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Cane River
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Cane River
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Cane River
Audiobook14 hours

Cane River

Written by Lalita Tademy

Narrated by Robin Miles

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Lalita Tademy was vice president of Sun Microsystems until she left corporate life to research the history of her family. The result of her two-year search is Cane River, a novel which quickly became both a New York Times best-seller and an Oprah's Book Club selection. Cane River is an isolated community that lies on a small river in central Louisiana. There in the early 19th century, slaves, free people of color, and Creole French planters lived and worked, loved and bore children. And there, 165 years later, Tademy discovers her amazing heritage. Beginning with her great-great-great-great grandmother, a slave owned by a Creole family, Tademy chronicles four generations of strong, determined black women. A combination of meticulously-researched genealogy and superb storytelling makes Cane River a truly unique experience. As the author peels back layers of racial and cultural attitudes, she paints a remarkable picture of rural Louisiana and the resilient spirit of one unforgettable family.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 13, 2004
ISBN9781490645629
Unavailable
Cane River
Author

Lalita Tademy

Lalita Tademy is the author of Cane River, a New York Times bestselling novel and the Oprah’s Book Club 2001 Summer Selection, and its critically acclaimed sequel, Red River. She lives in California.

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Rating: 3.9487775121951216 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5 stars This book was interesting. I enjoy genealogy and this book was the genealogy of a family in Louisiana. Elizabeth, a slave from VA was sold to a family in Louisiana. She was the house cook. Her man was Gerasime, a field hand, but he also was a skilled fiddler. I believe he was Indian and they had children.
    Their daughter Suzette worked in the house with her mom, but was also companion to the white niece. Suzette was raped by a French man, a friend of the family. She was a teen, about fourteen if I recall. She ended up with two children from this jerk. He finally left her alone, going to live with a free woman of color.
    Suzetter gave birth to Philomene who also worked in the house, when the war came and the slaves were freed. Philomene has "visions" and could see snippets of the future. She used this to her benefit or detriment, depending on how you view the situation. A white man started staring at her when she was about 10. This is a grown man. Can you say perv? She tried to marry herself a young black man whom she loved, but this perv, Narcisse interfered. He eventually told her she could come to him willingly or not but he would still have her. She used her "visions" to manipulate him to care for her and their many kids, eight. Her behaviour reminded me of a woman on welfare calling to find out how much more money she could get a month if she had another baby, or perhaps a shrewd prostitute. This may seem harsh, but she wasn't a slave nor was she stupid. I think she could have found a better way to deal with the situation.
    After reading this story, Louisiana felt like it was it's own world; speaking French and being told by the community what was acceptable or not.
    Which leads me to Emily; their eldest. She was spoilt. And Narcisse didn't want the Carpetbaggers (northerners) telling him how to raise or educate, (public education), his children. Emily learned to read and write.
    The women seemed to be fixated on color. And as Elizabeth called it, the "bleaching of the line". It didn't end with Emily either. She chose a French man. Her daughter, Angelite, chose a French man. All teenage mothers, unmarried, and illegitmate children. Wouldn't it have been better to marry a black man and be happy instead of being so focused on the color of your child's skin?
    Emily's man Joseph had promised to never leave her or their children, but the "night riders" started making visits to white men and pulling them out of bed in the night, burning their property, threatening, sometimes doing bodily harm.
    How is it that the slavery institution allowed this same behavior of micegenation, but after the civil war, cowards started taking the law into their own hands to keep "evil" out of their community? Who were these "night riders"? And all of this strife could have been avoided if these perverts had maintained their lust.
    Emily had two daughters, Josephine and Mary, whom never married because Emily didn't deem any black men worthy of them and they couldn't marry white. Josephine is quoted as to have said, 'if I would have known now what I didn't know then, I would have married the blackest man I could have found and had a bunch of babies.' My heart aches for her.
    A lot of the heartaches this family endured were because of the choices of Philomene and Emily, who were so focused on color. (and of course the idiot white men raping these poor girls, as I mentioned above).
    Suzette had told her daughter Philomene when they were both women about the racism of all;
    the slaves against each other; house and field, etc. a poignant moment. She was angry at a man she had manipulated for years. She didn't consider herself complicit. Was it easier to think of herself as a victim in all situations?
    This book had me fascinated with all kinds of things, like how do the natives say Natchitoches? nah-codish or nak-uh-dish, depending on who you ask. What is their accent? Do the French speakers have the same accent in English?
    I loved the pictures and copies of records included by the author.
    All of the members of the family were beautiful. I do wish a picture of Bet had been available. Also, Eva looks very Samoan to me. Does anyone else think so?
