Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons.

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Ivanhoe is a tale of loyalty, patriotism, knighthood, and England. Scott takes us back to medieval England and casts some familiar faces (Richard the Lion-Heart, Robin Hood, Friar Tuck) and some new ones (Ivanhoe, son of Cedric, a Saxon lord; Rowena, Cedric's ward and Ivanhoe's forbidden love; Athelstane, the last Saxon who could claim a right to the throne). For good measure, he tosses some bad guys into the fray (De Bracy, Bois de Guilbert, Front de Boeuf), all knights who are on their worst knightly behavior in this novel, and a father-daughter pair who are maligned for being Jews. We start with Ivanhoe in exile, fighting with Richard the Lionheart in the crusades because Cedric banished him for expressing his undying love for Rowena, his ward. As with any good exile, it doesn't stick, and good ole' Wilfred (Ivanhoe) makes his way back to merry ole' England. He enters a tournament in disguise and declares Rowena the 'Queen of Love and Beauty', but the gig is up and his identity is revealed, much to everyone's (but not our) surprise. Ivanhoe was severely wounded in the tournament, though he was the clear winner and beat all the nasty knights. The nasty knights decide they're going to get their due and they kidnap Rowena and Rebecca (along with Ivanhoe, who is under Rebecca's care) and Cedric and Athelstane. Robin Hood and Richard the Lionheart (also both in disguise - it's a running theme in this book) help to launch a counterattack and save Rowena and Rebecca from De Bracy's castle. De Bracy is burned alive, and we think Athelstane has died (but, amusingly enough, he was just unconscious. Story to come.) Otherwise everyone's hunky dory. Well, everyone but Rebecca, who gets tooken encore une fois by Bois de Guilbert. She gets tried for sorcery (some serious anti-semitic vibes) and declares a champion (you guessed it, it's Ivanhoe) and even though Ivanhoe isn't really all better he bests BdG, who promptly dies on the spot (like you do). Ivanhoe gets back with Rowena, Richard makes Cedric forgive his son, Athelstane withdraws his claim to the throne and swears allegiance to Richard, and everyone lives happily ever after (except for the Jews who leave England for ever). I know, serious bummer.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

This book was lots of fun. My mom recommended it, as it's one of her favorite books and she read it in France, where they pronounce it Ee-Van-Oh-Ay (lolz). It was super different from The Left Hand of Darkness, but a rollicking good ride. The anti-Jew theme was tough to stomach, especially given the recent rise of anti-semitism in America and other countries, but I guess it illustrates how deep-seated the prejudice is and how systemic. 

Don't worry Scotland, we can care about England, too
Apparently, Scott was super famous for writing about Scotland, and this was his first book venturing into new territory. Considering that I don't think of Scotland and England as so different as, say, Ghana and Sweden, it was pretty funny to read his long introduction where he assures his readers that England has a pretty interesting history, also. 

#Saxonsforever
If this book had a hashtag, it would definitely be #Saxonsforever. Not knowing much about English history, I was fascinated and taken by this idea that there were warring clans that fought aggressively before we came to this present-day concept of English and England. Here are a few of my favorite lines (all about Cedric, of course, since he's the real die-hard Saxon): 

Say to them, Hundebert, that Cedric would himself bid them welcome, but he is under a vow never to step more than three steps from the dais of his own hall to meet any who shares not the blood of Saxon royalty. haghaghahghaghg

The restoration of the independence of his race was the idol of his heart, to which he had willingly sacrificed domestic happiness and the interests of his own son. yep, you read that right. Cedric is rooting for Athelena (Athelstane and Rowena are betrothed, which would ignite Cedric's dream for a Saxon throne takeover), so he has no problem kicking out Ivanhoe when he gets in the way. 

I will die a Saxon - true in word, open in deed.

Wamba the Wonderful
When I was starting this book, my mother told me, "There's a character called Wamba..." And is there ever! Wamba is Cedric's jester, but, through some beautifully constructed literary irony, he is no one's fool. Here are some of my favorite Wamba moments: 

Of all the train none escaped except Wamba, who showed upon the occasion much more courage than those who pretended to greater sense.

