Take Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush Illustrated By Virginia Hamilton Released As Hardcover

Teresa first notices the handsome stranger out on the street, she falls hard for him, Several weeks later, he appears in her apartment, and it's only then that she knows that he's a ghost, Brother Rush, He takes Tree and her mentally challenged brother Dab on journeys into the past, and slowly Tree realizes in these glimpses of the past, Brother Rush may be telling her something about her own present.


Hamilton's writing is wonderfully lucid and descriptive, showing Tree's thoughts in a language and idiom that perfectly express her character, Here's a passage I especially liked, from Tree's first meeting with Brother Rush in her apartment:

"The sweatshirt she had on couldn't keep her warm.
Yet she was aware of the moment when the cold turned into something she could live with, Fear was sealed inside her, like a tatter of paper from her ream, And if you opened the tatter, it would read: This is all the scared I can get,

The categorizing part of my brain wants to say that this is fantasy, because it's a ghost story, I suppose technically it is, but it's so rooted in reality that the supernatural doesn't feel especially fantastic, It's simply a book about people, about Tree's relationships with her brother and her mother, who has to work so hard to keep the family going that she's rarely there, leaving Tree to take care of herself and Dab.
It's a bittersweet book, full of loss and sadness, yet also full of love and hope, Trigger warning: The use of the word 'retard' is used in this book, Not frequently but it's used,

I first read this book in grade school and it was my favorite book as a kid, I wanted to see if it still felt the same as an adult, It did

The majority of this book occurs over the course of a weekend, This book followsyear old TeresaTree and her life as care giver for her mentally handicapped brother DabneyDab, On her way home from school she notices an odd but handsome stranger, at a stoop, She sees he's not like the other neighborhood boys and knows it's something about him that she can't put her finger on, When she sees him in the middle of a table in her apartment closest she realizes he a ghost, The ghost, Brother Rush, takes her into a world that where she learns about her mother as a young woman and her mother's youngest brother, Brother.


Her journeys with Brother Rush reveals forgotten/hidden family information that sheds light into her brother's condition and why her mother is the way she is.
Tree has so much adult responsibility that one forgets that she's just a kid herself and there's so much she's yet to understand, Learning about how different her and her brother's childhood experiences where opens her eyes to the shortcomings of the adults in her life, particularly her mother.
Her emotional reaction to these revelations, especially how they relate to her reality, is understandable and heartbreaking,

I love this book just as much now as I did when I was a kid, I understand so much more of the full story now that I've read it as an adult, I definitely struggled to finish this book, I am so very glad it is over and I can read something enjoyable now, Mom leaves herchildren at home alone for days, even weeks, on end so she can go work, She has a life including a boyfriend and a car that her kids know nothing about, One of the children is special, and the little sister cares for him alone, The children begin seeing a ghost who is their mother's brother, Through him, they see visions of the past like mom chaining the boy to the bed, What Who does that Just, . . ugh to mother for not being much of a mother at all, . .

I typically do not enjoy reading dialects that include poor grammar, I just do not enjoy that page after page after page, Every bit of dialogue was like this: "I want stay in here wif you", It just bothers me, and I want my reading time to be pleasurable, not frustrating and annoying, "I'm laughin wit chew". Well, at least one of us is laughing, . .

Silversmith is introduced later in the book, and I enjoyed his character, "Trouble is human. We bound to have it one time", Or. Or. Or,. Silversmith is one of the best parts of this book, as is the ending where they create a family with Miss Pricherd,

Mom says, "Get all the education you can think of", Yes! Yes! Yes! Teenagers and younger people often like to view life in black and white, People and things are either good or evil, Truth belongs to one group, and teenagers, at least in their minds, are usually right, I think this book is great because it challenges thinking about life as a dichotomy, Tree's mom does some really horrible things, but in the end she still really loves her daughter and is sad about her actions, Tree seems to be really negative about the lady who comes to clean for them, and the lady seems to be really lazy and uncaring about doing her job.
In reality, this lady is going through

a lot of struggles and has some valid reasons for not doing her job right, In the end, she ends up being a very good cook, and Tree sees her as a grandmother figure, I guess the moral is don't judge people too quickly, Don't just place them in a category in your mind that they will never be able to escape from, Leave some room for growth, and leave some room on your own shelf, . . for this great book : Eh, Really weird book. The girl named Tree has to take care of her older brother, who gets really sick, while their mother leaves for months at a time to help other people in their homes.
Never calls or drops by, And it turns out their mother got a boyfriend and a car and everything during one of her extended leaves, At least she always comes back in time, barely, to stock up on food,

