Advertisement

BOOK REVIEWS : A Universal Tale of Adolescence, Divorce

Share
<i> Walker Alexander's latest work is "Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius--A Portrait of the Man, a Critical Look at His Works" (Warner Books). </i>

Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad by Bebe Moore Campbell (G.P. Putnam’s Sons: $18.95; 272 pages)

This is a delightful story, very simply told, about a young girl growing up through adolescence into marriage and career as the child of divorced parents. A half-dozen points distinguish it from the run-of-the-mill story of a black family with middle-class values and aspirations. Nor is it the familiar story of a black man who is seen as typically lazy, abusive, uncaring and underclass.

Bebe Moore Campbell lives with her mother in Philadelphia during school months and spends “Sweet Summer” with her father in Elizabeth City, N.C. The contrasting life of North and South is bridged by the love surrounding Campbell, and this love stems from an extended family of aunts and uncles, a grandmother and cousins, as well as from a brother-friend, mother and father. As a matter of fact, the story transcends race and class.

“Sweet Summer” has basic reality and universal appeal in that it could be about any adolescent living in urban or rural areas and surrounded by the love of a strong family. Campbell’s father is a paraplegic without a lot of higher education, and her mother has all the bourgeois attitudes of a schoolteacher. Yet their overwhelming love for Campbell comes first; her welfare always is protected by them.

Advertisement

As a result, she grows up with a deep respect for the men in her family, recognizing their shortcomings but also their basic humanity. Because of this deep respect, her relationships with men in her adult life are colored by the male images of her girlhood, chiefly her father. His physical handicap never got in the way of their loving relationship, and even in his death the bonding between them was secure.

In the same way, Campbell recognizes the weaknesses in her mother and her aunts’ characters, yet she strives to be like them, following their patterns and examples as an adult. She is very much like her mother and will raise her child in the same way she was raised. As she says in the end, “I was raised right.

Although “Sweet Summer” captures the vernacular of black speech and Campbell understands black awareness and consciousness of the Black Nationalist/Black Power Movement, she still is not obsessed by race. In fact, the one quality obviously inculcated in this child of divorce is that of a balanced personality with “everything in moderation; nothing to excess.”

Carefully crafted, “Sweet Summer” will hold your interest until the last page. Like any life, Campbell’s has many poignant moments of pleasure and pain, tragedy and joy. But I find the following passage at the heart of the story most indicative of the positive image the book evokes:

Once Daddy brought me back to North Carolina and left, I felt as cooped up as ever. “How come my daddy didn’t get a job in Elizabeth City?” I asked Grandma one August afternoon. . . .

“Jobs don’t grow on trees. You gotta go where the jobs is,” Grandma explained.

“He coulda looked. I bet he didn’t even look in Elizabeth City?”

Advertisement

“Maybe ‘Lizabeth City don’t pay as much as them in Richmond. Richmond’s a big place.”

“They’ve got big cities in North Carolina,” I argued just for the sake of having the last word.

“Well, mebbe he didn’t wanta work in North Carolina ‘cause he can’t get no driver’s license here. . . .”

“ ‘My father doesn’t have a North Carolina driver’s license? How come?’

Grandma looked at me. “It got took away because of the accident.” She bent her head and started sewing. . . .

“Did anybody get hurt?”

Advertisement

Grandma put down the piece of red cloth she’d been holding. She looked at me and took a deep breath. “A boy was in the car with him and he got hurt. Real bad.”

I could scarcely breathe. “What happened to him?”

“I think. . . .” Grandma’s voice trailed off. Then she looked me straight in my eyes. “He died.”

My hand froze on the piece of battered cloth that I was holding.

“Was it my daddy’s fault?” I whispered.

Grandma picked up her needle. She stuck a piece of thread in her mouth and took it out, poking around the needle. “Mebbe he was driving too fast. I don’t know.”

Advertisement

“What about, what about when he got hurt? Was he going fast, too fast?”

“Mebbe.”

“Was he?’

Grandma looked at me long and hard and didn’t answer. Maybe? I thought about Daddy’s dark-green Pontiac, the blue Impala swiftly careening down Route 17, the wind in our faces, my hair flying, my daddy smiling, and laughing in the wind. I understood. It was all his fault. He wasn’t a nobly injured prince. He was reckless. My father was a person who had ruined lives, his, mine, others.

“Sweet Summer” deserves a wide and appreciative readership. I hope this happens. Of one thing I am quite sure: We have not heard the last of Bebe Moore Campbell.

Advertisement