    The end of the book in 1936 with Emily going into town to a store saddened me, but I'm glad the author included it. The book is very thought provoking on many levels and well worth the time to read it, especially if you like genealogy.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    My book group chose Cane River by Lalita Tademy for our January book. This book came out quite a few years ago (2001) and I remember hearing a lot about it when it first came out. Especially since it was an Oprah Book Club pick at one point.Here's the blurb from Amazon:"Lalita Tademy's riveting family saga chronicles four generations of women born into slavery along the Cane River in Louisiana. It is also a tale about the blurring of racial boundaries: great-grandmother Elisabeth notices an unmistakable "bleaching of the line" as first her daughter Suzette, then her granddaughter Philomene, and finally her great-granddaughter Emily choose (or are forcibly persuaded) to bear the illegitimate offspring of the area's white French planters."The book is split into three parts, each part belonging to one of the daughters (Suzette, Philomene and Emily). I felt that this format worked well for the story. The family trees at the beginning of each section along with family photos also helped piece things together. However, my head hurt by the end of this book. I know this book is based on fact and that Tademy put a lot of research into it, but it was just one pregnancy after another followed by sickness and the loss of a loved one.Weighing in at over four hundred pages, the cycle of life and death became almost too much to bear. I ended up skimming the last quarter of the book and to be honest with you, I don't think I missed anything. It will be interesting to hear what my book group thinks of it next week.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent book. Was moved by this story.. Well worth reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Built from an exploration of her own ancestors, Tademy's Cane River is an impressive melding of historical documents and fiction, pulling together multiple generations of a single family and offering a novel which offers the best of what historical fiction can be. From generation to generation, the story unfolds with incredible attention to both daily life and character, weaving a tale which is all but impossible to put down.Absolutely recommended to readers of historical fiction.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An extraordinary amount of painstaking research went into this work of fiction based on the author's family history covering 4 generations living in rural Louisiana.As often happens in these multi generational epics, much time is spent on setting up the story and the introductory characters. The reader has a better knowledge and understanding of their lives than the later characters which are not drawn in such detail or given as much room for their stories to unfold.Nevertheless, I found the novel riveting and meticulously written. I enjoyed learning about the role of the Creoles and freedmen who lived side-by-side with the white French masters, the slaves and their mixed race children.Some readers may find this book slow going but as I have an interest in the era I enjoyed it. I thoroughly enjoyed the appended photos of the family members.The author has done a tremendous job of bringing her ancestors to life and in retelling their stories. I look forward to reading more of her work.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Loved this book. A beautifully written historical memoir.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the incrediable story of three generations of the author's ancestry. Through their years as slaves, to their freedom. Their loves and dispair, grief and bewilderment. The novel does not portray the many horrors that slaves suffered at the hands of their "owners". Wonderfully and lovingly the author has attempted to peice together their lives, using official documentation and living memory
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An incredible story, based on geneological research, of three generations of Louisiana women. Beginning in slavery, the reader witnesses rthe women enduring ape, sales of their children and loved ones, death, and abandonment of the men who used them. It is a painful story of the lives endured by women in America, soley because the color of their skins, determined the paths of their futures.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A goodt book, although slow at times, about slaves, ex-slaves, Creoles, people of color, in Louisiana. I kept waiting for it to "get good", but it never quite arrived. I do think it is a good story for those who want to see slavery and the evolution of "emancipation" over three generations.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A novel based on the author's genealogical research about her family in 19th and 20th century Louisiana. ome were slaves, some free, some black, some white. I would love to write a novel like this about some of my ancestors. In fact, I have considered this before, but it would take a lot more research than I have done so far.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A novel based on the author's genealogical research about her family in 19th and 20th century Louisiana. ome were slaves, some free, some black, some white. I would love to write a novel like this about some of my ancestors. In fact, I have considered this before, but it would take a lot more research than I have done so far.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    liked this book very much. kept waiting for the fairytale ending to get out of the history of ignorance & oppression.