I've Read Some Things: Part 1 of 3

Sorry - this is going to be about a month's worth of posts in one single day. I've been slacking, but I've got a lot to talk about.

I'm attempting to read 100 new books from 1 December 2006 to 1 December 2007. I've read 25 so far, so I think I'm doing pretty well.

I read a book this month by Barbara Chase-Riboud called The President's Daughter.

The book was about Thomas Jefferson's natural daughter, Harriet Hemings, born to Sally Hemings in the late 1780s or early 1790s. Jefferson allowed her to run away at the age of 21, but she was never freed. He freed a couple of his sons upon his death, but not Sally Hemings (although the book alleges she didn't want to be free), and not his daughter. Nothing really is known about Harriet Hemings after she ran away, so Chase-Riboud created a life for her based on one of her brothers' "confessions" that was published in a newspaper long after Jefferson's death.

An interesting thing I learned in the book is that the Hemings children were only one-sixteenth black, so none of them had African-American features at all. Harriet Hemings was said to resemble Jefferson so strongly that visitors to the house were completely taken aback by it.

So, the hardest part of the story for me to understand was why this woman seemed to dwell so seriously on getting caught or getting outed or her secret. Her life went on for years and years after she ran away, but she was never able to just bury that within herself. I think that might speak more to my ability to self-deceive than any actual problems with the concept, though.

And then I finally figured it out - the reason she couldn't get it out of her head was because she was raised a slave. So black was not only a color to her, it was an entire state of being, because she was raised so completely differently from her white half-sister.

So, now I get it. And I recommend the book - it was very, very engrossing. I read it in two days.

And then I read two Anita Shreve books, which are upcoming in this space.