The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!

 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

It's the 90s! The 1890s, that is. We're in high society in New York City, and our protagonist/narrator, Newland Archer, is about to marry May Welland and cement his status as part of the elite class. In the months leading up to his marriage, though, Newland is re-introduced to an childhood acquaintance, May's cousin, Ellen Olenska. Ellen married a count in Europe, but has left her husband (scandal!) and wants to begin anew in her hometown of the Big Apple. At first, she is not terribly well received (too bohemian, not the 'right' sort of wealthy, a separated woman, etc.) but eventually May's family stands up for her and she is lukewarmly welcomed back into NY society. Newland falls for Ellen (and vice versa), but for a variety of reasons, their love is not meant to be, and Newland marries May and has several children with her. Ellen moves to Paris (to live independently, not to return to her husband) and their lives diverge forever. 

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Okay, so I gave you a little snapshot of the plot; there's obviously a lot more that happens, but those are the most salient points. If you're wondering about the book's feel, it's basically Gossip Girl from a hundred years ago. I really enjoyed Wharton's writing style, as well as the forbidden love story; if you haven't read it, I highly recommend! Here are some highlights from my point of view. 

Portraits of People

Wharton does an excellent job of capturing the essence of each of these high society characters. Here are a few of my favorites:

Mr. Sillerton Jackson

In addition to this forest of family trees, Mr. Sillerton Jackson carried between his narrow hollow temples, and under his soft thatch of silver hair, a register of most of the scandals and mysteries that had smouldered under the unruffled surface of New York society within the last fifty years. 

Mrs. Henry van der Luyden

She always, indeed, struck Newland Archer as having been rather gruesomely preserved in the airless atmosphere of a perfectly irreproachable existence, as bodies caught in glaciers keep for years a rosy life-in-death. lololololz.

Ellen Olenska (née Mingott)

She was a fearless and familiar little thing, who asked disconcerting questions, made precocious comments, and possessed outlandish arts, such as dancing a Spanish shawl dance and singing Neapolitan love-songs to a guitar.  this was Ellen as a young girl, though the description still fits her as an adult. ;)

Fashionable! Do you all think so much of that? Why not make one's own fashions?  

Female author, male protagonist

My biggest issue with this book was that the narrator/protagonist was Newland. AKA, a man. I'm sure it was revolutionary enough to write and publish as a woman in the early 20th century, and who knows what forces were at play, but I wish Ellen could have been the real heroine of this book. Newland felt more like a 3rd party observer, which has its own allure and adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the novel, but I couldn't help feeling like Edith was hiding somewhere under Ellen's surface. 

If you've read my blob, this is not the first time I've made this complaint. Other 'offenders' from this blob include, in chronological order:

(Edith Wharton)

- Flannery O'Connor

- Isabel Allende

- J.K. Rowling

Newland stands up for women's issues, saying things like: Women ought to be free - as free as we are. But it wasn't enough for me to feel satisfied. I still felt a bit like Ellen was muted, which felt like a reflection of misogyny/sexism.

Moments that reminded me of Proust/Swann

There were many, which I admit I found quite endearing, since you know how much I love my Marcel. 

• He had dawdled over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realisation. 

Murakami moments

Several of Archer's reflective moments reminded me of Murakami, in particular The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, in their sort of existential despair/displacement. Admittedly, I felt I needed to lean away from these sentiments since being in the middle of a pandemic when one is forced to stay at home 98.4% of the time could bring out many of these feelings in me if I let it. ;)

• He was out of spirits and slightly out of temper, and a haunting horror of doing the same thing every day at the same hour besieged his brain. 

• The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.

• What's the use? You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment, you asked me to go on with a sham one. It's beyond human enduring - that's all.

• Since [that day] there had been no farther communication between [Newland and Ellen], and he had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned among his secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him, his judgements and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent-minded man goes bumping into the furniture of his own room. Absent - that was what he was: so absent from everything most densely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him to find they still imagined he was there.

• I don't know what you mean by realities. The only reality to me is this. 