When Wamba ends up riding with Richard the Lionheart: On horseback, [Wamba] was perpetually swinging himself backwards and forwards, now on the horse's ears, then anon on the very rump of the animal, -now hanging both his legs on one side, and now sitting with his face to the tail, moping, mowing, and making a thousand apish gestures, until his palfrey took his freaks so much to heart, as fairly to lay him at his length on the green grass - an incident which greatly amused the Knight, but compelled his companion to ride more steadily thereafter.

When Robin Hood & company have come to save them, but Wamba is prisoner because he saved Cedric by changing places with him: When the noise of the conflict announced that it was at the hottest, the Jester began to shout, with the utmost power of his lungs, 'Saint George and the dragon! - Bonny Saint George for merry England! - The castle is won!' And these sounds he rendered yet more fearful, by banging against each other two or three pieces of rusty armour which lay scattered around the hall. The guard is so frightened that he leaves them unguarded and they make their escape! Go, Wamba!

Some things never seem to change (like anti-Semitism)
As I've mentioned already here, there's a lot of anti-Semitism in this book. A good deal of the book is spent sort of questioning that hatred, and I think the whole point of including Isaac and Rebecca as side characters/love interests was to humanize the 'jew and jewess', but it mostly just made me really sad that humans have such a long-burning capacity for hatred and mistreatment and unkindness. 

Subtitle suggestions for this novel

• Ivanhoe (who's out of commission for like a third of the book)
• Ivanhoe (More like IvanWHO)

I have to admit that I was a little let down by Ivanhoe as the titular hero. He gets injured and then just LAYS AROUND for most of the epic battle scene, and I didn't really feel like he was anywhere near as cool as some of the other characters (like, ahem, Rowena, or Rebecca, neither of whom this book is named for). 

Speaking of badass ladies

My favorite one is Ulrica. She has a whole backstory, but the most important thing is that she was a Saxon, but she's been forced to live here at De Bracy's castle and assimilate as a Norman and has had all kinds of terrible things done to her. She leads a SECRET COUNTERATTACK and sets the castle on fire (with De Bracy locked in it) and the scenes of her at the end of the battle are my favorite in the book: 

The fire was spreading rapidly through all parts of the castle, when Ulrica, who had first kindled it, appeared on a turret, in the guise of one of the ancient furies, yelling forth a war-song, such as was of yore raised on the field of battle by the scalds of the yet heathen Saxons. Her long dishevelled grey hair flew back from her uncovered head; the inebriating delight of gratified vengeance contended in her eyes with the fire of insanity; and she brandished the distaff which she held in her hand, as if she had been one of the Fatal Sisters, who spin and abridge the thread of human life.

The maniac figure of the Saxon Ulrica was for a long time visible on the lofty stand she had chose, tossing her arms abroad with wild exultation, as if she reined empress of the conflagration which she had raised.

Mortal defiance
There are many references to mortal defiance and other such florid knightly terms, which I found highly amusing. Here's one of my favorite lines: 

My master will take nought from the Templar save his life's-blood. They are on terms of mortal defiance, and cannot hold courteous intercourse together.

And this one: 

Athelstane - 'Tell Sir Reginald Front-de-Boeuf that I send him my mortal defiance, and challenge him to combat with me, on foot or horseback, at any secure place, within eight days after our liberation; which, if he be a true knight, he will not, under these circumstances, venture to refuse or to delay.' 

'I shall deliver to the knight your defiance," answered the sewer; 'meanwhile I leave you to your food.'

Love triangles
I think this book is technically called "Ivanhoe, a Romance" and while I wasn't all that into the whole Rowen and Ivanhoe love affair, I enjoyed the various love triangles and angles that weren't quite intersecting. A few of the pairings/exchanges: 

Rowena, to Cedric
Without attempting to conceal her avowed preference of Wilfred of Ivanhoe, she declared that, were that favoured knight out of question, she would rather take refuge in a convent, than share a throne with Athelstane, whom, having always despised, she now began, on account of the trouble she received on his account, thoroughly to detest. hagh!

Rowena, to De Bracy
Courtesy of tongue when it is used to veil churlishness of deed is but a knight's girdle around the breast of a base clown. You tell him!

Rebecca, to Bois-Guilbert
Thou shalt see that the Jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with God, than her honour to the Templar!

