Leaving Paradise
A mother and daughter take a cross-country trip -- and explore their shared history.
NOWHERE IS A PLACE
By Bernice L. McFadden
Dutton. 290 pp. $24.95
The history of women of color in America is fraught with suffering and grief, emotions fed daily by routine abuse and dehumanization. The effects travel the blood route like a gene from one generation to another.
Bernice McFadden's new novel, Nowhere Is a Place , is an homage to the strength of generations of black women, who, while beneficiaries of a legacy of pain and submission, have learned not only the variable facets and forms of their own power, but also how to wield that power to survive. It is set in the summer of 1995, when earthy, down-home Dumpling and Sherry, her grown, free-spirited daughter, set off from Paradise, Nev., for a family reunion in Sandersville, Ga. But to Sherry the destination is less important than the journey itself. Buried in her sense memory is the sting of a slap Dumpling once landed on her 6-year-old face, a slap that has remained for all of her life as puzzling as it was painful. Now she hopes that their journey together will thaw the icy barrier that has divided them for years.
There are two stories here: one present, one past. In the present, Sherry, directionless and unfocused, has rebounded from a misbegotten relationship with a white lover with "piano-playing fingers" into a romance with a man several years younger, whose child she carries. Dumpling, long skeptical of Sherry's dalliances across the culture line, now tries to cajole her into shedding light on the romance that finally seems to bring a smile to her face.
Meanwhile, Sherry implores her mother to tell the story of the three generations of women who preceded her. As Dumpling recounts their ancestral history, Sherry writes it all down in novelized form for her mother to read. It is that fully imagined tale, set between italicized chapters of the present day story, which narrows the gulf between them.
The tale begins in 1836 when Nayeli, a beautiful Yamasee Indian, is abducted into slavery. She marries an enslaved African but still must satisfy the lustful whims of her white owner. Robbed of her name, virginity and freedom, "Lou" tries to make the most of her plight, finding rare moments of joy in the arms of her husband.
The nightmare gets worse when the plantation is sold. New owner Charlie Lessing's hateful abuse does not stop at the occasional rape of women. A "raving lunatic," he arbitrarily shoots even his own men. But as Lou's family struggles to fend off a cruel fate, Lessing's madness plays right into their hands, and he becomes their trump card in a clever ruse that not only ensures their freedom, but changes their fortunes forever.
It is in this new milieu that Lou's daughter, Suce, comes of age, a girl whose "laughter, song- like, magical and generous, was always giving the people who heard it the courage to imagine palms as smooth as cream and fingers long, brown, and unblemished by the scars that came along with picking cotton." But as Suce gathers years and strength, she, like her mother, must make choices to claim her life as her own. And if Suce's unflinching self-determination has evolved from Lou's, her daughter, Lillie (Dumpling's mother), is emboldened in ways her grandmother, Lou, couldn't have imagined. The novel charts the progress of each generation of women as they learn to survive the caprices and constraints of a world dominated by white males. As time progresses, each woman passes on a bequest of confidence and self-assurance to her progeny.
This provocative saga of 19th and early 20th century women is the dominant thrust of the narrative; and partway into the car trip to Georgia, Sherry's and Dumpling's story is regrettably consigned to the back seat. We are left to wonder about the details of their relationship and of their own lives; both women's youth and upbringing, for example, get less attention than that of their forebears.
But these complaints do not detract from the power and grace of McFadden's seventh literary outing. A marvel of storytelling with sure-footed prose that is never overwrought, Nowhere Is a Place is a literary page-turner, vibrating with McFadden's love for language and her fine-tuned descriptions of characters and places. It is one more example of McFadden's imaginative flair as she takes on a subject she does best -- the layered lives of strong, courageous black women, overcoming the odds. ·
Rosalyn Story, a violinist and writer, is the author of "More Than You Know."
