Black April

by Julia Peterkin

Julia Peterkin pioneered in demonstrating the literary potential for serious depictions of the African-American experience. In her novels and stories, she taps the richness of rural southern black culture and oral traditions to capture conflicting realities and reveal grace and courage.

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Julia Mood Peterkin won Pulitzer Prize for novel with Scarlet Sister Mary in 1929.

Reviews

[Naima Haviland]

I don't know how to review Black April without trying to set some groundwork by explaining the South Carolina Lowcountry and the people whose families have lived on the coast and on the sea islands for 300 years. They are/were descendents of slaves on the rice plantations. They have their own language, folklore, recipes, and crafts and their history is incredibly rich. The Lowcountry's landscape is diverse, unique, and beautiful as to be almost a mystical realm. That the wife of a plantation owner in the 1920s could have written novels plotted around and peopled entirely by Gullah characters and do so with such natural ease, depth, and skill defies stereotypes of race, gender, geography, and timeframe.

Plot:April is the foreman of Bluebrook, a working plantation owned by a family that lives up North most of the year. April is a physically powerful and daring man who is a natural leader. Married, he's a ladies man. He's also fearless to the point of arrogance, a true alpha male who gives no other male leader one inch of the spotlight no matter where they're standing. It is telling that, although April is not the novel's protagonist, he is the one around whom this plot revolves. You may know a man like this. Some of us have fathers like this. He's the sun. We're planets; it may be our story but it wouldn't exist as it does if he didn't exist first. The protagonist is Breeze, a boy of about 8 who meets April because Bluebrook's cook, a larger than life personality named Miss Big Sue, simply showed up on a nearby island one day and talked his weak-willed, overwhelmed mother out of him. Her reasons for this seem to be that she wanted someone to raise and to run and fetch for her, but also Breeze is April's illegitimate son and April is Big Sue's lover. I think she meant to bind April to her. Rival females and April's arrogance combine to bring April from the pinnacle to the pits in a way that resembles Job's downfall in the bible. We see this through Breeze's eyes, but the characters are so real and vivid that I never felt limited by his child's point of view. April speaks the last line of the novel and I closed the book feeling sad for him and very moved.

I want to read Julia Peterkin's other novels, especially Scarlet Sister Mary, which was banned as obscene in South Carolina but which won the Pulitzer Prize.

[Neeta]

4.5. Story of African Americans living on a plantation in the South. The fact that this novel is written by a woman who lived on a plantation in South Carolina lends authenticity to the characters and culture depicted in this novel. Vivid descriptions of nature and effective use of dialect. The story focuses on a handful of people. It includes a coming of age story of a young boy and depicts interesting superstitions of the people at the time.

[Cynthia]

Julia Peterkin is a wonderful storyteller and chronicler of her time and place. This novel, like Scarlet Sister Mary is set in low-country South Carolina in the early quarter of the 20th century. Farming, birthing babies, close community relationships, dealing with sickness, and death, superstitions, and the spoken language were richly described and vastly different from today.

[Laurie]

Extraordinarily well written with an uncommon understanding of the culture, language and relationships of the people living in low country plantations. Grateful to have discovered this book in a second-hand book shop in South Carolina. I would love to read anything else by Julia Peterkin.

[Laura]

Great book about Sandy Island and mainland. The people's lives are full of planting, hog killing, celebration, religion and magic. Lots of hardship and people sleeping around.

[Becky]

This was a book i read off of my moms shelfs when i was visting her one summer, i remember that i liked it but cant remeber any real details about it.