The Legends of the Melungeons and of Danny and Danny's House and Danny's Friends
Last month I managed to read two more books (in between being in The Drama and doing my other reading and various labours), Walking toward the Sunset by Wayne Winkler and Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck.
I got Walking toward the Sunset 'free' (i.e. not free, since I only got it because I made a donation to NPR that I might not have made if the book didn't come as a prize for doing so) a couple of years ago, because I have always wanted to learn more about the Melungeons (in the unlikely I ever write one of the novels I sometimes think about, I plan to have the protagonist get a magic bullet from an old Melungeon woman to kill a supernatural enemy, based on some earlier reading in the Tennessee Room of the Johnson City Public Library which said that a Melungeon woman could make a silver bullet to kill witches--which I assume means an evil spirit, as that is what witch meant amongst old country folk in much of Tennessee). The book was much like the sentence I just completed: long, a little repetitive, sort of confusing, and full of information that did not fully explain what a Melungeon is.
Melungeons are a group living in and around Hancock County, Tennessee. They were supposedly there (or arrived about the same time) when the first white settlers arrived around 1800. Melungeons spoke English, many had English names, but they also had a darker complexion and some facial features that could have fit an Indian or a Negro. This made them unpopular, and (after Tennessee wrote a new constitution in 1835 that limited the rights of coloured people) led them to lose some of their land and, in some cases, the franchise. They spent the next century and a half trying to prove they were white (probably descended from Portuguese mixed with Indians) or (eventually) moving away to some place where no-one knew what a Melungeon was, until America reached the point that there were no legal impediments and few social impediments to coloured people, and then Melungeons became something romantic and interesting that everyone wanted to be instead of a distrusted lower caste (although by that point, so many had intermarried with other families that many did not look much different from anyone else).
The book was pretty informative, but not always focused. It also discussed many similar groups (which it describes as tri-racial, because some of the groups' members or enemies suggested they had either white, Indian, or Negro blood) such as the Red Bones, Brass Ankles, and Lumbee. Furthermore, the book was often repetitive, and felt like a graduate school thesis in which each chapter could nearly be its own article, and in which a review of the broader literature and related studies was required fairly often. Furthermore, despite discussing a group whose physical differences were always part of their social distinction, the book provides very few pictures of Melungeon people, and those it does do not show people much different from any other Appalachian white (although perhaps that is the idea). Despite these flaws, it is an informative book, but I hope there is a more interesting one on the Melungeons somewhere, and that one day, when I have time, I will find it.
Tortilla Flat is a mock epic set on the outskirts of Monterrey, California right after World War I. The protagonists are paisanos, who claim to be Spanish but have a fair mix of Indian blood, and are said to speak both English and Spanish with a paisano accent. The tale revolves around Danny who inherits two houses from his grandfather and the friends who come to live in his house (and briefly the other one), a place Steinbeck describes as resembling King Arthur's round table. These paisanos rarely work if they can help it, getting by on schemes, theft, and mooching, but at times undertake quite noble causes for the good of their friends, neighbours, or Saint Francis (who eventually appears in a vision to one of the Friends' dogs). At first I found the characters despicable, but in their own shady way they are lovable and occasionally admirable; certainly they are funny. I would recommend this book for its humour, its characterisation, and its depiction of a bygone era and area about which I knew little--certainly California is fairly mythic to me--mythically rich and wild in its old days, mythically depraved today.
This also brings my total reading for the year up to forty-one books, giving me nine to go before the end of the year. I am currently reading a very long Penguin history of Latin America, but might switch to novels again if I get desperate.
I got Walking toward the Sunset 'free' (i.e. not free, since I only got it because I made a donation to NPR that I might not have made if the book didn't come as a prize for doing so) a couple of years ago, because I have always wanted to learn more about the Melungeons (in the unlikely I ever write one of the novels I sometimes think about, I plan to have the protagonist get a magic bullet from an old Melungeon woman to kill a supernatural enemy, based on some earlier reading in the Tennessee Room of the Johnson City Public Library which said that a Melungeon woman could make a silver bullet to kill witches--which I assume means an evil spirit, as that is what witch meant amongst old country folk in much of Tennessee). The book was much like the sentence I just completed: long, a little repetitive, sort of confusing, and full of information that did not fully explain what a Melungeon is.
Melungeons are a group living in and around Hancock County, Tennessee. They were supposedly there (or arrived about the same time) when the first white settlers arrived around 1800. Melungeons spoke English, many had English names, but they also had a darker complexion and some facial features that could have fit an Indian or a Negro. This made them unpopular, and (after Tennessee wrote a new constitution in 1835 that limited the rights of coloured people) led them to lose some of their land and, in some cases, the franchise. They spent the next century and a half trying to prove they were white (probably descended from Portuguese mixed with Indians) or (eventually) moving away to some place where no-one knew what a Melungeon was, until America reached the point that there were no legal impediments and few social impediments to coloured people, and then Melungeons became something romantic and interesting that everyone wanted to be instead of a distrusted lower caste (although by that point, so many had intermarried with other families that many did not look much different from anyone else).
The book was pretty informative, but not always focused. It also discussed many similar groups (which it describes as tri-racial, because some of the groups' members or enemies suggested they had either white, Indian, or Negro blood) such as the Red Bones, Brass Ankles, and Lumbee. Furthermore, the book was often repetitive, and felt like a graduate school thesis in which each chapter could nearly be its own article, and in which a review of the broader literature and related studies was required fairly often. Furthermore, despite discussing a group whose physical differences were always part of their social distinction, the book provides very few pictures of Melungeon people, and those it does do not show people much different from any other Appalachian white (although perhaps that is the idea). Despite these flaws, it is an informative book, but I hope there is a more interesting one on the Melungeons somewhere, and that one day, when I have time, I will find it.
Tortilla Flat is a mock epic set on the outskirts of Monterrey, California right after World War I. The protagonists are paisanos, who claim to be Spanish but have a fair mix of Indian blood, and are said to speak both English and Spanish with a paisano accent. The tale revolves around Danny who inherits two houses from his grandfather and the friends who come to live in his house (and briefly the other one), a place Steinbeck describes as resembling King Arthur's round table. These paisanos rarely work if they can help it, getting by on schemes, theft, and mooching, but at times undertake quite noble causes for the good of their friends, neighbours, or Saint Francis (who eventually appears in a vision to one of the Friends' dogs). At first I found the characters despicable, but in their own shady way they are lovable and occasionally admirable; certainly they are funny. I would recommend this book for its humour, its characterisation, and its depiction of a bygone era and area about which I knew little--certainly California is fairly mythic to me--mythically rich and wild in its old days, mythically depraved today.
This also brings my total reading for the year up to forty-one books, giving me nine to go before the end of the year. I am currently reading a very long Penguin history of Latin America, but might switch to novels again if I get desperate.