Babylon Sisters

(originally published at http://nomadreader.blogspot.com)

The backstory: Babylon Sisters is the second novel in Pearl Cleage's West End series. Although this book isn't a sequel to Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do, the main characters from Some Things do pop up a few times here, which will delight readers who enjoyed the first novel.

The basics: Babylon Sisters focuses on Catherine, who describes her work perfectly in this passage: "What I do is coordinate and integrate services for programs assisting female refugees and immigrants. Atlanta is a magnet for people trying to make a new start in a new country, and even though the town’s natives still think in terms of black and white, in reality we’re looking more and more like the show more Rainbow Coalition." She's also a single mother to a smart, confident seventeen-year-old young woman who longs to know her father, but Catherine remains committed to keeping that secret from her.

My thoughts: It's no secret Pearl Cleage is one of my all-time favorite writers. I love her ability to write characters who can simultaneously be human beings struggling with romance and trying to make the world a better place. Pearl Cleage's novels make me feel like I'm sitting at the greatest dinner party ever. Her characters eat, drink, think, speak and act in ways that inspire me and leave me breathless:

"There are always a million answers—the generals and the rebels make sure of that—but when you really think about it, there’s no good reason to try to kill as many people as you can, for as long as you can, until the ones who are left surrender their lives, or their resources, or their culture, or their self-respect, or their ancestors, or their spirits, or their oil, until they get strong enough to throw you off their backs and the whole cycle starts all over again. Thinking about it can make you feel powerless and scared, and that was no way to end an evening that had evolved into one of the best I’ve had in too long."

Catherine is the heart and soul of this novel, and I loved her personally and professionally. She's smart, driven, loyal to her friends, and a wonderful mother. What makes her great, however, are her raw honesty and her expression of fears and vulnerabilities:

"I wondered if it was possible to be in love with a man and develop a vocabulary free of the responses that make every conversation a minefield of hurt feelings, half-truths, and dashed expectations."

I'm rarely sad when I finish a novel because I'm usually eager to find out how it ends and ponder my thoughts on the novel as a whole. Babylon Sisters, however, is the rare novel that makes me sad when I finish because I want to go on glimpsing into the lives of Catherine and her friends because they feel like my friends.

Favorite passage: "Trying to change poor people’s lives is never as glamorous or inspirational as they make it when some do-gooders get the central role in a Hollywood movie. In real life, Sam’s experience is probably closer to the truth, a long series of unrewarded sacrifices and thankless tasks that rarely impact the lives of the people you want to rescue."

The verdict: Babylon Sisters is a rallying cry for social justice, a love story, a touching tale of a mother-daughter relationship, and a story about the family we make for ourselves, but most of all it's a beautifully written novel filled with memorable characters faced with difficult decisions, both personally and professionally. And it makes readers think about the choices we wish we would make and the choices we fear we might make. show less

Single Mom, Catherine Sanderson, has been living off an inheritance and working as an advocate for immigrant women, making connections to housing and services, when her daughter indicates an interest in attending an expensive college. Just as she begins to think about paid employment she is approached by the renowned Miss Ezola Mandeville, a Black woman who has organized Black maids in Atlanta to get better working conditions and benefits. Her company needs to expand and she wants to incorporate immigrant women into her network and thinks Catherine can help make those connections. As she is winding up her unpaid services and getting her feet wet at the company, she is asked to help a young immigrant girl find her missing younger sister. show more There is also a side story about her daughter wanting to know the identity of her father. When a reporter, Burghardt Johnson, shows up investigating the rumors of a sex slave trade moving into the Atlanta area immigrant community and said reporter turns out to be the secret father things get interesting.
This was a nicely done African American romance with a look into a couple of current social issues; the exploitation of immigrant labor and the sex trade and right of discovery of birth parents. Both are handled well and with a little intrigue. The lower rating is mainly for the fact that there were too many coincidences and things fell into place much too easily. show less

I agree with some of the complaints about Babylon Sisters being a bit scattered, and sometimes obvious...but what relationship with sisters -- whether by birth or luck -- isn't both of those, from time to time? Pearl Cleage's stories just make me happy. They're romances, at heart, but the men and women who populate them are real people, with real faults and worries. When they fall in love, its not a rescue, and when they have sex, its neither careless nor earth-shattering. I like them, because I *would* like them, if I knew her characters in person.

