Carolina Comments: Race & Grief

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This week’s post includes a play about race that is compelling and uncomfortable and a beautiful memoir on delayed grief. The drama is the Pulitzer Prize winner, Fairview, and the book is Memorial Days.

CHALLENGING THEATER 

Fairview (Justice Theater Project)

The Justice Theater Project, a small drama company, presents plays about social issues at Umstead United Methodist Church in Raleigh.  Sets and lighting are simple, and the theater space is small with a limited number of seats.  Last year, the Chief Penguin and I went to see their production of Cabaret.

Set in the present day in an unspecified location, Fairview is about a middle-class Black family.  Beverly and her husband Dayton and their teenage daughter Keisha are preparing a special dinner to celebrate Beverly’s mother’s birthday.  Jasmine, Beverly’s sister, is an early-arriving guest.  These four banter and bicker back and forth over the preparations.  Later, Beverly’s brother Tyrone and Keisha’s friend Erica erupt on the scene joining them and Mama, the grandmother.  

The first act is short but could have been shorter.  The second act is long, and half of it is dominated by a radio discussion about race and which race one might choose to be.  From a reasonably ordinary domestic scene, the play then transforms into a confrontation between all the characters now onstage and then the audience.  It is challenging and uncomfortable to watch and thought-provoking.  

Playwright Drury (theintervalny.com)

Written by Jackie Sibblies Drury, Fairview won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  Those of us who attended together were a bit discombobulated by the end.  We thought it could have been a tighter production and that the radio voice went on too long.  Still, it was a worthwhile experience.

DOCUMENTING GRIEF

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

Brooks (vineyardgazette.com)

My first acquaintance with Geraldine Brooks was reading her nonfiction book, Nine Parts of Desire, which focused on Muslim women in the Middle East, and was published in 1994.  Before she was a novelist, Brooks was a foreign correspondent living and working abroad for the Wall Street Journal. That book was a fascinating account which I really enjoyed.

Only later when I read her early novel about the bubonic plague. Year of Wonders, did I connect back and realize that Geraldine Brooks was the author of both titles.  Since then, I’ve read and relished almost every one of her historical novels including March (2005), Caleb’s Crossing (2011), and the most recent one, Horse (2022).

Brooks was married to fellow writer and journalist, Tony Horowitz, author of Spying on the South.  His sudden death on Memorial Day 2019, while far away on a book tour, was a searing event.  Being in the middle of writing Horse, Brooks did not take time to grieve.  Memorial Days is her interleaved account of the day of Tony’s death and those following and her prolonged stay three years later on an island off her native Australia.  

Being alone, isolated in nature, she granted herself a pause from work and her usual routine.  She walked the beach, swam, grieved, and reflected: on their happy marriage, on the joys of their parallel careers, on her sadness, and on how her life would have been different had she not met Tony, but lived her entire life in Australia.  It’s a beautiful and poignant memoir, straightforward and almost understated in its approach.  Highly recommended for Brooks’ fans! (~JWFarrington)

Note: Header image is Pledge Allegiance: Memorial to John R. Lewis by Jo-Ann Morgan.

Valentine Reading & Viewing

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WITTY ROMANCE FOR VALENTINE’S WEEKEND

(free vector.com)

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center

Romance is a hot genre these days.  It’s come out of the closet or perhaps better put, out from under the covers.  Romance novels, historical ones and contemporary ones, have been around for years.  New sub-genres incorporate fantasy or feature gay protagonists.  With their large readership, romance titles are also receiving more attention from the reviewing world and even academia.  Note the new exhibit related to romance cover art and publicity materials, Romancing the Novel, at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland.  It’s curated by a male communications and cinema professor.  

Texan Katherine Center’s recent rom-com, Hello Stranger, features artist Sadie Montgomery.  A portrait painter, Sadie is struggling to gain recognition in her career.  A finalist in a big prize competition, she must produce one more work for it when she has a major accident.  Post surgery, she awakens with face blindness (a real condition where human faces often appear incomplete.)  She tells only a handful of friends as she struggles to adjust.  

Sadie is attracted to her dog’s vet as a potential mate and makes damning assumptions about a neighbor in her apartment building.  It’s funny, poignant, heartwarming, and a really good story!  You will route for Sadie all the way through.

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY GONE AWRY

The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts by Louis Bayard

Oscar Wilde (wikipedia.com)

Constance Wilde knew Oscar loved her and their children.  He was affectionate, but not passionate.  In Louis Bayard’s marvelous new novel, The Wildes, we see Constance as she becomes aware that her husband’s emotions are more fully engaged elsewhere.  It is late summer in Norfolk, England, an escape from London for this family, and the young poet Lord Alfred Douglas, familiarly known as Bosie, is coming to visit.  

