A Quick and Moderately Entertaining Read

I am so used to the special effects and props of today’s TV shows like Law & Order, CSI and NCIS and movies like Braveheart and The Gladiator that The Bride Wore Black (a murder mystery published in 1940) actually came across as a “sweet” murder story! Haha! A black widow of a woman goes around killing men in various ways and while reading on I found the murders effective, but without the WOW factor. The first edition cover is scarier than the novel.



Also, I would categorize this book as more of a short story than a novel anyway. Each victim had his own chapter and no known connection to the other victims other than a woman who was going to kill him. The woman herself changed her name, appearance, etc. so with no one really connected to each other I didn’t get to know any background of the characters or really care all that much when they died. It wasn't until the last 20 pages that things came together and I gave the “OH…okay” head nod to wrap up this sweet murder story.

As far as having a place in the top 501 Must Reads I’m going to need to read more murder mystery novels to compare. The one thing a reader could walk away with was this little life lesson: Before you kill someone, make sure they are really the one you have in mind to kill and for the intended reason.

Morbid…but true.
(For people who do those sort of things - hopefully no one who reads this blog or knows my name.....haha)

A Home Run!

John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me was an incredible look into southern culture in the late 1950s. John bravely dyed his skin from white to black in an experiment to find out if racism against blacks was truly occurring in our country - and it certainly was!

Having heard consistently that men were no longer being judged by the color of their skin, but by their merits, Griffin endeavored to see if his experience and qualifications as a writer would give him a leg up both in the black community and when interacting with whites. Other than his skin color, Griffin didn't change any other aspect of himself. He didn't change the way he spoke and he told the truth about his profession, life and history when asked. However, as you can imagine, most whites did not care to look past the color of his skin and treated him with such disdain and disrespect that he feared for his life on countless occasions.

What Griffin went through as a black man for several months was only a taste of what blacks were going through then, and probably what some have continued to experience to this day. He was followed and verbally abused on the streets, denied the use of public facilities and water, and forced to sit at the back of the bus. And while some of this didn't surprise me, (I guess some of those childhood history lessons stuck with me!) I was completely shocked by what the white men who gave him rides while he was hitchhiking dared to ask and discuss. Not only were they curious about the sexuality of black people, but they were proud of forcing themselves on potential female black employees who wouldn't dare refuse them - "Not if they want to eat -- or feed their kids...if they don't put out, they don't get the job."

Outside of the hatred and mistrust Griffin felt from white people, the camaraderie and support he felt from his fellow blacks was incredible. The sense of community among perfect strangers seemed to be the largest source of positive energy for Griffin throughout his experience. He was shown hospitality and generosity by a man who took him in, despite the fact that he could barely feed his wife and six children in their small, two-room shanty. A porter at the bus station pointed him toward a room where he could sit to wait for the bus. And then, he met a man on the bus who pointed toward contacts to help him with a safe place to stay.

I truly enjoyed this book, despite the sick feeling I got in my stomach at times. John Howard Griffin was able to expose the existing racism from a perspective that no one else had ever attempted before. And from his experiment, he went on to try to help communities and our country as a whole, work through the horrible mindset that so many had. I highly recommend Black Like Me.

Black Like Me...read it!

Black Like Me was an easy read, but harder to read…emotionally. I myself believe deep down people want to be good to one another. People want to adopt the “do unto others” motto and for social conformities and/or prejudices push their kind spirits for mankind aside and adopt a “save yourself” motto instead. This book made me glad to be born in the 80s in order to bypass the stream of hatred that seemed to flood the country at this time.

So about the book…John Griffin is your average white man writer who went “undercover” in the Southern black community by dying his skin, taking pigment alteration pills, tanning with high UV lights and shaving his dirty blond hair in order to successfully submerge himself into an race and identity opposite his own. His results were astounding. He passed as a black man 100% in appearance and maybe 25% in attitude. The man didn’t know what to do! He didn’t know where to sit, stand, or even what direction to look if a white person should walk by. He had no idea of the culture and the extreme hatred he would experience by the whites. Some days he walked across town just to use a “black bathroom” or get a drink of water. The undeserved and groundless “hate stares” he called them, were one of the worst things he experienced as a black man. One of the best was the kindness he found in the words and actions of complete black strangers.

Griffin exposed the immediate comradery in the black community amongst strangers who could empathize with one another. They had secret glances and gestures to unify them instantly should situations get out of hand in interracial areas such as busses or trains. My first feelings of disgust and devastation as to how whites treated blacks were strong, but were matched by feelings of hope and acceptance with how blacks treated each other. After Griffin came out with his publication and made his project known to everyone I was happy get some follow-up information about how he helped in the Civil Rights efforts to stimulate a culture that had been suppressed for so long. A great quote said to a white man by a black Griffin was, “…This happens when you force humans into a subhuman mode of existence. Social studies do not deal with any basic difference in human nature between black and white. They only study the effects of environment on human nature. You place the white man in the ghetto, deprive him of educational advantages, arrange it so he has to struggle hard to fulfill his instinct for self-respect, give him little physical privacy and less leisure, and he would after a time assume the same characteristics you attach to the Negro.” (The white man was in shock by Griffin’s vocabulary and sentence structure, by the way).

I would suggest everyone read this book, if you haven’t already, to remind us how much progress we have made as a country of mixed races, religions and cultures. By the end of the novel I had a renewed sense of myself and faith in the person I am and always want to be. In my opinion this book should still be read in high schools and definitely deserves its place in the 501 Must-Read Books book.