Betsey Brown: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Betsey is ME!
Review: Betsey Brown is me when I was 13, and is still me 11 years later! I saw myself in the book and I was pleasently surprised to find that out. I fell in love with the book within the first few pages. The only complaint that I have with the book is that its not LONGER!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Family Life
Review: Betsy and her family is just trying to make it through everyday family problems. Betsey and her siblings school is integrated for the first time. The story is set in St Louis 1959. Betsy is a nice read.

Rating:
Summary: Is it class or race?
Review: For anyone who has read Cypress, Sassafrass and Indigo by Shange, this book will seem mediocre in comparison. On the other hand, what it is is an excellent social document depicting the experiences of an African-American family in St. Louis of the 1950's. It describes the pressure that the combat of racism puts on a family---Betsey Brown runs away at the age of 12 because she is being bused to a school full of "crackers." Betsey doesn't want to have to do everything for the "race"-she just wants to be a comfortable 12 year old girl with her neighborhood friends.

Other tensions happen between the husband and mother when the husband (Greer Brown, a doctor) and the wife (Jane Brown) a nurse argue over whether their children should participate in civil rights demonstrations. The mother, like her daughter, is forced to leave home as she does not want her children to participate. Later she returns to the man she loves, and her lovable, if noisy and rambunctious children.

Another important sub theme to this novel is that of class. The Browns are the creme de la creme of African-American society, (Greer is one of only 5,000 African-American doctors in America at that time) Yet there is a constant stream of characters who are not so graced; Miss Calhoun, a maid who lasts only one day because the children don't like her, Regina, who is dismissed by the Browns for having a boyfriend, and Carrie, who is forced to take care of the children and work as a domestic. Betsey herself is shamed by one of her friends for making Miss Calhoun miserable-as the childs mother is herself a maid, and Betsey begins to re-examine her attitudes from that point on. Later she encounters Regina working as a prostitute-she has been apparently abandoned by her boyfriend. All this quickly sends Betsey running back to her middle-class home.

If I learned anything from this book it is that life was hard for everyone characterized at this time period. While being forced to confront prejudice forces both Betsey and her mother out of the home, confrontation with life outside the home sends them running back. The lesson of this book seems to be that upper-middle class black women are forced to confront racism whether they like it or not-either on behalf of their lesser favored sisters or because they wish to keep their families together. Their priviledged status does not make them exempt from any fights on behalf of everyone else in their community.