Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow

by Dedra Johnson

"Reading Dedra Johnson's Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow, I was fully in the presence of the mind, heart and soul of a richly rendered, fascinating fictional character. I knew I was also in the presence of the brillian voice and sensibility of a major new American writer. This is an important novel by a true artist."-- Robert Olen Butler "Dedra Johnson has caught something wonderful in Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow. She writes brilliantly about childhood, New Orleans, the intricacies of a vexed family life. Sandrine is a remarkable debut novel that will catch your heart."-- Frederick Barthelme Despite being a straight-A student and voracious reader, eight-year old Sandrine Miller is treated as little more than a servant by her mother, who forces Sandrine to clean house, do chores and take care of her younger half sister, Yolanda. On top of the despair of her life at home, Sandrine must confront growing up against the harshness of life in 1970s-era New Orleans, where men in cars follow her home from school and she is ostracized because she is a light-skinned black girl. The only refuge Sandrine has against her bleak world is spending summers with her beloved grandmother, Mamalita. After Mamalita’s death, Sandrine realizes that she must escape from her mother, from New Orleans, from everything she has known, if she is to have any kind of future. In the tradition of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker's The Color Purple , Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow is a brilliant debut from an important new African-American voice in literary fiction. A native and current resident of New Orleans, Dedra Johnson received her MFA from the University of Florida, where she was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow was a runner-up for the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award in 2006.

Genres: Fiction

220 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

my gut told me i loved this book after i read it, but the more i think about it, the more things nag at my brain - just stylistic things that i wasn't totally in love with. so i'm going to stop thinking about it because while i was reading it, i was loving it. and i would definitely read another book by this author. least helpful book review ever...

come to my blog!

[Dedra]

I mean, it is my novel.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had this book on my to read shelf for years. I don't know why I waited so long to read it! I stayed up until 1:00 am to finish it, I could not put it down. Dedra Johnson is an amazing storyteller ....I felt like I was there in 1970's Ninth Ward. The story is so emotional and detailed...sad, horrific, beautiful....and I wonder how fictitious Sandrine actually is.

Great first novel, I look forward to reading more of Johnson's works in the future.

[Betsy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a powerful, unrelenting read with an amazingly resilient narrator who has seen and experienced more than most girls her age (10 by the end of the book) and yet somehow comes through the other side with an intact ego after suffering physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of several different adults in her life. For me, this book lost its momentum in the last 40 pages or so when Sandrine finally finds a home with caring or at least benign adults in her life but the ending remains fairly ambiguous and somehow not as satisfying for this reader as the earlier parts of the novel. I also wish that the character of Sandrine's father was a bit better fleshed out. I wondered why he was blind to the abusive behavior of both his current girlfriend at the time and Sandrine's mother and yet later came back to "rescue" Sandrine while still being mostly self-absorbed by the long hours he puts in as a rural doctor for an impoverished community. On the last page of the book, he acknowledges that he knew something bad was going on since she was three years old yet he didn't act on it until so many years later. The most positive (living) adult in the book is Kiswana,a woman who works at the clinic with her dad, and brings Sandrine books to read and encourages her to be a kid and have friends (something her stern mother never allowed). The New Orleans setting of much of the book also is a powerful character in the book.

I look forward to more books from this very promising writer.

[Bob Redmond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked almost everything about this book. Practically every sentence matters. Dialogue is not extraneous. The characters are drawn deeply. The story bears telling. It's not flashy, but indelible; not breathless, but patient and steadily revealing in the drama of a young life.

The story is of a grade schooler named Sandrine, whose endures and possibly survives a New Orleans childhood of neglect, abuse, and opportunity--most of this last, self-made. Whether or not it is ultimately redeeming I won't spoil by suggesting. The voice is Sandrine's, and of all the gifts Johnson brings to the writing, probably the most impressive is the progressive aging of Sandrine's voice (and thoughts), from age eight to twelve.

