Weekly Reader: The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the GIlded Age by Myra McPherson; An Entertaining Biography of Two Memorable, But Naughty Sisters

Weekly Reader: The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age by Myra McPherson: An Entertaining Biography of Two Memorable But Naughty Sisters

By Julie Sara Porter,

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: If Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is right that “well-behaved women seldom make history,” then Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin certainly made it. Myra McPherson’s winning biography tells and excellent and entertaining book about two sisters who lived life according to their own terms and proved to be very memorable colorful women who yes indeed made history.

Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin made a lot of firsts in their lives. They were the first woman to start a Wall Street brokerage. Woodhull was the first woman to run for President in the United States and was the first woman to address a United States Congressional committee. Claflin ran for Congress and became an honorary colonel for an all-black regiment. They also were the subjects of much scandal in their lives. They were Spiritualists and strong advocates for Free Love, Freedom of Speech, and Women’s Suffrage. They were also frequent targets because of their active love lives and their willingness to talk about it.

The Claflin Sisters came from scandal naturally. Their father, Buck was a snake oil salesman who put the sisters on stage to conduct séances and communicate with the dead for paying customers. (Despite their shady early connections with Spiritualism, the sisters particularly Claflin remained ardent Spiritualists for the rest of their lives. They always claimed that talking to the spirits helped get them through their difficult childhood with their idle abusive father). They also had several siblings mostly sisters who were involved in unhappy marriages and lived off of Victoria and Tennessee’s earnings. Despite the bad upbringing the sisters spent a great deal of time telling people lies about their father.
They said that he was “once a successful merchant and possessor of a large fortune who lost money in speculation.”  McPherson writes that the Claflin Sisters deceived people about their background in an attempt to gain respectability, a respectability that was often challenged by their avaricious and obnoxious family.

Like the rest of their family, the Claflin Sisters were not ones to live by rules and societal conventions. This was particularly noticeable in their sexual relationships with men. Tennessee Claflin was the lover of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who helped the duo finance their brokerage. Victoria Claflin had an early marriage to Canning Woodhull, an alcoholic doctor but she was a believer in Free Love so also had an affair with Col. James Blood, a Civil War hero. Though they were the targets of suspicion, ridicule, and damaging gossip the sisters publically acknowledged their lifestyle. Woodhull proudly declared, “Yes, I am a Free Lover,” in a public trial. The two hid no secrets about their romantic relationships in public and in their periodical, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly.  While many would argue about the Sisters’ private lives, they were certainly true to themselves and their beliefs.

Because of their very open lifestyle, the Sisters made many enemies. Even though they were ardent suffragists, many of the leaders in Women’s suffrage did not care for them. The conservative Lucy Stone head of the American Women’s Suffrage Association was appalled by their behavior.  Susan B. Anthony, leader of the more liberal National Women’s Suffrage Association, initially befriended the sisters impressed by their brokerage. She later became a mortal enemy when they threatened to reveal the private lives of many of the suffragists. Later Anthony told someone “Both sisters are regarded as lewd and indecent. I would advise against any contact.”

However they also had supporters. Elizabeth Cady Stanton supported the duo’s Free Love lifestyle even at the point of arguing with her best friend, Anthony. McPherson said that Stanton’s friendship with the Sisters and Anthony’s dislike of them was one of the issues that caused friction in the suffrage giants’ friendship. They also had a steady friend in escaped slave/author, Frederick Douglass. In fact when Victoria Woodhull ran for President in 1873, she selected Douglass as her running mate, a selection that he did not support, opting for re-electing Ulysses S. Grant instead. However, there were no hard feelings and when Woodhull and Douglass reunited, Douglass said he treated her “politely and respectfully-and (Woodhull) departed not displeased with her call.”

The friendship and enemies that the Sisters make becomes a Who’s Who of the Gilded Age and explored their relationship with the world around them. McPherson isn’t afraid to put the dark sides of the sisters and their friends and enemies, reflecting how people lived and strove to change the world around them.

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was the sister’s worst enemy. The pastor who was also the brother of Uncle Tom’s Cabin author, Harriet Beecher Stowe and anti-suffrage advocate, Catherine Beecher spoke out against the sisters on his pulpit. He frequently spoke against women’s suffrage and Free Love holding the Sisters as examples of the decadence and debauchery in the 19^th century.

