Silver Sparrow (2011) by Tayari Jones

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Silver Sparrow (2011)

by Tayari Jones

Atlanta, Georgia

Georgia: 14/26

  Tayari Jones had a breakout hit in 2018 with her novel, An American Marriage, which was an Oprah's book club selection, a sales hit and a literary prize award winner.  I read it when it was released- a good example of a book that I would only read based on the attention of people like Oprah and the Prize Committee's, i.e. not a subject matter (race based injustice in the criminal justice system in the south) that I would seek out given my day job as a criminal defense attorney.   But I did read it, and I thought it was a well-written book.   Susan Straight, editor of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America did not select An American Marriage to represent Jones, but rather picked her third novel, Silver Sparrow, about the experience of two children growing up with a bigamist father.  

   I know Jones is a good writer, so I wasn't dreading Silver Sparrow the way I might have been, in light of the number of novels in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project that stick to the viewpoint of pre-adolsecent children who are stuck in a shitty living situation and never go anywhere or do anything while getting abused by their family members.  No one gets physically or sexually abused here, but the psychic scars of both families are front and center.  

   Like many of the novels that deal exclusively with family issues, I was left wondering why people bother with having kids and relationships if it is just going to bring them misery.  I know the answer: because every human being thinks things will work out for THEM.  Here, the Mom of the side family is particularly vexing as she copes with a situation that she walked into with eyes wide open.   Girl, I wanted to scream, don't do it.  

Appalache Red (1978) by Raymond Andrews

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

Appalache Red (1978) 

by Raymond Andrews

Muskhogean County, Georgia

Georgia (13/26)

     This is the half-way point for the Georgia chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  Currently I'm reading around the south of Georgia.  Muskhogean county is closer to Tallahassee, Florida than Atlanta by hundreds of miles.   This southern part of Georgia contains peach and pecan trees and swamps as well.  I enjoyed Appalache Red, the first of a four-part series about the goings-on in this part of Georgia.  It's more about the town than the eponymous Red, a Caucasian looking, African-American Entrepeneur who manages to turn a humble black-owned diner into a sprawling sin-embracing bar and casino.   I like the novels from the south that don't sugar-coat the cruelty and violence of this part of the world, and Red fits that bill, with plenty of rough talk and triggering behavior that probably explains why this book, and the author, are mostly forgotten today.  It even says that it won an award: The James Baldwin Prize, that the internet says doesn't even exist.

Unworthy Republic (2020) by Claudio Saunt

Audiobook Review

Unworthy Republic: 

The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (2020)

by Claudio Saunt

        Unworthy Republic is a 2020 Bancroft Prize (US history) winner about the removal of Native American tribes from the Eastern half of the United States.   It is a sad, sordid history, not simply limited to the more-or-less well known "Trail of Tears" but including similar removals from the old Northwest (today's Ohio/Wisconsin/Michigan) and Florida.  

        In law school I learned about the legal back and forth- tribes desperately seeking relief from the Congress and the United States Supreme Court over a period of decades with limited/no success.  I know about the result- the presence of dozens of tribes in the eastern half of Oklahoma who had no historical ties to the area.  What I learned from this book were the voices of those involved- the leaders of civilized tribes who thought the Federal government would protect them.  The bureaucrats and adventurers who were tasked with implementing the removal.  The state authorities in places like Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Florida, who come off the worst of the bunch and the voices of Americans from outside the South and old Northwest, who often stood in opposition to these policies.

    What strikes me most about the events in Unworthy Republic is the blood-thirstyness of the local population in places like Georgia, where fear mongering and simple greed let to the greatest atrocities- a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing if not genocide.  It's also hard not to link the events of Unworthy Republic with the large trends in American democracy during the same period, namely the rise of Andrew Jackson and enfranchisement of non-property holding Americans, making the dispossession of Native groups an attractive prospect for poor white Americans.