Sinecure (a position requiring little or no work but giving the holder status or financial benefit)

This was a word on a Latin test Mr. Lausch gave us back in high school, and I got it wrong. He had planted a tricky fake-out choice, something about a poison without a cure, and I was fooled. For a long time, I wondered what an example of a sinecure would be. This description of Newland's job feels like it perfectly fits the bill: 

No one was deceived by his pretense of professional activity. In old-fashioned legal firms like that of which Mr. Letterblair was the head, and which were mainly engaged in the management of large estates and 'conservative' investments, there were always two or three young men, fairly well-off, and without professional ambition, who, for a certain number of hours of each day, sat at their desks accomplishing trivial tasks, or simply reading the newspapers. Though it was supposed to be proper for them to have an occupation, the crude fact of money-making was still regarded as derogatory, and the law, being a profession, was accounted a more gentlemanly pursuit than business. But none of these young men had much hope of really advancing in his profession, or any earnest desire to do so; and over many of them the green mould of the perfunctory was already perceptibly spreading. 

Where shall I dine to ameliorate my gout? 

There's a savage kind of wit in how Wharton describes high society, which I'm sure is part of what made this book successful. I loved this discussion of how one had to balance one's dinner invitations to have a rounded diet of nutrition and mental stimulation. 

You couldn't have everything, after all. If you dined with the Lovell Mingotts you got canvas-back and terrapin and vintage wines; at Adeline Archer's you could talk about Alpine scenery and "The Marble Faun"; and luckily the Archer Madeira had gone round the Cape. Therefore when a friendly summons came from Mrs. Archer, Mr. Jackson, who was a true eclectic, would usually say to his sister: 'I've been a little gouty since my last dinner at the Lovell Mingotts' - it will be do me good to diet at Adeline's.

Mr. Jackson had helped himself to a slice of the tepid filet which the mournful butler had handed him with a look as sceptical as his own, and had rejected the mushroom sauce after a scarcely perceptible sniff. He looked baffled and hungry, and Archer reflected that he would probably finish his meal on Ellen Olenska. This was one of my favorite lines in the book.

Zeugma (a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses (e.g., John and his license expired last week ) or to two others of which it semantically suits only one (e.g., with weeping eyes and hearts )

In another high school flashback, shout out to Mrs. Wagner (I think? Sorry, I'm blanking on the name and she left the district pretty soon after) for teaching us figures of speech in AP Language and Composition. I fell in love with zeugma and it's still a delight to me whenever I stumble across it. 

As Archer mustered [Madame Olenska's] modest front he said to himself that the Polish Count must have robbed her of her fortune as well as of her illusions.  Zing! Zeugma!

Lines I Liked

• Her visitors were startled and fascinated by the foreignness of this arrangement, which recalled scenes in French fictions, and architectural incentives to immorality such as the simple American had never dreamed of.

• 'Well, we need new blood and new money - and I hear she's still very good-looking', the carnivorous old lady declared. 

• Beyond the small and slippery pyramid which composed Mrs. Archer's world lay the almost unmapped quarter inhabited by artists, musicians, and 'people who wrote'.

• There was something perverse and provocative in the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing room, and in the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effect was undeniably pleasing. 

• The idea that he could ever, in his senses, have dreamed of marrying the Countess Olenska had become almost unthinkable, and she remained in his memory simply as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts. I love these alliterative "p" pairings!

• He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime. 

Title possibilities for this blob

• In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.

• If we don't all stand together, there'll be no such thing as Society left. 

• It was just for such distinctions that the young man cherished his old New York even while he smiled at it.

Words New to Me

vaticination - the act of prophesy; prediction

Well, dear readers, I'm on to the next. I'll leave you with a few of what I'm calling 'love lines'. In reading about love, I think about what I would want in a partner, and this book had several things to check off. 

(1)  Newland, on his wife May's clashing sense of taste - His only comfort was to reflect that she would probably let him arrange his library as he pleased - which would be, of course, with 'sincere' Eastlake furniture, and the plain new bookcases without glass doors. Ahh, yes. I will, of course, need to arrange my library as I like. I want to buy a house just so I can have a dedicated library. 

