trigger warnings: incest, child death, rape
My relationship with this book is quite complicated. I was extremely excited to read this book, but it left me feeling somewhat flat. The story itself was fascinating, one that I feel needed to be told. But although I love a long book done well, this felt somehow both too much and too little at the same time. The “too much” comes from the fact that there were many parts that felt more like filler than moments that really added to the story. The “too little” came from the rather vignette-style chapters. They were often rather short, a snapshot of a moment, over before I could really get to know the characters within. This wasn’t helped by the lack of many time markers, beyond a general year. I felt as if I never truly got to know Dolly (aka Dorothy), nor the large cast of characters in her life that were important.
And that is a shame as Dorothy Kirwan Thomas was a powerful and influential woman of color who was driven to succeed in a world and time that didn’t want that to happen. She was extraordinary, both as a woman in a world dominated by men, but more importantly as a person of color. She was driven, ambitious, and incredibly inspiring.
It also felt as if there was often too much attention paid to the intricacies of Dolly’s romances. They were important to her story, of course, but it felt as if the focus on them came at the expanse of pushing the story of her way to freedom and success to the side. And that was the part I wanted to know more about. It felt almost disrespectful to reduce her story to that of her relationships with men, as if her interactions were the most important thing about who she was.
All of that being said, there were some incredibly poignant moments, moments that really made me think. Here are a few quotes that really stuck out to me. Some because they were eye-opening, some because they are profoundly true, some that spole to me as a woman.
-The white man wants to blame his sins on colored women. His depravity is our fault. If we take the abuse just to live another day, they say we are the seducers. They write the history.
-A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
-If not for Charlotte, I’d turn around and pretend I didn’t see this, how free colored fell into the ways of owning folks just like the whites.
-Somewhere on my journey, I started to love me. I won’t ever stop. My girls needed to love themselves, too, and to believe they were worthy of their dreams.