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Overview
She vowed to find a better world for her children. Even if she had to make it herself.A sweeping epic of contemporary history by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alex Haley, this magnificent novel weaves an unforgettable story of one family, three generations, and their search for the American dream....
She is the heart and soul of her family who, through faith and courage, drives herself, her children, and her grandchildren onward, determined to propel them to a better place. Mama Flora, born to poor sharecroppers in Tennessee, is forced to raise her children alone after the murder of her husband. But it will not be Willie, her son, who fulfills her ambitions, but Ruthana, the niece she raises as her own. Inspired by her love for the radical poet Ben, Ruthana seeks her soul in Africa even as Willie's son and daughter embrace Black Power and drugs in their embattled coming-of-age. Throughout all the seasons of their lives, it is Mama Flora who prevails, whose quiet determination and love bring them back, as she leads her own quest for justice in tumultuous times.
From the Paperback edition.
Synopsis
She vowed to find a better world for her children. Even if she had to make it herself.
A sweeping epic of contemporary history by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alex Haley, this magnificent novel weaves an unforgettable story of one family, three generations, and their search for the American dream....
She is the heart and soul of her family who, through faith and courage, drives herself, her children, and her grandchildren onward, determined to propel them to a better place. Mama Flora, born to poor sharecroppers in Tennessee, is forced to raise her children alone after the murder of her husband. But it will not be Willie, her son, who fulfills her ambitions, but Ruthana, the niece she raises as her own. Inspired by her love for the radical poet Ben, Ruthana seeks her soul in Africa even as Willie's son and daughter embrace Black Power and drugs in their embattled coming-of-age. Throughout all the seasons of their lives, it is Mama Flora who prevails, whose quiet determination and love bring them back, as she leads her own quest for justice in tumultuous times.
Publishers Weekly
Somewhere along the line, the late Haley (Roots) or his collaborator Stevens (Queen) made the calculated decision to sacrifice the warm, personal and often sentimental story of a black sharecropper's life for the more global and sensational sweep of roughly three quarters of a century of African American history. And therein lies just one of the failings of this posthumous novel, which traces the Zelig-like descendants of a larger-than-life matriarch, Mama Flora, from 1920 to the present day. After her young husband, a Tennessee sharecropper, is mortally wounded when caught stealing from white landowners, he makes her promise that their son Willie will get an education. But after Willie drops out of school and is temporarily lured to the fleshpots of Chicago, Flora invests all her energy in her sister's orphan, Ruthana. By the time we see the third generation turn either to drugs or to politics (the Civil Rights movement, the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam), the novel has lost all sense of proportion and is shipping its characters to every imaginable hot spot in recent African American (or American, or African) history, from HUAC's persecution of the Jewish family for whom Mama Flora works to political repression under Idi Amin. At the same time, Haley and Stevens lose the human touch that animates the novel's first half--the dollar bill sent as a wedding gift, the mother who pretends to be dropping money into the collection plate in order to keep up appearances. As corny and sentimental as the early chapters are, they have something that the latter portion of the novel lacks, and that's credibility. (Oct.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Somewhere along the line, the late Haley (Roots) or his collaborator Stevens (Queen) made the calculated decision to sacrifice the warm, personal and often sentimental story of a black sharecropper's life for the more global and sensational sweep of roughly three quarters of a century of African American history. And therein lies just one of the failings of this posthumous novel, which traces the Zelig-like descendants of a larger-than-life matriarch, Mama Flora, from 1920 to the present day. After her young husband, a Tennessee sharecropper, is mortally wounded when caught stealing from white landowners, he makes her promise that their son Willie will get an education. But after Willie drops out of school and is temporarily lured to the fleshpots of Chicago, Flora invests all her energy in her sister's orphan, Ruthana. By the time we see the third generation turn either to drugs or to politics (the Civil Rights movement, the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam), the novel has lost all sense of proportion and is shipping its characters to every imaginable hot spot in recent African American (or American, or African) history, from HUAC's persecution of the Jewish family for whom Mama Flora works to political repression under Idi Amin. At the same time, Haley and Stevens lose the human touch that animates the novel's first half--the dollar bill sent as a wedding gift, the mother who pretends to be dropping money into the collection plate in order to keep up appearances. As corny and sentimental as the early chapters are, they have something that the latter portion of the novel lacks, and that's credibility. (Oct.)Library Journal
When Haley died in 1992, screenwriter Stevens used unfinished material to write Queen (LJ 7/93). This multigenerational family saga is based on more of Haley's writings. The lives of Mama Flora and her family provide a whirlwind survey of the 20th-century black experience. As a young woman in a small Tennessee town, Flora bears a son and sees his father killed at the hands of white racists. She realizes that education is the only way out of poverty. Soon, her daughter becomes a social worker while her son dabbles in communism and enlists to fight in World War II. As Flora lays dying, she can look back on her family and their accomplishments with pride. This novel's sweep seems to have overwhelmed the authors' capabilities; the book's perfunctory prose reads more like an extended treatment for a film script than a finished novel--no surprise, since it is due to be made into a CBS miniseries. Buy only if demand warrants. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/98; see also "Black Writers on the Rise," p. 96-100.--Ed.]--Nancy Pearl, Seattle P.L.School Library Journal
YA-This novel treats the same struggle as Haley's Roots, but updates it. From the 1929 stock-market crash through the turbulence of 1968, the history is all there, framed by a fast-paced tale of strong-as-a-fortress Flora, who overcomes all obstacles to keep her family going. In her, readers meet a matriarch who nurtures the many branches of a rural Tennessee black family turned urban. Those who liked Alice Walker's The Color Purple (Harcourt, 1982) and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Random, 1970) will find themselves caught up in Flora's struggle to keep her three children and their offspring intact through integration. History students will recognize landmarks: Brown v. Board of Education, Rosa Parks and her civil disobedience, the lunch-counter sit-ins, the assassinations, the rise of the Black Muslims, Afros and daishikis in Harlem and Chicago, drugs, and tensions within the Civil Rights movement. Readers who like their history conveyed through compelling narrative and an authentic voice will find this complex novel well worth reading.-Margaret Nolan, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VAKirkus Reviews
Screenwriter Stevens (who completed the late Haley's Queen) has now crafted from another incomplete Haley novel one of those heartwarming generational sagas that relies on individuals as eyewitnesses to history. Too often, when characters are turned into representatives of the Zeitgeist, they dance to the music of time rather than to the promptings of the heart, and Mama Flora's Family is no exception, but with one caveat: Mama Flora herself is as memorable a character as Root's Kunta Kinte and Chicken George.The eldest daughter of poor black farmers in Mississippi, Flora is seduced by the son of a wealthy black plantation owner and has to give up her baby and leave the state as a result. A devout Christian, Flora settles in a small Tennessee town, where she is helped by the local preacher to find work. After a brief but loving marriage to Booker, who is murdered by the Klan, Flora is determined that their only son Willie will go to college. But Willie, unlike Ruthana (the niece Flora raises when her sister dies), is no student: He leaves school, but the Depression makes work hard to find, so he heads to Chicago. There, he becomes involved with drug dealers and black communists, then joins the army and fights heroically in the Pacific, only to return to find racial prejudice still entrenched. The times are changing, though, and Flora and her growing family respond in different ways. Some become Moslem, others join the Black Panthers, take drugs, or, like Ruthana, go to Africa. Even Flora does her part, by single-handedly desegregating the local cafe. At the reunion for her 80th birthday, the community and her family are all there to honor her.
Not in the same class as Roots, but an affecting if superficial take on recent racial history.