Peruse Song Yet Sung Assembled By James McBride Provided As PDF
the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of theNational Book Award for Fiction.
In the days before the Civil War, a runaway slave named Liz Spocott breaks free from her captors and escapes into the labyrinthine swamps of Marylands eastern shore, setting loose a drama of violence and hope among slave catchers, plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves, and free blacks.
Liz is near death, wracked by disturbing visions of the future, and armed with “the Code,” a fiercely guarded cryptic means of communication for slaves on the run.
Lizs flight and her dreams of tomorrow will thrust all those near her toward a mysterious, redemptive fate,
Filled with rich, true detailsmuch of the story is drawn from historical eventsand told in McBrides signature lyrical style, Song Yet Sung is a story of tragic triumph, violent decisions, and unexpected kindness.
After theoth or so page, i flipped to the back of the book to see how long it was and said "thank god, anotherpages.
". Yes, it is that good, This book is filled with rich history and much of the story is drawn from historical events The story of Harriett Tubman.
Song Yet Sung brings into full view a world long misunderstood in American fiction: how slavery worked, and the haunting, moral choices that lived beneath the surface, pressing both whites and blacks to search for relief in a world where both seemed to lose their moral compass.
This is a story of tragic triumph, violent decisions, and unexpected kindness, This was a hard one to rate, I would have given it a five if not for the violence and language, But it's hard because that graphic detail was a big part of what made the book what it is, I was really intrigued by so much of this bookthe "code" the author comes up with as part of the Underground Railroad.
I appreciated that it didn't divide by race who was good and who was bad, My favorite lines of the book:
But I don't know who I am,
Well, there it is, he said ruefully, That's a problem, ain't it, If you don't know who you are, child, I'll tell you: you's a child of God,
With all I seen, I don't know that I believe in God anymore, she said,
Don't matter, the old man said, He believes in you.
The writing is beautiful, and I loved how it put together ideas of race, religion, freedom, and identity, I just wish McBride could have done it without all that other stuff, I was absorbed in this book from start to finish, The storyline is superb and the characters are complex, It weaves gender, race, class, and geography to create a very real and moving portrait of what is must have been like to live during this time in eastern Maryland.
McBride does an excellent job in the "gray" areas of the lastyears of slavery, You really see how the institution dehumanized everyone, even the so called "civilized" people,
The book does an excellent job in dealing with questions such as
What does it mean to be free
What does it mean to be human
What does it mean to own another person
What are people willing to do for money
What does it mean to be loyal
Who is an ally Enemy
A final note: I am not sure I would have read it as soon as I did but I was attracted to the book by it's hauntingly beautiful cover when I was at my local bookstore.
Song Yet Sung is about Liz, a runaway slave who has visions of a future for Black people that don't really seem that great.
Her escape sends a black market heh slave catcher and a bounty hunter after her and she learns about the code of the Freedom train.
I thought that a book inspired by Harriet Tubman and a secret code that enslaved Africans used to gain their freedom would be a rich and exciting book.
I was dissapointed. The book is well written and keeps your attention, but the leading character, the Dreamer, Liz is not an inspiring character, I understand that the author was trying to make a statement about today, but to have someone enslaved dream that freedom was so bad in the future that you have no drive to free yourself today is a stretch.
The code was the best part of the book, The author's notes say that so historians do not believe there was a code but we know that there was a language, like spirituals that was used to convey messages so why not a code.
I enjoyed reading about the subtle ways we could use to communicate,
I thought the book was overly violent, I had the impression that maybe the writer was making the book easy to convert to a screenplay, The most developed character was Denwood, the "Gimp" who was a slave catcher, It would have been a good book for high schoolers if it weren't so violent,
There was good imagery of the beauty of the Eastern Shore in Maryland, I found the fact that for these people, freedom was onlymiles away but the difficulty of the journey making it so much more, fasinating.
The book also highlighted the watermen on Eastern shore and how slavery worked in that industry, I just re"read" this for a group readthe first time I read it in print this time I listened to the audiobook, which made it a different experience, but no less powerful or better/worse.
This is the first book I ever read by McBride and it remains my favourite oneI wasn't sure if I would find it as good and powerful the second time or if I'd been partly just in the mood to read a good, new writer, but it is brilliant.
