Resilient Family Spreads Love, Goodwill in “Redwood Court” https://ift.tt/r7TB1pR
Award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron’s Redwood Court spans decades of racial segregation laws, the Brown v. Board of Education decision ruling against school segregation, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed discrimination by race, religion, national origin, sex, and color.
Dameron renders her ambitious, complex saga through lush, layered, and satisfying scenes that immerse us in this era through the individual and collective lives of a family.
The book zooms in on the members of a Black family that flees Thomson, Georgia, where they grew butterbeans and tobacco, to escape post-World War II racial violence. Black women fear going to town alone. Mann, as everybody calls the father of the family, shows his daughter, Weesie, short for Louisa, to carry a knife in her waistband in case of an emergency. When they find a man hanging from a light pole, “a signature White-folks’ move,” they pack. Weesie, her mother Lady, and Weesie’s brother Pete leave the farm, but Mann stays behind: He “won’t dare picture himself in the city or noplace where you could see into your neighbor’s house just looking out the window.”
By scrimping, saving, and working multiple jobs, the Mosby family buys a ranch house in a working-class, Black subdivision in Columbia, South Carolina.
Redwood Court is a luxury location, “shiny, different.” Of course, in Columbia, too, racist rules dominate. Lady works at Woolworth’s downtown, but segregation forces her to take time off work to shop at a Black store, farther away, with higher prices. “Was there anywhere Black folks could go to be free like they said they were supposed to be?” Weesie asks herself.
In fact, in the real world, the Confederate flag flew in Columbia, on the South Carolina State House grounds, until 2015, when protesters forcibly removed the offensive emblem after nine Black people were killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.
Racial tension and conflict simmer continuously in the foreground and background, but love, hope, joy, and faith dominate this indefatigable family. They take care of their own — and more, accepting strangers into their midst and ministering to those worse off.
Weesie, especially, is interested in helping others. Enterprising and alert to opportunity, she is by turns a teacher’s aide, cosmetologist, a caretaker for the elderly, and a good neighbor. When neighbors move away, Weesie is mortified she hadn’t known “who they were or where they came from,” and vows to make sure the new owners feel “known.” She wanted them to “come on in and feel like family.” She manages the family, emotionally, physically, and socially.
The book covers the post-World War II and Korean War eras, and into the1990s. Multiple characters narrate briefly, but the chief storyteller is granddaughter Mika, coming of age in the 1990s. The book opens with a prologue of sorts, a chapter called “Stories Everyone Knows and Tells.”
Mika questions her grandfather James (“Teeta”), “How far back do you know we go?” His response? “Sometimes he thinks they just emerged from the earth, like Adam.” Mika isn’t satisfied. “Don’t you want to know more? Where we come from? Where we going?” Teeta shrugs; he doesn’t know if he does want to know more.
Dameron’s insightful, smart characters and striking, original language keep the scenes lively, meaningful yet heartbreaking, especially when the perils of “being Black” inevitably crop up. These family stories unfold, of course, against ongoing racism; for instance, despite the family’s resilience, they’re caught up in the prison-industrial complex, the new Jim Crow, and the racket of overpriced telephone calls to an imprisoned loved one. There’s an N-word encounter during a gas stop en route to Walt Disney World.
Weesie calls out these indignities and insults. A doctor examines Weesie’s pregnant 13-year-old daughter, and suggests a procedure to “fix her” once the baby is born, to prevent future pregnancies. Weesie says, “My baby ain’t a dog. Ain’t something you can just fix. And another thing, y’all can stop her from future babies but won’t stop her from having this one?”
These rich scenes are full of texture and nuance. Some are unforgettable. The scene in which a strange woman crashes the neighborhood cookout, for instance, begins when she parks in the driveway. This attracts everybody’s attention because no one parks in the driveway at the cookout.
Dameron begins with Mika’s thoughts: “To paint a picture: for this season, he [Teeta] moved the barbecue pit to the far back right corner of the yard, so it was farthest away from the gate. I had gotten to the gate, zinging by still-frozen guests like a pinball knocking through the machine.” The scene builds over four pages. At last, Weesie says:
“Baby, if you could move your car — we need to keep the driveway open.”
She had curled her face into a smile when she said, “baby,” but it didn’t feel fake or anything. Like how she’d talk to me or Sissy when she couldn’t remember our names quick enough . . . and it was a stand-in for our names, but filled with some type of love, maybe tenderness.”
The guest’s identity will surprise readers.
Redwood Court is big in every way. It’s a paean, a praise-song to this family, and others like them, spreading love and goodwill and community in a society that still sorely needs love and goodwill.
FICTION Redwood Court
By DéLana R. A. Dameron
Dial Press
Published February 6, 2024
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