Cane River by Lalita Tademy. Term Paper

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Total Length: 2070 words ( 7 double-spaced pages)

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When Louis Derbanne dies, he leaves a valid will, but his wife is not up to managing a plantation, and the fortunes of the family begin to slide. In effect, this white woman was little better off than the slaves they refused to educate, but of course, no one would ever admit that. The planters were not very smart, they did not take pains to ensure they had all the tools to hold on to their land, and the situation with Suzette and her family, and their eventual breakup, clearly indicates that.

Another surprising fact was the information that so many white men actually took responsibility for their mulatto families, as Derbanne did with at least some of the women who fathered his children, by freeing them at his death, and that there was much more of a caste system in Louisiana than just whites and blacks. There were the slaves, but there were free people of color (gens de couleur libre), Creoles (must be French-speaking descendents of early settlers, not mixed-race people), and of course, the whites in the area. Thus, there was an entire sub-culture of races and ethnicities in the area, many more than is often recognized or thought about when it comes to slave history in this area.

The strengths of this book are many. First, the author's descriptions seem to transport the reader back in time to Louisiana throughout the decades.

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She can make the reader feel the heat, the hopelessness, and the anger of these women, along with their compassion and great joy in their families, as well. She writes, Philomene wouldn't allow herself words, even with the babies. There was a freedom in not talking, an extra corner of calm to be gained by not having to participate fully in a world without Clement."

She makes you feel the anguish and inequity of these characters when their lives are ripped apart, but she also writes of the area in the same lyrical way.

If there are any weaknesses to this book, they are that all the white men prey on black women (perhaps they did, but there had to have been some who did not), and that so many of her ancestors develop madness or some form of detachment, but it is easy to see why they do. It does not seem there are many inaccuracies in the history of the book, except of course that the author has used fictional license for much of the situations in the book, since she did not have personal accounts of many of the situations. Even so, the book and her ancestors bring history alive, a wonderful accomplishment for any book......

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