Patricia Hruby Powell

What is more important in life than love and death? In Martha Brockenbrough’s young adult novel, “The Game of Love and Death” (Arthur Levine 2015), Love is personified as a gentle man. And Death, a hard woman.

The story begins February 13, 1920 in Seattle with the birth of two babies—Henry who is white and Flora who is black. Love chooses Henry as his player and Death chooses Flora. The game begins. Love, the weaker of the two players, wins, if Henry falls in love and marries Flora. Death wins if they do not fall in love, at which point she’ll take Flora. The deadline is July 1937 when the players are seventeen.

Love and Death meet unexpectedly in Venice on a gondola ride. Death “looking like an angel in a long coat of winter-white wool” and wearing a red cashmere scarf looks seventeen in this incarnation. Love has chosen middle-age “a reflection of the weariness he felt with his lot,” having spent an eternity losing the game. Was Death beatable?

Back in Seattle, 1937, Henry’s well-to-do parents have long since died. His guardian is a rich cold newspaper owner whose son Ethan is Henry’s best friend. Ethan is a bit of a slacker, has never learned to read or write, but fortunately Henry takes up the slack and keeps Ethan’s secret both in school (by doing his homework) and by writing Ethan’s feature stories. Henry is a little too good to be believed, but Love is his guy, so why not? (Don’t ask me how Ethan does on his tests at school).

Flora, also an orphan, is raised by her loveable grandmother and uncle with whom she owns a nightclub. She’s a fabulous jazz singer and an aviatrix who would like to do what Amelia Earhart is doing. Death is her guy, so the odds are she’ll, well, die. Of course we all will. But when?

Henry does not fit into his family, but he has an outlet. He plays a mean stand up bass—mostly classical, but he does love his jazz.

Brockenbrough is confident, honest, inventive, and succinct when she embodies the characters Love and Death. For instance, Death is there when the Hindenburg burns. “Death plucked the rising souls like flowers, decorating her mind with the residue of human experience while the fire lit and warmed her face.” Death creates herself as Helen, Ethan’s capricious cousin, trying to win Henry’s love, in order to win the Game. Sometimes she sidles around the ankles of the players as a black cat.

Love creates himself as James Booth and wins Ethan’s heart—in order to draw him away from his loving Henry—Love’s attempt to win the Game.

Of course the odds are against Henry and Flora’s love in racist pre-war America. Love is weaker than Death. Will Love ever win the Game? The book itself is handsome, with each of its seventy-one chapters beginning on black matte paper printed in white ink.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker has recently been awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction as well as a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

“Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own” (Crown 2015), Kate Bolick’s adult memoir should be read by all women, but in particular, by young adult women. There are so many points to ponder and discuss.

About young adulthood, Bolick says: “When we “invented” adolescence as a sociological and developmental category in the 1950s, we robbed it of dignity, turning teenagers into a faceless mob of deranged hormones. In fact, it’s a noble and brave and terrible time . . .” And the perfect time to think about one’s future.

The word spinster once meant a woman who spun woolen thread as an occupation; in 1890 it has meant prostitute; and presently it has strong emotional connotations—usually derogatory—of a woman who can’t find herself a husband. In another feminist cultural history, “Writing a Woman’s Life” (Ballantine 1989), Carolyn Heilbrun calls an unmarried woman an “ambiguous” woman—one who chooses not to center her life on a man. Bolick prefers “spinster” feeling that its connotations are undeserved and “spinster” ought to be viewed as a destination.

“Spinster” begins: “Whom to marry, and when will it happen—these two questions define every woman’s existence, regardless of where she was raised or what religion she does or doesn’t practice.” This did not ring familiar to me, so I asked around and was told a myriad of experiences—all very interesting. Whereas the opening premise might not hold true, it’s a good starting point. What Bolick is getting at is that women generally see themselves in relation to men—and marriage.

Beginning with the poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Bolick writes about five “awakeners” —writers who guided her in her long coming-of-age quest. The others are essayist Maeve Brennan, columnist Neith Boyce, novelist Edith Wharton, and social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

All but the Irish Brennan came of age, roughly, between 1880 and 1920, a time which may have been “the single woman’s most glorious moment yet.” Women had struggled for suffrage, and upon achieving the vote in 1920, their mission petered out. Interesting.

Bolick entitles one chapter, “Are women people yet?” Looking through the lens of the five awakeners and their century-old but familiar-enough-to-be-contemporary experience, the author asks about a woman’s life. Does she control her life? We are reminded that having children is a choice. Women must be people first, and women second.

Bolick has several landmark thoughts concerning her own marrying. When in college, she assumed she’d marry by thirty, giving her time “to learn about the world before settling down.” To not do so, “would require a very good explanation, which I certainly didn’t have.” However, when she reached thirty, she wasn’t ready. Now she is forty something and still a spinster and intends to stay so, although she is presently in love with a man.

