Betsey Brown A Novel

by Shange, Ntozake

• ISBN13: 9780312134341
• ISBN10: 0312134347
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-08-15
• Publisher: Picador

Summary

This is a unique and vividly told novel about a girl named Betsey Brown, an African American seventh-grader growing up in St. Louis, Missouri. While rendering a complete portrait of this girl, author Ntozake Shange also profiles her friends, her family, her home, her school, and her world. This world, though a work of fiction, is based closely and carefully on actual history, specifically on the nationwide school desegregation events of the Civil Rights movement in America''s recent past. As such, Betsey Brown is a historical novel that will speak to and broaden the perspectives of readers both familiar with and unaware of America''s domestic affairs of 1950s and 1960s.Shange has set her story in the autumn of 1959, the year St. Louis started to desegregate its schools. In May of 1954, in its ruling on Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka--a verdict now seen by many as the origin of the Civil Rights movement--the United States Supreme Court outlawed school segregation. The novel is firmly located in the wake of this landmark ruling; the plot of Shange''s novel and the history of America''s quest for integration during the Civil Rights era are fundamentally entwined. Thus textual references abound to the watershed events at Little Rock''s Central High School in the September of 1957, for example, and to "fire-bombings and burningcrosses" in the South as well as "''battalions of police and crowds of crackers''" at a demonstration in St. Louis.Betsey is the oldest child in a large, remarkable, and slightly eccentric African American family. Her father is a doctor who wakes his children each morning with point-blank questions about African history and Black culture while beating on a conga drum; her mother is a beautiful, refined, confident, and strong-willed social worker who is overwhelmed by the vast size of her young family and who cares very little for ''all that nasty colored music.''Indeed, Betsey''s whole existence can be seen as a perceptive, adventuresome, and still-developing hybrid of her parents'' most distinctive qualities. Her feelings of internal conflict are often clearer or easier to identify when seen as the collision of her father''s dreams and her mother''s manners, or her father''s music and her mother''s cosmetics. There are several fascinating characters in this novel-and encountering, describing, and trying to figure out these characters will appeal to students of all backgrounds-but the two characters who, after Betsey, most influence the directions, themes, and issues of this tale are Betsey''s mother and father, Jane and Greer. Their her parents'' difficult marriage, like the difficult era of desegregation that has only begun in St. Louis and the rest of America, is the realistic, conflicted, yet ultimately hopeful backdrop before which Betsey''s lip-synching, poem-reciting, soul-searching, truth-seeking, tree-climbing, and fact-finding take place. In fact, her parents'' stubborn disagreements, heartfelt reconciliations, past glories, and future worries are all, at various times in the book, anchored or else set adrift by the activities of theireldest daughter (and first teenager!). Betsey''s running away sends her parents into a vicious fight, while her subsequent return seems to bring them closer together (if only temporarily).As a novel, Betsey Brown is panoramic yet personal. It tells us what being a Black student in the early days of American desegregation was like by showing us what being Betsey Brown is like. This is an episodic, character-driven saga of the Black experience in St. Louis at the end of the ''Fabulous Fifties,'' but it is also a story about the many and various-and basically familiar-growing pains of a precocious, passionate, spunky young protagonist. We see Betsey fall in love; make friends; say prayers; argue with, look after, inspire, and ignore her younger siblings; run away from home; return to those who love and value her above all else; and switch from a school she knows and enjoys to a school

Author Biography

Ntozake Shange is a renowned playwright, poet, and novelist. Her novels include Liliane and Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, both of which are available from Picador. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.

Table of Contents

"A lyrical coming-of-age novel . . . about a teenaged black girl who endures the trials of school integration." --The New York Times

"Ntozake Shange has recreated a humorous, charming, and heartbreaking vision of St. Louis and the Brown family that will delight young and old. She can conjure, as if by magic . . . [This book] is like an enchanting melody." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Miss Shange is a superb storyteller who keeps her eye on what brings her characters together rather than what separates them: courage and love, innocence and the loss of it, home and homelessness. [She] understands backyards, houses schools, and churches. Betsey Brown rejoices in--but never sentimentalizes--those places on earth where you are accepted, where you are comfortable with yourself . . . [This novel] creates a place that is both new and familiar, where both black and white readers will feel at home. The characters are so finely drawn they can be recognized by their speech alone. Readers of Miss Shange's poetry already know that she has an extraordinary ear for the spoken word." --The New York Times Book Review

"A beautiful, beautiful piece of writing." --Houston Post

"Exuberantly engaging." --Los Angeles Times

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