New in Paperback- Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Published by Algonquin ISBN 9781643752587

Trade paperback, $16.95, 352 pages

March is Women's History Month, and there are many wonderful historical novels now out in paperback that make great reads honoring this month. Lauren Willig's fantastic Band of Sisters (my review here) fictionalizes the true story of a group of Smith College alumni who traveled to France during WWI to aid villagers displaced by war.  Another terrific one is Kaitlyn Greenidge's Libertie, which takes us to the Civil War, and tells the story of a Black female physician in New York, and her daughter Libertie. Both are excellent reads.

As the novel opens, Libertie is a dark-skinned Black 11 year-old daughter of Cathy, a light-skinned Black female physician living in Brooklyn during the Civil War. Libertie's father is dead, and in addition to caring for the people of her community, Cathy also aids people on the Underground Railroad.

Madame Elizabeth, whose husband is an undertaker, brings Cathy an escaped slave hiding in a coffin. Cathy resusitates the man, Ben, and then Ben is sent to live in town with other escaped men. Libertie is drawn to Ben, and he has a strong effect on her.

In one striking passage in 1863, during what became known as the New York Draft Riots, mobs of Irish people burned down a Black children's orphange to protest being drafted to fight in the Civil War, and the children that could be saved were rowed across the river to Brooklyn where Cathy and Elizabeth and others rushed to help the refugees. I don't recall learning about this horrifying event in history class.

Cathy and other Black women formed the Ladies' Intelligence Society, and they planned to build a hospital to treat Black people, with a focus on women's health issues. Soon, she began to treat white women who turned to Cathy with reproductive issues they couldn't get help with in their own communities. They allowed Cathy, with her light skin, to treat them, but many wouldn't allow the dark-skinned Libertie to touch them.

Cathy arranged for Libertie to attend a Black college in Ohio to train to become a doctor like herself. While at school, Libertie does not get the grades necessary to continue, and she is afraid to tell her mother when she returns home. 

Libertie meets the doctor who is now assisting her mother, and she agrees to marry him and move to Haiti, where his father and sister have fled the scourge of slavery in the United States. Cathy is furious that the dreams she had for her daughter are gone, that Libertie has chosen to be a wife and mother as her life's ambition.

Adjusting to life in Haiti is difficult for Libertie, her father-in-law and sister-in-law do not treat her kindly, and her husband appears too busy to notice. She becomes attached to TiMe, the family servant, and discovers a troubling situation, one she will not ignore.

Libertie tells her own story here, and people who love Toni Morrison's novels will find themselves drawn to Kaitlyn Greenidge's lyrical style of writing, with an element of magic involved. Libertie has a strong mother-daughter story at its core, and I for one would love to read Cathy's own story told by her as well.

We read to put ourselves in the shoes of others, and read historical fiction to feel how people lived in other times other than ours, and Libertie accomplishes both of those brilliantly. I can see why so many publications called it one of the best books of 2021. Libertie the book and Libertie the person are unforgettable.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Kaitlyn Greenidge's book tour.

Algonquin has many wonderful excellent books for Women's History Month, including Thrity Umrigar's Honor, and Elena Medel's The Wonders. 

Honor

The Wonders

The Wonders by Elena Medel

The Wonders by Elena Medel

Published by Algonquin ISBN 9781643752112

Hardcover, $26.95, 240 pages

March is Women's History Month and if you are looking for a great read, you can do no better than Elena Medel's brilliant and moving novel, The Wonders. Some of the book is set during the Women's March in in Madrid 2018.

Medel takes us inside the lives of two women- Maria in 1969 and Alicia in 2018. Maria works as a housekeeper and caregiver, scraping out a living in the few ways available to her. She left her hometown as a teenager after becoming pregnant by an older married man and giving birth to a daughter.

Maria is forced to leave her baby Carmen behind in the care of her disapproving parents, with her sister Soledad and 13 year-old brother Chico who help as well. Chico splits his time between working at a bar and caring for his niece.

Maria works hard, visits Carmen when she can, which is not often enough, She dreams of the day she has enough money to be permanently reunited with her daughter, but even as hard as she works, that opportunity slips further away with each passing each day.

We see Maria as she grows older and becomes politically active, beginning with her neighborhood association, trying to make her neighborhood safer. Eventually she started meeting with other women to discuss things important to them, but not to the men, in their lives- divorce, abortion, physical and emotional violence. Over the years, Maria found her voice and became a leader to other women.

I was particularly struck by this passage:

"No one can know the truth about these women. Their enemy is the boss: the one with more money, more power, the one who changes their shifts without bothering to ask, who's always looking down on them."

In 2018, Alicia is working her night shift at the convenience store. She prefers that shift, leaving her days free. Her husband Nando wants her to work days so they can spend time doing the things he likes but Alicia does not- cycling trips, beach days with his mother, dinner at the same restaurants with the same couples and their young children.  She "molded her life to his" and that is not enough for her.

In her unhappiness with Nando, Alicia has begun having one-night stands with strange men. Alicia's mother is Carmen, Maria's daughter. We are privy to Alicia's upbringing, and once again Chico has played a big part in the lives of the women in his family helping raise Alicia after her father's suicide. Chico is a caring, kind man, a balance to the other selfish, self-centered men in the novel.

As Alicia walks through the crowds of the women's protest, we wonder if she will meet up with her grandmother Maria- would she even know her if she saw her?

"Money's the thing: not having enough is the thing." Society does not value the work women do, from caring for children to caring for our elders, and money means freedom for those who have it. 

Medel is a Spanish poet and as such, every word in is carefully chosen for maximum inpact in this slim yet powerful 240-page story. We know Maria and Alicia's lives intimately in these few pages, a true accomplishment. If you read and loved Elena Ferrante's novels (or if you thought those books were too long for you), Elena Medel's debut novel The Wonders is your next read. I give it my highest recommendation.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Elena Medel's tour.