Sweetsmoke by David Fuller
By Dera Williams • Aug 24th, 2008 • Category: Book Review •
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Check out what APOOO is saying about Sweetsmoke by David Fuller.
I have been working on the review and hope to have it finished tonight. With more discussion, I am leaning towards a 5, but while this is a notable book of 2008, I cannot say it is definitely going to be a top ten. But then again I only have about 2 books that are 5s for me. Some of us had this conversation about Sweetsmoke being written by a non-AA and the whole white man’s ice being colder, another member’s saying. I was reluctant to embrace it because the critics and the non-AA publishing world did so. The book is already being embraced as a publisher’s pick and possible mandatory reading for high school. With all that, I wondered out loud why Song Yet Sung and Stand the Storm, while being reviewed by major media has not gotten the same reaction. All that to say, Sweetsmoke was a well-written book and highly recommendable and I am trying to balance my biases/reluctance with quality of the work, without thought as to who wrote it. As another member said in our private email discussion Fuller gave dignity and respect to the characters and that is a major thumbs up.
And here’s what another member had to said.
I would like to stop everything and finish this book; it has so captured my attention…there is an event early in the story that prompted some thoughts on slavery.
I am glad that modern historical fiction paints a broader picture of the realities of slavery and not the “either, or” that was so prevalent at a time, but it certainly served its purpose for the time (I ain’t mad at all).
However, the institution itself was more complex than the bad white man, noble black man. First of all, Africans didn’t sell “us”; just like other civilizations they sold themselves. We only became “us” when our languages, cultures and identity were brutalized away.
There were black participants in the trade, and it was all about war, economics and greed. There were black slave drivers and black slave owners, black women and white men who fell in love, slaves who ate with and befriended their masters (what a contradiction), none of which eclipses the horrors of the institution of slavery. I plan to do more reading, but I know (yet) of no other system of slavery upon whom an economy depended and under which required the total oppression of an entire race of people. And we are still dealing with the after-effects.
I just had to get that off my chest…
And there you have it…APOOO’s raw thoughts on Sweetsmoke by David Fuller.
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Dera Williams is a writer and lives, works and plays in the Oakland/Bay Area where she works in curriculum at a local community college. She has contributed to several anthologies and journals including Life Spices from Seasoned Sistahs and Honoring Our Black Fathers and has written academic profiles for Greenwood press reference books. She is a reviewer/editor for APOOO Exchange Team and Affaire de Coeur magazine and active in literary events. Her book club affiliations include Marcus Book Club, East Bay Page Turners Book Club and Women of Words Book Club. Her other interests include genealogy, Black history and culture and travel.
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