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Praised as "exuberantly engaging" by the Los Angeles Times and a "beautiful, beautiful piece of writing" by the Houston Post, acclaimed artist Ntozake Shange brings to life the story of a young girl's awakening amidst her country's seismic growing pains. Set in St. Louis in 1957, the year of the Little Rock Nine, Shange's story reveals the prismatic effect of racism on an American child and her family. Seamlessly woven into this masterful portrait of an extended family is the story of Betsey's adolescence, the rush of first romance, and the sobering responsibilities of approaching adulthood.
- Sales Rank: #349052 in Books
- Published on: 2010-09-28
- Released on: 2010-09-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .48" w x 5.50" l, .42 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 208 pages
Review
“A lyrical coming-of-age novel.” ―The New York Times
“The pages go whoosh!” ―Kirkus Reviews on Sin City
“Shange is a superb storyteller who keeps her eye on what brings her characters together rather than what separates them…. After you've read Betsey Brown to yourself, you can read it aloud to a friend.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“It's the truth Betsey Brown is a beautiful, beautiful piece of writing.” ―Houston Post
“Shange has re-created a humorous, charming, and heartbreaking vision of St. Louis and the Brown family that will delight young and old. She can conjure, as if by magic.... Betsey Brown is like an enchanting melody.” ―St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Ntozake Shange is a unique and gifted, literary executant and works under strong impulses to do things her own way despite settled conventions of craft. The author's peculiar chemistry (a synonym for talent), plus her singlemindedness, has brought her a decided victory. She has made Betsey Brown live. We care about the child and wonder what will happen to her, how she will fare. This doubtless was the author's intention and mission.” ―Chicago Sun Times
“No contemporary writer has Shange's uncanny gift for immersing herself within the situations and points-of-view of so many different types of women. No wonder she has achieved an almost oracular status among her female readers. She is a writer of many masks. She can serenade you, and she can cut you; she can chirp, as well as growl; she can delight, as well as antagonize.” ―Ishmeal Reed
“Betsey Brown is a joy to read. Every sentence seems filled with a delicate, jubilant, sly, comical, musical brio. The energy, good humor, imagination and joie de vivre make this novella refreshing exception to most contemporary fiction.” ―Philip Lopate
“Ntozake Shange's writings compose one long, continuous song: by part blues medley, swaying gospel melody, plaintive torch ballad.” ―Washington Times
About the Author
NTOZAKE SHANGE is a renowned playwright, poet, and novelist. Her works includes Some Sing, Some Cry, the Obie Award-winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo and Liliane. Among her honors and awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and a Pushcart Prize. A graduate of Barnard and recipient of a Masters in American Studies from University of Southern California, she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
THE SUN HOVERED BEHIND A PINK HAZE THAT ENgulfed all of St. Louis that Indian summer of 1959. Th e sun was a singular preoccupation with Betsey. She rose with it at least once a week. She'd shake Sharon or Margot outta they beds and run to the back porch on the second floor to watch the horizon set a soft blaze to the city. Their house allowed for innumerable perspectives of the sun. From the terrace off Betsey's room, where she was not 'sposed to stand, she could see the sun catty-cornered over the Victorian houses that dotted the street, behind maples and oaks grown way over the roofs of the sleeping families. On her street you could name the families without children in one breath. Why, one reason to live there was cause there were so many children. Only the Blackmans directly cross from Betsey with their pillars and potted dwarf plants didn't like children, which must be why they didn't have any. In the wintertime Mrs. Blackman would come running out in her furs, shouting for everybody to get off her lawn, even though it was the best one for sledding cause there were two slopes. Whatta shame she couldn't understand that. Yet seen from the terrace, when the dawn came in the winter, Mrs. Blackman's dwarfed plants wrapped in shields of ice glistened like rainbows. Betsey never told Mrs. Blackman that. She didn't mention the shadows of the nuns dressing in the convents, either. There was a preciousness to St. Louis at dawn or dusk that was settling to the child in the midst of a city that rankled with poverty, meanness, and shootings Betsey was only vaguely aware of.