However Beecher’s private life was hardly that of the saint that he projected to his parishioners. He had an affair with Elizabeth “Lib” Tilton, the wife of his parishioner Theodore Tilton. Beecher and Tilton maintained a secret love affair for years that was eventually exposed by Woodhull and Claflin in their paper. Woodhull and Claflin also exposed “The Masked French Ball” a gathering attended by financier, L.C. Challis in which men paraded and forced themselves onto young women. (While Woodhull and Claflin attended the Ball and saw the encounters themselves, they covered up their involvement by telling the story from an imaginary insiders’ perspective.) They also spoke about legalizing prostitution and defended women who had been forced into such a life and instead felt that the men not the prostitutes should be held accountable for their actions.

In exposing men, like Challis and Beecher, who criticized and attacked others for their private lives, but lived sordid lives themselves, the two revealed their attack on hypocrisy. They also showed that they were more than capable of defending themselves against powerful men by proving themselves to be just as cunning as they are, but more open about themselves. They wrote in their paper: “(Beecher) helped to maintain for these many years that very social slavery under which he was chafing, and which he was secretly revolting both in thought and practice….he has, in a word, consented and still consented to being a hypocrite.”

 Challis and Beecher later sued the Sisters for libel leading to a lengthy trial in which Woodhull and Claflin were held up as “whores” but also as symbols of Freedom of Speech and the Press. They were vilified by Beecher and his powerful allies. The scandal plus dwindling finances (partly caused by the Financial Bank Panic of 1873 and also because they lost their allies) cased the Sisters to suffer economic strain.

The most disappointing aspects to the book take place after the two renounced their earlier stances and settled into marriages into English aristocracy. They insisted that they were never advocates for Free Love and their words were taken out of context. While their actions betrayed their earlier philosophies about living their lives independently and free from conventions, these later actions showed their chameleon-like nature to suit their lives as they saw fit.

Despite their conventional marriages, the two still maintained their support for women’s suffrage and supported the more dramatic protests from the English suffragists like Emmeline Pankhurst such as hunger strikes, riots, and publicity stunts. Tennessee Claflin and Victoria Woodhull died in 1920 and 1927 respectively outliving most of their enemies and contemporaries and were one of the few early suffragists to see women get the vote in Great Britain and United States.

McPherson wrote” (Woodhull and Claflin) belonged to the ages, which must now puzzle over and debate their worth, which continues to change with passing generations and shifting attitudes about women.” Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin were outrageous, scandalous, and free spirited, but they were always memorable and always colorful. Surely they were not well-behaved but surely, in their own fashion, they made history.

Classics Corner: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; A Unique Trip Inside the Mind of Post-WWI London

Classics Corner: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; A Unique Trip Inside the Mind of Post-WWI London

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Virginia Woolf was a talented writer who knew about the inside of the human mind. Many of her works explored characters from the inside out, what they were thinking, feeling, and experiencing in their pasts and present. Sometimes the interior was a darker stormier place than the exterior. Unfortunately this was a truth that Woolf knew rather well. She was gripped by frequent depression and committed suicide by drowning in 1941.

However, her works such as Mrs. Dalloway are excellent works that explore the psychology of individuals and how their surrounding environment affects them. Mrs. Dalloway is similar to James Joyce’s Ulysses in that the action covers a single day and takes the Readers inside the characters’ minds. However I find it a better work because it does a better job of separating a person’s exterior life of conformity and respectability and the interior life of rebellion and boredom. It also acknowledges the death and despair that often are just waiting around the corner.

Without the stream of conscious trips inside the minds of Woolf’s characters, the day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway would be deadly dull. Mrs. Dalloway prepares for a party and shops surrounded by other characters including WWI veteran, Septimus Warren Smith. She then would present the party and hears about Septimus’ suicide. Well alright the suicide would be interesting to read, but the rest of Mrs. Dalloway’s life would be extremely dull. And that’s the point.

Mrs. Dalloway is driven to give this party as though it is her only purpose and Woolf hints that as far as she and the other characters in her life are concerned, it is. She chooses flowers, food, oversees the menu, and the servants’ preparation, and welcomes guests playing the role of perfect hostess. However, inside she is suffering from boredom, ennui, and possibly depression.

At 51 years old, Mrs. Dalloway feels her life slipping away from her and is unwilling to accept middle age. She remembers her rebellious youth when she carried on affairs with Peter Walsh, a former Lothario and Sally Seton, a formerly Bohemian friend who has now become a Conservative mother of five. As she thinks of her early affairs and wayward youth, she feels nothing but boredom and disgust at the life around her even though she goes through the motions.