(2) Seated side by side on a bench of the half-empty boat they found that they had hardly anything to say to each other, or rather that what they had to say communicated itself best in the blessed silence of their release and their isolation. This moment between Ellen and Newland reminded me of the scene in To the Lighthouse where Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay are reading. Here's my note from that blob: 

When reading is like dreaming

One of my favorite scenes in the whole novel is when Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, whose relationship is complicated, but affectionate, simply sit together in his study and read, each attentively drawn in to their own book. As mentioned above, Mr. Ramsay is reading Sir Walter Scott, and Mrs. Ramsay has picked up a book lying nearby.

Mrs. Ramsay raised her head and like a person in a light sleep seemed to say that if he wanted her to wake she would, she really would, but otherwise, might she go on sleeping, just a little longer, just a little longer? She was climbing up those branches, this way and that, laying hands on one flower and then another.

Yes, please. I would like someone who can read with me, and with whom I can enjoy reading. 

(3) How shall I explain? It's always so. Each time you happen to me all over again. I love this line. Harder to articulate what it would mean in a desire for a partner, but I think I'll know it when it's there.

(4) 'I want - I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like [mistress] - categories like that - won't exist. Where we shall simply be two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each other; and nothing and nothing else on earth will matter.'

    She drew a deep sigh that ended in another laugh. 'Oh, my dear - where is that country? Have you ever been there? 

It's a romantic notion, but hey - a girl can dream! ;) 

Sending you all rainy day vibes, cozy pre-fall feelings, and happy cups of tea. We may be looking for other realities these days, but at least we can fantasize about designing our own libraries! I'm off to tackle The Known World. Keep each other safe! Keep faith! 

The universe knows someone is missing, and slowly it attempts to replace him.

The Sandman by Neil Gaiman

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

The Sandman is about a failed attempt to kidnap and control Death and all that happens afterward. Instead of capturing Death, a secret society captures Dream, Death's brother. They try to harness his power, but their attempts are futile, and he eventually breaks free and wreaks vengeance on them for stripping him of his totems and leaving him imprisoned for decades. Dream must undergo a series of challenges to retrieve the totems which help him to wield his power, but after he is successful in getting them back, he feels empty. He discusses his feelings with Death, his older sister, and this is where the first volume comes to a close. 

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear blobbists, 

  Perhaps I needed to read more than just the first installment (my edition called it "Preludes and Nocturnes) but I didn't really get into this one. I loved the concept, but it overall felt really dark and gory and a little bit gross. I also felt like it fell into the category of the somewhat icky male gaze, where there was a weird amount of gross female nudity/sexual commentary but it felt very one-sided.

  That being said, the intro to my copy waxed poetic about how revolutionary and amazing and fantastic this series is/was, so maybe I was just coming in with my expectations set too high. I still feel like we need wayyyyyyyyyyyyy more graphic novels by women, POC, and everything in between and inclusive of those identities. 

  Genuinely no offense meant to those who love this series - I may well come back to it and read more volumes in time, but I wasn't inspired to at this particular juncture. 

  I don't have much else to say about this one. I often feel really guilty after finishing a graphic novel because it seems like something that would take a tremendous amount of work and yet I consume it in almost no time at all. Maybe there's a different way to read graphic novels, or maybe that's part of the experience, and just something the writers/illustators are habituated to. Like gymnasts who vault for a millisecond and then are done competing for another year. 

 Well, I'm off to tackle the Age of Innocence. Join me if you like!

Stay safe, keep faith, good night!

Somebody to run to. It seem too sweet to bear.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

The Color Purple is a story about identity, longing, resilience, racism, and the ability to thrive despite all barriers and obstacles. It follows the tale of Celie, and we start with her as a pregnant teenager, a situation for which her father is responsible. We're in the deep South (rural Georgia) in the 1930s, and we learn quickly that Celie's life is far from pretty. Her sister Nettie is her only friend and bright spot, but soon Celie is married off to a Mr. _____ (I'm not being withholding, that's just how he's referred to in the work) when she is all of fifteen. Both of her children (for she was pregnant once before, also by her Pa) have been taken from her, and she is unsure if they have been killed or given away. Through a small-town coincidence, Celie sees a young girl she believes to be her daughter with another black woman, Corinne, at the local store. The girl doesn't recognize her, and later Nettie ends up seeking out this woman, Corinne, because she leaves home and has no money to her name. Nettie ends up following Corinne, her husband Samuel, and the two children (Olivia and Adam, who turn out to both be Celie's children) to Africa (a few different countries within the continent) and set up as missionaries in a small town in Liberia with the Olinka people. 

