jo's Reviews > Libertie

i listened to the beautiful audio version of this book so i don't know what it would be like to read it. it is slow, but the slowness didn't bother me. it carefully builds an inner story, a story of personal growth, and it's so centered on the interior life of libertie that many words are needed. but as i said i listened to it, and when listening one is more patient, or at least i am.

i found this book so damn painful. a lot of the pain is not explained.

[SPOILERS FROM HERE TO THE END]:

why is libertie's mother so tortured? she wants a daughter she doesn't have and both loves and rejects the one she has. later in the book, at some point, we learn she got into charity work (i don't know how else to call it: she is a doctor who helps slaves escape to the north) because a friend persuaded her. at some point though she seems to reject the principles that underpin this charity by agreeing to have a segregated clinic in which white women allow her to treat them because she is fair skinned and could pass for white. what is going on with her? she wants her daughter to be a doctor while at the same time not allowing her daughter to help her in the clinic (she helped her while she was practicing at home) because she is too dark and her white patients would not tolerate it.

she admires deeply a young doctor who practices with her while libertie is in college and can't stop talking about him (he is also very fair), but when libertie marries him she is so upset she all but breaks up with them both. what is going on? why?

i wish we were told why so much hurt runs back and forth between mother and daughter. maybe we were told but i missed it.

then poor libertie is forced to share a house with a serial rapist (a bishop at that) and a sister in law who has to pretend to be mad to escape her father's abomination. perhaps she becomes mad for real. we are not told. what is going on? what is the place of this turn of events in the story?

eventually, with the help of two lovely lesbian friends, libertie leaves husband and abusive house and returns home. is the mother now a loving mother? will she accept her for who she is? i am not sure we get told.

i confess this book was hard for me. so much sorrow, so much being stuck. it's a beautiful book, but if you ply your protagonist and my hero with so much hurt i want to understand a little better what the hell is going on.

i would like to say, also, that there are not many novels (that i know!) that deal with this particular period in history -- the last years of slavery, the early years of the reconstruction, the Black flight to haiti, and it was super interesting to learn more about it all. the whole issue of colorism -- so painful, so horrible. greenidge may not tell us fully what happens to libertie, but she trains a very clear eye on the horrors of white supremacy. timely.