The book reminds me of Lynda Barry's CRUDDY in its impact, its blunt descriptions of the real horrors of some childhoods. Johnson (like Barry) made me care more about the characters; in fact the last time I cared this much about characters in a book was re-reading Harper Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD--and this book does not suffer from the comparison.

*

WHY I READ THIS BOOK: Booking writers for an event in Seattle involving New Orleans writers, I came across Johnson's name and book. (She made my list of six NOLA writers to invite, and agreed to be part of "Bilocal" in November 2010.)

[Avery · Rating 5 out of 5]

I simply could not put this book down.
Notes of Toni Morrison with a little bit of revenge fantasy.. just incredible work.

[Open Loop Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nine-year-old girl wakes up on the morning she is to leave her mother’s New Orleans home. Sandrine Miller will spend the summer with her father, and she will visit her grandmother, who she adores most of all, who lets her bring the collard greens in from the garden, teaches her to make jam, takes her to the library for more of the books she loves. Sandrine can already feel the strength in her grandmother’s fingers working cornrows into her hair. Even so, anxiety dilutes Sandrine’s excitement: will her mother discover her? She is standing on a stool, wiping down the tops of the kitchen cabinets, early, before her mother (Sandrine hopes) is awake, righting an oversight, that, if caught, would be considered a grave one. Will her mother keep Sandrine in New Orleans as punishment?

“I stopped in the doorway, my clothes for the drive still on the floor where they had fallen off when Mama picked up the suitcases; I tucked the clothes under my arm. ‘You keep your mouth shut. He asks you about me or this house you just say ‘fine,’ hear me?’ When I left, she was muttering, ‘He don’t want to live with me, he don’t get to know what goes on in my goddamn house…’” (Pg. 3)

So begins Sandrine’s Letter to Tomorrow, Dedra Johnson’s impeccable first novel, hopeful and hurtful by turns, where reader and narrator walk together along a path of prose that wends its way through Sandrine’s troubling childhood.

Through Sandrine we encounter the quandaries of adult authority, explore the specter of loneliness, and observe unusual resilience in the face of trouble, all of which compels us to examine questions of responsibility: of adults to children, of children to themselves, of readers to the characters they learn to love.

“Mama cooked breakfast every morning before work and I ate just enough to stop the pains in my stomach. Soon I’d be eating biscuits and grits and hard-rind bacon and homemade jelly every morning for the rest of my life. In church on Sunday I stood, kneeled, said words without thinking about them until it was time to go home and even though I usually couldn’t wait for Lent each year because once a week our class did the Stations of the Cross and I could look at the stained-glass windows showing the Mysteries up close, the paper-white Jesus, the drops of blood, Mary’s face turned up to heaven, begging God to save her son just for her, no other reason, just because she loved Him and wanted Him, I didn’t even glance at the windows and didn’t care about any of it. (Pgs. 67 – 68)”

We come to know Sandrine as we know the interior angles of our own assumptions. Yet we also know her as we know the child who sits beside our son at school, the girl we see, day in and day out, at the library, the one we caught once out on the sidewalk admonishing her sister. Dedra Johnson has affected a difficult, disconcerting, yet delicious writerly effect: the unreliable narrator. Sandrine tells us what’s happening, accurately renders her encounters, but does so in a voice that reflects a child’s vision of the world. It is us, Dedra Johnson’s readers, who recognize another layer of meaning; we know Sandrine’s challenges should not be hers to face alone. Thus we are bound to her, and to each other, by our concern: Will anyone step in? Are we the one’s who must do our best to help?

It is in this way we recognize the power of fiction—that it compels us to care for those who are, in fact, imagined, that it shows us the most difficult things and makes it possible to look. Fiction is a window through which we view the experience of others, those whose lives may be different from our own, but who we are drawn to through the fact of our mutual humanity. It is this gift that Dedra Johnson gives her readers: a character that elicits our compassion, who reminds us that that the power for change lies in what draws us beyond the borders of the self.

