false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg 5167 21 Lalita Tademy's riveting family saga chronicles four generations of women born into slavery along the Cane River in Louisiana. It is also a tale about the blurring of racial boundaries: great-grandmother Elisabeth notices an unmistakable "bleaching of the line" as first her daughter Suzette, then her granddaughter Philomene, and finally her great-granddaughter Emily choose (or are forcibly persuaded) to bear the illegitimate offspring of the area's white French planters. In many cases these children are loved by their fathers, and their paternity is widely acknowledged. However, neither state law nor local custom allows them to inherit wealth or property, a fact that gives <I>Cane River</I> much of its narrative drive. <p> The author makes it clear exactly where these prohibitions came from. Plantation society was rigidly hierarchical, after all, particularly on the heels of the Civil War and the economic hardships that came with Reconstruction. The only permissible path upward for hard-working, ambitious African Americans was indirect. A meteoric rise, or too obvious an appearance of prosperity, would be swiftly punished. To enable the slow but steady advance of their clan, the black women of <I>Cane River</I> plot, plead, deceive, and manipulate their way through history, extracting crucial gifts of money and property along the way. In the wake of a visit from the 1880 census taker, the aged Elisabeth reflects on how far they had come. <blockquote> When the census taker looked at them, he saw colored first, asking questions like single or married, trying to introduce shame where there was none. He took what he saw and foolishly put those things down on a list for others to study. Could he even understand the pride in being able to say that Emily could read and write? They could ask whatever they wanted, but what he should have been marking in the book was family, and landholder, and educated, each generation gathering momentum, adding something special to the brew. </blockquote> In her introduction, Tademy explains that as a young woman, she failed to appreciate the love and reverence with which her mother and her four uncles spoke of their lively Grandma 'Tite (short for "Mademoiselle Petite"). She resented her great-grandmother's skin-color biases, which were as much a part of Tademy's memory as were her great-grandmother's trademark dance moves. But the old stories haunted the author, and armed with a couple of pages of history compiled by a distant Louisiana cousin, she began to piece together a genealogy. The result? Tademy eventually left her position as vice president of a Fortune 500 company and set to work on <I>Cane River</I>, in which she has deftly and movingly reconstructed the world of her ancestors. <I>--Regina Marler</I> 2028071 book 2001 Cane River (Oprah's Book Club) total:4024|5:1331|4:1602|3:838|2:218|1:35| 4024 16048 5349 661 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 5 3 false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue May 29 14:17:54 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 12 13:10:43 -0700 2007
What shocked me most about th...more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 3 1 false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 13 08:03:05 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 13 08:41:57 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 4 1 false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Oct 01 08:16:00 -0700 2008 Thu Mar 12 11:37:37 -0700 2009 1 Cane River is a wonderful novel, which I highly recommend. I learned a lot about the slave/plantation/small farmer experience of Creole Louisiana. Especially interesting are the details about the gens de couleur libre and the long line of interracial unions (both forced and chosen) among Tademy's an...more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 4 1 false Wed Sep 03 18:49:03 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 05 13:18:25 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5156 0446615889 9780446615884 211 26 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517887m/5156.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5156.Cane_River 3 1 false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 07 12:38:49 -0800 2007 Mon Dec 10 18:19:42 -0800 2007 more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 5 1 false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Apr 03 11:19:20 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 03 11:21:42 -0700 2009 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 4 1 false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Dec 27 09:38:13 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 27 09:39:04 -0800 2008 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 4 0 false Wed Sep 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 07:54:42 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 09 08:04:19 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 4 0 false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 23 08:44:16 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 23 09:01:33 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 2 0 false Tue Dec 30 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 19 07:15:58 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 30 08:18:52 -0800 2008
Here's the blurb from Amazon:

"...more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 4 0 false Tue Apr 07 16:51:58 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 07 17:16:03 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 3 1 false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 28 21:15:07 -0700 2007 Sun Jul 29 13:26:03 -0700 2007
Her writing is not especially good, but from a historical perspective, it's a fantastic story, and an interesting way to really understand what sl...more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 5 0 false Fri Nov 27 16:20:57 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 27 16:41:26 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 2 0 false Tue Apr 22 00:00:00 -0700 2003 Tue Aug 11 07:25:50 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 11 07:26:32 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 5 0 false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sun Apr 19 10:23:53 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 19 10:30:45 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 5 0 true Sat Apr 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 07 13:38:40 -0800 2009 Sun Apr 05 06:34:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 5 0 false Mon Nov 09 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 09 12:13:05 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 10 10:00:09 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 2 0 false Tue Jul 19 00:00:00 -0700 2005 Sun Mar 22 11:20:51 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 08 17:35:05 -0700 2009
From back cover:

"On a Creole plantation on the banks of Louisiana's Cane River, four generations of astonishing women battle injustice to unite their family and forge success on their o...more...]]> 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 4 1 false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Thu Oct 16 14:03:24 -0700 2008 Wed Oct 22 13:31:29 -0700 2008 5167 0446678457 9780446678452 3553 607 3.99 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517911m/5167.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5167.Cane_River 5 1 false Sat Mar 01 13:38:45 -0800 2008 Thu May 15 20:34:12 -0700 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=5167