Mrs. Dalloway’s relationship with her husband, Richard is proper and conventional with all of the propriety one would expect from a marriage in Upper-Middle Class London. She is economically cared for, has children, and attends the correct functions. But still she feels something is missing. She goes from location to location throughout her day as if avoiding her deeper thoughts and unhappiness as the clocks tick away as if removing hours, minutes, seconds of her life.

Mrs. Dalloway also feels somewhat envious and competitive towards her daughter, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth is a New Woman product of the early 20^th century. Unlike her mother, she is able to express her displeasure and disappointments (making it clear that she does not want to attend her mother’s dinner party and would rather go to the country with her father). She also has dreams of being a doctor, a farmer, or go into Parliament avenues that her mother would never have dreamt. Instead Mrs. Dalloway gives parties as her life passes her by.

Mrs. Dalloway isn’t the only character with problems. Woolf saw Septimus Warren Smith as “an essential counterpoint” to Mrs. Dalloway and he is. While Mrs. Dalloway goes through the ennui of her life, Smith goes through the trauma of his. He is a WWI veteran with PTSD and an unhappy marriage with his wife, Lucrezia, an Italian immigrant.

Smith is haunted by the ghost of his friend and fellow soldier (and possibly more) Evans who was killed in action. He goes through his life having imaginary mental conversations with Evans and finding life difficult to adjust to returning after war. His wife, Lucrezia is supportive but doesn’t understand him. His doctor, Dr. Holmes gives blank diagnoses about his condition based on little effort. (Perhaps Woolf’s way of getting back at some fraudulent psychiatrists in her life). The pressure and inability of returning to a so-called normal life leads to Smith’s suicide by jumping off a building.

Though Mrs. Dalloway and Smith never meet or interact with each other (except for a moment when he sees Mrs. D. through a window), their fates are connected. When one of her party guests mentions Smith’s suicide, Mrs. Dalloway at first is dismayed and upset that this shadow of death fell on her surroundings. (“A young man had killed himself. And they talked of it at her party..”)  Instead she feels envious towards him. She says to herself, “But this young man who had killed himself-had he plunged his treasure? ‘If it were now to die, ‘twere now to be most happy.’” She is jealous that Smith was able to do something about his unhappiness. He was able to act out and accept what he was feeling. While Mrs. Dalloway had to hide her feelings behind a semblance of respectability. Smith’s death forces Mrs. Dalloway to confront her own tormented thoughts and emotions and for the first time live honestly to herself.

Virginia Woolf took the Reader on a trip inside the human psyche and explored who they were. She showed us that sometimes those who are most seemingly contented are often inside the saddest.

Classics Corner: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs: True Story Captures the Brutality of Slavery and The Rewards of Freedom

Classics Corner: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs: True Story Captures The Brutality of Slavery and the Rewards of Freedom
By Julie Sara Porter,
Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin reflected the horrors of slavery but from the authorship of a white woman. While it received much defense and criticism, even to this day (particularly from many who use the term, "Uncle Tom" as a derogatory term), it opened a lot of pre-Civil War eyes to slavery and the abolitionist movement. However, because Stowe wrote it (and did meticulous research for it which she explored in the follow up A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin), it can only gain an outsider's perspective of what she imagines the life of a slave to be like. A book that had been written about the same time reflects the life of a slave much better, because it is the true story of a former slave written by herself.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) improves on Stowe's narrative because this was Jacob's life and her observations. The book was published under the name Linda Brent and with pseudonyms (however for this review, I will use the real names of the people.).  Jacobs explored the horrors of her situation and her eventual daring escape with honesty, warmth, rage, and even a dry detached wit that not only matches up to Uncle Tom's Cabin, but surpasses it in terms of writing quality.
Jacobs resorted to some literary techniques in her writing such as addressing the "Reader" in an intrusive narrative form and she invited the Reader to imagine themselves in such a situation. But most of her narration is honest, frank, and doesn't resort to melodrama. For example she uses situational irony when she recounts one of her master's description of a run away slave who was found in New York to be starving and begged to return. Jacobs later mentioned seeing this woman who was completely happy and had no intention of returning. "Many of the slaves believe such stories, and think it is not worth while to exchange slavery for a hard kind of freedom," she wrote.
She described such horrible events  as physical abuse and sexual assault, but in a plain matter-of-fact way to let the story speak for itself that slavery was a cruel institution. She didn't need to resort to drama to grab her reader's attention. She just let her own story speak for itself.