Celie's life is no better with Mr. ______ than with Pa; he beats her frequently, tells her she's ugly, and forces her to care for his several children. Celie writes letters to God, and then to Nettie (never mailed, for she doesn't know where Nettie is) and Nettie writes back to Celie, but Celie doesn't get the letters until many years have passed, because it turns out that Mr. ________ tried to have his way with Nettie just before she left. She fought him off, and he said as punishment that Celie would never get her letters. 

Shug Avery enters the picture, a very fashionable and wealthy black woman who has been Mr. ________ (Albert is his first name)'s lover in the past. Celie falls for Shug, and Shug develops a deep love for Celie. When Shug finds out Albert has been beating Celie, she does everything in her power to put a stop to it. Albert's son, Harpo, marries a woman, Sofia, who ends up brutally beaten and sentenced to 12 years in jail because she 'sasses' a white woman (the mayor's wife) and hits her back after the woman slaps her in the face. Sofia ends being released from prison to work out her sentence by working for this same family as their maid. Around the time Sofia is finally freed and returned to her children (who no longer know her) Shug takes Celie off to Memphis. They have a happy time for a while, but Shug eventually falls for a young man, and Celie is heartbroken. Celie returns to Georgia when her Pa leaves her a home unexpectedly. She learned prior to his passing that he was, in fact, her stepfather, and that her real father was lynched. Nettie eventually returns from Africa, and though we think for a little while that the ship she and the rest of the family have returned home on has sunk (she marries Samuel after Corinne dies in Africa), they arrive at Celie's new home, and finally, after decades of sorrow, pain, loneliness, and sadness, Celie is whole again.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear Blobbists, 

I loved this book. I can't believe I had never read it, since it's definitely considered a classic, but I'm very glad that I had the chance to engage with it and enjoy it. In retrospect, I'm not sure I was ready for this book when I was younger, so perhaps this was the perfect time for me to find it. I have many thoughts...

On Shug Avery

I love the way Celie describes Shug. Lots of people are in love with Shug (short for Sugar) and I can totally see why. She's particularly striking because, unlike all the other black women in the story, she's wealthy, she's respected, and she's deeply loved. 

• Now when I dream of Shug Avery, She be dress to kill, whirling and laughing.

• She look so stylish it like the trees all round the house draw themself up tall for a better look.

On getting 'big'

This is how Celie refers to getting pregnant. I can't imagine being pregnant so young, and the incalculable trauma of it happening at the hands of her sole caretaker, and a man she believes to be her father.

• The first time I got big Pa took me out of school. He never care that I love it. I felt terrible for Celie, and I wanted to give her back her chance to stay in school. 

• Nettie still don't understand. I don't neither. All us notice is I'm all the time sick and fat. The only thing scarier than being pregnant that I can imagine (personal thing - pregnancy freaks me out) is being pregnant and not knowing what was going on. What incredible resilience and what a traumatic thing to live through.

On resilience

A common theme in this book is the idea that as a woman, and as a black woman, survival is really the only reasonable goal. At one point, Celie is asked why she doesn't fight back when Mr. ______ beats her. Here's her response: 

• I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.

And this mentality is cruelly internalized in Celie, so that when Harpo comes to her for advice on how to handle his wife, Sofia, who won't 'mind' him, and Harpo's dad, Mr. ______ says: 

Wives is like children. You have to let 'em know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating. 

Celie, after marinating on it, says to Harpo, about Sofia:

Beat her. I say. 

And while I was saddened and horrified by this, this exchange then illuminated all that Celie was feeling: 

Sofia: You told Harpo to beat me. 

Celie: No, I didn't. 

Sofia: Don't lie. 

Celie: I didn't mean it. 

Sofia: Then what you say it for? 

Celie: I say it cause I'm a fool. I say it cause I'm jealous of you. I say it cause you do what I can't. 

Sofia: What's that? 

Celie: Fight. 

Sofia: She stand there a long time, like what I said took the wind out her jaws. She mad before, sad now. All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. This was such an intense exchange, but also so beautifully articulated this complex jealousy in Celie and her desire for others to be brought down the way she was. 

This exchange was also intense, between Shug and Celie:

Celie: He beat me when you not here, I say. 