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A beautifully told family history about four generations of slave women on a Louisiana plantation in the nineteenth century. Lalita Tademy takes the dry dates and pieces of paper that go into genealogy research and crafts them into a story of strong women, family and the trials of slavery and freedom. Her writing is powerful and poetic - 'She watched words float past, plump and ripe, before they burst just outside her line of vision' - but never purple, and she effortlessly recreates another time and place with evocative descriptions of Cane River in the 1800s. It is jarring to read about the lives of these vividly drawn 'characters' in a story, coming to know and care about them, only to turn the page and find a facsimile of a bill of sale for a slave auction and find their names listed, or look into the eyes of Narcisse and Emily in a photograph after imagining them. Combining fact and fiction, or grounding a poignant slave narrative in the shameful reality of history, somehow makes more of an impact than reference books and novels. But the saddest part of this family saga is not the vicious circle of illegitimate children or the 'bleaching of the line' when Suzette, Philomene and Emily had children with white men, whether by force of choice, but that nothing really changed for them after risking their lives for a hundred years to break free of slavery and provide for their families. In 1936, an elderly Emily takes the bus into town to buy her own snuff and some peppermint candy for her grandchildren. The store owner doesn't know her, but takes her for a white woman, long the ambition of her mother Philomene and her grandmother Suzette, because she is only one-quarter black. When another customer recognises her 'colour', however, the man turns on her and rudely makes her wait, at over seventy years of age, while he serves the white customers. She 'knows her place', he tells another woman who offers to let Emily go first. Emily leaves without her snuff, and returns to the house by the river - sitting at the front of the bus. The importance of colour, and the treatment of the women and the white fathers of their children, both distressed and angered me, more, if truth be told, than their lives on the plantation.This is how family history should be told, with heart, pride and affection.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    PlotAs a reviewer said, it's very similar in style to Alex Haley's "Roots." Lalita Tademy fictionalizes the history of her family that she learned through genealogical research. She traces her history back to Elizabeth, a slave sold from Virginia to New Orleans with the Fredieu family. Her daughter and most of the women of succeeding generations have children with white men, either through rape or actual love. The novel follows the family through ups and downs, separation through slavery and selling, the Civil War, and efforts to make a life for themselves after emancipation.SettingNew Orleans, Louisiana, before and after the Civil War and through Reconstruction and toward the present day (when the author was young)Charactersmain female characters are Elizabeth, her daughter Suzette, Suzette's daughter Philomene, and Philomene's daughter Emily. Closely follows female line. Most of the women desire lighter skin, which is an issue that is frequently raised in the family. They encourage children to marry lighter men/women to have the next generation closer to white and therefore closer to more opportunities.PacingSlow in parts. Toward the end, gets bogged down with trying to cram the rest of the family history into a few pages. It is difficult to remember all of the children's names and their connections.NarrationThird-person omniscient=====Language - R? Sex - R, occasionally explicit with rape Violence - PG-13 - war, arson, physical fightingHomosexuality - none
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It sounds overly simple to say that this book is beautiful, but that is precisely what it is. Though its language is not overly ornate, and its characters not always sympathetic, "Cane River" is five-hundred pages of a slowly unfolding, highly emotional saga. This book causes the reader to address ideas of race and family in new, old, and surprisingly simple ways. A quick read, but a wonderful and very powerful book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I LOVED this book. I loved Tademy's writing style, the storyline and characters, the fact that it's based on Tademy's ancestors and that she left the corporate world to focus on and write this book. It's just so amazing to see how much America and our attitudes and laws have changed over the past 100 or so years. Amazing really.This was a phenomenal book -- I would recommend it to anyone from a mature 8th grader on up...really a delightful and insightful read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Cane River is a wonderful novel, which I highly recommend. I learned a lot about the slave/plantation/small farmer experience of Creole Louisiana. Especially interesting are the details about the gens de couleur libre and the long line of interracial unions (both forced and chosen) among Tademy's ancestors. An important thread that runs from beginning to end in Cane River is the impact of skin color biases within the black community, and Tademy's family specifically.San Francisco Bay Area native Lalita Tademy has a unique story to tell about her family lineage, and I'm glad she took the time to research and write this novel. She convincingly portrays strong, interesting, complex women -- starting with her great-great-great-grandmother Suzette, whose nine-year-old fictionalized character launches the novel in 1834. Lalita Tademy brings a cast of memorable characters to life, with a great literary flair.I selected this novel for the February 2009 meeting of my library-based Mostly Literary Fiction Book Discussion Group. Book group participants described the book as a "page turner," and recounted many passages that moved them to tears.Lalita Tademy will be visiting the Hayward Public Library for a special event on March 11, 2009, as part of our NEA-sponsored Big Read of A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines -- a novel set in Cajun Louisiana in the late 1940s. