Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 31, 1993 TAG: 9310310228
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By Miles Morland. Random House. $21.
Having achieved the pinnacle of success in the financial worlds of London and New York, Miles Morland abruptly resigned at age 45. What was he going to do? Everyone, including Miles himself, wondered about his future. Then his wife Guislaine, who hates to fly, suggested they take a walk.
They did.
Their trek from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean (about 350 miles) required great determination but resulted in back-aches, blisters and bemoanings. Their many problems, related in graphic detail, spoil the light-hearted style Morland wants to achieve in "Miles Away." Even though he makes it clear that their journey was a pilgrimage, "a crossing into a different life," the book does not soar, it limps. Except for some little-known historical data, I found this walk not exciting, but merely pedestrian.
- LYNN ECKMAN
A Women's Mourning Song.
By bell hooks. Harlem River Press. $8 (paper).
A Dark & Splendid Mass.
By Mari Evans. Harlem River Press. $8 (paper).
Anointed To Fly.
By Gloria Wade Gales. Harlem River Press. $12 (paper).
Typing In The Dark.
By Saundra Sharp. Harlem River Press. $9.95 (paper).
In this quartet of books, Harlem River Press offers us four African American poets, four women who are stunning, challenging, brutally frank, and lyrical. I am not a student of poetry, never took a class on poetry, have no special skill at deciphering the sense behind the words. I can only read, sometimes aloud, more often to myself, the words that trail across the page in blocks of print or long loose strands that drag my eye along.
In these four volumes I found much to move me. Gayles writes about mothers and daughters and fathers. She sends messages to the elder sisters who paved the way for all of us such as Sojourner Truth, Phillis Wheatley, Tubman, Wells Barnett, McLeod Bethune, Hurston, Hamer, and "To All The Nameless Ones." For Mari Evans the pain and resilience in the world of prisons, homeless people, lovers, old age, and incest are given shape and substance.> An essay on the rich African-American traditions of dying and death as a part of living opens bell hooks' "A Woman's Mourning Song," followed by verses concerning the dead and those who mourn them. Saundra Sharp's poems are complimented by photographic images by four artists; old ladies, street scenes, children, glistening black nude forms resembling some ancient African statuary are sprinkled throughout the book. She boldly states "I Am Not An African Queen," and reassures us that "We Still Write Love Poems."
Read these poems for your self, share them with a child, a class, your mother. Give them to your lover, your friend.
- LENI ASHMORE SORENSEN
Glory Enough For All: The Battle of the Crater, a novel.
By Duane Schultz. St. Martin's. $22.95.
You can write good history or you can write a good novel, but the historical novel is frequently neither. Duane Schultz proves that once again in "Glory Enough For All" where the facts of the 19th century are subordinated to the trendy racial revisionism of the 20th.
To set the stage, the time is the summer of 1864; the Civil War siege of Petersburg has begun. On the Union side, a Pennsylvanian, Henry Pleasants, proposes that his regiment of former coal miners tunnel beneath the Confederate lines, pack the tunnel with powder, and blow a hole through which Union forces can plunge, perhaps bringing a quick end to the war.
So much for history. Schultz's theme is not the siege or the engineering marvel of the mine. The sole purpose of the book seems to be the deification of the black troops who were part of the Union attack and who, in some cases, were shot down when seeking to surrender. The result of all this is a book that serves neither history nor fiction, and in its failure gives no believable credit to the black troops of the Civil War. To have done so would have required more objectivity and balance than the author apparently cared to provide.
- ROBERT HILLDRUP
\ Lynn Eckman teaches at Roanoke College.\ Leni Ashmore Sorensen is a graduate student at the College of William and Mary.\ Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.
by CNB