The Chosen Place, The
Timeless People
by Paule Marshall
Reading can be quite interesting if the material
read relates to your culture and the geographical location that intice you to continue
reading until you close the last page.
This feeling of getting deeply involved occurs whenever I read a book
set in the Caribbean. Paule Marshall’s book entitled The Chosen Place, The
Timeless People did this to me as I was drawn into the world of its characters and
their conflicts.
The character that kept me tied to the book was Merle. She is strong,
educated and determined to find her roots in the Caribbean Island of Barbados. Here she
functions as the historian who keeps reminding the people of Bournehill that slavery did
exist and that many blacks suffered the cruelty in the hands of the whites after traveling
in the darkness of death through the Middle Passage.
Ms. Marshall is daring, for she gives Merle a strong voice. She speaks
of her sexuality. She speaks about her anger against too much control and power, her
search for her African/Caribbean roots, her relationships with men and women, and her
warnings that the new Caribbean people should learn from history, and cultural events such
as the carnival to do good and not harm on your own.
She also talks about the destruction of the land. She attempts to tell
the African-Caribbean people to learn from the mistakes of the colonizers. Her language is
not complicated, and she spices it with some Creole. Yes, Paule Marshall has written a
marvelous book that makes an Islander feel proud. So, when you visit your favorite
bookstore, do not hesitate in picking up The Chosen Place, The Timeless People.
The amazing thing about this novel is that Ms. Marshall was born and
raised in Brooklyn, New York. However, one of her parents is from Barbados. She is
currently teaching at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.
-- Lydia S. Vale Delgado
The Century
by Peter Jennings, Todd Brewster
"We have sought," write Peter Jennings
and Todd Brewster, "to distinguish our story from other histories by holding each
chapter up to a litmus test: Have we looked at this time from the perspective of someone
who lived through it? And in doing so, have we captured a sense not only of the events of
a particular era, but of the mood, the prevailing attitudes?" Thus, the experiences
of ordinary men and women come to life in sidebars that appear throughout The Century.
Sharpe James, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, recalls the sense of excitement and
possibility he felt when Jackie Robinson became the first black ballplayer in the major
leagues. Gilles Ryan remembers what it was like to be a high-school student in Dayton,
Tennessee, during the Scopes Trial. Connie Chang talks about emigrating to the United
States from Korea and establishing a liquor store in Los Angeles, only to have it
destroyed in the civil unrest.
Comparisons to Harold Evans's The
American Century are, perhaps, inevitable, but in addition to the emphasis on
ordinary lives, The Century is further distinguished by the effective use of color
photography (as well as several black-and-white shots). The book's sweeping narrative,
shaped by Jennings and Brewster's comprehensive text, also flows a bit more smoothly than
Evans's telegraphic prose; one can almost imagine Jennings reciting from these pages as he
hosts the ABC/History Channel documentaries to which this book is a companion piece. |
