I can't remember which review of this book was the one that made me want to read it, but it was GLOWING. Well, I just read it and I agree, I agree, I agree. I stayed up until 1am to finish it, and annoyed my co-workers by booktalking it to them first thing in the morning when they had their own reviews to finish. I am on a mission. I love this book.
In the summer of 1968, three African American sisters, Delphine, Vonetta and Fern, travel from Brooklyn, where they live with their father and grandmother (Big Ma) to spend a month with Cecile, their estranged mother in California. They haven't seen her since she took off seven years ago, when Fern was a baby.
The girls go with visions of their mother greeting them with open arms, of meeting movie stars, of Disneyland, surfing, and all the things California represents to non-Californians. Well, the girls' don't get the Southern California Gidget version of California, they end up in poor Oakland, in good old (cold) Northern California.
To say that the mother is not happy with the girls visit is putting it mildly. I audibly gasped when she says to her girls "I didn't send for you anyway...should have gone to Mexico to get rid of you when I had the chance." She basically makes them fend for themselves while she focuses on her poetry, and sends the girls to a Black Panther day camp for breakfast and to keep them occupied and out of the house. For three girls sheltered back at home, all of this is a very big deal, and Delphine is counting the days until they can get away from crazy Cecile.
But the girls stay, and learn, and show their strength, and stand up for themselves with Cecile and others until they and their mother start to come to an understanding and acceptance of each other.
This is a book for everyone, but Black kids (or maybe just Blacks of my generation and older, though I doubt it), will identify things like Big Ma's admonition not to act up around White people and with the game of counting how many Black people you see on TV and how much screen time they had. And lets not even get started on how my family felt about Black people who acted up on television so that all the White people could see our "dirty laundry", so to speak. But I digress.
Williams-Garcia never makes the progression of the characters unrealistic or shmaltsy; Cecile will never be a nurturing earth mama. But she makes the smallest steps towards cracking Cecile's hard shell, and we are just as pleased as the girls are when those small steps are made. She's also not completely evil, either. There is complexity in her character when it would have been so easy to make her one-sided. I fell in love with all the characters, but it's Delphine and her sisters that are so real that from the beginning that you just want to hug them and reassure them that it's going to be alright.
As heartbreaking as their mother's departure and their reunion is, this is also not a tragic tale -- Delphine says she imagined her mother was somewhat destitute like in those reports on television on Negro poverty, but she wasn't, and this book isn't the stereotypical Black problem novel. These girls aren't victims. They're strong and smart and well loved by their father and grandmother, and by the end of the book, we (and the girls) realize that in her small way, in her own way, their mother loves them too. I'm sure they'd never make a movie of it, but it sure would make a great afterschool special (remember those?) It would make an even better Newbury Award winner.
Other people are much better reviewers than I. So I'll let them speak. Here's more on One Crazy Summerfrom A Fuse #8 Production
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