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Title: The Black Rose by Tananarive Due ISBN: 0-345-44156-7 Publisher: One World Pub. Date: 02 January, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.43 (23 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A great start to learning about an extraordinary woman
Comment: I have a new heroine. Not only did she rise above being black in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but also she rose above being a black woman to become America's first female millionaire. It's an incredible story.
Her name is Madame C. J. Walker and her story is fictionalized in Tananarive Due's historical novel, The Black Rose. Based on the research and an extensive outline complete by famed author Alex Haley before his death in 1992, Due weaves a fascinating account of Walker and her times.
Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove to freed blacks in 1867. Sarah is proud that she is learning to read and write, and dreams of reading her mother's Bible and someday attending college. Her dreams are crushed when her parents, now tenant farmers on the same Delta, Louisiana, farm where they were once slaves, die of yellow fever in 1874. Eight-year-old Sarah and her siblings are left to struggle for survival on their own. By 1878, the crops were failing and their shack was all but falling down. A year later, Sarah and her sister, Lou, move to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to become washerwomen.
The work is grueling but mind numbing. At 14, Sarah marries Moses McWilliams, a man she grows to love with all her heart, but who is killed less than a year later in one of Mississippi's infamous race riots. Devastated and left with a daughter, Lelia, to care for, Sarah moves to St. Louis. Life there is hard, but Sarah still dreams of college, of learning to read without having to struggle with each word. She has her own washing service and begins to save money so that Lelia can someday have the education she was categorically denied.
St. Louis' Annie Malone begins a beauty supply business, hiring black women as representatives to sell the products door-to-door. Sarah admires Annie, but her products do not bring relief to her own itchy dandruff and dry scalp that have tormented her since childhood. In an effort to find relief, Sarah and Lelia being concocting different remedies in their kitchen. Thanks to the help of a dream about a field of black roses and the treatment of sulfur to an injury Lelia sustains, Sarah stumbles onto the secret formula that make hair grown-she is a living example that it works. A new business if founded!
During this time she meets and marries C. J. Walker, an advertising whiz, and moves her business to Denver. With the help of C. J., but more of her own ambition and determination, Sarah begins her beauty supply business, recruiting women to sell it door-to-door. Before long, Sarah is the most sought after, most powerful woman, in America. Eventually she moves her business to Indianapolis and New York, where there is a more concentrated population of blacks.
But the more time she spends working, the less time she has for Lelia and C. J. The three grow estranged and by the time of her death in 1919, Madame C. J. Walker was the wealthiest, loneliest woman in the United States.
The Black Rose is more fiction than fact, according to Due who was in St. Louis recently. Scads of papers remain from The Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, which existed until the 1960s, but little personal documentation about this powerful woman have survived the years. Due reviewed thousands of interviews, documents, and papers that Alex Haley has complied before she began writing. "I tried to be true to the spirit of Sarah Breedlove McWilliams Walker," Due said. And from everything else I've read about this remarkable woman, Due has done as excellent job in capturing her essence. The Black Rose is a powerful, captivating tale of a real-life heroine.
Rating: 4
Summary: Captivating
Comment: The story of Madam C.J. Walker,the hair care product pioneer and America's first black female millionaire is the rags-to-riches story that this country was built upon. Based on reaserch done by Alex Haley prior to his death, Tananarive Due weaves a spellbinding tale of determination, heartbreak, and triumph. Spanning the time following the Civil war to the early 1900's, she is able not only to tell the story of Sarah Breedlove, later to be renamed Madam C.J. Walker, but intertwine that compelling story with historical events. The book is character driven, and those characters come to life in these pages. This was a delightful book, and thouroughly involving.
Rating: 5
Summary: Inspiring.....
Comment: I enjoyed reading this book - I had put it off for a long time for some reason, but I'm glad I finally sat down & read it. I admired Sarah Bredlove's perseverence to go after her dream which was propelled by her adversities while growing up. This books gives the age-old message; keep your head up, follow your dreams & if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, nothing will be impossible unto you.
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Title: The Between: A Novel by Tananarive Due ISBN: 0060927267 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 May, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due ISBN: 006105366X Publisher: Eos Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Good House : A Novel by Tananarive Due ISBN: 0743449002 Publisher: Atria Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Living Blood by Tananarive Due ISBN: 0671040847 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker (Lisa Drew Books (Paperback)) by A'Lelia Bundles ISBN: 0743431723 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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