The sun and the stairways protected her, gave her a freedom that was short-lived but never failing. Her house sat on a small hill and there were stairs that went to the front door, but you could use the same stairs to go anywhere around the house cause the stairs also led to a porch that went all the way round the side of the house. That's how come nobody could ever tell exactly where Grandma was. She could be anywhere on that porch just watching you do wrong. Then there were the back stairs, only three of them: one, two, three wooden ones, all creaky and needing paint. Underneath those stairs Betsey helped a stray cat have babies. She lined up worms and rocks. She lay flat on her back sometimes, being quiet and unseen, while everybody went looking for her or while everybody was coming up the steps. She heard a lot of secrets lying under the back stairs. Heard a lot of kissing. Now, kissing is hard to hear, but Charlie kissed back there sometimes. Jane and Greer were always kissing. The stairs to the basement were magnificently narrow, like a dungeon the basement was. In the summer it was ever so cool and in the winter it was warm. Betsey didn't know why more of the family didn't covet the basement. Maybe it was on account of the dark and the smell. It smelled funny down there. Jane said that white folks usedta make the colored help sleep down there. Now that Jane would never do, put a Negro in the basement.
But the best stairs were the back stairs that went all the way to the third floor. These stairs turned this way and then that. Why, a body would hide in a cranny on those stairs and never be found. They were dark, too, a blackish wood gainst blackish walls like servants should never see the light of day. Betsey loved the back stairs that led to the littlest porch on the third floor, which Jane never warned her about, cause Jane'd never seen it, Betsey 'sposed. From there, on fall mornings, in her pajamas and overcoat, Betsey watched the dawn come up over the steeple of the church way down Union Boulevard, past Soldan and the YMHA. The bells would cling a holy cling that no one in the house could hear. They used alarm clocks.
So Betsey had fashioned parameters of her own for the house she shared with everyone else. The only real problem was doors. Every room was connected to another room by a door and Jane forbade anyone to lock the doors. The second floor was a pathway of bedrooms with a hallway right next to it. Only Charlie's room wasn't connected to anything and that was because he was in high school. Betsey didn't see what kinda reason that was to have a room that wasn't connected to everybody else's. That's why Betsey liked to be up before everyone else, out on one of her porches, taking in the world all on her own. There she made up stories or just stayed out of the fracas Sharon, Margot, and Allard would be making all the time. Sound traveled uncannily in this house and everybody was always yelling to everybody else. Arguing all the time. Howdy-Doody or American Bandstand, Little Rock or Amos and Andy.
Alone on her balcony, Betsey luxuriated in the quietness, letting her thoughts ramble.
“Speak up Ike, an’ 'spress yo'se'f,” Betsey murmured, remembering yesterday afternoon on Union Boulevard when Willetta and Susan Ann had ripped into each other over that basketball champ with the good hair, Benny. Betsey kept trying to remember how Willetta's bra looked and how Susan Ann had scratched Willetta's face with the longest red nails. She was certain that the black-laced bra and the red nails had something to do with the way Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar wanted her to say, “Speak up Ike, an’ 'spress yo'se'f.” Some sultry willing- to- fight- over- you,- if- you- give- me- a-chance way of saying the line. Today Mrs. Mitchell was having the elocution contest for Class 7B, Betsey's class, with the kids from cross the tracks and the kids from the right side of em too. Willetta and Susan Ann had gathered such a crowd round em, tearing at each other that way. And Benny, he just went on to the game gainst Sumner, like he didn't know nothin bout all this blood and swearing and cussing going on in his name. It was evil and wicked to fight, but Betsey wanted the grown woman bit of it to rub off on her today when she said, “Speak up Ike, an’ 'spress yo'se'f.”
“I told you, you had to be out of the bathroom in five minutes! What do you think I'm gonna do? Go to school stink on accounta you take so long, Margot,” Sharon was screaming round the corner from Betsey's room. How could she become a great anything with all this foolishness going on around her?