~Carlin M. Wragg, Editor
Open Loop Press

[Ig Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...the dialogue is fast and lively, and Sandrine’s first-person narrative delivers immediate, searing drama."—Booklist

"[An:] aching debut...[with:] echoes of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings..." —Publisher's Weekly

“Reading Dedra Johnson’s Sandrine’s Letter to Tomorrow, I was fully in the presence of the mind, heart, and soul of a richly rendered, fascinating fictional character. I knew I was also in the presence of the brilliant voice and sensibility of a major new American writer. This is an important novel by a true artist.”—Robert Olen Butler

“Dedra Johnson has caught something wonderful in Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow. She writes brilliantly about childhood, New Orleans, the intricacies of a vexed family life. Sandrine is a remarkable debut novel that will catch your heart.”—Frederick Barthelme

Despite being a straight-A student and voracious reader, nine-year old Sandrine Miller is treated like a servant by her mother, who forces Sandrine to clean house, do chores and take care of her younger half sister, Yolanda. On top of the despair of her life at home, Sandrine must confront up against the harshness of life in mid-1970s New Orleans, where older men prey on young girls and she is ostracized because she is a light-skinned black girl. The only refuge against her bleak world is spending summers with her beloved grandmother, Mamalita. After Mamalita’s death, Sandrine realizes that she must escape from her mother, from New Orleans, from everything she has ever known, if she is to have any kind of future. In the tradition of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Sandrine’s Letter to Tomorrow is a brilliant and uplifting debut from an important new voice in African-American fiction.

A native and current resident of New Orleans, Dedra Johnson received her MFA from the University of Florida, where she was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. Sandrine’s Letter to Tomorrow was a finalist for the 2006 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Award.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sandrine is coming of age in 1970's New Orleans.

All she wants is to be loved and cared for, but after Mamalita, her grandmother, dies, no one seems to want her. Her own mother, Shirleen doesn't seem to want her. She only seems to value Sandrine's labor and hits her wth a paddle if everything isn't done to her satisfaction ... or if Sandrine speaks certan truths. Her father is a busy doctor who has room in his life for his mean-spirited new wife and her hapless young daughter, but seems to have no room for Sandrine.

After Mamalita's death, Sandrine comes to realize that Shirleen seems to actively hate her, even blaming her for the unwanted attention from adult men, which she is trying desperately to avoid. Sandrine feels she would be safer away from Shirleen and moves in with her father who has left his wife, but still has no time for Sandrine.

This was an outstanding debut novel. It was written in a strong, clear voice and told with such immediacy that it felt as if the author were telling her own story, which she most likely was. Whether or not she was, though, she did an excellent job of bringing the reader into her - or Sandrine's world.

[ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

i haven't finished it quite yet, but i like it. it has a smooth tone, and digs deep into the skin. she had a troublesome childhood to say the least, and sometimes you want to put it down because some of the stuff that happens to her, but you can't, i think it gets to you like that. and then i was finished and felt it even more, that this was a good book. if i could do something like this, i would do it in the same way. i wouldn't change it. i think she found the right form, for what she was trying to say. it also brings to the surface, all those problems with the color of one's skin, because she is light skinned, and everybody was giving her all kinds of grief, and she couldn't just be her self, but there is a possibility that we are growing past all that, because she was writing in like the 70's, in a city that was on the brink of change, or maybe on the brink of destruction.

[Nupur · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the story of a young girl, light-skinned African American girl, who grew up raising herself in a dysfunctional household and deals with issues well beyond her age. The book start put promising, but lost its way in the middle. While the plot, characters and situations were well drawn out, the pace of the book was very disappointing for me; I don't need half the book to describe the same things over and over again to understand the protagonist's point of view. Nevertheless, what I did like about the book was the focus on Sandrine's hope - how she dreams of and actually does move away into a better situation and doesn't give up hope when there is no sight of it.

The best part about the book is right in the end when Sandrine writes bravely to her mother, putting the blame exactly where it belongs.

