Dear Women of Wisdom,
Yes, we are meeting at 6:30 PM. at Panera. The book we read for February was Good Things I Wish You by A. Manette Ansay. I am so sorry I didn't email. Makenzie, Vince, and Timmy are coming home this week and I have been trying to prepare for them as well as study for my Principal's test, work on my Yoga Teacher Training, and keep up with my lesson plans at school. Oh, and I forgot to add how many hours I wasted researching for a good price on airline tickets to Italy which by the way I never found a good deal. Anyway, I kept meaning to get around to writing, but it never happened. This month, I want to get everyone hooked into my phone for a group text message in case this happens again. I hope you can all make it.
Since, to no surprise, I never finished January's book Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambly, I appointed Becky group leader for the meeting. Others in attendance were Cheryl, Ginnie, Jody, Mary Beth, and, of course, me. We all had a difficult time staying with the book because of the historical setting’s Mardi Gras celebration where a countless array of characters were in disguise. However, Becky insists that if we continue to “wade” through the book the characters are unmasked and their true identities are revealed.
We will learn, Becky adds, that the costumes or disguises are symbolic of the main theme: “People are not who you think they are; everyone wears a mask.” This reminds me of Shakespeare’s quote from his play, As You like It: “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” Do you think maybe Hambly borrowed a little of Shakespeare’s timeless plot to write her book? If she did, she wouldn’t be the first.
One thing Becky and I both found interesting in Free Man of Color was the vocabulary. If you read only the forward of the book, you will learn a history of cultural terms used for the mixed races of people in New Orleans during the story’s time setting. For instance:
mulatto for a child with one white parent and one black parent
griffe or sambo for a child with one mulatto parent and one full black parent
quadroon for a child with one mulatto parent and one full white parent
octoroon for a child with one quadroon parent and one white parent
musterfino for a child with one octoroon parent and one full white parent
I think it’s funny that during the early 1830’s it was more offensive to call a black person “black” than “colored.” The terms people used then truly distinguished people by their class in society and the expectations in etiquette for each class. We discussed at book club how much of the prejudice between classes still exists in the south and many of us have seen it, especially Jody who lived in the south for a time. We also remembered our book The Help where we learned in despicable details about the 1960’s, when the distinction between races was still very evident.
To finish my response to A Free Man of Color, I’ll end with a quote Becky chose for us from the book: “But with all its faults – with my family and the Americans coming in and … and all else – New Orleans is my home.” We are all accepting of the faults of our family and roots of our home. “Not Africa, nor Paris, but here this place where he had grown up.” (Thoughtfully consider this quote, and be ready to discuss it tonight!)
Yours in Reading,
Tammy
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