Country Way East, Okemos MI, Wednesday, March 16, 2011
I believe that novels have the mystical ability to enter our lives at a moment in which we find ourselves standing at the crossroads in-search of something that change our hearts and minds in effort to teach us a deeper meaning of life and love and purpose. Perhaps this is the point for me of Cheri Paris Edwards latest novel: The Other Sister.
My love life stinks. For the millionth time, I’d reached the conclusion that my girlfriend and I had no future, besides the meaningless banality of frivolous momentary interludes of sex, drama, and random cafe-affairs of aimless chit-chat.
“… I keep replaying the discussion we’d had at Venice Cafe. It rang loudly in my head, trying to capture some profound meaning amidst it all. Anyways, perhaps I spoke too much and didn’t allow you to speak enough. Perhaps there were questions left without the space and time to call them out and allow them to be answered. …”
Tom’s Oyster Bar, Detroit MI, Thursday, March 17, 2011
I pulled into Downtown Detroit and headed straight to Tom’s Oyster Bar to think about Denicio’s note. I ordered rum and reached into my jacket for Edwards’ book to read over notes, marginalia, and to think about the impact it had on my immediate circumstances. Edwards’ book is about safety, and the sacrifice of new beginnings, Sanita Jefferson returning to Illinois for an unrealized reunion with her ecstatic parents. Regardless of her sister, Carla’s cold receptions, Sanita plants her feet firmly on the yellow brick road and sets out for new horizons of promise and prosperity. Then she runs into Terrance Catching.
*vibrate*
“Confessional: I’m not sure you noticed but I placed my leg next to you on purpose. Today I wanted to touch you. I looked at you and thought of what it would be like to have you hold me, hug me, touch me. Then I thought to myself, no…he would hurt you – not on purpose, not intentionally – it’s just how he is made…how he has come to become in this world….”
St. Michael Hotel, “Whiskey Row” Prescott AZ, Saturday, March 19, 2011
I arrived in Prescott just before the sun set low, when the gentle breeze cooled native souls, where cowboys reminisced, and “Preskitian” residents told olden stories to thirsty tourists at Hooligans Pub. Rowdy, arrogant, raucous mid-westerners (the ones harboring feelings of entitlement and privileged belonging) drank Modelo beers and propped up their Walmart western boots on Hooligans ledge overlooking the nostalgic panorama that is Whiskey Row. Down below, restless vagrants meet at the intersection of South Montezuma and East Gurley Street to discuss the day’s strategy for pan-handling enough change to get cigarettes and whiskey. Later that night they will meet up across the street in Courthouse Plaza to divvy up the ante before heading on over to Bird Cage Saloon for two-dollar draft and cheap Tequila shots.
*vibrate*
“In my past relationships, I’m often quick to nurture, fast to heal, to capture and conceal secrets, hurts, pains. Your writing, like mine is your place of healing…I get that…but where does Push house his love…for himself? for the women both past and present in his life? I know I risk much sharing these thoughts with you. But, the older I get the more I appreciate risks and honestly… from others, from myself, to myself…please come and see me when you return to Michigan. I will get you from the airport if you need.”
I would often follow them to BCS where I listen from a short distance to their sullen proclamations of love lost, land gone, and familial discount. They talk about the futility of life, where they have come from (mostly Chino Valley, Phoenix, and various Native American reservations), and where they are going (mostly nowhere and everywhere). Prescott treats its homeless community very well, with food, clothes, money, and a warm cot if these weary destitutes so desire. Every night around midnight the desperate winos and raggedy hobos congregate at the southern tip of Montezuma Street, just outside of the St. Michael hotel where they plan to head on up to BCS for a little revelry, reflection, and relief. I sat over in the far left corner and thought about the love of my life, Denicio Barbier while reviewing collected thoughts and notes on The Other Sister:
The Other Sister is a good read…I reallty like the writing…Edwards is a good writer…
Edwards has a gift for story-telling and understands the art and craft of novel-writing. ..
Good characters, deftly constructed…
Good moral messages…spiritual meanings and good commentary on that which afflicts society today
Common current event themes of disease, death, destruction, HIV
Good use of biblical themes…thou shalt not judge..
Nice discussion questions….
Good array of family matters and complex relationships…
Bethabara Park, Winston-Salem NC, Saturday, April 2, 2011
Love’s in need of love today… Don’t delay, send yours in right away. Hate’s goin’ round, breaking many hearts. Stop it please… Before it’s gone too far. –Stevie Wonder
I finished my review of The Other Sister while sitting in the back-booth of a quiet, rural suburban breakfast retreat over near Wake Forest University by historic village of Bethabara Park. I drained my orange juice, left a small tip, grabbed my NetBook, got in my car and dipped towards University Avenue, headed toward High Point to visit an old friend. I pushed in Damian Marley’s Road to Zion and thought about Edwards’ overall message, an essential lesson on hope, love, community, sacrifice – all the things the African-American are in desperate need of. Sanita’s (Jazz) double-life antics catch up with her, sending her back home to face her dubious reality. Carla leads a respectable life of promise and prosperity, committed to excellence, having played by the rules, working hard to achieve and triumph. This is the complex dice both play out in this Christian amalgam of faith, love, and hard-lessons learned. Demonstrably, Edwards is from the old-school, and TOS is saturated with biblical themes, religious characters (conflicted in secular contexts, of course), and goody-two-shoe morality, which at times seemed boring at worst, contrived at best, but typical and unoriginal to say the least. Yet, the point is clear with TOS, and we get it. Love your family, forgive people, and allow for redemption in the face of repressive odds. Love is key….and we need it. All of us.
what about the kennedys 