in the tea-room, enjoying her tea and the elegant surroundings, she notices another woman staring at her. The beautiful and elegant blond woman has alabaster toned skin and Irene is scared she might have found out until she realizes, she knows the woman. Irene always assumed that Clare has become a prostitute but as it seems she got married to a white man and is obviously “passing” for good. Clare invites Irene to her place to meet her husband and family and also invites another girl who also “passes” frequently.

What could have been a pleasant get-together turns into something that is hardly imaginable. Clare’s husband starts to talk about “niggers” and how much he despises them, that he would immediately leave his wife if he found out that she is “a nigger.” Picture this: there sits this condescending man, married to a woman of mixed origins, talking to her two friends of equally mixed origins and he doesn’t get. Not only does he not get, he would still leave her, if he found out although there seems to be nothing that indicates her being different in any way.

Irene doesn’t want to see Clare anymore after this. She is deeply humiliated and outraged. But Clare cannot let go. She wants to see her again. She wants to frequent “her people”. From a story about race, Passing develops into a novel of gender roles, jealousy, attraction and hatred. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but the development and the ending are quite unexpected and cruel.

Passing illustrates the complexity of notions of race even better than Quicksand.

“Yes, I understand what you mean. Yet lots of people ‘pass’ all the time.”

“Not on our side, Hugh. It’s easy for a Negro to ‘pass’ for white. But I don’t think it would be simple for a white person to ‘pass’ for colored.”

This is a highly interesting aspect and seems to indicate that African-American people are far more sensitive to race than white people, which makes the racism of white people all the more absurd. If they don’t get the difference, unless it is really obvious, what is the prejudice based on? The perception of African-Americans is much more nuanced. From my studies (I have an unfinished interdisciplinary Ph.D. on Haitian literature in my drawers) I know that in Haiti, for example, there are at least ten different expressions for skin-tones. Only a very few Haitians are just called “black”. Each skin-tone is linked to a specific social status. The lighter the better. (You could say that the suppressor’s or colonialist’s belief system has been fully internalized).

If I have to compare the novels, I think I liked Quicksand more as I found Helga Crane such a moving character.

It is sad that Nella Larsen didn’t write any other novels and I would like to know what really spurred that decision. Maybe she wanted to turn her back on her past. She had a troubled marriage and was writing during that marriage. Sometimes we cut off something that we really like just because it is tied to something unpleasant in our past.