Une fresque familiale émouvante et extrêmement bien écrite. 4 générations de femmes qui ont connu l'esclavage et la discrimination aux Etats unis.
Des passages très durs mais qui reflètent ce que les femmes esclaves devaient subir pour survivre.
Des personnages fascinants et uniques.
La question sur la couleur de peau est très intéressante car on peut apercevoir du racisme chez les personnes de couleurs.

Une lecture que je vous conseille pour le Black History Month mais aussi pour le reste de l'année :).

Wow, I never knew that I read so many Oprah books. I certainly never went out of my way to read them.

Cane River is an engrossing family saga that takes place in Louisiana and spans 4 generations. It is loosely based on the author's own family. The story explores the cruelty of slavery, racial boundaries, love and family dynamics.

This was a technically well-written book and the topic is fascinating. I felt that there was a subtle but persistent level of passivity or acceptance, and that bothered me. I'm not saying these women had many choices or any choices, for that matter. But their oppressed status and a certain submissive (perhaps, practically submissive or submissively practical?) attitude, especially across multiple generations, were overwhelming. There was very little hope or silver lining....except, it seems, to become lighter complexioned with each successive generation and to gain resources through a white man. And this brings up another troublesome element: the position white male progenitors have and continue to wield in this book. They often are rapists or they definitely hold power over the women. But, for these women, those relationships and the resultant progeny serve as a tenuous but only way to gain safety and security as well as some resources and an elusive sense of stability.

I did not find this book to be hopeful or uplifting. Yes, they survived and that's more than satisfactory. Perhaps these 500+ pages are a set up for more encouraging stories. I'm going to pursue them, however.

This debut novel, written by Lalita Tademy who left her career at Sun Microsystems to write it, is a “work of fiction deeply rooted in years of research, historical fact, and family lore.” Sometimes this book read like a narrative, and at other times, like a family history book. A semi-fictional/biographical account focusing on three generations of African-American slave women living in Louisiana, this story is interspersed with pertinent copies of documents, newspaper clippings (which are incredibly subjective and racist) and photos that coincide with sections in this book. I found the story to be quite straightforward and fast-paced, but slow enough to build strong characters. Tademy occasionally used some interesting metaphors (e.g. comparing Doralise’s blackened-eyed face to a rotten ripe peach). Overall, an interesting ROOTS-like look into one woman’s ancestry!

A work of historical fiction focusing on the lives of 4 generations of women in Creole Louisiana, from the slave woman matriarch brought to Cane River from Virginia in 1820 to the early 20th century, with a brief epilogue in 1936. All but the first generation had children by white fathers--one by force, one by a coldly calculated relationship intended to benefit the children, & one by a long-term loving relationship hampered by ostracism & legal constraints. The special challenge of these mixed-race relationships is--along with the resources of family strength--the main focus of the book. Moderately engaging & somewhat didactic, with serviceable but not inspiring prose, it's worthwhile reading but not worthy of the enthusiastic recommendation it got from Oprah, Darlene, & my Mom.

I should divulge that I formerly lived along Cane River (the in-town part) and was given a free copy by our local National Park unit at a public symposium. I started the book that night at bedtime, thinking I'd read for an hour or so, per usual. Well I was up until well after 4:00 a.m. finishing this thing! When I showed up slightly bleary-eyed for class the next day, one of our observant grad students (thanks, Melissa!) asked whether I'd been up all night finishing "the Book of Crack" as she called it. So true--you just couldn't put it down. It was a wonderful story--kind of an Alex Hailey's _Roots_ set along the region surrounding Cane River in northwest Louisiana (roughly spanning Natchitoches to Cloutierville). For anyone not from the region (as with Mom and mother-in-law who both received and loved their copies), it's a great introduction to a region and to the complexities of Louisiana's creole communities. And the fact that the author wrote the book as something of a voyage of discovery of her own family roots, just makes it that much more bittersweet after you become so invested in characters from whom she is actually descended. This is a beautiful book about a beautiful and complicated place.