Shug: Who do, she say, Albert? 

Celie: Mr. ______, I say. 

Shug: I can't believe it, she say. She sit down on the bench next to me real hard, like she drop. What he beat you for? she ast. 

Celie: For being me and not you.

I think one of the things I loved most about this book were the continually unfolding layers of nuance. Alice Walker is not content to let you put "x" character in a box, or let you believe you know the outcome or the morality or the content of someone's character purely based on one assessment. Everyone is constantly changing in your mind as a reader because they are all products of their environment, and they're all subject to external factors that force you to reassess them. 

On quilts

I loved that one of the bright spots for Celie was quilt-making. Here's how Sofia and Celie make up after their exchange from above:

Sofia: Let's make quilt pieces out of these messed up curtains, she say. 

And I run git my pattern book. (The quilt pictured features a block Celie uses - Sister's Choice)

Then later...

Me and Sofia piecing another quilt together. I got bout five squares pieced, spread out on the table by my knee.  My basket full of scraps on the floor. 

There's a nice through line here, in that we see this in Liberia:

The Olinka men make beautiful quilts which are full of animals and birds and people. And as soon as Corrine saw them, she began to make a quilt that alternated one square of appliqued figures with one nine-patch block, using the clothes the children had outgrown, and some of her old dresses. 

On Sofia

Sofia is a badass, and because she is a black woman in the South in the 1930s, this is a recipe for an extremely difficult life. The exploration of black women and how they were both protected by and endangered by their own communities, as well as victimized and murdered by white people, is so painstakingly explored. 

When Sofia is attacked and placed in jail, Celie goes to see her. And Celie, who has been raped, abused, and beaten by her (step)father, and has been beaten over and over by her husband, is in a state of shock: 

When I see Sofia I don't know why she still alive. They crack her skull, they crack her ribs. They tear her nose loose on one side. They blind her in one eye. She swole from head to foot. Her tongue the size of my arm, it stick out tween her teef like a piece of rubber. She can't talk. And she just about the color of a eggplant. 

   Scare me so bad I near bout drop my grip. But I don't. I put it on the floor of the cell, take out comb and brush, nightgown, witch hazel and alcohol and I start to work on her. The colored tendant bring me water to wash her with, and I start at her two little slits for eyes. This is obviously a deeply difficult scene to read, and one that immediately brings names like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd to mind, among the numerous others over the centuries, and it makes my heart hurt to think that black women, in particular, are still so endangered by their everyday existence in America. We must continue to educate ourselves, activate our power and privilege where we can, and protect the Sofias and Breonnas and Claudette Colvins of the world. 

And then disturbingly, but naturally, Sofia's response to working in the prison laundry: 

Every time they ast me to do something, Miss Celie, I act like I'm you. I jump right up and do just what they say. 

But later, as Sofia gets more of herself back. 

I dream of murder, she say, I dream of murder sleep or wake. And all I could think was, who wouldn't?

On seeing her children again - Nobody told them I was coming, so they don't know who I is. The agony of this, the theme of children taken from their mother by agents beyond their control, is so poignant. 

And Sofia, on her boss, the mayor's wife, after this unexpected "gift" of the visit:

I spent fifteen minutes with my children. 

And she been going on for months bout how ungrateful I is. 

White folks is a miracle of affliction, say Sofia.

On Squeak going to see the warden

Things only go from bad to worse for women of color in the novel. While Sofia is in jail, Harpo is with another woman, Squeak. They try to get Squeak to go to the warden to try to get him to lighten Sofia's sentence, because, it turns out, Squeak is related to the warden (though of course he doesn't recognize or acknowledge being related to a black woman). To her dismay, he is not only unreceptive, he is violent: 

He took my hat off. Told me to undo my dress. She drop her head, put her face in her hands. 

My God, say Odessa, and he your uncle. 

He say if he was my uncle he wouldn't do it to me. That be a sin. But this just little fornication. Everybody guilty of that. 

She turn her face up to Harpo. Harpo, she say, do you really love me, or just my color?

Harpo say, I love you, Squeak. He kneel down and try to put his arms round her waist. 

She stand up. My name Mary Agnes, she say. 

