Such an enlightening read on the history of slavery. Tademy does a remarkable job of fleshing out her characters and an era of history. Based on real people.

The authors use of her real life family history to craft a historical fiction is unique and well done in this book. Overall I found the story very heartbreaking and while it was slow for me I think this being a somewhat true account adds so much value. I chose not to rate this one as I think it would be unfair to the 4 generations of women and their hardships.

I was in a bit of a reading slump and this was the book that got me out of it. It was very good. It follows generations of women, the first of which was sold as a slave to a plantation in Louisiana. The Civil War happens and freedom is given, but the hard stuff isn’t over yet.
I’ve read a lot of Civil War era books (none set in Louisiana), but none have given me such a clear picture of what it was like to live a slave, a freed slave, a biracial person in love with a white person…it was very revealing for me. And then the fact that the characters were all real and the ancestors of the author.
This is a very good book and I will be adding it to my personal library.

This book was interesting and intriguing but it did not feel authentic. I know she wrote a novel based on her family tree but the “free reign” of the “mulattos” did not feel true based on what I know of that time in history, especially in Louisiana. I also wish she had attempted to answer the question of why stay in Louisiana when so many others left. I often ask that question...

One of those books that hooked me in right away. Lalita Tademy tells the story of her 2+ years of family history research and shares it with us. Her family history begins in the Cane River as a family of slaves. This book is told through the eyes of the females of the family. I couldn't help but feel I was right there with the family through all the hardships. I am excited to read the sequel, Red River, the men of the family's point of view.

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.

A novelization of the author’s own family and a portrait of her grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great grandmother and the lives they carved out for themselves on plantations along the Cane River near Natchitoches, Louisiana

An interesting examination of how complicated our intersections with race are in this country.

My mom passed this book to me a couple of years ago and said it was very good. I picked this up recently after seeing another review that caught my attention. This is a story of the author’s research of her personal family history. It gets back around 5 generations of the women and how they lived and survived the years prior to the civil war and the aftermath. To say the women especially were strong and made decisions to help keep their family as intact as possible. It does pull back the curtain of slavery - especially women and their children, many by their masters and land owners of French descent in Louisiana. Although the book is based off the authors genealogy, she does an amazing job with putting it into a story form and highlights the lives of 3 of those amazing women in her family. I highly recommend it.

This might make my top books (already!) for this year. While it was released in 2001, it just came up for me as a book to read for Black History Month. The author Lalita Tademy weaves a story of her own female ancestors that were born enslaved in the Cane River area of Louisiana. It tells the very real fears and realities these women had to face as time went on. Four generations of African American women trying to build their families and seek elusive freedom. I learned a lot from this book, and would recommend it to anyone.

This book isn’t graphic but does deal with the atrocities of enslavement, rape, war, colorism, and racism.

16/20

Une lecture importante, de celles qui nous rappellent ce que l’esclavage était vraiment, comment il se perpétuait génération après génération et combien certains êtres humains ont pu souffrir en raison de la prétendue infériorité raciale. Un très beau roman, même s’il comportait quelques longueurs un peu regrettables.

Ma chronique : https://littleprettybooks.com/2021/08...

I loved this book so much that I slowed down reading Emily’s story because I wasn’t ready for the book to end. I myself have been working on my Creole genealogy on both of my grandparents side a few parishes over and although this story is Lalita’s family , it helped me to understand the lives of so many. This will be forever one of my all time favorite books and I would love to see a movie made from this book. I liked it a lot better than the color purple.

Don’t try to match one misery against another. Field or house, we’re all in the same web waiting for the spider to get home.”
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Learning. Teaching. Applying. Realizing.

Those are the words that come to mind when I think of the four generations of women we follow here in this novel. Elisabeth, Suzette, Philomene, and Emily initially on and near a Creole plantation on Louisiana’s Cane River.

All of these women living in similar times with small differences who shape them as mothers and as people. The three eldest women navigating slavery, and eventually freedom. Baring children by men that they could not marry, and the ones that could marry (in a sense) were devastated when it was time to be sold to other plantations. Manipulated but also navigating decisions that would ultimately lead to family stability but at the same time hoping that things didn’t get worse.

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Even though these women progressed throughout the years, individually and as a family, they were struck with discrimination (as expected with the times) due to their color and because of their choice in men.

Some were color struck and felt that the lighter their skin the more advantage they would have in the world. While the others felt that they would still be labeled as colored and mixing with white men was merely “bleaching the line”.

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Given the times, I feel that each of these women did what they needed to do to protect themselves to the best of their ability and provide for their family.

In the end, they saw some of their line education, owning land and having the ability to see the truths that always remained the same.
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Spanning over 137 years of family history, Cane River, covers the authors family written as fiction. Surprisingly, there are photos of wills, family trees for each of the women and a combined tree for the entire family; photos of every family member that’s spoken of and a very much appreciated Authors Note and Acknowledgements that bring this story full circle.