Throughout history classes during my time in school, I was told of slavery, and the contempt that remained towards African-Americans in the south long after slavery was abolished. I was told of segregation, and cruelty, and violence and murder. All of this struck a chord with me as wrong, but the books we were given to read were never instrumental in evoking the rage and sadness these events merited. The acts themselves, and the paragraphs they elicited in our history books sufficed in that regard. Then I read Martha Taylor's In the Land of Cotton. I couldn't put this book down for a second. I read it from start to finish with very little interruption. The book reads as a novel, and so is thoroughly captivating in that regard, but then I realized that it's not fiction at all. It's Ms. Taylor's life story growing up during the Civil Rights Movement.
The book begins in 1956 with a young Martha telling of her life in Tennessee, where she lives with her affluent grandparents while her parents and younger sister reside in Arkansas. Her parents move to Tennessee and she moves back in with them into a suburb with identical housing, much different than the world she inhabits with her grandparents. One thing they both have in common, however, is their disdain for and distrust of the African-American neighbors. As you'll find within the first few chapters, that distrust and disdain should have been held for someone far closer to home.
Martha's father has always had trouble holding down a job, but after finding a job he hires Lucy to be a caretaker for Martha and her sister, while he and his wife are at work. Lucy quickly becomes a confidante to Martha, and Martha doesn't see her as the maid or the nanny but as a friend, and later as part of her family. Martha and Jimmy, a friend in the neighborhood, like to explore as a means to escape their home lives, and one day Martha finds a road and eventually convinces Jimmy to explore with her. It isn't long before Martha is going alone, and she finds the road leads to Lucy's home and family.
Although hesitant at first to let Martha stay and visit for obvious reasons, eventually she's welcomed with open arms by Lucy, Lucy's mother,Mammy Grace, and the patriarch of the family, Uncle Jesse. One person she develops a close kinship with immediately is Lucy's nephew Silas. Martha being there isn't always smooth sailing as told in one heartbreaking incident. Eventually, the friendship between Silas and Martha develops into more, much to the the dismay of all involved, including Silas who knows he has no place in Martha's world during the height of the Civil Rights movement, in the south no less. Martha's family moves to Texas, and reeling from the amount of loss in his life, Silas moves to Chicago. They keep in touch mainly through Martha's weekly calls to Lucy, but eventually find their way back into the other's life. After all, they've never left each other's hearts.
The goings-on of the era are highlighted extensively throughout the telling of her story, from Kennedy to Martin Luther King to Vietnam, space expeditions and Malcolm X. Before I realized this wasn't fiction, I silently applauded Ms. Taylor's research. But it wasn't research, it was something she lived through. And I think that is the key difference between this and so many other books I've read that take place in this era. Ms. Taylor opens the curtains to show us not just the world as it was then, but her world as it was then. Taking place over the course of twelve years, it's both eye opening and incredibly heart breaking. I cannot recommend picking up this book enough.
Posted by Ashley
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2 comments:
Thank you for the review. This book sounds amazing. I'm definitely adding this to my "to read" list.
Your review is great! I would love to read this one.
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