Jacobs recounted her childhood including her birth by her mother Delilah Horniblow and biracial father, Elijah Knox, and her upbringing by her grandmother. The home was so loving that Jacobs was unaware that she was property until her mother's death when she was six. "I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed I was a piece of merchandise, trusted to them for safe keeping, liable to be demanded of them at any moment."

Jacobs lived with her mother's mistress, who was kind enough to teach her to read, write, and sew but not kind enough to free her. So after she died, the mistress left a will with a codicil that ended up causing Jacobs to be sold to the mistress' five-year-old niece, Mary Matilda Norcrom.
Mary Matilda's father, Dr. James Norcrom sexually harassed Jacobs when she came of age.He alternated between appearing  nice and erupting into violent rages, both of which terrified Jacobs. "My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him." Jacobs recounted excellently that fear of being continuously abused and assaulted by a powerful man and the loneliness that she has no one to turn to who could help her.

Jacobs used many means to resist Norcrom's advances including becoming involved in a consensual sexual relationship with a white man who fathered her two children, Louise Matilda and Joseph.
 Jacobs justified her sexual relationship as a means of survival. "I  was a poor slave girl, only fifteen years old," she wrote. "To be an object of interest to a man who is not married, and who is not her master, is agreeable to the pride and feelings of a slave, if her miserable situation has left her any pride or sentiment."
However Jacobs' relationship had strings attached. While her lover promised to free their children, he refused to do so, though he eventually returned them to their grandmother.  He also bought her brother and became upset that because he believed "some damned abolitionist encouraged him to run away." (In actuality, Jacobs' brother seized the opportunity to run away on his own.)
The careless behavior of Jacobs' white lover and former mistress shows that the Myth of the "Good Slave Owner" is just that: a myth. That when people with the best of intentions towards their slaves
still took part in such a heartless institution that offered no equality towards people seen as property. That even if a slave was fortunate enough to work under a kind master or mistress that encouraged them to read and never had them whipped, the slave was  not  seen as a human being in their own right. The kind master or mistress' protection may last only as long as they are still alive. The slave still could be at the mercy of being sold and separated from their friends and family, a real fear that filled Jacobs' life as she worried about her children being sold and Norcrom threatened to do if she resisted his advances.

Jacobs eventually ran away and in the book's most intense passages escaped to the last place Norcrom would have looked for her: instead of heading North, she turned right around and hid in the crawl space of her freed grandmother's attic. Jacobs watched from her grandmother's attic with glee as Norcrom made several fruitless trips up North to New York figuring that she ran up there to hide with relatives. But she also watched with heartache as her children and other relatives were sold and she can't do anything about it (though Norcrom kept bothering them about their mother's whereabouts which they did not know until Jacobs had been in hiding for years.) Even though Jacobs described the attic as "an uncomfortable prison" and her concern for her children was always apparent, she considered it a better alternative to being found and returned by Norcrom. "I heard the old doctor's threats but they no longer had the same power to trouble me. The darkest cloud of my life had rolled away," she wrote with pride about her escape and her children's removal from Norcrom's clutches.

Jacobs eventually escaped to Philadelphia in 1842  by boat to live with some anti-slavery friends and found work as a nursemaid in New York. She eventually was able to reunite with her children. Her book has a finality as she said that her story does not end with marriage, instead ending with the freedom of herself and her children. "We are as free from the power of slaveholders as are the white people of the north," she wrote with pride and dreamed of greater things like owning her own home (which she eventually did) and teaching about the evils of slavery (which she did at anti-slavery conventions), and her children going to school (which they both did. Louise Matilda  worked towards educating young African-American children and Joseph joined his uncle and Jacobs' brother to live in California).

There is an interesting story that when Jacobs first thought of telling her story, she was uncertain of her own writing abilities. So she appealed to Harriet Beecher Stowe, even suggesting her daughter, Louise Matilda accompany Stowe to England to recount her story. Stowe refused suggesting that Louise Matilda's story as a former slave might hold her to being spoiled and pampered by the English audience. Stowe also doubted the veracity of Jacobs' story and wanted to consult with her employer. Jacobs was outraged and sharply retorted, "...what a pity we poor blacks cant (sic) have the firmness and stability of character that you white people have."
Jacobs proved with her own observations and brilliant gift of writing that she was more than capable of telling her own story herself.