I read a review, today, that noted (and, I paraphrase) that if you can't find a character you can root for to have an emotional transformation, whats the point of finishing the book? Cleage's show more characters are Good People, doing the best they can, and sometimes getting it wrong, but sticking together, no matter what. I can root for that, despite a few flaws. show less

More like 3.5 stars. This is a perfectly good little book. Enjoyable, not particularly challenging but still smartly written.

I have two quibbles with it. One is that a central driver of much of the plot is that our narrator, Catherine, has not only not told her teenage daughter who her father is, she has actually planted false information to throw Phoebe off the trail. Lying like this not only comes off as completely outside of Catherine's character, she lies "dumb". A small thing perhaps but something that kept coming back to me: Why didn't she just TELL her in the first place and all of this would have been avoided? Yes, I know, then there only would have been half a book but this was an exposed seam that really irritated me every show more time I ran into it.

The second quibble is that although Catherine's area of expertise is refugee resettlement and although Phoebe's father comes back into town to cover a female slavery ring involving refugees we actually see virtually nothing of the refugee communities, meeting only one woman who is searching for her sister. We are TOLD about refugees, how difficult life is for them, the ways in which they are vulnerable but we see almost none of that. show less

More like 3.5 stars. This is a perfectly good little book. Enjoyable, not particularly challenging but still smartly written.

I have two quibbles with it. One is that a central driver of much of the plot is that our narrator, Catherine, has not only not told her teenage daughter who her father is, she has actually planted false information to throw Phoebe off the trail. Lying like this not only comes off as completely outside of Catherine's character, she lies "dumb". A small thing perhaps but something that kept coming back to me: Why didn't she just TELL her in the first place and all of this would have been avoided? Yes, I know, then there only would have been half a book but this was an exposed seam that really irritated me every show more time I ran into it.

The second quibble is that although Catherine's area of expertise is refugee resettlement and although Phoebe's father comes back into town to cover a female slavery ring involving refugees we actually see virtually nothing of the refugee communities, meeting only one woman who is searching for her sister. We are TOLD about refugees, how difficult life is for them, the ways in which they are vulnerable but we see almost none of that. show less

More like 3.5 stars. This is a perfectly good little book. Enjoyable, not particularly challenging but still smartly written.

I have two quibbles with it. One is that a central driver of much of the plot is that our narrator, Catherine, has not only not told her teenage daughter who her father is, she has actually planted false information to throw Phoebe off the trail. Lying like this not only comes off as completely outside of Catherine's character, she lies "dumb". A small thing perhaps but something that kept coming back to me: Why didn't she just TELL her in the first place and all of this would have been avoided? Yes, I know, then there only would have been half a book but this was an exposed seam that really irritated me every show more time I ran into it.

The second quibble is that although Catherine's area of expertise is refugee resettlement and although Phoebe's father comes back into town to cover a female slavery ring involving refugees we actually see virtually nothing of the refugee communities, meeting only one woman who is searching for her sister. We are TOLD about refugees, how difficult life is for them, the ways in which they are vulnerable but we see almost none of that. show less

Catharine Sanderson runs a nonprofit helping immigrants get settled into the Atlanta community. Her daughter Phoebe is about to enter college so Catharine needs a job to pay the tuition, and when she is approached by Ezola Mandeville, who runs a housekeeping business, to team up to find work for Catharine's clients and give Ezola a new pool of applicants, the partnership seems right on time. But if it was perfect, there wouldn't be a story...

Meanwhile, Phoebe is desperate to know who her father is and Catharine is just as desperate for Phoebe not to know. And surprise of surprises, he contacts Catharine on business, and the other plot thickens.

Pearl Cleage does an amazing job of narrating her own novel. Many authors don't, but her show more voice, timing and diction are all on point. I would love for her to narrate works by other authors as well.

This was a light read. I'm not too much into chick lit, but I liked Pearl Cleage's What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day when I read it way back when and decided to give her another go. It took me a few tries to finish this one because the story lines were a little clumsy. You definitely have to suspend belief to get into it. A main character disappears partway through the novel.

I finished the book because it is not too heavy on the romance, has POSITIVE black men who want their children and try to do the right thing (big ups for that!), and didn't take itself too seriously even while highlighting some serious societal issues. show less