Lovely imagery
While I wasn't necessarily all that into the romance portion, I was very into the romanticized depiction of the medieval era. Between the castles and descriptions of the forests like the one below, I was ready to ship off to medieval England: 

Hundreds of broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks, which had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the Roman soldiery, flung their gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious green sward; in some places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various descriptions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun; in others they receded from each other, forming those long sweeping vistas, in the intricacy of which the eye delights to lose itself, while imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of silvan solitude.

A last bit - for laughs
I mentioned earlier that Athelstane is taken for dead, and I promised the story. While I can't quite capture how amazing the whole thing is (he's punched, taken for a ghost, almost buried, and is understandably irate when he finally escapes) here's a snippet to give you a sense of the moment:

I should have been there still, had not some stir in the Convent, which I find was their procession hitherward to eat my funeral feast, when they well knew how and where I had been buried alive, summoned the swarm out of their hive. I heard them droning out their death-psalms, little judging they were sung in respect for my soul by those who were thus famishing my body.

Referents and Reverberations
As usual, this book reminded me of many books - Don Quixote, the Three Musketeers, Pride and Prejudice, to name a few. Here are two specific moments that struck me: 

In describing the interior of one of the medieval castles - Magnificence there was, with some rude attempt at taste; but of comfort there was little, and being unknown, it was unmissed.
(To which I thought, sounds a lot like Karhide ;)

And this line from Rebecca to Ivanhoe:
What remains to you as the prize of all the blood you have spilled - of all the travail and pain you have endured - of all the tears which your deeds have caused, when death hath broken the strong man's spear, and overtaken the speed of his war-horse?

And Ivanhoe's answer: 
What remains? Glory, maiden, glory! Which gilds our sepulchre and embalms our name.

reminded me, bizarrely enough, of when I read the Iliad translated into French, and we learned these lines from Achilles (aka Asheeel)

The Iliad
Si je reste à me battre ici devant les murs de Troie
Sans effet de retour, mais j'y gagne une gloire impérissable
Si, au contraire, je rejoind la terre de mes pères, sans effet de cette belle gloire,
  mais j'aurais longue vit
Et n'attendrais que sur le tour le terme de mes jours

I won't attempt to translate it line for line for you, but suffice it to say that glory has been on the brain of many a character, and Ivanhoe is certainly in good company with his obsession. 

Great Lines

• Where be those false ravishers, who carry off wenches against their will? Where indeed!?

• Tell me, dogs - is it my life or my wealth that your master aims at?

• This dungeon is no place for trifling.

• Thou wilt have owls for thy neighbours, fair one; and their screams will be heard as far, and as much regarded, as thine own.

• My vengeance is awake, and she is a falcon that slumbers not till she has been gorged.

New Words
buckram - coarse linen or other cloth stiffened with gum or paste, and used as interfacing and in bookbinding

dingle - a deep wooded valley or dell

escutcheons - a shield or emblem bearing a coat of arms

hurly-burly - busy, boisterous activity (not to be confused with a Hurdy-Gurdy, pictured here)

malapert - boldly disrespectful to a person of higher standing

oriel - a projection from the wall of a building, typically supported from the ground or by corbels

quondam - that once was; former

I'm off to work out and read more books! I'll leave you with this last bit that I liked: 

Be of good courage, and trust that thou art preserved for some marvel.

Have a lovely evening, be of good courage, and rest assured that you are all preserved for many marvels, dear readers! Happy spring evening to you all. 

The First Envoy to a world always comes alone. One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
The Left Hand of Darkness is a fictional thought experiment about not aliens invading earth, but earthlings venturing to other planets and becoming alien themselves. Our narrator is the 'First Envoy/Mobile' to the planet Gethen (also known as Winter, for reasons which will become clear very soon), a human man named Genly Ai. When we first encounter Genly, he is embedded in the country of Karhide on Gethen, seeking audience with the current king. His goal as First Envoy is to make the planet aware of the existence of a much larger universe and coalition (The Ekumen) and he's aiming to receive approval to send his ship and comrades down to land on Gethen. At first, it seems like this is close to happening, but then the winds shift quickly, and though Genly Ai avoids so harsh a sentence, his only Karhidish 'acquaintance/frenemy' (Lord Estraven) is forced into exile.