“Listen here, heifer. I'm gonna be in that bathroom in three minutes or you never gonna play with my jacks and I'ma tell Jeannie not to speak to you ever again. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?”
Sharon was kicking the bathroom door with her saddles making black streaks long the sideboard when Jane rolled over in her bed to touch Greer, just once more before her hellish day began. Where was Betsey with her coffee? Why was Sharon shouting the devil out in the hall? How could all this be happening to her?
“Sharon, I am going to whip you good, if I hear you call your sister or anybody else a heifer. Do you hear me? Just wait your turn. The boys are finished and you'll have plenty of time.” Jane managed to raise her voice, if not her body. Something had to be done with all these children. “Greer, please, let's not have any more children. But can we make a little bitty bit of love?” Jane was tustled in a mass of auburn hair. Somehow her lavender nightgown was entwined in her arms beneath the pillows. She rolled toward her husband, who, as always when in a good mood, grabbed her reddish ringlets and pulled her mouth to his. The answer was yes, a long and sweet yes.
“Betsey, Betsey, where's my coffee?” Jane breathed deep, longing for more of her Greer and that caffeine. She could smell the coffee perking downstairs, which meant that Mama was up and about, making lunches for all the children. “Betsey, where is my coffee?” Greer nuzzled a little closer and Jane simmered down and was all purr and open. She forgot about coffee.
Betsey wasn't even dressed, and she hadn't gotten her mama's coffee or her lines right yet. She ran like the Holy Ghost down the back stairs to set up Jane's cup and saucer before Grandma had to do it and broke something. “Speak up Ike, an’ 'spress yo'se'f” rambling through her mind, her little girl hips twitched the way she imagined Susan Ann's had after she left Willetta in the street with nothing but her panties on. Not even a ponytail clasp was on that child once Susan Ann was done. Grandma sure enough had the coffee done.
“Seems to me a child could make an effort to take her hardworking mother a teeny ol’ cup of coffee,” Grandma murmured in her Carolinian drawl. There was a way about Vida that was so lilting yet direct that Betsey sometimes thought her grandma had a bloodline connection to Scarlett O'Hara.
“I'm sorry, Grandma, but I was practicing my elocution.”
“You should have practiced your elocution last evening, instead of jumping all that colored double roping with those trashy gals from round the way.”
Grandma poured her daughter's coffee, knowing full well what was goin on upstairs. Her daughter didn't have no common sense, that was the problem. Awready there was a house fulla chirren and she wouldn't stop messin’ with that Greer. Jane was lucky, Grandma thought. None of the chirren looked like him, all dark and kinky-headed. Now it was true that Betsey had a full mouth. Margot was chocolate brown. Sharon had a head fulla nappy hair. Allard was on the flat-nosed side. But in Grandma's mind Jane had been blessed, cause each of the chirren was sprightly and handsome on a Geechee scale, not them island ones but the Charlestonians who'd been light or white since slavery. But Grandma didn't like to think bout slavery. She was most white. Slaves and alla that had nothing to do with her family, until Jane insisted on bringing this Greer into the family and he kept making family. Lord knows who could help her.
“Here, Betsey, you carry this on up to your mama, and tell her I said that Allard needs to be looked at for the ringworm and Charlie needs a whipping for calling Sharon out of her name and all the lunches are packed, but I do feel a mite weak and need to rest m...
