I enjoyed this installment much more than book one. Neely shows more of who Blanche is in this one, how she handles the need to provide a better life for the children in her care while trying to make sure that they stay not only connected to their own history but to continue to grow into kind and empathetic people. This isn't a huge thriller and doesn't have a complicated mystery that's difficult to figure out. It's a quick read and an entertaining story that was just what I was looking for.
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Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase 0140250360 Barbara Neely has pulled off a rather challenging feat: she has managed to introduce the serious issues of color, class and race to readers who would not wittingly pick up a book on those subjects. And, she certainly managed to seriously engage me in the subjects.
The reader who wants a complex and heady mystery story may be disappointed in this novel because that aspect of the book is clearly secondary to Neely's interest in raising the subject of how we judge and perceive each other.
This is my second introduction to Blanche White and I was not disappointed. I really loved Blanche on the Lam and this book was equally engaging for me, but in a totally different way. I spent many years in Detroit so I have been exposed to Black culture from the outside looking in. Blanche turned that around for me and opened my eyes in many ways.
I was fascinated by her careful preparations for vacationing in a fancy Black resort and interested in every step along the way as she met and mingled with the residents and transient visitors. The relationships she formed---or didn't form, felt very real and I loved understanding a bit more about the light bright culture she was encountering.
The first half of the book was riveting to me and I felt the story lost some of its steam as the author tried to fold in the mystery with the message. There is no doubt that the book has an attitude, but don't we all? I am a fan of Barbara Neely's and was thoroughly intrigued by Blanche's adventure. 0140250360 “Everybody in the country got color on the brain…white folks trying to brown themselves up and looking down on everything that ain’t white at the same time; black folks puttin’ each other down for being too black; brown folks trying to make sure nobody mistakes them for black; yellow folks trying to convince themselves they’re white.”
Timely? Why yes! So isn’t it interesting that this book was initially published in 1994?
My many thanks go to Net Galley and Brash Books for a fascinating DRC.
The Blanche White series is a mystery series, but Neely uses this approachable medium as a forum to discuss race, primarily the unspoken caste system that has developed about and among people of color in the United States.
In our story, Blanche is invited to visit a black resort on the coast of Maine. Her sister is dead, and Blanche is now a parent to her two children. This book is the second in the series, and we are told that during the first, Blanche had come away from a bad situation with a bundle of money that she dedicated to the excellent education of her two elementary-aged children. Now Taifa, her daughter, is anxious that she use a hair “relaxer” to straighten her ‘fro. It’s bad enough that Mama Blanche is eggplant-dark. Bad enough that she is not part of the black petit bourgeoisie, but a working class woman…a maid, no less! And so Taifa’s loyalty is divided; she wants to fit in with these pale, wealthy folk, but she also loves her Mama Blanche. Blanche in turn is torn. She doesn’t fry her hair, but she does have a conversation about it with the children.
Meanwhile we learn that a woman named Faith is dead, and it may not have been accidental. Like Agatha Christie’s Murder On the Orient Express, it seems just about everyone here has a reason to want Faith dead. That isn’t Blanche’s business, of course…until it is.
I do love a good mystery, and will cheerfully sit down to a tower of Blanche books if I can find them.
The cover is what drew me initially; I looked at the wide hips and thought this was surely my kind of woman.
But race is more than academically interesting for me; my own family is blended and my Caucasian children grown and gone, which has left me the only white person in the house. Most days I don’t think about it, but for years, planning the family vacation was both eye-opening and interesting. One child at home is Caucasian and Japanese; the other (was) African-American. We enjoyed Yellowstone, but heartily regret having been forced to stop for gas in the Idaho panhandle, an experience we will avoid in the future. Now my African-American son is grown and out of the house, but I will never look at the world the same way. It’s been a real education.
Surely anyone who looks at this book’s title understands that s/he is in for more than just a mystery story. The depth of analysis kept me flagging pages and rereading passages. I love the feminist spirit our hero embodies.
I did find it interesting that although skin, hair, and attitude were discussed freely, African immigrants never even made it into the discussion, let alone into the exclusive resort.
The social message somewhat dominates the plot, but the mystery is also a fun read. Highly recommended for those willing to confront today’s issues.
As for me, I loved the blend of story and message. Because really, until the United States deals with the escalating issue of racial inequality, particularly regarding African-Americans… I can’t breathe.
