Expedition to the Baobab Tree by Wilma Stockenstrom

A baobab tree is an enormous species of tree native to, among other places, South Africa. In Expedition to the Baobab Tree by Wilma Stockenstrom, an unnamed slave woman in an unspecified time (the Dutch began importing slaves into South Africa in 1658) is forced to take shelter in the hollow trunk of a baobab tree after she finds herself alone in the African bush. When her master and his wealthy friend had set out on an expedition to find a mysterious inland city, she accompanied them. The unknown territory they ventured into proved to be more dangerous than thought. One by one the members of the party die or disappear, eventually leaving the woman alone. Unfamiliar with the veldt, she does not venture far from the baobab tree. Knowing little about living off the land, she uses her time to scrounge for food and water. While sheltering within the tree, she recalls her past life in a series of non-chronological flashbacks, ending with her childhood abduction by slave traders. A beautiful woman, she was used as a sex slave, purchased by one wealthy man after another. Her life was not as physically difficult as some slaves’, but nevertheless, it was slavery.  Her time and her body were not her own and her children were sold. A South African poet, Wilma Stockenstrom is able to describe the dehumanizing horrors of slavery in a measured tone. Expedition to the Boabab Tree tells a harsh story with gentle language. 

Check out Expedition to the Boabab Tree @ the library!

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride is the winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction. A historical novel set in an extremely difficult and violent period in our nation’s past, it tells the story of abolitionist John Brown and his single-handed, single-minded effort to end slavery in the United States. In the late 1850’s John Brown led a small band of armed raiders into Kansas, intent on kidnapping slaves and freeing them. The narrator of this book is Henry Shackleford, a young slave boy taken by Brown after a gun fight kills both his father and master. Because Henry is dressed in a sack, common attire for slave children, Brown believes him to be a girl and no amount of argument can dissuade him. This delusion symbolizes Brown’s fatal flaw: “He never remembered nothing but what he wanted to, and didn't tell himself nothing but what he only really wanted to believe.” Eventually Henry (Henrietta) embraces his girlhood because it keeps him out of the violence and battles Brown seeks out. For nearly four years, Henry travels with Brown and his group of abolitionists. He grows to know Brown well. He sees him clearly for who he is— a sincere, deeply religious, self-righteous, well-intentioned, dangerous man who had no doubt about his mission. He listened to the counsel of no man, only that of his God. And his God always told him what he wanted to hear. Eventually Brown abandons his raids to free slaves and plans instead to start a war for this cause. He tries to raise an army of Negroes. Blind to the fact that most of the Negroes, slave and free, have too much common sense to follow a mad man’s folly, he persists with his plan. His first move is to raid the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry to secure rifles and ammunition for his troops. This is also his last move. His delusions finally catch up with him. Out manned and outgunned, most of his “army” is killed and Brown is captured. Henry, still disguised as a girl, manages to escape and lives to tell his tale many years later. John Brown was imprisoned and hung but the fear he inspired among Southern whites is believed to have been a cause for the later secession and Civil War in the United States.  It is not easy to write a humorous book about tragedy and suffering, but James McBride manages the right ironic tone to successfully tell John Brown’s story. 

Check out The Good Lord Bird @ the library!

(Or over at the Morning News Tournament of the Books...)

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

This new novel by the acclaimed author of The Secret Life of Bees tells the unlikely stories of two very different women in 19^th century Charleston.  Spanning more than thirty years, Kidd reveals the lives of Sarah Grimké: middle child in a large, wealthy South Carolina family and Hetty Handful Grimké: a slave owned by the Grimké family.  We begin in 1803 around the time of Sarah’s eleventh birthday.  The young girl is presented with two very different gifts: a chance to graduate from the nursery into her very own bedroom and a slave for her own personal maid.  Immediately Sarah tries to refuse the second “gift” from her mother.  This only ends in Sarah embarrassing her mother in front of a bunch of guests and having to write out many apology letters.

Late that same evening, Sarah sneaks into her father’s study to copy out a manumission document in order to free Hetty Handful outright.  Her father is a very important lawyer.  Surely he will carry out her wishes? Sarah remarks “What could Father do but make Hetty’s freedom as legal and binding as her ownership?  I was following a code of law he’d fashioned himself!” But when Sarah finds the document torn in two and lying in front of her bedroom door the next morning, she knows that helping Handful obtain her freedom will be more difficult than she’d imagined. 

Kidd allows us to see the two girls grow in friendship though their backgrounds are very different.  But Kidd also allows the reader a glimpse into the horror and brutality of slavery.  As we get to know Handful, we see that her mother Charlotte has dreams of freedom.  Though the woman is an expert seamstress and clearly the most valuable slave in the Grimké home, she is not content.  After years of bowing, scraping, and saving money from odd jobs outside the household, Charlotte disappears.  Handful, while heartbroken that she has been left behind, hopes that her mother is living somewhere as a free woman. 

Sarah grows and changes as the years go by.  She begs to become the godmother of her youngest sister, Nina, and her influence on the child is very apparent.  While Sarah quietly changes her religious views and begins to study abolition, Nina is a girl of outspoken and firm conviction.  After both women are jilted by potential husbands, the two join forces and become the first female voices for abolition; travelling all over the northern states speaking to other women about their views. 

Kidd has found an interesting way to bring the very real Grimke sisters to life.  Readers who enjoy historical fiction will not be disappointed in Kidd’s third novel.  TheInvention of Wings is available everywhere on January 7th, 2014.