The Year the Colored Sisters Came to Town

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I can't believe this book was the "United We Read" selection for this year in Kansas City MO. (I don't know if this is part of a national program, or just KC.) I was very disappointed with this book. Expecting to read some real "stuff" about black nuns in the rural south, I ended up skimming much of the going-nowhere story looking for those parts. They were almost not there. The last 20 pages redeemed the story to a very slight degree but overall, this book was a waste of time. Lots of character development -- no real story, no plot, no antagonist, no protagonist. As another reviewer stated, the thoughts and dialog of main character, 10-year-old Vivien Leigh does not ring true to her age (even if she is "wise beyond her years"). I also felt the story itself did not ring true to the period, or place. At times I wasn't sure if they were in present day or the 50's; California, or Louisiana or somewhere else altogether. The many incongruities were annoying to say the least.

Rating:
Summary: Good narrator
Review: I enjoyed being introduced to rural Cajun Louisiana in the 1950's by the delightful Vivien Leigh. Her delightful voice carried me through a time and place full of difficulties and contradictions the ten year-old was trying to understand.
A well written, easy read but one that leaves you with much to think about.

Rating:
Summary: Good narrator
Review: I enjoyed being introduced to rural Cajun Louisiana in the 1950's by the delightful Vivien Leigh. Her delightful voice carried me through a time and place full of difficulties and contradictions the ten year-old was trying to understand.
A well written, easy read but one that leaves you with much to think about.

Rating:
Summary: exquisite writing
Review: It has been a long time since I have read a book this well written. The author has taken life in the 50's South and shown us the everyday cracks and crevices that can mold and/or alter lives.

She is to be congratulated for an incredible book. I eagerly await ner next one.

Rating:
Summary: exquisite writing
Review: It has been a long time since I have read a book this well written. The author has taken life in the 50's South and shown us the everyday cracks and crevices that can mold and/or alter lives.

She is to be congratulated for an incredible book. I eagerly await ner next one.

Rating:
Summary: TEMPESTUOUS CHANGES SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD
Review: Jacqueline Guidry - a Louisiana Cajun by birth - has taken a turmoil-rocked time, the mid-1950s in the South, and allowed us to view the events that would forever change America through the eyes of a ten-year-old child. Her young narrator, Vivien Leigh Dubois, lives near a small Louisiana town, Ville d'Angelle, with her mother and father and her little sister Mavis (whose place in life is seemingly to continuously irritate Vivien Leigh). The family is Catholic, and the girls attend Holy Rosary School. They enjoy a fairly idyllic existence among their extended family and friends - but the time is 1957, and things in the American South (and the rest of the nation, of course) are about to change forever.

The `troubles' in Little Rock - the attempt by black children to attend Little Rock's Central High School - are of course in the news. Since the institution of slavery in America, race has played a part in our lives that we cannot ever erase - the scars from it, even if the wounds were somehow miraculously healed today, would be with us for decades to come. Memories retain pain suffered, even if it is buried for years - it must be faced and dealt with if we are to learn from it and pass through it. When two black nuns arrive in the town and appear at mass one Sunday - and when the townspeople learn that they are new teachers, to work in the otherwise all-white Catholic school - fears raise their heads, tempers flare, and friendships between blacks and whites that have been (at best) tenuous for years begin to fray and snap.

Vivien Leigh sees the sisters' presence as a problem - she sees them as `out of place', only because that is what she has been taught, if not directly, then by example. It is far easier for a child to come to accept change, however, than it is for adults, who have lived with their beliefs for most of their lives. The family's housekeeper, a hard-working, honest and lovable black woman named Aussie, and her young daughter Marydale (who is the `best friend' of young Mavis) are caught up in the hard feelings and impending changes like everyone else. The relationship between them and the Dubois family, which goes back for years, is bruised to the point of never properly healing - which, although each of the sides recognizes as a sad thing, is also seen as inevitable, something with a bad taste that the simply have to accept.

Guidry's characters are endowed by the author with distinct, honest and accurate voices - the rite of passage through which they are traveling takes its toll of each of them, and changes each of them uniquely. The care and compassion - and sheer literary talent - with which the author relates this story makes this a book that anyone who wishes to understand (and we all NEED to understand) the troubled times depicted here, as well as the challenges that remain before us, should read. It's also moving and entertaining, and I can recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: The Indelible Year
Review: The characters in this book will stay with you for a long time. They're as real and unpredictable as your cousins, and caught up in the events of Ville d'Angelle, Louisiana, in 1957, they'll pull you in and keep you spellbound until--like all good stories--you don't want it to end. The varied and complex reactions of one family to the fact that two black nuns are assigned to teach at the town's all-white Catholic elementary school form the framework in which the two daughters, 10-year-old narrator Vivien Leigh and her seven-year-old sister Mavis, come to realize how they feel and how they're expected to feel about the black people they've known all their lives. Details like fig picking and speech patterns provide a passionate sense of place, while a change-of-life baby, a visit from Baton Rouge "sheets," and a divisive wager propel the plot. Guidry has a fine sense of how the smallest change affects and is affected by the larger landscape. This book is a very good read.

Rating:
Summary: The Year the Colored Sisters Came to Town
Review: This book has living, breathing characters in a real-life situation. The story is compelling from the first sentence to the last with a subtle undercurrent throughout. Set in the South in the late 1950s, the book tells the story of residents of a small Louisiana town. They don't know it yet, but they are about to participate in events that will change their town and their country forever. One summer Sunday, two African American nuns arrive at church for Mass. No one is too alarmed, assuming they are just passing through -- although there is some question of why they didn't go to Mass at the "colored church" instead. But the nuns are back again the next week. And soon, the townfolk learn that they're staying to teach first and fifth grades in the all-white Catholic school. No one seems happy about it, but some are more unhappy than others, especially parents who form The Concerned Citizens group and another group of men from Baton Rouge known as "the sheets." Told from the viewpoint of a 10-year-old girl, this story will keep you turning pages all night long.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Thought the humor in this story was priceless. The author did an excellent job of revealing this southern family during a difficult and historical time. Ten year old Vivian Dubois is wise beyond her years. Enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: Sisters...Meaning Nuns
Review: When I first read the title, I was thinking sisters in reference to, well, sisters, black women and colored referring to lively. I didn't know they were talking about real sisters, meaning nuns and colored meaning black.

I read ms. Guidry piece of fiction, at least I hope it was fiction. It was suppose to be told from the perspectve of a ten year old. Now, mind you a ten year old who just turns ten in the book and one who has the vocabulary of a forty year old.

So a few events happen in this book but not much talk about the sisters. Most of the book (a lot of) talked about the ten year old family and a black cleaning lady and her daughter who lived down the road. Some parts were funny,some part sad. I must admit, I did like little Mavis, she fought hard not to adapt to the "you black and I'm white theory", but her daddy, and sister, Vivian Leigh was not having that kind of none sense.

It wasn't until her sister pinched her after a really bad event that Mavis finally came to her senses, that god made white people and he made coloreds and you as a white person can not be best friends with a colored or the "sheets" will get you and hurt you.

The Year...when the Little Rock riots occurred. This way of thinking still exist and the year is 2002.

It didn't seem to me that anybody really changed because of the sisters they changed because of...well change.