0140250360 I loved Blanche Among the Talented Tenth even more than the first book in the series, Blanche on the Lam. I wasn't quite expecting that, because the setting of the first book (rural North Carolina) is much more familiar to me than the setting of the second (an expensive black resort on the coast of Maine). But in this book we get deeper into Blanche's life and personality. The setting allows her to make more friends, spend time with the niece and nephew she's raising, and contemplate romance.
As with the first book, this one didn't appeal to me as a mystery novel nearly as much as it did as a story about an awesome woman having an adventure. However, this time I was in suspense nearly the whole time about the solution.
Blanche's greatest strength as a sleuth is her interpersonal relationship skills. She's excellent at making friends with people, getting them to trust her and talk to her, and figuring out what's going on among a group of people she's just met. I love reading about this because I don't have those skills, and Neely describes them in such a way that I feel like I'm learning something.
Besides, at the same time Blanche is gathering clues, she's building genuine relationships with the people she finds worthy, and that's where this book is loveliest.
My favorite passage comes when she's having a tête-à-tête with Tina, a young woman she's just met who wants Blanche's advice about her fiancé.
Blanche could almost smell Tina's longing to talk, and she was pretty sure who Tina wanted to talk about. But Blanche wanted to know who she was talking to first.Later comes a scene in which Blanche and Tina are preparing dinner in Blanche's kitchen, and they shift their conversation to talk about how they decided to wear their hair naturally. This is something they want to talk about with each other, but they also know that Blanche's preteen niece, Taifa, is troubled because she's been around people who privilege straightened hair and light skin; and they know that Taifa can overhear their conversation. I'm not describing it well but this episode was exactly the sort of thing I (not a parent) like to read about parenting.
Where you from, Tina?
...
She nudged Tina with gentle questions until they were casting pieces of their past into the night like lights strung together to illuminate them for each other...
Heart talk, Blanche thought. Her term for the way women gave each other bits of lives and history as a way of declaring their good intentions toward each other.
I loved this book. I would have given it five stars, not four, except for one short exchange that I wish weren't there. Blanche and her friend Ardell are talking about how it's best to pay attention when Blanche senses that there's a catch to a man who's apparently perfect for someone -- Blanche had had this feeling about someone Ardell had once dated, who turned out to be a cross-dresser. Ardell had told Blanche that while she wished to be big enough to handle it, she wasn't. Sure, it's okay for Ardell not to be attracted to someone, but I really wish Neely had thought of a different example of a catch. 0140250360 When Blanche white is invited to spend the summer with an elitist bunch of people at Amber Cove, she decides to take up on it and see the kind of crowd her kids (her niece and nephew she is raising) are rubbing shoulders with at the private school she has them attending. She is expecting to meet the rich and the who's who of the African American community so that she can understand the changes in her kids. What she doesn't expect is to put on her detective hat. But that is what happens when a body turns up and everyone at the resort has a reason to want to see the victim dead. And, Blanche is left to work out the motives and the opportunity of the people she is supposed to be vacationing with.
I quite enjoyed this book mostly because of the protagonist. Blanche White is a loveable character. She is expert at befriending people and putting them at ease - a characteristic that came in handy in this book. People feel comfortable talking to her as they would to their best friend or to an agony aunt. Her ability to gather information, and sizing up people complements her natural ability to befriend people. She is smart and sassy too. She is open and frank in her discussions with the kids. What else do you need when you have a protagonist like this working out the details of the case?
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When Blanche White, black domestic worker extraordinaire, moved north to Boston, she thought it would be a better place to raise her kids, especially when she managed to get them both into a private school. But they appear to be getting as much attitude as education, as they start correcting Blanche's English and acting snotty about homeless people. When Blanche and the kids are invited to Amber Cove, an exclusive, all-black resort in Maine, she sees it as the perfect opportunity to observe her children with their wealthy friends and try to figure out how to stop them from becoming people she doesn't want to know. Along the way, Blanche gets an insider's view of the color and class divisions within the black community. Blanche stands out against the light-skinned, college-educated residents at Amber Cove, and some of the guests make sure she knows it - including her own daughter. But when one of the guests has a fatal accident and the godson of a famous septuagenarian feminist commits suicide, Blanche is enlisted to find out if these events are connected. What she discovers is a web of secrets that somebody may be willing to kill for, even as she meets a man determined to sweep her off her feet, no matter how much she weighs. Blanche Among the Talented Tenth (Blanche White #2)
I truly loved this! It's a really good look at the interplay in the Black Community USA between colorism and classism as well as the undeniable link between the two.
