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A review by gabsalott13
Cane River by Lalita Tademy
4.0
**note: scroll far, far down for the meme summaries
"When the census taker looked at them, he saw colored first, asking questions like single or married, trying to introduce shame where there was none. He took what he saw and foolishly put those things down on a list for others to study. Could he even understand the pride in being able to say that Emily could read and write? They could ask whatever they wanted, but what he should have been marking in the book was family, and landholder, and educated, each generation gathering momentum, adding something special to the brew."
This is truly a 4.5-star review, as Cane River is a touching combination of familial research, incomplete records, and the reimagined lives of Lalita Tademy’s ancestors in the eponymous section of Louisiana. Recently, I've been learning about how researching your genealogy is a form of ancestral work, one that is made infinitely harder by the unfeeling historical documents one finds in a county or parish's records. Through a slightly fictionalized account, Tademy colors in what the Census and slave records left out from the story of her great-grandmothers, four of whom were born into and lived out of slavery.
I am in love with the way she intersperses Elisabeth, Suzette, Philomene, and Emily's narratives with family photos, personal letters, historical versions of data I use every day (like the Census), and also "property records" of enslaved people. I was struck by the tonal similarity of the 1850 plantation bill of sale and the 1880 Census--if not for Tademy's work in between the documents, it would be hard to see any different treatment of the subjects captured in each report. I am struggling against this technocratic orientation towards public records in my own professional work, and it was touching to see how Tademy uses her own family's stories to provide a "people-first" context for this data. In one of Emily's sections, she remarks that certain people in the Cane River society “saw him from the outside and offered up one piece of the man at a time, like it was the whole cloth. He was more than that.” With this work, Lalita Tademy helps weave the whole cloth of her family, and I am incredibly grateful for it.
In addition to the genealogical work in this novel, Cane River is also an amazingly crafted story: Tademy gracefully takes us from Antebellum to near present day, summarizing trends of the changing Louisiana landscape and expansion of the family tree with a measured cadence that mirrors the passing of time. Each new section begins with a preview of the family tree to come, and asks us to unravel what Elisabeth later calls "a conscious and not-so-conscious bleaching of the line." Each time I saw Eugene Daurant, Narcisse Fredieu, or even Joseph Billes lurking around Cane River, I became both upset and incensed by the sexual manipulation and abuse we know will follow them (Lalita Tademy lays out this crushing cycle all too well.) In the later sections, Tademy explores the growing irony in the Jackson-DeNegre-Daurant-Fredieu-Billes clan's ideological separation from the white people in their parish and their family, even as they try to become closer to whiteness.
On that point: it's interesting to see how various women in this story internalized that colorism over the years, and how it led to lost relationships and love for many offspring. At first I judged the characters, but that probably wasn’t fair to people trying to do the best in the worst of circumstances, and probably doesn’t recognize similar histories in my own family. While I can’t relate to having family who tried to paper bag test any potential romantic partners, I’ve definitely heard stories of how my dad was his grandmother’s favorite at least in part because of his light skin. There is also a class dynamic I recognized, as Suzette and Emily wanted their kids to “strengthen the blood of [their] own children” in order to “give the children a better chance.” In later years, Elisabeth and Philomene recognize that their relations with white men didn’t necessarily guarantee their biracial children better lives than their half-siblings, who were the products of consensual, loving relationships between enslaved people. However, many mothers today are still struggling to learn this lesson—that someone’s skin color or bank account doesn’t determine whether they will be a good parent or partner. Due to the libidinal and capitalist economies we live under, parents' skin and wealth surely provides significant opportunities for their offspring, but this is not the same as security or even contentment.
I will be thinking about this book for a long time to come, and think it's a masterful guide for those of us attempting to "fill the dashes" in our family tree.