Forgotten Favorites: The Heroines by Eileen Favorite: A Book Lover's Dream (or Nightmare) Comes To Life

Forgotten Favorites: The Heroines by Eileen Favorite: A Book Lover's Dream (or Nightmare) Comes To Life
By Julie Sara Porter,
Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: The Heroines by Eileen Favorite could be considered every book lover's dream. But in some ways it could also be every book lover's nightmare. It portrays a world in which female literary characters take a break from their story lines and relax inside a Bed & Breakfast.

The Prairie Homestead, owned by Anne-Marie Entwhistle, is the go-to place where literary heroines arrive to get some tea and sympathy from its proprietor and snorts of derision from her daughter, Penny. It is the type of place where, on any given day, Emma Bovary could arrive in tears about Rodolphe deserting her. Where Daisy Buchanan takes long baths after she kills Myrtle Wilson with her car. Where Ophelia lounges on the hammock outside and mourns her deceased father, Polonoius.

For Anne-Marie, this is a great privilege as she welcomes the Heroines with open arms. She has a few set rules such as keeping her vast private library locked so the Heroines never accidentally learn of their fates. ("The last thing (Anne-Marie) wanted was for Anna Karenina to accidentally discover that she was bound to take her life on the railroad tracks," Penny explains in her narration.) She also doesn't let the Heroines know about their fate. She just offers nods of sympathy, non-committed, "Yes I see"s or analytic "What do you think you should do?"'s to the Heroines as they bemoan their fates that their authors put them in.

Favorite captures the interactions between Anne-Marie and the Heroines well. One of the interesting aspects of the Heroines is how non-eventful and anti-climactic their arrivals are. They don't appear out of some magical vortex, dressed in period appropriate clothes, and yell at modern conveniences like wondering how the tiny people got inside the television sets. They appear in ordinary clothing and sign into the register like any other guests. In fact Penny and Anne-Marie are unaware that the women are literary characters until they start talking about events in the book.
Anne-Marie takes their arrivals in stride offering rooms and continental breakfasts with no amazement or surprise. Of course she has been seeing the Heroines since she was five years old and first met Rapunzel, so this is bound to be a regular occurrence to her.
Favorite also captures the Heroines' verbal cues and more elevated language rather well like they are characters still trapped in their own time periods, their problems, and situations. Hester Prynne soothes her sobbing daughter Pearl and apologizes to Anne-Marie by saying, "I am truly sorry, mistress. Pearl, thou art a disgrace to me." Franny Glass lies on the Homestead sofa and recites the Jesus Prayer to block out Anne-Marie's feminist rants and declares  "Power's an illusion. Often power and wisdom are revealed through the most lowly-the poorer and children." They may have changed locations and are wearing modern wardrobe, but they can't stop being who they are.

Favorite also captures the adolescent angst of Anne-Marie's daughter, Penny. Penny is irritated by the Heroines' arrival because she feels they get their mother's attention. Many of their arguments are based on the Heroines such as when Penny tries to warn Emma Bovary to go back to her husband which only results in her mother's slap. Penny also is angry when she believes that her mother puts the Heroines' needs above her own such as giving Dierdre, a character from Irish Mythology, her room. Favorite captures those vulnerable times when a teenage girl begins to feel sexual urges for the first time and has to deal with her developing body. Just when she needs her parents the most, but acts like she doesn't. (And in Penny's case, when she feels abandoned by her mother the most, because of her concern for the Heroines.)
At Penny's most vulnerable moment is when she encounters for the first time, a male character driven to take back a Heroine in this case, Dierdre's husband, Connor. Even though Penny has a definite Villain vibe about him, she is drawn by his raw sexuality, handsome looks, and roguish charm. She is also a young girl alone in the woods and definitely has some naughty thoughts about the handsome Irish king in front of her. She offers to "help" him by getting Dierdre hoping to get some alone time with the man. In the typical mother-daughter  interaction, Penny believes her mother "doesn't understand" Penny's attraction to Bad Boy, Connor but we Readers later discover that through Anne-Marie's youthful infatuation with another literary Bad Boy, Wuthering Heights' Heathcliff, she understands more than Penny is aware.