Black firsts are sometimes so light skinned I'm not entirely sure they're black. Wealth and status have been tied to skin color since the first 'Angolan' officially arrived in this country. 0140250360 The second book of the Blanche White series has Blanche carefully preparing for a Maine beach holiday in the fictional resort of Amber Cove. The talented tenth of the title are the light bright set: fair-skinned, wealthy, black Americans. Blanche, a working class housekeeper, is atypically nervous about her trip:
Blanche assumed there must be some black-black rich women in the country, but she'd never seen one; so she wasn't expecting to see her eggplant-black self mirrored at Amber Cove. But color wasn't the only way she'd be different. She doubted anyone in Amber Cove had, like her, worked four parties to spend two nights at the Inn.
The truly talented Barbara Neely effortlessly combines social issues such as racism in the black community and class hatred with the personal struggles of Blanche to raise her stroppy teenagers and to find true love. The detective element is stronger than in the first book, Blanche on the Lam, but is still the least interesting aspect.
There is a rage that brings this book a certain darkness. I felt quite drained after finishing it. Anger against male entitlement, the cruelty of snobbery, and female betrayal runs deep within the book. But the cracking pace, the frequent humour, and the loveable, relatable Blanche make this a top-notch read.
I was left with the feeling that Barbara Neely is more than capable of writing serious fiction in the style of Toni Morrison or Zadie Smith, but chose to write genre fiction instead.
On to the third book now, and excited to see where she will take this character.
0140250360 Blanche Among the Talented Tenth is the second book in the Blanche White series. I remember how taken I was with the first book in the series Blanche on the Lam, but this second book is just brilliant. Where has Barbara Neely been all my life and why aren't more people reading and raving about her Blanche White series? This series has everything most mystery/crime novels don't have: a main character that you can't help but love that is portrayed as real as can be, a storyline that keeps you hooked from beginning to end, some of the best writing (one liners), and most of all social commentary that remains sadly relevant today. I could definitely see this being made into a successful tv series or maybe 4 movies. So yes I highly recommend it! 0140250360 Having dealt with the retrograde condition of interracial relations in the debut novel of this series, author Barbara Neely turns her gimlet eye to the state of relations with the African-American community in Blanche and the Talented Tenth.
The title refers to W.E.B. Dubois’ prediction that one-tenth of the Negro race would rise, through education and good character, to be the leaders who would buoy up the rest of the race. The term became conflated with light-skinned blacks, those with straight hair and skin no darker than a paper bag, as if intelligence, industry, or leadership were something based on having traces of Caucasian blood!
At the heart of Blanche and the Talented Tenth are the light-skinned, well-bred, and well-connected African Americans who regularly summer at Amber Cove, Maine, a stand-in for wealthy African-American resort villages like Oak Bluff on Martha’s Vineyard or the Azurest section of Sag Harbor, N.Y. Doctors, lawyers, authors, well-known professors — the crème of the African-American crème — litter the landscape at Amber Cove in Maine. And when Blanche White — a maid who wants to appear more at ease with her dark skin, natural hair, and job position than perhaps she really feels — comes to Amber Cove, she finds the old prejudice of so-called “high yellow” blacks against their darker brothers and sisters alive and well, a prejudice as strong as that of any racist white.
Blanche will be spending a few days at Amber Cove with her sister’s children as the guest of two well-heeled African-American doctors, Drs. David and Christine Crowley. (Blanche’s niece and nephew, Taifa and Malik, attend school with the Crowley children.) Just before her arrival, a particularly unpleasant regular died under very suspicious circumstances. And Blanche intuitively realizes that lots of unsavory goings-on amongst the Talented Tenth of Amber Cove, despite their money, Ivy League educations, and privilege.
Neely weaves a most intriguing mystery. But what really made this book special was the penetrating look it took at the black ruling class and at the self-deceptions that help the privileged of any race able to keep looking at themselves in the mirror. 0140250360 I thought in skipping the first Blance mystery Blanche on the Lam I would miss out on getting to know the main character, but that was not the case. Blanche turned out to be more interesting than the mystery itself which I thought was a little lackluster. The central theme here is the mistreatment (i.e. looking down on)of dark-skinned black people by thier light-skinned counterparts, which Blanche, being dark, experienced all of her life. The mystery read more like gossip and only seemed to create the setting and introduce characters to carry on the main theme. Though not completely predictable, this was not a strongly mysterious or surprising read. 0140250360