[OOSA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't Judge Me

"Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow" is the story of a young girl who grew up raising herself in a dysfunctional household. The book provided a perspective look into the childhood of young, light-skinned, African American female dealing with issues such as how she was mistreated as young girl by both peers and family. "Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow" was an overall good book. It is a story that is very plausible in the African American community. I believe a lot of people, especially older generations, could relate to the story.

Reviewed by: Pam

[Joella Tunnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story told by a 10 year old black girl in New Orleans whose mother does not want her. She is a straight A student, but so light skinned that even the kids at school avoid her. She is made to do all the housework, cooking, take care of her younger stepsister and still gets beatings from her mother. And she lives in a neighborhood where black men regularly prey on young girls. She finally escapes to be with her father, a doctor in a poor area of Mississippi. Here she comes to realize her worth.

[Heather Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Making the reality of southern poverty and black culture readable is an impressive feat. Sandrine's point of view, though she is a child throughout the text, is mature. She handles varied abuse with such grace as a dynamic child character among stoic characters of both children and adults. The coming of age story line is sometimes stunted as scenes shift quickly, but the segments come together to a completion. I like that the character is an avid reader and uses her cultural history to make sense of the world. In the end, we witness our heroine overcome abuse with hope for a better future.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dedra Johnson takes a somewhat ordinary story of a young girl who comes of age amidst a life of poverty and abuse and makes it extraordinary with a terrific narrator (Sandrine). Her strength, resilience, and wisdom at such a young age (she's only 10 or 11 by the end of the book) is amazing. I felt that Johnson was uneven in her attention to subplots -- some seemed to go on too long, and others not long enough -- but Sandrine alone makes this book worth reading.

[Lyric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful story with an engaging narrator. Reading the book's description was enough to, naturally, hook me and reel me in. The author's prose is beautifully written and I believe that she greatly executed the task of giving each character a voice and dialogue that's character-specific. Shirleen's dialogue is eloquently abusive. While I enjoyed the story, the last forty or so pages just did not "do" it for me. I found myself reading even faster so I could finish the novel.

[Yolanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Book--very vividly written--I could see in my mind's eye everything that was going on, which made it a hard read at times. Felt sick to my stomach when Sandrine experienced abuse and just wanted her to get free. Very important story about overcoming the seemingly impossible to discover one's own strength and ability to continue to hope.

[Beth Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this one on a recent tip from an acquaintance. It is the story of a young girl growing up in New Orleans (with her mother) and in Mississippi (with her father). Set in the '70s, it details Sandrine's navigation of her world, avoiding bad men, trying to come to terms with abuse at the hands of her neglectful mother, and forging a relationship with her father.

[Yvonne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well told story about a 10yr old forced to grow up to early.

Of course I don't don't recall how my mind worked as a 10yr old, but I felt like it was pretty close and that the characters were believable.

[Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked how the author spun this tale. I must say that the plot was a little too close to home for me - too much like the kids I work with. I didn't enjoy it the way I thought I would. Well-written and beautiful though.

[Stephanie G.]

Sandrine is a hopeful child who just wants to be with her Mamalita forever. Sandrine's letter to tomorrow is a book that shows me that I have to believe that the next day will be better than the previous.

[Joanna Folger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like I experienced every possible human emotion while reading this book, moving through sadness, anxiety, and rage until finally landing on joy and triumph at the beautiful ending. Wonderful reading experience.

[Maya Hollinshead · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read in a long time. I was pulling for Sandrine the entire book. I just wanted to grab her out of her situation and wanted to tell her it was OK. I also wanted to beat almost all the adults in the book, especially the mother!

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

The language in this book is lovely. I can't wait to see what she comes out with next - I think it will be better.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful. 'Nuff said.

[Karina · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a while to really get into this book, but it was great.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in 1 day. It was compelling, although disturbing in some places. It is about an African-American girl growing up in New Orleans in the 70s and the obstacles she faces.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great prose and a strong voice. Pretty sad. It is hard to imagine living a life with so little love in it.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written. You forget that it is fiction because it reads like a memoir. Very upsetting to read at times.

[Kamyia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the things she said made my heart ache but they also made me realize that some kids really do live hard lives.