Surrounded

Surrounded: America's First School for Black Girls, 1832 by Wilfred Lupano (2021), Illustrated by Stephane Fert, 142 pgs.

In 1832, Sarah Harris entered the all white class of Prudence Crandall's boarding school. As a young Black girl in a time when slavery was only abolished in some states--like her home state of Connecticut--a formal education had not previously been available to Sarah, until she asked to join this class. After racist outrage followed Sarah's admittance, Ms. Crandall made the decision to make her boarding school for Black girls only. Girls from across the state traveled to learn together, and they faced many barriers from the white community, who stopped them from getting school supplies or other items in town, and from the local legislature, who passed laws making it illegal for Black girls to travel to the Crandall school. Nevertheless, Sarah and her classmates continued to learn and grow and challenge the stereotypes they had been taught.

This beautifully-drawn, fictionalized account of a true story is a quick, yet impactful read. The art style is very whimsical, but it also does a good job of emphasizing the gravity of dark moments. The story, at times, felt like it was teetering on the edge of being a white savior story focused on the teacher, but I do think the white author tried to avoid going that way entirely by including more moments focused entirely on the Black students. Overall, I would definitely recommend

All We Were Promised

All We Were Promised by Ashton Lattimore, 368 pages

It's 1837 in Philadelphia, and after four years in the city, Charlotte's father James is finally establishing himself as a renowned businessman. The only catch is that Charlotte and James are runaway slaves from Maryland, and while James is passing as white, Charlotte has been stuck in the role of his black housemaid, unable to pursue the activism and education she longs for for fear of exposing her father's secrets. But when their former mistress arrives in town with one of their close friends still enslaved, Charlotte realizes that she must act to help free her friend and walk a tightrope to avoid getting herself or her father captured.

This book does a good job of highlighting the frustratingly slow abolitionist movement and the slaver-friendly laws in "free" states (for example, you could bring your slaves with you and keep them enslaved, as long as you didn't stay more than 6 months) in the years leading up to the Civil War. However, there were elements of the story that just felt a bit too unbelievable (particularly near the end), which took me out of the story. A better book on a similar topic is James by Percival Everett (check out my blog post for that here).

Washington Black

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, 333 pages

When he was young, George Washington Black was a field slave on a sugar plantation in Barbados. He was plucked from that misery (though still officially a slave) by Christopher "Titch" Wilde, a man of science and the brother of Wash's owner, who enlisted Wash to be his assistant. But an unexpected event causes Wash and Titch to flee Barbados to the frozen tundra of Canada, starting Wash on a new life dedicated to scientific observation and illustration. Along his journey, Wash slowly learns to look at the people in his life with the same critical eye that he uses when he draws mollusks and flowers. It's a wonderful journey of discovery, beautifully told. Edugyan shows masterful skill in weaving together the story of an escaped slave and the story of groundbreaking scientific history and invention. This is a great book, and it's no wonder it has received so many accolades. More are sure to come.

Pere Goriot

Pere Goriot / Honore de Balzac, various translations, 274 p.

The November choice for the Read the Classics Book Group, this one generated lots of discussion.  Goriot was one novel in the collection of loosely interconnected works that Balzac entitled The Human Comedy, which, if Wikipedia can be believed, contained 91 completed works including novels, stories, and novellas.  They concern the state of French society at the time of the Bourbon Restoration, after the fall and exile of Napoleon.

Father Goriot lives in a dingy Paris boardinghouse, where he is mocked by his fellow residents for being the poorest among them and for his fanatical love for his high-society daughters.  The reader meets the handsome young law student Rastignac, who lives at the same address and who falls in love with one of Goriot's daughters. Frequently humorous, but a bleak portrayal of human nature, vicious and petty.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Middlemarch by George Eliot
It was a lot of fun discussing this great book with lots of people this summer. A lot of reflective characters, and a lot of people (in Middlemarch) worrying what their neighbors think. I liked how Ladislaw, Dorothea, Mary, and Fred all end up. And I was surprised about the end of the relationship between Raffles and Bulstrode.
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The Water Seeker

The Water Seeker by Kimberly Willis Holt  305 pp.

This well written historical novel is the story of a boy growing to manhood in the early 1800s with a touch of magical realism thrown in. Amos Kincaid had a rough start in life. His mother died when he was born and his father was a trapper who was away most of the time. He was taken in by an relatives and neighbors only to lose them to illness. His father, Jake and his grandfather before him were born with the gift of dowsing, finding underground water using a forked tree branch. His father, however, sees the gift as a curse that would only tie him down and only uses his gift when absolutely necessary to make money. Because of his father's feelings about it, Amos hides the knowledge that he too has inherited the gift. After Jake returns from trapping with a new wife, a Shoshone woman named Blue Owl, he decides to take a job as a scout for a wagon train headed to Oregon. On the trip Amos matures in many ways, growing into a fine man who eventually finds his calling and the love of his life. 

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey, 379 pages.
Apparently Peter Carey can write, and write well, about anything and everything. I first read his "The True History of the Kelly Gang" about the infamous Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, several years ago and have since enjoyed pretty much everything he has written. His last book before this one, "His Illegal Self" was a wonderfully disjointed tale about a woman and the child of two 1960's radicals on the run together, with part of the story told from the lost, bewildered child's point of view. This tale, Parrot and Olivier, set largely in 1830's New York, felt like that to me (disjointed and bewildering, that is)for a long time, until I realized that the downloadable audio book I was listening to had the book out of order and it had started in the middle of the story. Even jumbled, though, it was a tale worth reading and listening to. With the fictional character Olivier de Garmont standing in for the real Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Larrit, aka Parrot, aka Perroquet, his sometime servant, traveling, each for his own reasons, from Paris to New York, we get to see the worlds that both men have lost and watch as they try to reclaim their pasts and their struggles to construct some kind of future. Both are extraordinary characters, misreading situations and each other as they make their way in the New World. One of my favorites of 2010.