AND it turns out that the mother hadbrothers who all died and a life and a father of the kids who left her and everything, none of which she had told her kids about.
So Brother Rush, the mom's baby brother, comes back as a ghost with a hand at his ear and holding a little piece of glass which brings the girl into the past to see small pieces of her mom's life.
Weird.

So the book is NOT about being black, but the author feels the need to throw it in every once in the while just for kicks.
And then she justifies some of their behavior as expected of Blacks and not as bad just because they are Black,

But again, mostly this story isn't about that at all, It's about a crappy mom and the girl Tree taking care of her sick brother while a ghost comes and shows them stuff through his piece of glass.
Weird. I have to read this book again,

I hadn't thought about this book in years and years and years, I just happened to see it again right now, I was looking at the page for Dinky Hckper Shoots Smack, and this book was listed on the side, As soon as I saw the title, I remembered it as a book I read repeatedly in middle school, maybe into high school, But I can't really remember the plot of it, even after reading the summary and some other reviews,

The weird thing is that as soon as I read the title, I started getting a tingly turnedon feeling, I associate this book with feelings of sexual excitement that happened to my young girl self,

I have to read this book again,

Update: I don't know why I remembered this as a sexy book, It's really not. Early on, there is some talk of the older, mentally disabled brother having girls over spending the night in his room, That part seems a little sexy, but that's it,

The four are for the way I remember feeling about this book when I was a kid, These days, I would only give it two, There's certainly a reason as to why Virginia Hamilton is sometimes called the YA Toni Morrison,  Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush is often even referred to as a YA Beloved, and it's clear why upon seeing the similarities between the two books involving ghosts, abusive but loving mothers, and a haunting past.
  

But as a work by itself, Sweet Whispers was phenomenal,   This book discusses so many difficult topics with a nuanced toneit discusses abuse, caretaking, homelessness, illness, classism, and so on and so forth,   Not only does it discuss all of these ideas, but it discusses them well,   

Not only that, but the characters in this are just so realistic and wonderful and threedimensional,   They're angry, they're sorry, they're sorrowful, they're loving,   They're a family, as disjointed and dysfunctional as they may be,   And that's another part of what makes this book so incredible,   Not only does it discuss such ideas in a way that's nuanced and makes sense for the audience, but it weaves this discussion with characters who pop.
  They're an integral part of the storythere's no way to write this book without Tree and Dab and their mother and Brother Rush,   It's all just absolutely wonderful,

crosslisted sitelinkhere! Teenaged Tree and her brother, Dab, live together and alone in a shabby apartment while their mother lives and works elsewhere it's not entirely clear where and at what and occasionally visits to fill the fridge and cupboards for them.
It's far from a perfect situation, but Tree loves her brother and seems to have contented herself with all the hard work that goes into caring for the two of them.
But then she starts seeing the vision of a young man standing in the middle of the table in a back room of the apartment, and gradually comes to realize that he is the ghost of her mother's brother.
He tacitly takes her through his memories, back to when she was little more than a baby, and she learns some disturbing things about her family.
Her uncle has, it seems, come to her as a harbinger of soontobe events which will change her small family forever,
I'm not sure what to say about this one, mostly because I'm still not sure how I feel about it, It's a strange little story, disturbing in parts, both in its actual plot content and in its disjointed structure, Tree's mother is troubling on many levels, not least of which is that I can't tell if Hamilton means for the reader to be as angered at her actions as I was.
It's certainly an interesting story, and definitely different than a lot of offerings in this genre, and Tree's character is well drawn and instantly one for whom you want to root.
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