In the opening chapter, we follow Oscar and Constance on a leisurely stroll as she quizzes him about this latest house guest.  It is a brilliantly rendered description of wifely curiosity and husbandly dodging of the real issue.

Subsequent chapters or acts follow Constance and sons Cyril and Vyvyan, to Italy where they live under assumed names during Oscar’s time in prison, to the sons in the mucky trenches of WWI, to Vyvyan some years later re-visiting the past to try to sort it all out, to finally a re-imagining of the family’s sojourn in Norfolk in 1892.  Well researched and beautifully crafted, Bayard’s novel sensitively combines reality with creativity.  One of the best literary novels I’ve read in some time!  (~JWFarrington)

COMFORT VIEWING, AUSSIE STYLE

Darby and Joan (Acorn)

Darby with Joan (rottentomatoes.com)

English widow Joan, a retired nurse, is determined to find out what her late husband was up to in Australia, when he was supposed to be in Barcelona.  Boldly setting out in her mobile home across the wilds of that country, she encounters retired Australian detective Darby whose truck has broken down. Her offer of a ride quickly becomes a shared journey as they deal with a death among a group of hippies and then travel on to assist an old chum of Darby’s.  

The story is light, the banter between these seniors is engaging, and the mysteries they solve are often murders, but the series is not gruesome.  There are two seasons with 8 episodes in Season 1 and six in Season 2.  The Chief Penguin and I have now watched the first two episodes.  Thanks to new friends for suggesting it.  Recommended if you are in the mood for stress free, fun viewing!

Note: Header image of hearts from Unsplash.com

Carolina Comments: History & Politics in Several Guises

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ABROAD AT HOME:  A NUGGET OF RALEIGH HISTORY

Pope House Museum

This week we toured the Pope House Museum in downtown Raleigh not far from the capitol.  Built in 1901, this small two-story building was the home of Dr. Manassa Pope and his family.  Pope was the first licensed African American doctor in North Carolina.  Born in 1858 to free parents, he graduated from nearby Shaw University and then got his training at Leonard Medical Center.  He fought in the Spanish American War and later helped start a bank in Durham.  

Manassa T. Pope, 1910 (Pope Museum)

Dr. Pope and his first wife Lydia bought the land and then built this house.  She died of tuberculosis in 1906, and he and his second wife Delia, an educator, had two girls.   The house was in a middle-class Black neighborhood and a mark of his success.  It faced Wilmington Street which was the dividing line between the African American neighborhood and a White neighborhood. 

In 1919, during the Jim Crow era, Dr. Pope was a candidate for city mayor.  He didn’t expect to win but wanted to show that African Americans had the right to vote.  His daughters, Evelyn and Ruth, became teachers and lived in the house until their deaths.  Neither married nor had any children.  Fortunately, the city of Raleigh acquired the property and preserved it as this museum.

The house is small but worth a visit to see the artifacts and photos documenting this man’s prominent role during a difficult era in history.  February, Black History month, is still being observed in towns like Cary. It is a fitting moment to see the Pope House Museum, to reflect on the past, to appreciate how far our society has come, and alas, to be fearful how far backwards we may go.

LOVE AND POLITICS: A NOVEL

How to Sleep at Night by Elizabeth Harris

Author Harris (nyt.com)

Elizabeth Harris is a New York Times reporter who covers the publishing industry and authors.  She has frequently written about trends in book banning including how it can be done under the radar.  How to Sleep at Night is her first novel, and it’s a treat.

Ethan and Gabe are a married gay couple with a 5-year-old daughter.  When Ethan announces, he is going to run as conservative Republican candidate for Congress, Gabe, who is a Democrat, is stunned and flummoxed, but agrees to go along.  Ethan’s sister Nicole is a suburban mother of two kids married to Austin.  Her marriage has become stale, and she feels somewhat adrift.  Nicole re-engages with old college flame Kate, who is a newspaper reporter, and both their lives become more complicated. 

Politics plays a big part in this novel, but it’s equally a novel about love, the vagaries within marriage, and the appeal of new love.  The characters are well drawn–even the children are convincingly real– and there is wit and warmth midst the chaos.  Recommended! (~JWFarrington)

BRAIN FOOD: GREAT DECISIONS PROGRAM

America’s Role Going Forward

The Chief Penguin and I are participating in one of the Great Decisions discussion groups offered here.  Great Decisions is an annual program developed by the Foreign Policy Association.  They provide a text which contains background reading for the weekly sessions, each chapter written by a different expert. The 2025 theme is “America at a Global Crossroads.”  An accompanying DVD has sections related to each chapter.  

