Straight up, this is a classic even among classics, and so I’m giving myself permission right up front for this review not to be important or add anything to the conversation at all. I don’t actually think I’m capable of saying anything that hasn’t already been said by people who said it better than I ever could. I feel like the only way this book can be reviewed now is either by looking at it through the context of today’s societal lens, or by relating […]
A sadly relevant tale: the 1970 murder of an innocent black man by three white men
The state of North Carolina is a perfect example of “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” In Blood Done Sign My Name, Tim Tyson recounts a story from his youth in Oxford, NC in which a young black man is murdered by three white men, all of whom were fully acquitted by a white jury. The heart of Tyson’s story is the 1970 murder of Henry Marrow, a black Vietnam veteran with a wife, two children, and another on the way. […]
Sore Thumbs
This year I started teaching a class of Seniors. It had long been a goal, and now I got to do it. I wanted to create as much of a collegiate simulacrum as I could. So I brewed up some lectures and led each week of instruction, discussion and reflection around a prominent theme in literature generally–with specific attention paid to African-American experiences (slightly awkward for a transparently white guy to do for a class full of black kids). And to guide my lecture creation […]
“When something catches your attention just keep your attention on it, stick with it ’til the end, and somewhere along the line there’ll be weirdness.”
It would be reductive to sum this book up as ‘Snow White in the ’60s with racism,’ but you could if you really wanted to. That’s the hook that caught me, after all. But really, the Snow White story is just the way in. It’s not really concerned with the same things that Snow White (or other fairy-tales) is concerned with. Boy, Snow, Bird is not as mysterious of a title as it first appears. Boy, Snow and Bird are all characters in the novel. […]