The book ends with a quote from a Mary Oliver’s poem: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?” Good question.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker has recently been awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction as well as a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

Marilyn Nelson tells a story of growing up black, in the fifties, as her family criss-crosses the nation to follow her father’s air force career in “How I Discovered Poetry” (Dial 2014).

From Ohio they move to Connally Air Force Base, Texas. Nelson writes “I’m the new girl in Dick and Jane country . . . the other children faceless as grown-ups . . . We ducked and covered underneath our desks . . . from the hide dragen bomb.”

We’re reminded of a very early understanding of death—the narrowness of early life—when a relative dies. “They said she was in that box. She was dead . . . When you die, you go to a different school.”

Nelson’s family makes history in Smoky Hill AFB, Kansas, 1954, when her Mama, in “Career Girl,” “ . . . teaches second grade in the base school. Her all-white class may be a Negro first.”

Nelson’s childhood ruminations often remind me of mine. Her mother who grew up in Indian Country had a Creek boy as a sweetheart. Her father says, “‘Marilyn, you could have been named Pocahontas!’ The room disappears. A me with another name /An Indian me? How different could I be, and still be me?”

When the family is transferred yet again, they set out cross-country. “The miles enter my eyes and disappear like cigarette smoke from the car window.” She sympathizes with those living desolate houses they pass in “the boonies, far from any town . . .You could just . . . send a postcard signed, Be happy. God.”

            In Mather, California, she finds a Negro friend, Helene. A blond girl calls them the “N-word.” “Helene thumped a lump on her forehead before she was done.”

Poems switch from a universal childhood experience—playing horses or lying in in “wild poppies, dreaming as clouds unfold”—to a black experience—“They think brown is a contagious disease . . . A mob attacked a girl for going to school . . .” and a line later— “I’d give anything to have a pony!” in the poem, “Cloud-Gathering.”

In Kittering, Maine they live across from the library and a block from the ocean—a short-lived bliss. On the road to a new home, “Daddy corrects white men who call him boy.” In Sacramento, 1959, “I’m learning that Negro is a language I don’t speak . . . I get good grades because I’m curious and I like to read, and NOT because I’m “trying to be white.””

In Fort Worth, Texas “My all-black classmates act like I’m from mars. Are you the girl from California? Talk for us. And these boys act like I’m cute!” In Oklahoma with her three best friends—all white—“We’re a quartet of geeks.”

Young Marilyn Nelson wants to be a poet and makes a plea to the cosmos, “Give me a message I can give the world.” I think the cosmos answered her prayer.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker has recently been awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction as well as a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

“The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell” (St. Martin’s Press 2015) by William Klaber is based on the true story of Lucy Lobdell who became Mrs. George Slater and bore Helen Slater before becoming Joseph Lobdell in 1853. The author began his project as non-fiction about this historic figure before changing to the fictionalized “memoir” it has become. Although written for an adult readership, it’s a good match for young adults who are perhaps the first generation to consider transgender people as quite normal.

It wasn’t as easy for Joseph 150 years ago. Bear in mind that transgender does not refer to sexual orientation, but rather to one’s gender identity not matching one’s birth gender.

Lucy grew up in the relative wilderness of New York State, wearing britches, chopping wood, and hunting game for her family. Once grown, she wanted the freedom that men enjoyed, but instead, as many young girls will, married an abusive man, who deserted her. After a stint back home with her disdainful mother, Lucy binds her breasts, dresses as a man and moves away.

Living upstairs in a small-town saloon, Joseph teaches young ladies music and dancing. Lydia, his sole violin student, grows ever more attached to him, until the two are in love. Joseph is discovered and betrayed before he can reveal his secret to Lydia. Making a narrow escape he sets out alone for Minnesota where Lydia dreamed of raising horses with him.

Fleeing with his violin across the American wilderness, up the Mississippi on a barge, we find him playing his fiddle to entertain the rough-hewn homesteaders. He survives a harrowing Minnesota winter in a backwoods cabin, all the while the reader is learning about adventures and attitudes of 19^th century America.

Likeable mild Joseph befriends many men, but again is betrayed when the poor guy bathes in a pond. And is raped. This time he is arrested and tried for wearing men’s clothes. When he is acquitted, it looks like the townspeople will accept him, but another tragedy awaits him from his humiliated attacker.

Little is known about the next seven years of Joseph’s life except he lived in hovels, a broken person, while making his way back toward daughter Helen who was left at his parents’ house. Living in an almshouse no longer in disguise, but still wearing his comfortable britches, Joseph befriends another road-weary young woman. They become lovers and marry—he in disguise, of course.

You might consider this outline a spoiler, but you could read a version of Lucy/Joseph’s story on the book flap. The discovery is in the invention, honesty and compassion of the writing. The endnotes, concerning the research is as intriguing as the story itself.