At this point, both figures make their way to a neighboring country, Orgoreyn, through very different means. Estraven has mostly fallen from favor, bearing shame even in a different country for his supposed 'traitorous' act of supporting the madcap alien who was obviously just spinning stories. Genly tries again to connect the planet to the Ekumen, this time through Orgoreyn and their leading bodies. The new country is full of spies and competing allegiances, though, and he realizes too late that he should have heeded Estraven's warnings to leave or call his ship before he receives approval.

Genly Ai is imprisoned in the equivalent of a science fiction gulag, fed next to nothing and living on the very brink of death in a labor camp. Estraven comes and saves Genly Ai, and the two outlaws hatch a harebrained scheme to cross a glacier to get back to Karhide. Estraven is confident that the winds have shifted again, and now Karhide would be amenable to Genly Ai's mission. They survive this seemingly impossible journey, after which Estraven is very quickly outed and then is killed/sort of commits suicide by action. (I know, kind of letdown, hunh?) Genly Ai realizes only at the very end of the journey that he really liked, maybe even loved Estraven, and his ship arrives with a bunch of other earthlings.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear blobbety-blob enthusiasts,

Greetings! If that felt a little scattered, it's because the book was kind of scattered. I mean, I really wanted to like it, given that it's pretty subversive and it's a fantasy/sci-fi novel by a badass American lady author. And I did really like certain parts of it, just not so much the plot part. I didn't get into it in the summary, because it's oddly not really relevant to the plot, but all the beings on Gethen are androgynous, meaning they can be male or female based on different periods, and during certain ages any Gethenian can bear children. It's probably the most interesting part of the book, but I felt like it could have risen more to be highlighted in the novel/incorporated into the plot. 

I honestly didn't really care what happened to Genly Ai, and that's just not a good sign. And when Estraven took things into his (their? pronouns unclear) hands, I was like, oh. Ok. Well that's that, I guess. 

That being said, there were some bits I did really love. I will share them with you now!
Introduction to the novel
Perhaps another reason why I didn't love this book was that I actually read the introduction (which I never do, for reasons I have written about at length, but she wrote this one, so I counted it as part of the 'book') and I LOVED it. Like, it's some of my favorite writing of all time. Unfortunately, it felt like that writing was from some different person or different instance of Ursula LeGuin. Here are the parts I liked. 

Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!

She has a wonderful playfulness with sci-fi and future-telling and lies and truth, and that's one of my favorite passages. Here's another. 

In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane - bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases [hagh!]) when the book is closed.  Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?"

And one more!

In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed. 

I feel this way all the time about books. Especially in a decade like this last one, where I've read easily 200, 250 books for the blog and for fun, and they start to bleed together. I wonder if I'm doing them a disservice by pushing one of them out of my head to make room for another, but then I remember that they're all still there, somehow, every last one of them. Maybe not the separate lines, but the way they changed me, the way I felt, the empathy I built in sharing that world, even just for a little while. 

Concepts and world-building
Some of you know this if you know me, but I've been working on my own novel for about a year now, and one of the pieces I'm working on is world-building. I feel like I should have taken a class with Ursula, because my favorite parts of her book were unique and distinct aspects of the world that she generated and constructed entire theories and logic around. I did also feel like maybe Ursula needed a better editor, or a slightly different structure for this novel, but hey - we all have room to grow, right Carol Dweck? 

Here are some of the world-building bits that stood out for me. 

kemmering - Tbqh, I'm still a little unclear on what this is, exactly, but it was a super interesting concept. It has to do with Gethenian androgyny and sexuality, and how they have sex and mate and reproduce. At least I think it does. Anyway, it also seemed both more finite and more fluid than human sexuality, which was kind of a fun mind-bender to chew on.

androgyny - Again, this was probably my favorite thing about the book, and on some level, I'm sure it was quite freeing for a number of marginalized populations (and maybe even just folks who feel like they don't fit so cleanly and clearly into our definitions and boxes). There was also a sort of badass feminist quality to it, which was great. BUT, I have to say I was bummed that for being so subversive and cool and out there, Ursula still made her narrator a plain ole dude. Seems like a missed opportunity to me! #thefutureisfemale

Here's a great line where Genly describes what an earthling should be prepared for on Gethen: 

The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience. I love this so much.

the Ekumen - this concept was super interesting, both in thinking about how we would be connected (or choose to connect or not) with other worlds, given a much larger planetary universe, and also in thinking about governing bodies in general. She describes the Ekumen as 'not a kingdom, but a co-ordinator', which both reminded me of the EU and the sundry complications of Brexit and made me think of my own work with Breakthrough Collaborative, and how we function as an allied collection of deeply different entities with common goals and agreed-upon norms. 