This is another example of that nuance, and the complexities of blackness here; I wanted to hate Harpo because he beat Sofia, but he was only doing what his father told him to do. And then I wanted to resent him for moving on from Sofia, but he loves Squeak, and he cares for her in a way that she deeply needs, and they fight for Sofia, only to have Squeak get raped by her own uncle. 

On existence

So if you haven't come to this conclusion yet, you might be thinking, how can they stand it? How can black people then (and maybe sometimes now) not just want to murder us (white people) in their sleep? 

Sofia say to me today, I just can't understand it. 

What that? I ast. 

Why we ain't already kill them off. 

Three years after she beat she out of the wash house, got her color and her weight back, look like her old self, just all time think bout killing somebody. 

Too many to kill off, I say. Us outnumbered from the start. I speck we knock over one or two, though, here and there, through the years, I say. 

I thought of all the layers of pain and suffering and how much power and personhood was routinely taken from black people through slavery and afterwards, and I found myself thinking, I'd kill us, too. 

On meeting Grady

On a lighter note, I enjoyed Celie's response to meeting Shug's husband (who comes before her young man lover later on): 

This Grady, she say. This my husband. 

The minute she say it I know I don't like Grady. I don't like his shape, I don't like his teef, I don't like his clothes. Seem like to me he smell. lololololz. 

On learned ignorance

Another layer of nuance is Walker's exploration of missionary activities in Africa, as well as exploring American blackness in Africa. 

I loved this line, from one of Nettie's letters, about learning more Black history:

I hadn't realized I was so ignorant, Celie. The little I knew about my own self wouldn't have filled a thimble! And to think Miss Beasley always said I was the smartest child she ever taught! But one thing I do thank her for, for teaching me to learn for myself, by reading and studying and writing a clear hand. And for keeping alive in me somehow the desire to know. 

And this revelation later:

Oh, Celie, there are colored people in the world who want us to know! Want us to grow and see the light! They are not all mean like Pa and Albert, or beaten down like Ma was. 

On Africans

But again, Walker drops in that oozing nuance, and explores more layers. 

Nettie, on Africans:

Why did they sell us? How could they have done it? And why do we still love them?

No one else in this village wants to hear about slavery, however, They acknowledge no responsibility whatsoever. This is one thing about them that I definitely do not like.

Nettie, on first exploring Sénégal:

Celie, try to imagine a city full of these shining, blueblack people wearing brilliant blue robes with designs like fancy quilt patterns. Can you picture it at all, Celie? Because I felt like I was seeing black for the first time. And Celie, there is something magical about it. Because the black is so black the eye is simply dazzled, and then there is the shining that seems to come, really, from moonlight, it is so luminous, but their skin glows even in the sun. I can't imagine the kind of power and wonder and magic this moment must have contained. 

On getting a marker

When Celie confronts her stepdad (Alphonso) about her real parents, he's blunt and cruel. 

Where my daddy buried, I ast. That all I really want to know. 

Next to your mammy, he say. 

Any marker, I ast. 

He look at me like I'm crazy. Lynched people don't git no marker, he say. Like this something everybody know. 

Mama got one? I ast. 

He say, Naw. 

How many people are buried in this earth with no marker to show they lived? No marker to show that they mattered, that they loved, that they were humans? How many of these people are indigenous? Or black? It makes me want to find all their stories and trumpet them to the world; it won't undo the harm done, but at least I could celebrate their personhood. 

On hand-me-downs

There were several moments that reminded me of Sophie's Choice, and this one in particular, from Nettie, reminded me of how horrified Sophie was when she realized that any 'nice' things being worn around at Auschwitz had been taken from dead Jews. 

I have never been able to bring myself to wear one of these dresses, which all seem to have been made with giants in mind, so I was glad to have Corrine's things. At the same time, I dreaded putting them on. 

On not writing to God any more

After writing letters to God for some time, Celie decides to write to Nettie instead. She doesn't post the letters, but she has strong logic for the pivot. Here's the exchange with Shug:

Celie: What God do for me? I ast. 

Shug: She say, Celie! Like she shock. He gave you life, good health, and a good woman that love you to death. 

Celie: Yeah, I say, and he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won't ever see again. Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful and lowdown. 

Shug: She say, Miss Celie, You better hush. God might hear you.