The last time I wrote that the characters were well doneto be fair, this was the year I readbooks and reviewed all of them since it was during Covid shut down year.
Also, I am not at all consistent in how well or thoroughly I write reviews, After reading most of his books it is apparent that McBride is brilliant at creating very real, very human characters and showing the complex thoughts and feelings that many can go through.
He has a great deal of insight in this area, For example, he manages to clearly show the complex emotions and relationships that developed in some slave/master situations from more than one POV.
Another example is that he has at least one character who is pure evil but is still well drawn out and not a convenient stereotype.
Original :
This is a powerful novel that arrived at my library the week before the tragedy of last weekend.
This book was a,star book for me, but it would have been just as powerful even without this past weekend, I am not giving you a blurb or a summary, but suffice it to say it involves slaves who have run away, people who are hunting them, and others who are doing neither, but who are important.
I have read quite a number of novels about American slavery, escape, etc, over the years not all shown on my GR page and also the American civil rights movement.
This one is a cut above many of them, This doesn't follow any formula or hit certain bases, McBride has done his homework, but then he uses his imagination in writing this he discusses this in the afterward, Most of the characters were very well developed, and some were quite complex, which is difficult to do well when writing and also make it believable.
The dialogue was impressive.
I am still reeling a bit from finishing this earlier this evening and am at a bit of a loss to really describe this well.
I picked this one up at a local used bookstore awhile ago and tried to read it but just couldn't get into it.
Then, I saw a few goodreads friends had read it and enjoyed it so I decided to give it another chance, And, I'm soooo glad that I did, I think I just wasn't in the right place to read it earlier,
But, this read was wonderful! I really enjoyed the book the writing alone is outstanding, I was amazed at the luscious writing, . . the descriptions of time and place were just amazingly well written, The author was able to describe the place in a way that just made me feel that I was there, experiencing every single, beautiful word.
And, then, by putting that beautiful place up against the brutal and ugly world of slavery, McBride was able bring that time in our history alive for me.
The story is focused on the complexities of slavery the system, the brutality, And it really brings all of it to life, And I was glad that McBride seemed to bring to focus the fact that no one was able to break the chains of the system white or black.
This was not a book focused on the evil of the white man it was focused on the evil of SLAVERY itself.
No blame really just a exploration of the system and its complexities, That was quite refreshing and gave me a different perspective that usually seen in books about this time in history,
One element that I really found interesting was how McBride gave the reader a view modernday African American society through the eyes of a slave.
Those passages were fascinating to me, Those visions haunted me and gave me so much to think about,
I really enjoyed this book very compelling and interesting, I definitely recommend it! Song Yet Sung by James McBride has everything I love in a book, a wonderful and exciting story, great characters, compassion and understanding and excellent writing.
Once I opened the book up and began the first paragraph, I couldnt put it down,
Liz Spocott is a two headed, one who sees visions and dreams, slave ofMaryland, who is attempting to escape to the North.
She is shot in the head and captured by some illegal slave traders who capture freemen or steal slaves and sell them in the deep south.
After she escapes a second time release the fourteen others who were captured with her, the great adventure begins unleashing forces throughout Maryland in attempting to find her.
She becomes somewhat of a legend and is known as The Dreamer,
McBride is so adept at dialogue that it makes it a great pleasure
to read:
Devil stole Jeff Boy! she said.
Whos Jeff Boy
Miss Kathleens son, From out Joyas Neck.
Boyd Sullivans widow Herbie asked
Yes, sir, Devil stole him.
Dead Herbie asked
No, sir, I just told you, sir, she said, Boy went out to the grove, A hole opened up and the Devil came out and snatched him!
Speak sense woman! Herbie snapped,
I am, sir, she sputtered, He was taken down. Taken down, sir. He went out to the grove, Out back behind the cornfield, Ground opened up and the Devil popped out and snatched him down the hole,
What hole
The hole from hell he popped out of,
It is such a real and dynamic dialogue that the reader can hear it being said, Also the setting ofs Maryland on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake bay is so well described, One can feel the sudden squalls which come out of the bay, picture the eerie swamps and understand the crusty oyster man who resent the plantation owners.
It is a beautiful and action packed book which I would not hesitate to recommend, I am looking forward to reading other books by James McBride, .