Genly is asked at several points to explain why the Ekumen has any interest in uniting with the nations of Gethen. Here's my favorite response: 

Material profit. Increase of knowledge. The augmentation of the complexity and intensity of the field of intelligent life. The enrichment of harmony and the greater glory of God. Curiosity. Adventure. Delight.

That's also where the title logic comes into play - when asked why he comes alone, unprotected, unsupported, Genly Ai responds - One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.

Snowshoeing - this book takes place on a planet called Winter (Gethen, to some) and it lives up to its name. There is snow, and ice, and bitter cold, and varying degrees of acceptance and tolerance. Genly Ai is always cold in the book, which admittedly felt refreshing to me since I'm a cool-weather animal, and springsummer approaches here in Philly. When he first awkwardly snowshoes with Estraven, I remembered wearing snowshoes for the first time near my friend's cabin in Washington State, and then again on Mount Cardigan in New Hampshire, and I vividly recalled how frequently I fell while the people around me seemed to glide smoothly along. The exchange below reminded me of a sort of fictional opposite of 'The King and I' and 'I do not believe in snow'.

Genly Ai: Well, in this same latitude on Terra, it never snows.'

Obsle, a commensal from Orgoreyn: 'It never snows. It never snows?' He laughed with real enjoyment, as a child laughs at a good lie, encouraging further flights."

Lines I Loved

• Truth is a matter of the imagination.

• If this is the Royal Music no wonder the kings of Karhide are all mad. lololololzzz

• Winter is an inimical world.

• I put on my winter coat and went out for a walk, in a disagreeable mood, in a disagreeable world. is this zeugma? I love it, whatever it is!

• It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelling smoke.

• A cold north wind dispersed the rain clouds utterly, laying bare the peaks above the ridges to our right and left, basalt and snow, piebald and patchwork of black and white brilliant under the sudden sun in a dazzling sky.

Wonderful Words That Were New to Me

ansible - a fictional device or technology capable of near-instantaneous or superluminal communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no delay, even between star systems. She used this so effortlessly that I thought it was a real word! Very cool.

rufous - reddish brown in color (as in the rufous moon pictured left)

susurrus - whispering, murmuring, or rustling (this reminds me of the French word for whisper, chuchôter)

thole - a pin, typically one of a pair, fitted to the gunwale of a rowboat to act as the fulcrum for an oar

Well, I suppose it's time to draw this blob to a close. I will admit to you, my dear ones, that I felt more than once in the last few days like this: 

I was alone, with a stranger, inside the walls of a dark palace, in a strange snow-changed city, in the heart of the Ice Age of an alien world.

Granted not with a stranger, but that sense of aching aloneness, and the uncertainty of self that comes with a toxic America like the one we live in right now. 

But then I read these lines, and I took some comfort in them.  

As they say in Ekumenical School, when action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

And so I will continue to gather information in future books, and when that grows unprofitable, I shall sleep. And so on and so forth. It was and it was not so. 

Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night. 

Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
The Bluest Eye is a tale of longing and desire, love and hate, pain and beauty, all rolled together into one. It has one ostensible narrative which follows a young black girl, Pecola, as she navigates a difficult coming of age and ends up pregnant with her father's child. Another line follows Claudia, our narrator, who is close to Pecola in age, and her sister, Frieda, as they, too, adolesce in ways both trying and amusing. Still other arcs trace backward in the history of several characters, like Cholly Breedlove, Pecola's father, and Mrs. Breedlove, Pecola's mother. We see not only what happens to each person, but why it came to be, and why, in fact, we should have sympathy or understanding for each character, particularly in exploring the ways that their blackness (and/or a white definition of blackness) impacts their sense of self. In the end, the actual events feel immaterial. What one leaves the book with is a sense of fulfillment and emptiness in equal measure, which echoes the complex, contradictory, and nearly impossible childhoods of our three female leads.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

If you haven't read this one, I highly recommend. It's definitely not what I would call a light read, but it's a must read, for sure. It's also quite short, so you really don't have any excuse, blobbers. ;)
My thoughts, in no specific order...

