Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... Generations: A Memoir (1976)by Lucille Clifton
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) BibliophageOnCoffee | Aug 12, 2022 |  Clifton frames this around her father's funeral, a time when she traveled home, saw lots of relatives, and thought a lot about her father's life and the stories he told about their family history. And that is what we have here. The repetition feels exactly like a parent telling their children stories--the same things pop up here and there, with different phrasing and context. She frames how he taught her to be brave and capable and confident despite your surroundings, just like his great-grandmother who raised him from the age of 8. Clifton took all of this to heart. There is a good family tree (with sources) on familysearch.org. It does not go back to Carolie and the first Lucy--whether their passed-down history is exactly 100% true (lack of online sources does not mean it is not true, as any historian or genealogist can confirm) is irrelevant in light of the relevance and importance of the stories to the later generations, giving them history and background and love. As a historian and genealogist, I wish everyone (especially the oldest generations) would write their own version of this. No they would not be poetic and evocative like this, but they would still be important within their own families and even to their own local historical/genealogical societies. ( ) Dreesie | Jun 8, 2022 | no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher Series
"Buffalo. A father's funeral. Memory. In Generations, Louise Clifton's formidable poetic gift emerges in prose, giving us a memoir of stark and profound beauty. Her story focuses on the lives of the Sayles family: Caroline, "born among the Dahomey people in 1822," who walked north from New Orleans to Virginia in 1830 when she was eight years old; Lucy, the first black woman to be hanged in Virginia; and Gene, born with a withered arm, the son of a carpetbagger and the author's grandmother. Lucille Clifton tells us about the life of an African-American family through slavery and hard times and beyond, of the death of her father and grandmother, but also of all the life and love and triumph that came before and remains even now. Generations is a powerful work of determination and affirmation. "I look at my husband," Clifton writes, "and my children and I feel the Dahomey women gathering in my bones.""-- No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)811.54Literature English (North America) American poetry 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.27)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (1)
2