By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book that features one of the Seven Deadly Sins (Spite, Wrath)
Spoilers: We all build walls and fences around ourselves. Some build them for protection to keep people inside. Others build them to keep others out.
Sometimes, the worst fences are the ones that surround the human heart. They are built because we don't know certain people, we don't want to know them. They are built not by hammers, drills, and nails but with other tools. Tools like assumptions, prejudice, spite, meanness, and hatred. Those fences are the strongest ones and they take forever to come down, if they ever do.
That is the situation faced by Magnolia "Maggie" Pugh, the young protagonist of Trudy Krisher's powerful novel, Spite Fences. Her family is considered "poor white trash" in their small town of Kinship, Georgia during the early 1960's. Many in town disregard her family because of their poverty. She has to deal with an abusive mother, unemployed father, and Gardenia, a sister who is propped up to become a beauty queen.
The Pughs also have to contend with their neighbors, the Boggses. Maggie's mother looks down on the Boggses, saying that if her family is poor, then at least they have standards. She thinks that the Boggses are a wild uncouth bunch of hooligans and with good reason. Their son, Virgil, is a sadist who plays malicious pranks on people including the Pugh sisters. Maggie's mother demands that her father put a fence around their home to block out the presence of their neighbors.
Besides the literal fence between the Pugh and Boggs homes, the figurative fences are stronger during the Jim Crow era. Maggie is looking for work as a housekeeper to help support her family. She is referred to the home of George Hardy, a mathematics professor who's new in town. At first, Maggie doesn't see George. She cleans his house as the two pass notes back and forth to each other. It comes as a surprise that her employer is an African-American man.
Maggie tries to continue working for George, whom she grows to like and respect, while hiding it from the town, particularly her mother. She also becomes swept up in the Civil Rights Movement as the African-American community of Kinship plans a display of civil disobedience. Maggie has to rely on her open mindedness, new found friendships with the African-American community, and her talents as a photographer to break through those fences and speak out.
Spite Fences is an extremely strong character and theme driven book. At the center of this storm lies Maggie. She is similar to Scout Finch, from To Kill A Mockingbird, a young prepubescent white girl breaking through the color barrier to question the societal standards that surrounds her. She is extremely timid and conditioned, particularly by her mother, not to express her strongest emotions. She buries a lot underneath, including being an eyewitness to a violent hate crime and not speaking out about the circumstances.
It is only after she befriends George and several other African-Americans around town, putting faces to names that she has grown up near but never knew on a personal basis that she realizes that she can no longer stand on the sidelines out of fear. Seeing how others live, worship, and work. She recognizes that struggle and is able to put herself forward.
Maggie is an amateur photographer and George is able to use that talent to bond with her. He offers her his issues of National Geographic so she can study photographs of other countries. He encourages her to use her talents around town and to look inside others to capture these moments. He also discusses deep topics such as fears with Maggie, so she can look inside the people around her and see beyond their outward appearances.
Maggie's photography becomes a key in breaking down the fences. She takes pictures of her new friends and herself in happy situations that unfortunately get revealed to the White community of Kinship. Even though things don't turn out well, Maggie is able to take pictures of the oppression that African-Americans face and the means they use to challenge them. These pictures not only bring faces to their struggle, but gives Maggie an opportunity to improve her situation.
Spite Fences is about the fences that are built out of cruelty and hatred. However, with love, friendship, human concern, and recognizing our talents, light can be shown through those fences. Maybe those fences can even come down.
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