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Fiction.
African American Fiction.
Literature.
Historical Fiction.
HTML:Here is one of those rare and remarkable debuts that herald the appearance of a major new talent on the literary scene. Inspired by real events, Lay That Trumpet In Our Hands is a wise and luminous story about a northern family, a southern town, and the senseless murder that sparks an extraordinary act of courage.
To this day, my family is in disagreement as to precisely when the nightmare began. For me, it was the morning Daddy and Luther discovered Marvin, beaten, shot, and dying, in the Klanâ??s stomping grounds off Round Lake Road. My brother Ren disagrees. He points to the small cluster of scars that begin just outside his left eye and trail horizontally across his temple to the top of his ear. Ren claims it started when the men in white robes took the unprecedented step of shooting at two white children. Others say it was when Mr. Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP and Mr. Hooverâ??s FBI came to town. Mother and Daddy sh… (more)
It's a shame that this book was so poorly promoted when it was released. It is a wonderful story of race and injustice in the south, with touches of actual historical events that lend a realistic feel to the story. It puts me in mind of the classic, To Kill A Mockingbird. ( )
This was a very touching story of a family that become intangled with the KKK in Florida in the 1950's. This is a story that will make you mad and scared and victorious all at the same time. You feel the grip of evil, and the hand of friends banning together. Everyone needs to have a book like this to refer back to when we may feel a little lost. It is proof that even now, a bully will never win. ( )
Lay That Trumpet In our Hands is a novel inspired by real events that took place in Florida in 1951. The story follows a northern family living in a southern community surrounded by racism and violence.
This would be a good book for a High School English literature class because it discusses many themes and different perspectives. It also examines different litercies by encompassing both northern and southern dialects, values, and histories.
Wonderful book. This was a book club choice for our group and we all really enjoyed it and it prompted good conversation. I would love to read her other book, True Fires. This book has some of the same feeling as To Kill a Mockingbird. The characters of Reesa, Vaylie, Luther, Marvin are all very likeable. You don't get to know the Klan characters very much but you don't need to to know you dislike them. It was interesting too look up the real cases after reading this book to get more info. ( )
For Dad, Mother, and Gam. And for all those whose time in the fire was Florida in the early 50's.
First words
Luther's on the back porch knocking on the door.
Quotations
"With the Klans attack on two white boys, the rules have abruptly changed; their evil is no limited to Negroes, Jews, and Catholics. The Klan's crossed it's own hate line." pg 195
"If you're not lucky, if you have the unfortunate luck of living directly in its path, the center of the storm, the eye, engulfs you in terrifying silence. You wait, and watchk and wonder when it will pass, when the crack of old trees, and the rain, and the winds, and the barrels of water will return, all over again.....Mrs. Moore's death is the first sign that this hurricane's overquiet eye has passed. A flurry of increasingly loud events follow....Florida Crackers bearing the badges of Mr. Hoover's F.B.I....it's lear the other side of this hurricane has begun to blow. chapter 23.
"There's a bit of rattler in all of us. But as far as I've seen, human snakes are a whole lot meaner than the reptile kind." pg 128
"...the Klan was nothing to be afraid of, just a bunch of good ole boys playing boogey-man." pg 14
Last words
It was Marvin I remember, I remember whenever I smell orange blossoms, who showed me my stripes and gave me his wings.
Fiction.
African American Fiction.
Literature.
Historical Fiction.
HTML:Here is one of those rare and remarkable debuts that herald the appearance of a major new talent on the literary scene. Inspired by real events, Lay That Trumpet In Our Hands is a wise and luminous story about a northern family, a southern town, and the senseless murder that sparks an extraordinary act of courage.
To this day, my family is in disagreement as to precisely when the nightmare began. For me, it was the morning Daddy and Luther discovered Marvin, beaten, shot, and dying, in the Klanâ??s stomping grounds off Round Lake Road. My brother Ren disagrees. He points to the small cluster of scars that begin just outside his left eye and trail horizontally across his temple to the top of his ear. Ren claims it started when the men in white robes took the unprecedented step of shooting at two white children. Others say it was when Mr. Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP and Mr. Hooverâ??s FBI came to town. Mother and Daddy sh
▾Library descriptions
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Book description
One orange-blossom-scented night in 1951, Reesa McMahon woke to find her world shattered by violence and hatred. Her friend and mentor, nineteen-year-old Marvin Culley, had been brutally murdered by the local Klan. The killing of this innocent black man, who worked in the McMahon's orange grove, will forever change Reesa's life and the life of everyone in the genteel town of Mayflower, Florida, pitting neighbor against neighbor in a conflict that would ultimately divide a nation.
Against this backdrop, Reesa draws strength from her indomitable grandmother "Doto," who drove hell-bent down from Chicago in her new blue DeSoto...Warren, her slow-to-anger Yankee father, who never quite fit in to the closed society of Good 'Ol Boy citrus growers...Miss Maybelle Mason, the elderly postmistress, who knew a rattlesnake when she saw one-and the bitr of heartbreak as well-and Luther and Armetta and the black community of Mayflower. Through Reesa's painful search for meaning, we experience the unforgettable rites of passage of a young girl's and of a small town's shattering confrontation with racial prejudice, injustice, and-ultimately-truth.
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