Julia Mood Peterkin (1880–1961)

Julia Peterkin pioneered in demonstrating the literary potential for serious depictions of the African American experience. Rejecting the prevailing sentimental stereotypes of her times, she portrayed her black characters with sympathy and understanding, endowing them with the full dimensions of human consciousness.

In these novels and stories, she tapped the richness of rural southern black culture and oral traditions to capture the conflicting realities in an African American community and show more to reveal a grace and courage worthy of black pride. (From the publisher.)

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Scarlet Sister May is vibrant with the urge of life, poetical in its conception and finished in its art. Oklahoma City Oklahoman

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Scarlet Sister Mary is a noble book, reaching into the hearts of a simple and highly attractive people. It is a novel like fine old wood, deep-grained, pungent, stout. Philadelphia Public Ledger

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All but cries with color, scent, sound, in a style that is a happy combination of solidity, brilliance and pure beauty. New York Times

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While all these things may be true, I still cannot ignore the silent scream that was in my head the entire time I was reading Sister Mary.

Julia Peterkin may have been correct in her representations, but she was also a White American; moreover, a WA who was married to a plantation owner and who enjoyed immense and (probably) undue privilege in her lifetime, having garnered it on the backs of those people she ultimately came to write about. I am having the most difficult time in my life deciding whether she honours the memory of the Gullah people of South Carolina, or whether this is the most egregious example appropriation of voice ever written.

Usually there are some clues to tip the reader one way or the other, but this one leaves me ... without breath ...

The novel is enjoyable, and very well written. There isn't one weak note that jumps out and says, "I am false", whether or not one agrees with the heavy-handed Christian ethos that runs like a spine throughout the work. Scarlet Mary is true to herself, right to the end: always on the edge of reconciling with God, in the end she strives for and achieves the ultimate conversion: accepted by her community, but very much on her own terms.

I cannot begin to imagine why Peterkin chose to write this book in this voice -- there is very little biographical information available on her. What there is is sparse, and repetitive: obviously each culled, almost verbatim, from previous sources.

The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929 amid controversy, but no one speaks of the objections in any detail: Dr. Richard S. Burton resigned from the committee when his own choice was not upheld for John Rathbone Oliver's Victim and Victor. There are a few enigmatic hints that Peterkin's novel was rejected, based on "obscenity", but that charge was never elaborated. Was it obscene because Sister Mary had (most of her) children out of wedlock or was it obscene because she seemed to turn her back on God? Was it obscene because she dared write an African-American's story; or obscene because she wrote an African American's story through appropriation of voice?

In 1930, Ethel Barrymore starred in a blackface performance of this novel, on Broadway.

And there lies the rub ...

Was Barrymore being true to the author's intent?

I had a nagging feeling throughout that Peterkin may not have been completely on the up-and-up in wishing to portray a true vision of the Gullah. I was overwhelmed with doubt about her authenticity. What kept coming to mind was Scarlet O'Hara writing a book in Mammy's voice: in true Scarlet fashion, she would use it to advance her own cause.

My impressions of Peterkin may be completely off-centre, but it is a persistent doubt that I will continue to carry. Far too many questions are left unanswered in her sketchy biography. It is interesting to me that she later became an actress, a role that perhaps suited her better in the end.

I will return to Peterkin one day to pursue my doubts. For now, I'll let her rest at a comfortable 3 stars. show less

I don't know how to review Black April without trying to set some groundwork by explaining the South Carolina Lowcountry and the people whose families have lived on the coast and on the sea islands for 300 years. They are/were descendents of slaves on the rice plantations. They have their own language, folklore, recipes, and crafts and their history is incredibly rich. The Lowcountry's landscape is diverse, unique, and beautiful as to be almost a mystical realm. That the wife of a plantation show more owner in the 1920s could have written novels plotted around and peopled entirely by Gullah characters and do so with such natural ease, depth, and skill defies stereotypes of race, gender, geography, and timeframe.

Plot:April is the foreman of Bluebrook, a working plantation owned by a family that lives up North most of the year. April is a physically powerful and daring man who is a natural leader. Married, he's a ladies man. He's also fearless to the point of arrogance, a true alpha male who gives no other male leader one inch of the spotlight no matter where they're standing. It is telling that, although April is not the novel's protagonist, he is the one around whom this plot revolves. You may know a man like this. Some of us have fathers like this. He's the sun. We're planets; it may be our story but it wouldn't exist as it does if he didn't exist first. The protagonist is Breeze, a boy of about 8 who meets April because Bluebrook's cook, a larger than life personality named Miss Big Sue, simply showed up on a nearby island one day and talked his weak-willed, overwhelmed mother out of him. Her reasons for this seem to be that she wanted someone to raise and to run and fetch for her, but also Breeze is April's illegitimate son and April is Big Sue's lover. I think she meant to bind April to her. Rival females and April's arrogance combine to bring April from the pinnacle to the pits in a way that resembles Job's downfall in the bible. We see this through Breeze's eyes, but the characters are so real and vivid that I never felt limited by his child's point of view. April speaks the last line of the novel and I closed the book feeling sad for him and very moved.

I want to read Julia Peterkin's other novels, especially Scarlet Sister Mary, which was banned as obscene in South Carolina but which won the Pulitzer Prize. show less

Written by a white Southern author who found the lives of blacks more interesting than whites'. Sixteen-year-old Mary is two months pregnant with July's child when they marry. A year later, July disappears with another woman. Mary falls into a depressed funk but manages to overcome it with the help of Maum Hannah and Budda Ben who both raised Mary from her youth. Mary goes on to have 8 more children with different men, doing what she pleases despite being kicked out of Heaven's Gate church show more and the disapproval of the community. For its time, the book reveals the humanity of blacks but not without some condescension on the part of the author (again, reflecting the times). Pullitzer Prize winner in 1929. show less

I didn't dislike this book but it was a bit of a chore to get through. It told the tale of a black community trying to figure out their new freedom. It followed the life of Sister Mary and her dozen children. None of the characters particularly stood out to me and I wasn't really taken in by the narrative. It was interesting from a historical perspective, but I would have liked to see more emotion coming from it, or being elicited from me.

In summation : I can't say that I'm particularly show more thrilled to have read this, nor do I expect it to stay with me for long. This is one of those books that a year from now I will be unable to recall much about. show less