Most helpful customer reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Writing at it's best
By A Customer
Betsey Brown is a coming of age story set in 1957 St. Louis. Betsey has to come to terms with being of the first to integrate a white school, but Shange does not give us the same-ol'-same-ol' blues about how bad it is. Betsey is an individual and the experience has its ups and downs. What is very interesting is her home life and the issues many black girls face. Her mother is lighter skinned with relaxed hair. Her maternal grandmother, also light skinned, is color struck. Her father is very black and not too well-liked by the grandmother though he is a good provider. Betsey wonders why her mother's hair is different than hers and finds out innocently during her first trip to the beauty shop. The book also has the reader experience Betsey's first experience with boys. She truly has no idea what to do when a boy comes to visit. Of course grandma is snooping. Betsey Brown is not as fast as most girls today, but I think her innocence is appealing, and most girls still have the same issues no matter how fast or slow they are. Shange is lyrical and truly literary, however, I think kids today will enjoy the book if it is "book-talked" correctly. As a matter-of-fact, I think it belongs on school reading lists. The book is not the same ol' black vs. white blues. The book is about being young, black, and female, per se.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Is it class or race?
By Sarah G. Partridge
For anyone who has read Cypress, Sassafrass and Indigo by Shange, this book will seem mediocre in comparison. On the other hand, what it is is an excellent social document depicting the experiences of an African-American family in St. Louis of the 1950's. It describes the pressure that the combat of racism puts on a family---Betsey Brown runs away at the age of 12 because she is being bused to a school full of "crackers." Betsey doesn't want to have to do everything for the "race"-she just wants to be a comfortable 12 year old girl with her neighborhood friends.
Other tensions happen between the husband and mother when the husband (Greer Brown, a doctor) and the wife (Jane Brown) a nurse argue over whether their children should participate in civil rights demonstrations. The mother, like her daughter, is forced to leave home as she does not want her children to participate. Later she returns to the man she loves, and her lovable, if noisy and rambunctious children.
Another important sub theme to this novel is that of class. The Browns are the creme de la creme of African-American society, (Greer is one of only 5,000 African-American doctors in America at that time) Yet there is a constant stream of characters who are not so graced; Miss Calhoun, a maid who lasts only one day because the children don't like her, Regina, who is dismissed by the Browns for having a boyfriend, and Carrie, who is forced to take care of the children and work as a domestic. Betsey herself is shamed by one of her friends for making Miss Calhoun miserable-as the childs mother is herself a maid, and Betsey begins to re-examine her attitudes from that point on. Later she encounters Regina working as a prostitute-she has been apparently abandoned by her boyfriend. All this quickly sends Betsey running back to her middle-class home.
If I learned anything from this book it is that life was hard for everyone characterized at this time period. While being forced to confront prejudice forces both Betsey and her mother out of the home, confrontation with life outside the home sends them running back. The lesson of this book seems to be that upper-middle class black women are forced to confront racism whether they like it or not-either on behalf of their lesser favored sisters or because they wish to keep their families together. Their priviledged status does not make them exempt from any fights on behalf of everyone else in their community.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Growing Up Black
By The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
BETSEY BROWN is the story of a young Black girl growing up in St. Louis in the late 1950's. She is the eldest child in a large upwardly mobile family. Her father is a doctor and a socially conscious "race man" who takes his children to sit-ins and protests. Her mother is a social worker who wants to shield her children from the racially charged environment in which they are coming of age.
Like any young girl, Betsey fantasizes about her young life, longs for the attention of a certain young boy and is fascinated with the idea of love. While she is going through the ups and downs of growing up, integration takes place in the South. Betsey and her siblings are bussed to white schools in the name of racial advancement. The children have fears of what may lay ahead of them and the parents are conflicted in their decision. While in their new enviroment the children have various experiences and emotions. Betsey often feels like the weight of the entire race is on her shoulders and no one understands her struggle.
Ntozake Shange gives all of the children who grew up in the era of southern integration a voice in BETSEY BROWN. The storyline is written in simple language with traces of southern dialect dispersed throughout. The novel gives a more visceral feel to the fear and uncertainty that children and their families had during the time of integration in America. This fear was pushed aside for the overall principle of advancement and not told in history books. While reading the novel, I felt like I was taken back in time to experience what, until now, I have only read about in textbooks and I enjoyed it. My only complaint is that Betsey's story ended too soon.
Reviewed by Aiesha Flowers
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers
See all 10 customer reviews...
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