Talking to and befriending literary characters seems like a plum dream come to true, but Favorite also refers to the responsibilities of living such as life: that they can't let anyone know about it. Penny realizes this too late when Anne-Marie consents to having Penny institutionalized after she accidentally reveals the family secret to the police. She also tells another patient in the (very scary and underfunded) Unit for mentally ill girls. The patient cruelly mocks her in a Group meeting. Penny seriously wonders if she and her mother aren't a little crazy imagining this scenario of literary characters. Thankfully a rescue from her friend, Albie and Connor (who sees and speaks to Connor) convinces Penny that she and her mother aren't the only ones that see and interact with literary characters. This plus a later conversation between Connor, Anne-Marie, and a police officer (which brings a finality to Dierdre and Connor's fates) shows that a life of befriending literary characters can bring its own share of stress and trauma in trying to change the characters' fates as well as the Entwhistle's.

The Heroines is a wonderful book in which Eileen Favorite explored some strong female characters both hers and other author's. She captures their interactions and friendships as well as the love between mother and daughter. It is the type of book that isn't afraid to ask "WWSD" "What Would Scarlett (as in O'Hara) Do?"

Bonus Weekly Reader: A Night In With Audrey Hepburn by Lucy Holliday: A Cute, But Fluffy Chick Lit About Friendship With A Ghostly Movie Star

Bonus Weekly Reader: A Night In With Audrey Hepburn By Lucy Holliday: A Cute, But Fluffy Chick Lit About Friendship With A Ghostly Movie Star
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: We may have dreams of our favorite celebrities. Sometimes we visualize them falling in love with us and sweeping us off our feet. We may also visualize being best friends with them, spending all night talking about our latest troubles to them. This is especially true of fans of the Golden Age of
Hollywood who see the works of Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, or Humphrey Bogart or others. These older actors had an allure of unapproachable glamour but often played similar characters so often that their fans feel like they know them because they know that character. Lucy Holliday captures those glamorous fantasies in her novel, A Night In With Audrey Hepburn in which a lovelorn failed actress encounters the ghost of her favorite Hollywood Golden Age film star, Audrey Hepburn.

Libby Lomax, an English woman, is the type of out of luck female that often stars in humorous chick lits. She recently lost her job playing an alien extra in a science-fiction tv show after she accidentally sets her alien costume on fire. But not before she catches the eye of the show's hunky star, Dillon O'Hara much to his jealous girlfriend's dismay. She also feels out of place with her stage mom agent mother and her attractive scenery chewing actress sister, Cassandra. So, Libby is a woman who needs a lot of help already before Audrey Hepburn appears on her Chesterfield sofa.

Hepburn is written with the charm and grace of her beloved characters such as Sabrina Fairchild from Sabrina and Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's. She is enthusiastic about this new modern world and its inventions such as Libby's espresso maker which amuses Libby. She also grows to love online shopping and Twitter much to Libby's chagrin. (She even sets up her own Twitter account #LittleBlackDressAndPearls) She gives the book the spunk and elfin charm that Hepburn was known for and steals just about every scene that she's in.

She also is fond of giving Libby some solid advice. When Libby talks about her absent father, Hepburn also relates about her own absent father who later was revealed to be a Nazi sympathizer (actual biographical information). She chastises Libby for her shyness and her somewhat plain appearance suggesting that she become more stylish (hence the online shopping). She also encourages to follow her heart and take chances with the men in her life, such as Dillon. Libby's encounters with Hepburn are the highlight of the book.

Unfortunately, Hepburn's passages with Libby completely overshadow the book that the rest of the book pales in comparison with them. There are many chapters where Libby encounters many of the people in her life, particularly her annoying mother and sister and self-centered father, as well as her friends. They are funny and usually involve comedies of errors such as when Libby steps outside of a sauna in nothing but a towel and ends up in an embarrassing Twitter video.
Most of Libby's encounters with the other people in the book are cute, but fluffy. You know that there are going to turn out well despite her embarrassment. Even the book's attempts at seriousness such as discussing Libby's relationship with her distant father end up being non-events (though they do give Libby some much needed Girl Power as she realizes that she could never change her father and not to even bother anymore.)
 But there isn't much sparkle to them as there is in the passages with Audrey Hepburn. In fact in the pages without her, this Reader kept hoping that Audrey would show up just to slap some sense into Libby or at least give her a stern but very spunky talking-to. Audrey Hepburn overshadows the book so much that everyone else just seems to be filler.

Some plot points get mentioned but are left dangling such as Libby having a male friend who appears to like her beyond friendship and there seems to be some connection between Audrey Hepburn in life and Libby's Chesterfield sofa that is never fully explained. Holliday wrote two other books in the series which feature Libby's encounters with Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly so this book no doubt sets up the others to follow. At the very least they should be interesting for the Golden Age of Hollywood stars. Maybe the rest of Holliday's writing could catch up to them.