My one objection is the author said nearly nothing about the problems of toiletries while Joseph lived in disguise. Even if he performed his bathing and eliminating in his room with a bedpan, at least, I’d like to have observed this scene. Maybe I’m too practical.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker has recently been awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction as well as a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

Tariq Johnson, African American, 16 years old, is fatally shot by Jack Franklin, white man, on the streets of an unnamed American city. A broad cast of characters each reports the incident differently, in Kekla Magoon’s “How It Went Down” (Holt 2014).

Brick, leader of the King gang is surprised but proud that Tariq was carrying a gun. But did Tariq have a gun, or was it a Snickers bar for his disabled sister Tina?

Brian Trellis, light-skinned brother who restrained Tariq as he got shot, watches the local news, says, “Every station’s got a different version of the story. Johnson had a gun. Johnson didn’t have a gun. Johnson robbed a store. Johnson was minding his own business.”

Junior, an imprisoned gang member watching the news upstate, says, “some brother got smoked by some whitey who’s gonna walk. So what else is new?” He doesn’t yet realize the brother is his boyhood friend Tariq.

Steve Conners says to his college bound stepson, Will, “If you dress like a hood, you will be treated like a hood . . . dress like a man. Simple as that.” Will (AKA eMZee) says, “You gotta have a hoodie to fit in.” As an anonymous graffiti artist, Will “tags” in the neighborhood (wearing a hoodie) while earning top grades in school.

Gang member Sammy, eager to find Jack Franklin, the white killer, says, “best way to . . . move up in the organization is to ice someone.”

Jennica, girlfriend to a gang member, holds Tariq as he takes his last breath. Later she says, “I don’t want it . . .watching the guys I know die at one another’s hands, the rest shrugging it off like it’s just another weekday, just another shooting.” She wants out of “the life.”

A fairly well-meaning churchman running for government office, Reverend Alabaster Sloan, comes from Washington to the neighborhood to bring attention to the needless killing and the injustice of the white man walking. He is center stage for Tariq’s funeral, helping the family. His popularity soars in the polls. He questions his own motives.

Cosmetician Kimberly does the Reverend’s make-up for TV shootings. He plies her with cocktails. Kimberly wonders if following the Reverend could be her way out of the slum.

Tyrell, once protected by Tariq, also bound for college, may never make it. He knows one false move will land him in the gang and throw him off his life course. What would Tariq have wanted? Does his sister Tina know what Tariq planned? Was he joining the gang?

There is so much to discuss in this book of racial strife. There is so much to learn about gang society in this Coretta Scott King Fiction Honor book.

 

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker has recently been awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction as well as a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com

“A Time to Dance” (Paulsen/Penguin 2014) by Padma Venkatraman is an insightful story about a dancer and a novel-in-verse set in a different culture—of course I’m going to review it.

Veda is a teenage Bharatanatyam dance student in India. At the onset, she is a competitive dancer who feels that “Pain is proof/ of my hard work,/ proof of my love for dance.” Veda feels the rhythm of the dance in every aspect of her life. When Paati, her beloved grandmother is “grating slivers of coconut for a tangy chutney,” Veda hears “thakka thakka thai” which is a perfect embodiment of the drum that accompanies Bharatanatyam dance.

Ma wishes Veda would study to become an engineer or a doctor. Dance is not practical for a middle-class girl. But wise spiritual Paati supports Veda’s dancing. And Pa doesn’t mind.

Shiva is the Hindi lord of Bharatanatyam and Veda’s hard-won trophy is made in His form. On the way home from the contest there is a terrible car accident. Veda loses her lower leg. Of course she is devastated.

            But now her true journey begins. Once she recovers from her initial depression and a young American doctor prepares her for and designs a special prosthesis, Veda is determined to dance again. She has a crush on the handsome doctor who took her through the worst of her ordeal. Once she recovers from his gentle rejection, she grows stronger.

Veda asks her best friend, “Do you believe in God? In Karma?” Chandra, on her way to a career in science responds, “Physics says every action has an equal and opposite reaction./ Karma is kind of the same, isn’t it?/ Good actions result in rewards, sooner or later. . .As for God . . .I see His cosmic dance of creation as the spinning of electrons within every atom. Science is God enough for me.”

Veda’s first dance teacher will not teach the newly “disabled” girl. But dancer Dhanam akka sees her as “differently-abled.” Akka tells Veda she has extraordinary courage, but not enough compassion—allow yourself to feel loss. She assigns Veda to the young teacher, Govinda. He sees dance as meditation and says, “Meditation isn’t about pushing your body,/ it’s about respecting it,/ the way you’d respect every other space within which God dwells.” So, as Veda falls in love with Govinda (whose parents disapprove of his dancing and wishes he’d be an engineer), she learns to dance spiritually—with more depth and therefore more satisfaction.

No matter your believe system, there is much profound wisdom in this well-told story and so much to learn from a culture outside the United States.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell’s book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker has recently been awarded a Sibert Honor for Nonfiction as well as a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration. talesforallages.com