****Meme corner***
In 2021, I am trying to summarize my books in written and visual format, so here goes a rough try:
Meme 1: whenever the white characters try to tell the women what a good life they've had in the big house
Meme 2: live footage of Elisabeth on her deathbed and T.O. choosing a wife
"When the census taker looked at them, he saw colored first, asking questions like single or married, trying to introduce shame where there was none. He took what he saw and foolishly put those things down on a list for others to study. Could he even understand the pride in being able to say that Emily could read and write? They could ask whatever they wanted, but what he should have been marking in the book was family, and landholder, and educated, each generation gathering momentum, adding something special to the brew."
This is truly a 4.5-star review, as Cane River is a touching combination of familial research, incomplete records, and the reimagined lives of Lalita Tademy’s ancestors in the eponymous section of Louisiana. Recently, I've been learning about how researching your genealogy is a form of ancestral work, one that is made infinitely harder by the unfeeling historical documents one finds in a county or parish's records. Through a slightly fictionalized account, Tademy colors in what the Census and slave records left out from the story of her great-grandmothers, four of whom were born into and lived out of slavery.
I am in love with the way she intersperses Elisabeth, Suzette, Philomene, and Emily's narratives with family photos, personal letters, historical versions of data I use every day (like the Census), and also "property records" of enslaved people. I was struck by the tonal similarity of the 1850 plantation bill of sale and the 1880 Census--if not for Tademy's work in between the documents, it would be hard to see any different treatment of the subjects captured in each report. I am struggling against this technocratic orientation towards public records in my own professional work, and it was touching to see how Tademy uses her own family's stories to provide a "people-first" context for this data. In one of Emily's sections, she remarks that certain people in the Cane River society “saw him from the outside and offered up one piece of the man at a time, like it was the whole cloth. He was more than that.” With this work, Lalita Tademy helps weave the whole cloth of her family, and I am incredibly grateful for it.
In addition to the genealogical work in this novel, Cane River is also an amazingly crafted story: Tademy gracefully takes us from Antebellum to near present day, summarizing trends of the changing Louisiana landscape and expansion of the family tree with a measured cadence that mirrors the passing of time. Each new section begins with a preview of the family tree to come, and asks us to unravel what Elisabeth later calls "a conscious and not-so-conscious bleaching of the line." Each time I saw Eugene Daurant, Narcisse Fredieu, or even Joseph Billes lurking around Cane River, I became both upset and incensed by the sexual manipulation and abuse we know will follow them (Lalita Tademy lays out this crushing cycle all too well.) In the later sections, Tademy explores the growing irony in the Jackson-DeNegre-Daurant-Fredieu-Billes clan's ideological separation from the white people in their parish and their family, even as they try to become closer to whiteness.
On that point: it's interesting to see how various women in this story internalized that colorism over the years, and how it led to lost relationships and love for many offspring. At first I judged the characters, but that probably wasn’t fair to people trying to do the best in the worst of circumstances, and probably doesn’t recognize similar histories in my own family. While I can’t relate to having family who tried to paper bag test any potential romantic partners, I’ve definitely heard stories of how my dad was his grandmother’s favorite at least in part because of his light skin. There is also a class dynamic I recognized, as Suzette and Emily wanted their kids to “strengthen the blood of [their] own children” in order to “give the children a better chance.” In later years, Elisabeth and Philomene recognize that their relations with white men didn’t necessarily guarantee their biracial children better lives than their half-siblings, who were the products of consensual, loving relationships between enslaved people. However, many mothers today are still struggling to learn this lesson—that someone’s skin color or bank account doesn’t determine whether they will be a good parent or partner. Due to the libidinal and capitalist economies we live under, parents' skin and wealth surely provides significant opportunities for their offspring, but this is not the same as security or even contentment.
I will be thinking about this book for a long time to come, and think it's a masterful guide for those of us attempting to "fill the dashes" in our family tree.
****Meme corner***
In 2021, I am trying to summarize my books in written and visual format, so here goes a rough try:
Meme 1: whenever the white characters try to tell the women what a good life they've had in the big house
Meme 2: live footage of Elisabeth on her deathbed and T.O. choosing a wife