Celie: Let 'im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you. Where's. The. Lie?

On getting gone

I loved when Celie finally got to put Mr. _______ in her rearview (though again, with the nuances of Walker and the complicated layers of blackness, he ends up being allowed back into her family as a reformed sort of friend). 

Mr. _______: What wrong now? I thought you finally happy. 

Celie: You a lowdown dog is what's wrong, I say. It's time to leave you and enter into the Creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need. 

and later, at dinner:

Mr. _____ reach over to slap me. I jab my case knife in his hand. 

You bitch, he say. What will people say, you running off to Memphis like you don't have a house to look after? 

Shug say, Albert. Try to think like you got some sense. Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me. YASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS KWEEEN. Is all I have to say.

On the way Celie talks

I've been reading a book called Everyday Antiracism (and I highly recommend, very very good read - targeted at educators, but really valuable though pieces for anyone to work through) and this conversation reminded me of the explorations of AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and how to honor it in the classroom while also teaching students to codeswitch as necessary in and out of 'standard' English. 

Celie is an entrepreneur, making pants that are wildly popular in Memphis, but one of the women who helps out with the business, another black woman, disapproves of Celie's way of speaking. She says Shug must be ashamed of the way her girlfriend talks. 

Shug not shame no how, I say. But she don't believe this the truth. Sugar, she say one day when Shug home, don't you think it be nice if Celie could talk proper? 

Shug say, She can talk in sign language for all I care. 

But I let Darlene worry on. Sometimes I think bout the apples and the dogs, sometimes I don't. Look to me like only a fool would want you to talk in a way that feel peculiar to your mind. I loved this so much. And it made me love Shug even more.

On making pants

I loved this exchange between Albert and Celie later on, after she's returned from Memphis. 

Albert: How you make your living up there? he say. 

Celie: Making pants, I say. 

Albert: He say, I notice everybody in the family just about wearing pants you made. But you mean you turned it into a business? 

Celie: That's right, I say. But I really started it right here in your house to keep from killing you.

On returning to America from Africa as black children

This line was gut-wrenching, from Nettie, in a letter to Celie, about the children Olivia and Adam:

How will they manage the hostility towards them, having grown up here?

On Eleanor Jane and love

Sofia ends up being close to Eleanor Jane, the daughter of the mayor and his wife, largely because she is generally kind to Sofia and her family is kind of a disaster zone. But when Eleanor Jane brings her baby to Sofia's house and waits for her to dote on him, this is how Sofia responds:

I love children, say Sofia. But all the colored women that say they love yours is lying. Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.

Lines I Liked

• You better not never tell nobody but God.

• I don't even look at mens. That's the truth. I look at women, tho, cause I'm not scared of them.

• On seeing her daughter in town: I think she mine. My heart say she mine. God, I love this line. So much tenderness.

• On Mr. _____ - One good thing bout the way he never do any work round the place, us never miss him when he gone. LOLOL. 

• Shug, to Celie - If you was my wife, I'd cover you up with kisses stead of licks, and work hard for you too. emoji heart explosions.

• Shug - You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a'tall.

• On finding out Shug is in love with a young man: Well, I say, if words could kill, I'd be in the ambulance. awwwwwwwwwwwwwww, Celie!

Okay, well I'm heading off to the country and to take a tiny human camping for the first time, so I'll leave you with some parting moments. 

Celie, I say, happiness was just a trick in your case. This broke my heart, when Celie was looking at herself in the mirror and mourning the loss of Shug and her momentary joy. Happiness wasn't just a trick! It shouldn't be a trick for any black woman, and we must work to make this true. 

On living without Shug - I try to teach my heart not to want nothing it can't have. So tender. 

On why we're here: 

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. 

On Shug in the end:

If she come, I be happy. If she don't, I be content. 

And then I figure this the lesson I was suppose to learn. 

I'll leave you to marinate on this line, as we go into the 4th of July: 

White people busy celebrating they independence from England July 4th, say Harpo, so most black folks don't have to work. Us can spend the day celebrating each other. 

However you engage with your American-ness this weekend, stay safe, keep faith in the possibility and the ability of us to make a better, more equitable, more happiness-filled world, and celebrate each other with love and kindness. I'm off to the world of graphic novels.