Set in rural and small-town North Carolina between the 1930’s and 1950’s, Lena is a realistic portrayal of a black girl, born into a sharecropping family, who, as early as nine years old, sets her sights on a world beyond the neo-slave life she has come to know. Determined not to become a permanent part of the sharecropping system, she takes advantage of the few available opportunities to achieve personhood and meaning, but because of the limitations placed on Black females in this environment, frequently faces disappointment. During her youth, she fantasizes about becoming a pianist, and later as a young adult, with her mother’s support, but her father’s disdain, she strategizes to break the familial stranglehold of sharecropping by applying to college. This dream becomes the force against which she tackles all kinds of hurdles and in effect, fights for her life.
As the novel explores Lena’s growing into womanhood, it examines her relationship with people who influence her–her parents and their volatile relationship, her best friend’s disturbing obsessions and the bittersweet remnants of first love. The story also dramatizes other key factors in her life, including a death in the family, the flight of her brother, the abuse she suffered as “the first black “public” employee at the small town’s Five and Dime, her best friend’s gradual descent into mental illness, and other hardships that would destroy a weaker person.
Told by several narrators, the story reveals Lena’s father’s spiritual exile, his struggles with powerlessness and loss, his betrayal of his wife and son, and his inability to show his son or daughter any affection. Finally, wrestling with a debilitating sense of powerlessness against everything he despises, and a concomitant lack of self-respect, he strikes back in the only way he knows how. Lena’s mother, her model for determination, resourcefulness and compassion, fights for her husband’s love while trying to protect her daughter from the perils of being Black, female, poor and good-looking in a racist and sexist world. Her brother, estranged from his father, disillusioned by the unfaithfulness of his girlfriend, and defeated by the bigotry of the small southern town, eventually goes into exile. Finally, Lena’s best friend, Mary Gladys, is emotionally and psychologically shattered and ultimately alienated from those she loved most.
Lena and Mary Gladys is a story you will not soon forget. It will introduce to some and remind others of the less celebrated journey traveled by so many.
Angelene J. Hall
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Lena and Mary Gladys
Set in rural and small-town North Carolina between the 1930’s and 1950’s, Lena is a realistic portrayal of a black girl, born into a sharecropping family, who, as early as nine years old, sets her sights on a world beyond the neo-slave life she has come to know. Determined not to become a permanent part of the sharecropping system, she takes advantage of the few available opportunities to achieve personhood and meaning, but because of the limitations placed on Black females in this environment, frequently faces disappointment. During her youth, she fantasizes about becoming a pianist, and later as a young adult, with her mother’s support, but her father’s disdain, she strategizes to break the familial stranglehold of sharecropping by applying to college. This dream becomes the force against which she tackles all kinds of hurdles and in effect, fights for her life.
As the novel explores Lena’s growing into womanhood, it examines her relationship with people who influence her–her parents and their volatile relationship, her best friend’s disturbing obsessions and the bittersweet remnants of first love. The story also dramatizes other key factors in her life, including a death in the family, the flight of her brother, the abuse she suffered as “the first black “public” employee at the small town’s Five and Dime, her best friend’s gradual descent into mental illness, and other hardships that would destroy a weaker person.
Told by several narrators, the story reveals Lena’s father’s spiritual exile, his struggles with powerlessness and loss, his betrayal of his wife and son, and his inability to show his son or daughter any affection. Finally, wrestling with a debilitating sense of powerlessness against everything he despises, and a concomitant lack of self-respect, he strikes back in the only way he knows how. Lena’s mother, her model for determination, resourcefulness and compassion, fights for her husband’s love while trying to protect her daughter from the perils of being Black, female, poor and good-looking in a racist and sexist world. Her brother, estranged from his father, disillusioned by the unfaithfulness of his girlfriend, and defeated by the bigotry of the small southern town, eventually goes into exile. Finally, Lena’s best friend, Mary Gladys, is emotionally and psychologically shattered and ultimately alienated from those she loved most.
Lena and Mary Gladys is a story you will not soon forget. It will introduce to some and remind others of the less celebrated journey traveled by so many.
Angelene J. Hall