Weekly Reader: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead: A Strange But Thrilling Alternate Universe Trip From Bondage To Freedom

Weekly Reader: The Underground Railroad By Colson Whitehead: A Strange But Thrilling Alternate Universe Trip From Bondage To Freedom
By Julie Sara Porter,
Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: I must admit as a child when I heard the term "The Underground Railroad," I took it literally. I imagined a literal train underneath the ground in which slaves escaped as freed blacks and white abolitionists conducted the actual trains to the North. Of course the term is figurative and the Underground Railroad was a fascinating history of people both white and black who took chances and saved lives challenging the Fugitive Slave Laws. But I never forgot my earlier naivete about picturing an actual train underground.

Colson Whitehead's thrilling alternate history of the Underground Railroad captured that childhood image by also taking the concept of "The Underground Railroad" literally by making it an actual rail system underground. (In fact one character scoffs at the idea that the term is metaphoric playing off on the Real-world system.) The book details the journey of Cora, an escaped slave as she encounters the Railroad on her journey towards the North into freedom.

Cora escapes with a fellow slave named Caesar, following the path of Cora's mother Mabel, who had earlier escaped without her. On their run to freedom, Cora kills a teenage boy who intends to capture her. Fearing retribution from the white community because of the boy's death, Cora and Caesar encounter an abolitionist who leads them to the first train stop on the Underground Railroad.

The book is exciting and filled with tension as Cora and Caesar encounter various difficulties at each stop. In South Carolina, they learn of a conspiracy to sterilize black women and render black men with syphilis (shades of the infamous Tuskegee Experiments before they appeared in the real timeline in the early 20th century). Before they can escape, the two are separated and Cora travels alone.
In Indiana, Cora encounters a farm run by escaped slaves and freed men. However, the freed men fear retaliation so they alert the slave catchers of the former slaves' presences. Each chapter Cora encounters a new struggle, but manages to escape using her strength, perseverance, and assistance from the Railroad's network of abolitionist, freed blacks, and conductors.

Cora is a three-dimensional protagonist as she makes her way to Freedom. She is fundamentally flawed such as her hatred for her mother who she feels abandoned her. She also is someone who is filled with a deep mistrust of most people, even the ones who are trying to help her, because of earlier abuse and sexual assault during her slavery days. It is to be expected that someone who had been through such a hard time would not find it easy to trust people. As she continues to run towards freedom, Cora also regains some of her faith and trust in others accepting help from those who offer it such as from Martin, a kindly abolitionist who hides her in his attic and Royal, one of the heads of the farming community in Indiana. This is just as much a journey of Cora's self-discovery as it is a run for freedom.

Whitehead also does a brilliant job of capturing other points of view besides Cora by giving other characters their own chapters. These chapters alternate with Cora's journey capturing Caesar and Mabel's less successful escapes than Cora's. (Caesar is killed by an angry mob and Mabel is bitten by a snake.) Whitehead also captures the points of view of white characters such as Ethel, Martin's reluctant wife who nurses Cora through illness and Ridgeway, a slave catcher who is equal parts Uncle Tom's Cabin's Simon Legree and Les Miserable's Inspector Javert. Ridgeway is obsessed with capturing Cora because he is consumed by memories of her mother, the only slave that he failed to catch. He is determined to even the score by capturing Cora and doesn't care how many men he has to sacrifice to do it. His obsession gets the better of him in his final encounter with Cora as she manages to attack him and get away on a push cart.

While The Underground Railroad is an interesting alternate history, some logistics are questionable. (Wouldn't people hear this large train system under their feet giving the whole system away? Aren't people even mildly curious where those mysterious train tracks lead? The book doesn't mention Harriet Tubman, but wouldn't that make her one of the first female train engineers and in this alternate timeline is she as successful as she was in the real timeline that "she was the only conductor who never lost a passenger?") But no matter. The Underground Railroad does what good alternate history is supposed to do. It mentions an intriguing possibility of how history could have played out and gives a brilliant story to surround that possibility.

Classics Corner: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: Angelou's Memoir Captures The Beauty, Sadness, Terror, and Strength of Her Youth

Classics Corner: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: Angelou's Memoir Captures The Beauty, Sadness, Terror, and Strength of Her Youth
By Julie Sara Porter, Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Maya Angelou's classic memoir I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is probably the gold standard of childhood memoirs. Angelou recounted a childhood troubled by parental separation, racism, child molestation, sexism, and teenage pregnancy with beauty and intelligence that also defined her career as a poet and Civil Rights activist.

