Revisionist History, Revised

I remember that this book made a splash when it came out in 2001. Alice Randall's novel The Wind Done Gone is billed as "the unauthorized parody" of Gone With the Wind. I didn't think it was so much a parody as a look through a different lens at Margaret Mitchell's famous ode to the Confederacy.

The story is told through the journals of Cindy (Cynara, Cinnamon) a former slave and illegitimate daughter of Planter, the owner of the plantation Tata. Cindy's birth mother is Mammy, wet nurse to Other -- Planter's eldest daughter. Much of the narrative revolves around Mammy's abandonment of her own daughter in favor of the master's child, and the complex relationship Cindy had with her half sister.

Sold as an adolescent, Cindy had several owners including Beauty, the madame of an Atlanta brothel and ultimately the Southern gentleman R.B. He makes Cindy his concubine at the tender age of 15 and marries her half sister several years later. Now 29, with the war over and subsequent Reconstruction doing an about-face, Cindy is looking back at her life and attempting to find some meaning in it.

If you are familiar with Gone With the Wind either from the book or the movie, you'll enjoy the "aha" moments in The Wind Done Gone. What I found compelling, and what made this book controversial, is that through this well-known story, Randall explodes notions of racial purity and strips some veneer from our perception of "civilized" society. Her work of fiction contains echoes of the ongoing struggle for historic recognition by the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his slave/lover Sally Hemings.

The writing shines. It is a quick and enjoyable read, with some important messages embedded within the story. I recommend this book.

(Cross-posted at the Spring Reading Challenge)