On being a phenom
I guess I knew that Toni Morrison had been around and on the literary scene for quite some time, but did you know that this book will be 50 years old next year? Beloved was my first introduction to Toni Morrison's work, and in my head I think I thought that book was newer, too, but it was actually published a year after I was born, so it's over 30 years old, too. Toni Morrison is a gift to the world. Here's a passage to give you a flavor of her prose: 

Their conversation is like a gently wicked dance: sound meets sound, curtsies, shimmies and retires. Another sound enters but is upstaged by still another: the two circle each other and stop. Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter - like the throb of a heart made of jelly...We do not, cannot, know the meanings of all their words, for we are nine and ten years old. So we watch their faces, their hands, their feet, and listen for truth in timbre.

On white dolls
Much of this novel centers on the concept of a desire for transformation, to escape the confines of blackness and be what seems to be America's definition of beautiful (blue eyes, blond-haired). I loved the way that Claudia broke this down for us, and how she was simultaneously revolutionary in her thinking and so obviously valid in her feelings. Here's her on white baby dolls: 

I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs - all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what what every girl child treasured.

And then later, comparing themselves to Maureen Peal, a white girl from school: 

If [Maureen] was cute - and if anything could be believed, if she was then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser. Nicer, brighter, but still lesser.

How often do we as children define ourselves in opposites like this? How damaging is this to our psyche? Can we avoid it? I'm not sure that we can, and certainly it's a habit that persists well through adulthood. I think it's worth cultivating an active resistance to.

On no one asking you what you want for Christmas
I loved Claudia as a character, and I loved both her pointing out that no one had asked her what she wanted for Christmas (which was not a white baby doll, to be quite clear) and what she said she would want if they had. 

I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama's kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone. I have mentioned this before, but I, too, love lilacs, and wouldn't mind someone playing the violin or viola or cello for me alone.

On her mother being in 'a singing mood'
This is one of my favorite lines.

Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took all of the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.

On Being Mary Jane
One of my best friends put me on to the show Being Mary Jane (which is excellent, btw) and when I read this line, I immediately wondered if this was the inspiration for the title. It's a scene where Pecola takes a few pennies to the store to buy candy, and she buys three Mary Janes.

Each pale yellow wrapper has a picture on it. A picture of little Mary Jane, for whom the candy is named. Smiling white face. Blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort. The eyes are petulant, mischievous. To Pecola they are simply pretty. She eats the candy, and its sweetness is good. To eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane.

Maureen Peal
I loved the way Maureen was depicted and villainized and just so clearly painted into my mind. 

A high-yellow dream child with long brown hair braided into two lynch ropes that hung down her back.

On candy dances
Claudia and Frieda make reference to their 'candy dances' when they come home and taunt the neighbor (whom they hate) and I just loved this line. 

We hurried back home to sit under the lilac bushes on the side of the house. We always did our Candy Dance there so Rosemary could see us and get jealous.

On black women
So I'm sure that I'm thinking of this in reverse, but reading this book at this point in my life made it feel like it was an epilogue to Beyoncé's Lemonade. In fact, Beyoncé's Lemonade is a culmination of years and decades and centuries of experience and art and revelations like this one. In any case, here are some lines that stood out, and captured this idea of black female personhood, and its unique burdens and boons. 

Edging into life from the back door. Becoming. Everybody in the world was in a position to give them orders. White women said, "Do this." White children said, "Give me that." White men said, "Come here." Black men said, "Lay down." The only people they need not take orders from were black children and each other. But they took all of that and re-created it in their own image.

And on comparing blackness against other blackness - All of us - all who knew her - felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her.We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness.

A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment.

On Pecola's baby - I thought about the baby that everybody wanted dead, and saw it very clearly. More strongly than my fondness for Pecola, I felt a need for someone to want the black baby to live - just to counteract the universal love of white baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peals.

Cholly, on children
I mention in my opening that Morrison has a way of informing all of her characters so that we see not just their motivations, but the ways in which race and poverty and happenstance define their view of the world. I feel like the best way to describe is that there's no easy depiction of 'good' or 'bad' characters, because they are all layered by and influenced by the systemic and personal moments in their lives. Here's an example of why Cholly could do something like have sex with his eleven-year-old daughter, but also why that act, while feeling heinous to the reader, is not imbued with hate or evil intent: 

Had he not been alone in the world since he was thirteen, knowing only a dying old woman who felt responsible for him, but whose age, sex, and interests were so remote from his own, he might have felt a stable connection between himself and the children. As it was, he reacted to them, and his reactions were based on what he felt at the moment.

