Racist?

[Allison]

Did anyone else find the descriptions of the black characters offensive?

[Lawrence]

Could you be more specific?

[Holly]

Not in any way that stands out.....it didn't even occur to me that they might be until I saw the comment.

[Carolyn]

noooooo if you did, you are looking for it to be racist. NOT at all was there any feeling or references of racism in my opinion.

[Trena]

I thought the author definitely had something to say about race...though I couldn't figure out quite what it was. Abigail's description of Maribelle as her best friend and the lovely times they shared together displayed a complete absence of consciousness that Maribelle was her employee, and the power differential this inevitably created between them. The physical descriptions of Ralph Washington never failed to mention that he was so dark the white people couldn't quite see his features. The descriptions of Paula Jabar always observed that she was mixed race and how light her skin was. I didn't get much about the author from this, I assumed it had to do with her characters having, perhaps, excessively uncomplicated ideas about race.

[Nancy]

Definitely an undertone of racism in the book. I remember being more than a bit surprised because of the comments made by the author regarding appearance, station in life, expectations. I guess I forgave the author, because she was relating a book about people who were born, and lived a lot of their life with certain notions about race and place.