Product Description

Set among the plantations in deepest Louisiana, CANE RIVER follows the lives of five generations of women from the time of slavery in the early 1800s into the early years of the 20th century. From down-trodden, philosophical Suzette, who was born and died a slave, to educated, pale-skinned Emily, whose high ambitions born in freedom become her downfall, we are introduced to a remarkable cast of characters whose struggles reflect the tragedy of slavery and, ultimately, the triumph of the spirit. This deeply personal saga - based entirely on the author's research into her own family history - ranks with the best African-American novels and introduces a major new writer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #170772 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Lalita Tademy's riveting family saga Cane River chronicles four generations of women born into slavery along the Louisiana river. It is 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. In many cases these children are loved by their fathers, and their paternity is widely acknowledged. However, neither state law nor local custom allows them to inherit wealth or property, a fact that gives Cane River much of its narrative drive.

The author makes it clear exactly where these prohibitions came from. Plantation society was rigidly hierarchical. The only permissible path upward for hard-working, ambitious African Americans was indirect. A meteoric rise, or too obvious an appearance of prosperity, would be swiftly punished. To enable the slow but steady advance of their clan, the black women of Cane River plot, plead, deceive and manipulate their way through history, extracting crucial gifts of money and property along the way.

In her introduction, Tademy explains that as a young woman she failed to appreciate the love and reverence with which her mother and her four uncles spoke of their lively Grandma 'Tite (short for "Mademoiselle Petite"). She resented her great-grandmother's skin-colour biases, which were as much a part of Tademy's memory as were her great-grandmother's trademark dance moves. But the old stories haunted the author, and armed with a couple of pages of history compiled by a distant Louisiana cousin, she began to piece together a genealogy. The result? Tademy eventually left her position as vice president of a Fortune-500 company and set to work on Cane River, in which she has deftly and movingly reconstructed the world of her ancestors. --Regina Marler, Amazon.com

Review
'An accomplished first novel weaves fragments of real-life family lore into a vivid tale of four generations of African-American women struggling to hold their families together, first as slaves, then as freed people subject to Jim Crow laws and white vigilantism ... The result is a richly textured family saga that resonates with intelligence and empathy' '... this excellent novel... a moving tribute to the force of love and the unseverable connection of family ties' 12/1 -- the Times 20020112

About the Author
Lalita Tademy gave up her high-flying career as a vice-president for a Fortune 500 technology company in Silicon Valley in order to research her family's history. After discovering her great-great-great-grandmother's original Bill of Sale, she decided she had to write this book.

Customer Reviews

A must read
I, like another reviewer, picked up this book because of the Ophrah show recommendation on the cover. Once I started the book I could barely put it down, the story focuses on the family history of the author who became interested in researching her family after coming across the original bill of sale for one of her ancestors. It is a beautifully written book bringing us into the minds and the lives of the women who shaped Lalita Tademy's family. It is a heartbreaking, deeply moving story of three generations of women spanning the time of slavery before the Civil War to the uncertain 'freedom times' after. It is a beautifully written account with it's roots based in fact, the book is peppered with original documents and photographs of Tademy's family. This book is a wonderful read, read it and then pass it on to all your friends.

Outstanding
After seeing the introduction to Cane River on Oprah,I too decided to order this book.I was instantly mesmerized by the author's ability to spin her story.This is a story of heart wrenching love between the generations of mothers and daughters caught up in the web of slavery,and their unbelievable struggles just to survive.Abuse,rape,starvation,insanity and being ripped away from their families just barely touch on the deep rooted pain that these women faced.Through sheer determination and love,sharing tears and sometimes laughter,they manage to tell their stories...even so many years later. It is impossible to read this book without shedding a tear.Not only did I feel the women's pain and fury,but I felt their hopelessness as well,and felt like I was literally transported back in time,to Cane River.An absolutely outstanding book.

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Cane River marks an epoch in the chronicling of slavery.
This book tells the story of four inspirational and real women who just happened to be slaves. So while the story is not exclusively about slavery, it illustrates in a heartwarming as well as heartbreaking way, the manner in which this condition colours their lives and ambitions without stripping them ultimately of their true essence. If anything, the struggles and the pain and the rapes emphasise the true and steely nature of these women of colour, called negroes or black as a race but according to Tademy, encompassing a spectrum from 'milk white to caramel'.This story paints a clear and compelling picture about many things but especially about this: a woman's struggle in life is a different on from that of a man's, but a woman struggle during slavery is truly a unique though heartrending one.
What really sets Tademy's book apart is the continuity within a family of slaves who are shaped and moulded and driven in many a case by their womenfolk, and it is passing interesting and instructive to note the way they themselves developed prejudices - among their own kind!
You've read Roots and other books within that genre or perhaps you haven't. In either case, Tademy's is not a work not to be taken lightly. It is a monarch amongst books of any kind and you will feel real gratitude that she researched her family and brought home her family to you in such a real way.