I read this one a while ago and did not jot it down in my Book Lover's Diary Journal, so I will relate what I remember. This was an Oprah Book. It has such an interesting backround in that the author Lalita Tademy, wrote this after quitting her job to research her own family heritage. Real documents and photos of the characters, her ancestors, fill the book. The author successfully researched back to her what I think was her great-great-great-great grandmother. A slave.
The narrative is broken into three parts. Told from the perspective of her ancestors, spanning three generations.
This is a heart-wrenching book; very similar to Uncle Tom's cabin.
I think that the fact it is written by a black woman, and about her own heritage and family makes this story more compelling and personal. Uncle Tom's Cabin did the remarkable job of bringing to light the horrors of slavery and prejudice through a fictional cast of characters. Cane River is about a real family and their very real experiences. The dynamics of creoles, blacks and whites, living in Louisiana at that time, somethig I knew nothing about, was very interesting and enlightening as well.
The cruelness of humans to others humans is staggering.
Yet, it shows the strength of woman, and the power of mothers to survive for their children.
Great, sad, read.

I come from two long lines of strong women. They survived the hard life of settling in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, the pain and loss of childbirth, disease, economic hardship, the Depression, the helplessness of dealing with alcoholism and many other tragedies and difficulties of life. But none of them, to my knowledge, had to suffer the indignities of slavery. Lalita Tademy's book, Cane River, tells in fictional form the stories of four generations of the women in her family.

The story, focusing on the women that raised children, mostly by white men, in rural Louisiana during the years before the Civil War and into the 1930s, brings home the true tragedies of slavery. The first woman of the family to come to Cane River was Elizabeth, torn from her two children in Virginia and shipped South, still a slave with no control over her fate or the fates of her children. Generation after generation struggle with the truth of being of dark skin in the South, as her daughters and granddaughters bear children to white plantation owners against their will, finally using the desires of these white men against them to better the lives of their children.

The great tragedy for me in this book was that these wonderful women, each beautiful and strong, was unable to realize the glory of their color. Being dark was a burden, and lightening the skin of the next generation became an unacknowledged goal for Suzette, Philomene and Emily as they fought for security in white society for their children. Being able to "pass" as white made life easier, but the resentment that built up in the community against the white men who lived openly and acknowledged their children by these black women shattered lives. Tademy's search for her heritage began in a resentment against the attitudes of the earlier generation against dark skin. What she discovered was that each generation dealt with prejudice and hardship in the only way they knew, and her respect for these women and their difficult choices becomes a wonderful story of their lives.

Although this is fiction, there is a lot of truth in this portrayal. The story doesn't end with a "happy ever after", and it sometimes seems to me that the struggle is still as hard as ever. It's long past time that we learned lessons from our tragic history.

CW: rape, racism (that’s a given since it’s about slavery), general human cruelty

I’d consider this a 4-5 star read. Honestly, for the most part, it was really engaging. I got to know and respect these women. It felt like reading Warmth of Other Suns. I know that Warmth is nonfiction written like a novel while this is a novelization of our character’s family life, but I think that Tademy did a really great job at keeping the reader engaged. Sometimes, it did feel a little stretched out but I think that that’s because she had so much to write. Im glad that I gave this book a chance.

I really enjoyed this book for the most part, but found it to be about 100 pages too long. 4/5

The author weaves together a wonderful story based on her research of her family history. I love the fact that along with the story are wonderful photos of those she writes about. These women have endured so much sadness, hardships and heartaches yet remain so strong until the day they died. This is a touching and powerful read. I definitely rec this one. I'm still on the fence about the rating...4 or 5 stars...for now a 4 but I may change to 5 later.

Although I initially thought this book was going to throw me into another depression, it really redeemed itself. I think it was not the book itself that made me sad, but the unfairness of the world we live in,especially in the past. There were so many injustices done to those in slavery, (and thankfully this book didn't dive too deep into the harsher side). But it was enough to make me realize the unfair position they were in. As I finished it, I had a great desire to find out what parts are true and to see the photos of these women (and men). I couldn't find as much information as I wanted but the author's website has a few.