Imprinted Life discussion

"Nothin' rushes water but the water alone. [chapter 1]

The co-authors Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza were actual sisters. Ntozake recently passed away. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/ob...

Chapters 1-4:

This part of the story takes place on a Sea Island of Georgia and in Charleston SC. The former site proves the source of memories for the character Ma Bette Mayfield. As she lingeringly transitions from enslavement to freedwoman, her memories as "wife" and mother before emancipation portray her relationship to the late Pa Lover, who owned the Sweet Tamarind plantation, and her children's differences and outcomes. With her granddaughter Eudora, she necessarily leaves, going to South Carolina to her light-skinned, snobbish daughter Blanche, who married into the elite of Charleston. But, Eudora, having experienced a higher situation on the plantation, feels embittered when Blanche prefers to house them in a filthy room by the water. Though she encounters prejudice from some for her bronze skin, this period of Reconstruction allows the young woman to fulfill her dream of becoming a dressmaker.

Video
https://www.c-span.org/video/?410244-...

Reviews
https://historicalnovelsociety.org/re...
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/bo...

"They had tasted freedom, the promise of it, all the worse to have it trammeled again." [chapter 7]

Chapters 5-7:

These steadily more powerful chapters both in language and history can overwhelm a reader. The sinister plans carried out to retake the black person's freedom through new laws and violent intimidation mirrors the title's second part, 'Some Cry.' That's all the more distressing as it followed the accepted recognition of blacks' social equality, election to political office and male voting, and integrated public education in early Reconstruction.

From Wikipedia ["List of amendments to the United States Constitution"]. The American Civil War after four years ended in 1865:

13th (1865) "Abolishes slavery, and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime"
14th (1868) "Defines citizenship, contains the Privileges or Immunities Clause, the Due Process Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and deals with post–Civil War issues"
15th (1870) "Prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on race, color or previous condition of servitude"

An educational website with a series of readings and videos that includes the Reconstruction Era in South Carolina and southern states is https://www.facinghistory.org/topics/... . Back then, the ideologies of Democrats and Republicans are the reversal of ones of today. The parties assumed the ideology of the other possibly during the Civil Rights movement of the mid-1960s.

The character Elma leaves South Carolina during Reconstruction to perform with the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

Andrew Ward. Dark Midnight When I Rise: The Story of the Jubilee Singers, Who Introduced the World to the Music of Black America on Book TV at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYwKk...

Also, http://fiskjubileesingers.org/about-t...

And,
https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/...


Quotes from Some Sing, Some Cry

"The past is the past. The future, make somethin' of that." [chapter 8]

"The veins in his forearms stood out like each one of them remembered the pickin' and the hoein' for some white man somewhere who could tell him when to eat, when to sleep, whom he could sleep with, where he could go on his own two feet, and so many things swirled in his head and his body till he just burst. [chapter 9]

Chapters 11-13

Eudora's daughter Lizzie with her friend Osceola would like to start a troubadour minstrel band. By way of a glitch, a train car leaves him in a Spartanburg jail. There Ossie meets the historical ragtime leader James Reese Europe ( A Life in Ragtime: A Biography of James Reese Europe) and the musicians with him, whom he accompanies for a time. Europe's musical repertoire is in The Music of James Reese Europe: Complete Published Works Solo Piano & Voice and Piano. Interestingly, this site http://www.redhotjazz.com/europe.html describes his phenomenal actions and songwriting in WW1. Lizzie and Ossie now both have connections in New York City through her sister Elma and his new friends, so the story might gravitate more or less from South Carolina.


Credit: National Archives and Records Administration.

Some Sing, Some Cry shapes social history into a novel about an African-American family and community beginning at the end of the American Civil War into the Great Migration north to after World War 1 and into the twenty-first century.

"Despite its centrality to the narrative, Some Sing, Some Cry is not a book about music. It’s a book about the struggles of being dark-skinned in the Americas, and about the ways those struggles are (and are not) able to be overcome." -- Us3.Online. http://mankinlevine.com/2016/03/readi...

Hansi Lo Wang made this podcast about Max Brooks's graphic novel about the famously brave 369th Infantry The Harlem Hellfighters at https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswit... Characters in Some Cry, Some Sing speak about the chemical gas weapons of WW1, the different treatment they received by Americans than by French. Some died back home after surviving tremendous odds overseas.

Chapters 17-19 continue Lizzie May's orientation to the musical night club's of New York City circa 1920 and vice versa. Her talent included songwriting, dancing, and playing piano and numerous instruments with an audience-attracting flair. Some of the historical musicians in that era a reader can find in the book Spreadin' Rhythm Around: Black Popular Songwriters, 1880-1930 .

Chapters 20-23 focus on the different paths of music taken by Cinnamon Turner and her cousin Memphis Minor, opera and jazz respectively. Having studied with a professional teacher, Cinnamon applies to Juilliard. Memphis disguises her youth to sing with a swing band. There are plenty of details and romance with a Baker Johnson as well to keep up the excitement. Prior to that plot in the novel, there was a family visit from New York City back to Charleston SC for Ma Bette's funeral and their reunion with the remaining matriarch Eudora. She offers to keep Elma and Raymond's son Jessie and their niece Cinnamon for a while, allowing Memphis to return with her parents to start life anew in New York. The underlying discrimination in work, housing, and education and the potential violence towards Negroes sometimes occur. The tenacity, vision, and talent of the characters, as well as the inclusivity of Negro organizations and the appreciation for ability by audiences, clear the path to success for some characters.

Chapters 24-27

The family expands through marriages and offspring. Their activities happen not only in family life but also as part of historical events. The private and public seesaw one into the other. A traumatic scene portrays the first-hand experience and psychological response of Cinnamon and Lawrence's three children who participated in Chicago's first day of bussed school integration.

Chapter 27-End of book

"It is a story meant to be spoken and sung as well as read." -- Ifa Bayeza

[Indeed, the audiobook for this novel does just that with a lively performance of expression and voices, as songs, careers in music, and accented speech have a strong place in the characters' lives. The end of that spoken format features an interview with Ntozake and Ifa.]

***

Chapter 27 involves the Mayfield family members in Alabama organizing to register to vote and confronting sheriff's troopers in front of the courthouse. That scene from the Civil Rights Movement, one of several noted, shows that even with sacrifices suffered the desire for equality in one's country will move forward.

The last chapters bring together all the living members from seven generations, which began with Ma Bette at the abolishment of slavery, to a celebratory gathering, and ends in an African journey by a relatively young member, now fifty, Liberty.