Teen Fiction - Body, Mind & Health, Teen Fiction - Girls & Young Women, Teen Fiction - School, Teen Fiction - Romance & Friendship

A White Romance

Name: A White Romance
Author: Virginia Hamilton
ISBN: 9780590130059

by Virginia Hamilton

Write a review

Overview

Swept away by the illusions of romance, Talley Barbour, a black high school student, falls for a devastatingly handsome white classmate.

As her all-black high school becomes more racially mixed, Talley befriends a white girl who shares her passion for running and becomes romantically involved with a drug dealer.

About the Author, Virginia Hamilton

Virginia Hamilton

Virginia Hamilton’s books, which combined African-American and Native American lore with contemporary stories and characters, are memorable not only for their inventiveness and rich characterizations, but also for their ability to evoke a wide variety of times, places, and historical figures.

Biography

A writer of prodigious gifts, Virginia Hamilton forged a new kind of juvenile fiction by twining African-American and Native American history and folklore with contemporary stories and plotlines.

With Hamilton's first novel, Zeely, the story of a young farm girl who fantasizes that a woman she knows is a Watusi queen, she set the bar high. The book won a American Library Association Notable Children's Book citation. Hamilton rose to her own challenge, and every new book she published enriched American literature to such a degree that in 1995 she was awarded the ALA's Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for lifetime achievement.

Born in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and raised in an extended family of farmers and storytellers (her own father was a musician), Hamilton's work was inspired by her childhood experiences, family mythology, and Ohio River Valley homeland. In an article about the importance of libraries in children's lives, she credits her mother and the "story lady" at her childhood public library with opening her mind to the world of books.

Although she spent time in New York City working as a bookkeeper after college, and traveled widely in Africa and Europe, Hamilton spent most of her life in Yellow Springs, anchored by the language, geography, and culture of southern Ohio. In The House of Dies Drear, she arranged her story around the secrets of the Underground Railroad. In M. C. Higgins, the Great, winner of both a John Newbery Medal and a National Book Award, she chronicled the struggles of a family whose land, and life spirit, is threatened by strip mining. Publishers Weekly called the novel "one of those rare books which draws the reader in with the first paragraph and keeps him or her turning the page until the end."

In her series of folk-tale collections, including The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales, In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World, and Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales, Hamilton salvaged and burnished folk tales from cultures across the world for her stories; stories that suffused her fiction with its extraordinary blend of worldly and otherworldly events, enchantment, and modern reality. Virginia Hamilton died on February 19, 2002.

Good To Know

Hamilton's first research trip to a library was to find out more about her family's exotic chickens, which her mother called "rainbow layers," because of the many tints of the eggs they laid.

In 1995, Hamilton became the first children's writer to win a John D. and Catherine C. MacArthur "genius" grant.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

When Talley's high school buses in whites, she finds herself drawn into a labyrinth of drugs, heavy metal and sexual attraction. "A sad but resoundingly effective story," said PW. Ages 13-up. (Apr.)

School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up Hamilton's novel works on at least five levels: within the personality of the protagonist, within her immediate circle, within her setting of school and neighborhood, between her world and the intrusive white world, and between the novel and the reader, especially if that reader is unfamiliar with the details of black urban American life. Talley's formerly all-black high school has been converted to an integrated magnet school for the entire district. This means an influx of white students. The culture shock is immediate and prolonged. Add to the mix drugs, heavy metal rock, Talley's struggles to establish her own values, and an almost unbearable level of adolescent sexual tension, and you have a very potent brew indeed. Talley and her circle of friends are effectively portrayed: Didi, her white best friend, hopelessly involved with Roady, who is crippled both in mind and body through drug use; David, his dealer, who now has his eye on Talley; and Victor, who is attempting to save her from her fixation on David. The setting of school corridors, city streets, and a rock concert right out of Hieronymous Bosch is equally real. The use of black English throughout may be a challenge to some readers, but is well worth the effort, since the book would be weakened in any other idiom. Not a happy book, but a vivid, even surrealistic and insightful depiction of painful relationships. Barbara Hutcheson, Greater Victoria Public Library, B.C., Canada