Thus far, I’ve been impressed with the quality of the background reading and have found the DVD lectures building on and expanding the chapter information.  It’s clear that the materials were prepared after the 2024 election making them very relevant.  Tariffs and the history of American trade policy since WWI were part of our most recent session.  Food for the brain!  

BLACK HISTORY BOOK DISPLAY

Note: Unattributed photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved.)

CAROLINA COMMENTS: READING & ART

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This week I’m sharing my thoughts on a new novel by Fiona Davis along with some works I found striking at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke. I’m continuing to consider some of our outings in Cary and beyond as other examples of Abroad At Home.

ENTERTAINING NOVEL: THE MET AND EGYPT

The Stolen Queen by Fiona Davis

Fiona Davis (facebook.com)

True to form, The Stolen Queen, the latest historical novel by Fiona Davis, centers on an iconic building in New York City.  Earlier novels featured the New York Public Library (The Lions of Fifth Avenue), the Barbizon Hotel for Women (The Dollhouse), and Grand Central Terminal (The Masterpiece), to name just several.  For this work, it’s the Metropolitan Museum of Art and specifically its antiquities and Egyptian collections.

Set in 1936 and 1978 in Egypt and Manhattan, it’s the story of two women and their search for a stolen artifact (the queen of the title), a missing jewelry collar, and a lost daughter.  Charlotte Cross was a budding archaeologist in Luxor in the 1930’s when her life was upended by tragedy.  In 1978, she is an associate curator at the Met, keenly focused on her study of a female pharaoh, yet still torn by not knowing the fate of her infant.  Annie Jenkins is nineteen, loves fashion, and by happenstance becomes Diana Vreeland’s gopher in the run-up to the Costume Institute’s annual gala.  Due to some unusual circumstances, Annie and Charlotte join forces to search for the missing antiquity which involves traveling to Egypt and excavating the demons of Charlotte’s past.

The novel is a romp in the Met Museum, fun for anyone who has spent any time at all there, while simultaneously being a complexly threaded set of relationships and events.  The female pharaoh and a few other characters are based on historic figures.  It’s a quick read and enjoyable, even if it all seems to be resolved too neatly!

ABROAD AT HOME:  ART IN DURHAM

Nasher Museum of Art

Friends invited us to join them for an outing to the Nasher Museum of Art on the Duke University campus in Durham.  I knew of this museum but had never visited, nor had I ever seen it.  The building itself is stunning with a soaring wide lobby topped by angled metal trusses and lots of glass.  Designed by noted architect Rafael Vinoly and opened in 2005, it’s a light-filled welcoming space.  Galleries and exhibit spaces are off to the side in appropriately semi-dark rooms.  

Interior, Nasher Museum

Several exhibits are currently on view and some are small so, we were able to explore them all to some extent.  We spent the most time in By Dawn’s Early Light, a major exhibit marking the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 set against the historical backdrop of the Constitution and several key amendments.  The exhibit is wide-ranging in its coverage of people and documents through photography, painting, and sculptural pieces. Here are several works that I found striking.

Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, a Native American from Montana, presents a map of the United States emphasizing its whiteness with white paint colors instead of state names.  The countries surrounding the US are multi-colored.  North Carolina is Breakwater White.

Fifty Shades of White, 2018
Detail showing North Carolina and neighbors

Americans have the right to bear arms. I found this Celtic cross composed of AK 47 rifles a chilling statement on what one might call “gun worship.”

Cross for the Unforgiven, 2002, Mel Chin

Another powerful piece for me was the historic Confederate flag, part of a performance piece in which the flag was deliberately torn. The colorful threads on the shelf at the bottom are formless and perhaps available for something new.

Unravelling, Sonya Clark, 2015
Tabaco, Diego Camposeco, 2015

Individuals from other lands come here seeking to fulfill the American dream for themselves.  Many of these are migrant workers, often Latinos. See Diego Camposeco’s print at right.

There is also moving section, “Freedom to Assemble” with images of Martin Luther King and others gathering and facing down armed troops at the Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965.  Mounted on mirrored sienna glass, the photos are very reflective making it impossible to get a photo worth sharing.  

By Dawn’s Early Light is timely and worth a visit. It runs through May 11. 

The museum also has an informal café space offering tasty salads, sandwiches, eggs benedict many ways, and omelets.  We four enjoyed lunch there midst the Under 25 set.  We had escaped our home bubble for a student-filled campus bubble.  Fun!

Note: All unattributed photos by JWFarrington (some rights reserved.) Header photo is of the massive bronze sculpture, MamaRay, by Nairobi-born artist Wangechi Muta. It was installed at the museum in 2021.