So much of who we are and who we will be is defined well before we have a real say in it. This is not to sanction any act under the sun, or to nullify Pecola's very real trauma here, but rather, to highlight the nuance embedded in the scene.

On being more alike than unalike
Again, what struck me as I read this novel was that, as Maya Angelou put it, in the end, we are more alike than we are unalike. Here are a few moments of alikeness I found with Claudia:

• It takes a long time for my body to heat its place in the bed. I was literally JUST trying to get my feet warm in the bed as I read this.

• Mom rubbing Vicks on her chest - I, too, have vivid memories of my mother rubbing Vicks on my chest, and the 'hurts so good' feeling associated with it. 

• Mason jars - okay, so I know every hipster has them, but I have them all over not just because I'm a hipster, but because each one reminds me that it used to hold my mother's applesauce, or her jam, or her canned tomatoes, or her peaches. 

• Don't nobody never want nothing till they see me at the sink. Then everybody got to drink water... Claudia's mom says this when Claudia comes to get a glass of water, and I laughed because it reminded me of my mom and I having the exact same argument. We keep the trash under the kitchen sink, and no one EVER needs to throw anything out until Just that moment when Mom was standing in front of the sink. ;)

• I just get tired of having everything last. This is what Claudia says when she's annoyed her sister got touched inappropriately. It's obviously a complicated scene for many reasons, but I love that Claudia's first impression is to be jealous and annoyed. It reminded me of my experience as a third daughter, and often feeling like whatever the thing was, I was tired of getting it last! (Amusingly, Frieda points out that Claudia had scarlet fever first. lolz.)

Marvelous turns of phrase (There are so many - please read it yourself so you can find all of them. But just in case, here are a few I've curated for you.)

• But the unquarreled evening hung like the first note of a dirge in sullenly expectant air.

• From deep inside, her laughter came like the sound of many rivers, freely, deeply, muddily, heading for the room of an open sea. God, I love this line.

• Her light-green words restored color to the day.

• Black people were not allowed in [Lake Shore Park], and so it filled our dreams.

• Over her shoulder she spit out words to us like rotten pieces of apple.

• We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life.

• Evening came. The dark, the warmth, the quiet, enclosed Cholly like the skin and flesh of an elderberry protecting its own seed.

Referents and Reverberations

This line - Adults do not talk to us. They give us directions. reminded me of Le Petit Prince and his dedication: 

I will dedicate the book to the child from whom this grown-up grew.

And this line:
There is somethin' in this house that loves brassieres, said by one of the prostitutes who befriends Pecola, reminded me of these telegrams from Hotel New Hampshire, from Freud to Winslow:

• GOOD YOU COMING! BRING ALL KIDS AND PETS! LOTS OF ROOM. YOU'LL LIKE THE BEAR.

• On the political dissidents: Their typewriters bother the bear.

• EVERYONE IS LOOKING FORWARD TO YOU COMING. EVEN PROSTITUTES!

New Words/Concepts
asafetida - the dried latex exuded from the rhizome or tap root of several species of Ferula, a perennial herb that is part of the celery family Apiaceae. In the African American Hoodoo tradition, asafoetida is used in magic spells, as it is believed to have the power both to protect and to curse. Also used in traditional Pennsylvania Dutch folk magic, among many other uses!

harridan - a strict, bossy, or belligerent old woman

Moirai - The Moirai (Moirae) were the three goddesses of fate who personified the inescapable destiny of man. They assigned to every person his or her fate or share in the scheme of things.

threnody - a lament

This book is full of many things, but in case you're left feeling a little on the dark side of life, I'll close us out with two of my favorite moments that are on the lighter side. 

First, this one, on girlhood: 

Guileless and without vanity, we were still in love with ourselves then.

And this one, when Mrs. Breedlove first meets Cholly: 

She had not known there was so much laughter in the world.

So, dear blobbists, when you wake tomorrow, remember the time when you were guileless and without vanity, when you were still in love with yourself. Inhabit that space, and rest easy in the knowledge that even in years like these, there is so much laughter in the world. 

Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night.