Maya, born Marguerite Johnson (but nicknamed "My" or "Maya" by her older brother, Bailey) recounted her childhood from the time she was three years old when she and her brother were sent to live at their grandmother's home in Stamps, Arkansas to when she was 16 and gave birth to her son, Clyde. Angelou's autobiography is written exclusively from her childhood self in which she is intelligent, shy, insecure, and confused about the world around her.

The book is filled with beautiful descriptions of Angelou's memories. On her and Bailey's arrival in Stamps, she describes the reaction of  her grandmother's store (which is the nerve center of Stamps) as "Early in the century, Momma (we soon stopped calling her Grandmother) sold lunches to the sawmen  in the lumber yard (east Stamps) and the seedmen at the cotton gin (west Stamps). Her crisp meat pies and cool lemonade when joined to her miraculous ability to be in two places at the same time assured her business success." Using humor and beautiful description, Angelou captures her youth as well as she captured her poetry in a way that enchants and inspires the Reader.

Angelou's grandmother, Annie Henderson, filled a loving presence in Angelou's young life. She writes "(Her grandmother) was undemonstrative in her love but uncompromising in that love. A deep-brooding love hung over everything she touched." "Momma" Henderson was a woman of deep strength and faith. Many of Angelou's strongest memories are of her grandmother taking her to church, introducing her to the various members of the community, and distributing motherly wisdom and advice to Maya and Bailey. She was a true warm and motherly soul that provided comfort for Angelou's dark childhood.

Many of Angelou's darkest childhood memories were caused by those who should have loved and cared for her: her parents. Her father, Bailey Johnson Sr. was a distant presence in young Maya's life. In fact he only appears twice in the book: once to drive his daughter to St. Louis to live with her mother and another time to invite a then-teenage Maya to spend the summer with him and his girlfriend in San Diego (The summer ended with  a huge fight between Maya, her father, and his girlfriend resulting in her becoming temporarily homeless.)

As bad a time as Angelou had with her father, the time with her mother was worse. Her mother had
a very glamorous appearance almost like a film star but was very immature and somewhat self-centered, more interested in being buddies with Maya and Bailey than being a mother. This is particularly evident when the children lived with her and her boyfriend in St. Louis. The boyfriend raped 8  year old Maya and threatened to kill Bailey if she tells anyone. The isolation that she felt during the rape and its aftermath is deeply felt as she withdraws into herself unable to trust her mother to protect her.
Maya continued to feel isolated even after the boyfriend was arrested and put to trial. He was released after a year only to be found dead under mysterious circumstances (possibly caused by her uncles). However this does not give Angelou any release as she was  rendered mute for five years from the trauma.

Despite the trauma that Angelou endured from her parents, she encounters love and support from her grandmother and brother, Bailey. (Bailey encourages Maya to come forward about the rape despite the threats to his life). But even they can't shield children from racism. Racism is prominently felt throughout the book in different passages that reveal the cruelty of the bigots around Angelou and her family.
Three "powhitetrash" girls mocked and displayed  vulgar gestures to Angelou's grandmother. Her disabled Uncle Willie was  chased by Ku Klux Klan members only to find safety in a potato and onion bin. A white dentist refused  to treat Maya's teeth which Angelou envisions a dramatic confrontation in which Momma Henderson confounds the dentist and makes him change his ways. (In reality she had to remind him of a debt he owed her, but Angelou always liked her version better.) In another passage, a white professor gave a graduation speech which basically tells the mostly black audience that they will never be good at anything but in sports. During his speech, Maya felt ashamed and embarrassed at her race but then became defiant determined to prove him wrong.

The struggles within her family and from the racism outside would lead most people to despair, but Angelou discovered her strength through a love of reading and learning. She writes that  William Shakespeare is her "first white love" as she discovered his works at a young age. After that she recognizes the transformation that reading provides for her and a talent for writing. Angelou's writing suggested that her love of reading even proved miraculous at times.
After her selective muteness, Maya bonded with Mrs. Flowers, a Stamps intellectual who offered Maya poems and books to read. This connection to her love of reading, freed Maya from the trauma of her rape and allowed her to read a poem aloud in school.

Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings captured a troubled childhood but did so with humor, beauty, and strength found in a love of family and learning. She turned a difficult background into a work of triumph.