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Blood on the Forge

William Attaway,

Darryl Pinckney (Introduction)

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Dec 28, 2023 Tony rated it really liked it

Shelves: novels, setting-us, workplace

The archetype of the Great Migration is of a black family moving from the deep south to one of many northern cities, where economic opportunity was theoretically more available. The author's own family did just that when he was a child, migrating from southern Mississippi to Chicago in 1917. His second novel, published in 1941, takes place in 1919 and tells a less archetypal story -- one of three tenant farmer brothers in backcountry Kentucky who hop a train to Pennsylvania to work in a steel mi The archetype of the Great Migration is of a black family moving from the deep south to one of many northern cities, where economic opportunity was theoretically more available. The author's own family did just that when he was a child, migrating from southern Mississippi to Chicago in 1917. His second novel, published in 1941, takes place in 1919 and tells a less archetypal story -- one of three tenant farmer brothers in backcountry Kentucky who hop a train to Pennsylvania to work in a steel mill.

The first part of the book sets up their hardscrabble life, living literally hand to mouth as they try and coax a crop from the rocky, eroding Kentucky hills. The head of the family is Big Matt, a brooding hulk of a man who spends his non-working time deep in his Bible. His wife Hattie is brisk but cut by the sorrow of a series of miscarriages. Rounding out the family are his two half-brothers, the happy-go-lucky gold-toothed Chinatown, and the more introspective guitar-playing Melody. Under the thumb of a white landlord who had them in debt peonage, they are tempted north by a factory recruiter handing out more cash then they've ever seen.

A transition section then described a dark and horrific train ride to Pennsylvania, evoking a kind of journey to the underworld, or perhaps a dark rebirth. Reading it, one has to wonder if Attaway was influenced while writing by contemporary accounts of trains heading to concentration camps. Once at the steel mill and surrounding town, a new world opens up to the brothers. One where they work and live side by side with white men -- albeit immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and central Europe, and the wages are such that whatever booze and women they desire are available.

As the weeks and months pass working at the mill, the place is revealed to be less of a salvation than a Gomorrah. Each becomes undone in different ways, and a 14-year-old Mexican prostitute becomes more and more the center of their orbit. Ultimately, the story carries the plain message that power will corrupt, and the industrial jobs of the north are no more liberating than the land-bound ones of the south. It's a vivid book, full of striking and visceral images, much of which are tied to violence (a dog fight, a mill explosion, strikebreakers attacking a union office, etc.). Readers interested in mid-century black literature should check it out, as should anyone interested in fiction of the Great Migration. ...more

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Jul 25, 2013 Katie marked it as to-read

Shelves: 50-states-50-novels

May 03, 2023 Amanda marked it as to-read

Shelves: fiction, exp

Apr 02, 2025 Anna Ruth FL marked it as to-read

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