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to meet Tademy and hear more details about her research and writing. I also recommend her second novel, Red River, which explores (again in fictional form) her father's ancestors, and the devastating Colfax, Louisiana, Massacre of 150 black freedmen in 1873.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I probably enjoyed 3/4 of this book. I got a bit bored at the end. As another reviewer has mentioned, it's really all birth, babies and death and although there was quite a bit on the struggles to become gens de coleur libre, which they eventually got. It didn't make much difference to them, the family was still treated with disdain by the 'white folks'. I enjoyed the fact that the book was told over three generations, and it was interesting to see how things changed as time went on.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The book is essentially a family history starting from the author's 5th removed great grandmother. What is slightly amazing about it is that her family is black in Louisiana so researching family records meant looking at sales invoices for her slave ancestors. There is a lot of interpretation in the writing of the history (as in all history) but the author also got some more direct information from her great aunt who wrote out a family history. It took me a little while to be fully brought into the family's world but once there it was hard to leave. Life in French speaking Louisiana during the mid to late 1800's started to fascinate me. Recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    the story was interesting, but the writing was not.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Enjoyed this book. Tademy uses her own family history to create this fictionalized account of the lives of four strong women (Elizabeth, Suzette, Philomine and Emily), dating back to before the Civil War. Gives a greater understanding of what it was like to be a slave and then later a black (free but not really free) in this country. I was especially touched by the descriptions of what happens when the master dies, and how families can be torn apart based purely on the economic whims of their owners without a thought (mothers separated from babies, husbands moved out of state, with no chance of reunion).
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Hard to read but so very well done. Horrific, shameful, historical, truthful and our collective American memory. This is the way people should be taught the history of America and discussion should follow. The writing brings the images of abuse into sharp relief and the climate of Louisiana can be felt...compulsive read. Once started, it should not be put sown until completed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a very compelling story. The characters were rich and often compelling. I did feel as if parts of the story were left untold, in some ways. I can tell you this much, you will cry, shudder, laugh and pray with and for these characters. Often the books that make it into Oprah,s book club are slow reading, as this was, and less than uplifting. This book had its moments, but I would not describe it as an uplifting read,
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A beautifully written account of a family's journey through time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Tademy recounts the history of several generations going back to the 1700's. Slaves in the South, children and spouses sold - a very hard life. This was every bit as good as Roots. Highly recommend. Couldn't put it down and was sorry when I finished it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The author fictionalizes her own family history beginning in the early 1800s when her family was enslaved in the south. It follows six generations of women through their emancipation and the "bleaching" of her family line. Excellent!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The author went to a lot of trouble to research her family's history, and wrote a wonderful story based on her idea of how it might have been for the matriarchs of her family, as slaves, and as liberated black women struggling against racism. This will be a classic someday.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A historical novel centered around Ms. Tademy's family history. Generations who survived and thrived amidst the injustices of slavery in rural Louisiana. With characters (family members) who come alive on the pages and a knack for storytelling, Ms. Tademy shows us the complex lives of slaves and "masters". Not my usual novel but, one that was recommended and I'm glad it was as I feel more informed, understanding and appreciative after reading Cane River. Thank you Ms. Tademy for shining a spotlight on this time in American history.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Cane River by Lalita Tademy; ROOT; purgedAfter attempting to read this family generational history numerous times over the years, I finally decided to pearl rule it this time around at 139 pages. I just could never get into it. Don't know why, but sometimes that is just how it is.The next one will be better.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An impressive semi-fictional narrative of thoroughly investigated family history. She takes you through the lives of many of her female relatives as they lives in the mid-1800s through to the mid-1900s. Sporadically she has pictures, documents and notes from her family relations which add to the rawness of the tale. It was a pleasure to read for its attention to detail and honesty.