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A Novel
by Ntozake Shange, Ifa Bayeza
Book Reviewed by:Shange and Bayeza give us a monumental story of a family and of America, of songs and why we have to sing them, of home and of heartbreak, of the past and of the future, bright and blazing ahead.
Award-winning writer Ntozake Shange and real-life sister, award-winning playwright Ifa Bayeza achieve nothing less than a modern classic in this epic story of the Mayfield family. Opening dramatically at Sweet Tamarind, a rice and cotton plantation on an island off South Carolina's coast, we watch as recently emancipated Bette Mayfield says her goodbyes before fleeing for the mainland. With her granddaughter, Eudora, in tow, she heads to Charleston. There, they carve out lives for themselves as fortune-teller and seamstress. Dora will marry, the Mayfield line will grow, and we will follow them on a journey through the watershed events of America's troubled, vibrant history - from Reconstruction to both World Wars, from the Harlem Renaissance to Vietnam and the modern day. Shange and Bayeza give us a monumental story of a family and of America, of songs and why we have to sing them, of home and of heartbreak, of the past and of the future, bright and blazing ahead.
Thorough dedication to their title theme transforms Some Sing, Some Cry into an unusually textured examination of mothers and daughters, as well as the shifting currents that guide them... For all the social brutality it exposes, and for all its intimate, more domestic griefs, Some Sing, Some Cry is not intended as a dark retrospective. In the midst of cruel circumstances, the women reinvent themselves with verve, maintaining a spirit of creativity as well as their own interpretations of dignity...continued
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(Reviewed by Karen Rigby).
The Gullah (known as Geechee in Georgia and Florida) are descendants of West African slaves, whose numbers today range from 200,000-500,000.
The Gullah region traditionally extends along the coast from SE North Carolina, through Georgia to Northern Florida, including the Lowcountry region and its Sea Islands (see map at bottom left).
Geographic isolation, a marshy, malarial environment that often led to absentee plantation owners, and the fostering of close community ties allowed a distinct creole culture to develop. After the Civil War and emancipation, the Gullah's isolation increased as few outsiders were attracted to the area, and labor issues and a series of devastating hurricanes caused rice planters to abandon their farms....
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If you liked Some Sing, Some Cry, try these:
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
by Honorée Fannone Jeffers
Published 2022
The 2020 National Book Award–nominated poet makes her fiction debut with this magisterial epic - an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer - that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War ...
by Michael Chabon
Published 2017
Following on the heels of his New York Times bestselling novel Telegraph Avenue, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon delivers another literary masterpiece: a novel of truth and lies, family legends, and existential adventure - and the forces that work to destroy us.
Annette Gordon-Reed, author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
In this epic saga, the sister-sister author combination of Bayeza and Shange offers a richly detailed and boldly colored account of one family's experience in slavery and its legacies for the generations that followed. Some Sing, Some Cry is both moving and arresting.
