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Summary
Summary
A sweeping, eerily resonant epic of race and violence in the Jim Crow South: a lyrical and emotionally devastating masterpiece from Charlie Smith, whom the New York Public Library has said "may be America's most bewitching stylist alive."
Delvin Walker is just a boy when his mother flees their home in the Red Row section of Chattanooga, accused of killing a white man. Taken in by Cornelius Oliver, proprietor of the town's leading Negro funeral home, he discovers the art of caring for the aggrieved, the promise of transcendence in the written word, and a rare peace in a hostile world. Yet tragedy visits them near daily, and after a series of devastating events--a lynching, a church burning--Delvin fears being accused of murdering a local white boy and leaves town.
Haunted by his mother's disappearance, Delvin rides the rails, meets fellow travelers, falls in love, and sees an America sliding into the Great Depression. But before his hopes for life and love can be realized, he and a group of other young men are falsely charged with the rape of two white women, and shackled to a system of enslavement masquerading as justice. As he is pushed deeper into the darkness of imprisonment, his resolve to escape burns only more brightly, until in a last spasm of flight, in a white heat of terror, he is called to choose his fate.
In language both intimate and lyrical, novelist and poet Charlie Smith conjures a fresh and complex portrait of the South of the 1920s and '30s in all its brutal humanity--and the astonishing endurance of one battered young man, his consciousness "an accumulation of breached and disordered living . . . hopes packed hard into sprung joints," who lives past and through it all.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Smith's brutal, beautifully written novel chronicles how racism in the segregated American South repeatedly derails the future of Delvin Walker, an aspiring writer. Delvin is haunted throughout his life by the memory of his mother, who fled Chattanooga, Tenn., upon being accused of killing a white man. Following her disappearance, Delvin and his siblings are separated and placed in foster care. Delvin's love for reading and storytelling is nurtured when he's taken in at age six by kindly Cornelius Oliver, a well-to-do mortician who hopes to pass his business on to Delvin. The particularly horrific mutilation and murder of a young black man leaves its mark on everyone, and Delvin later leaves Chattanooga, worried about an incident involving guns and some hostile white boys. He begins traveling on the rails and meets a man who calls himself Professor Carmel. Delvin agrees to help him run his mobile museum, which showcases photos of murdered black men. He's working with Carmel when he runs into a northerner named Celia, the first woman for which he pines. All along, Delvin keeps a notebook of his writings and longs to write a proper book. Smith (Men in Miami Hotels) is a master at conjuring evocative images, and his expert wordsmithing makes the brutal third act-in which Delvin is falsely accused and imprisoned-particularly visceral. This unforgettable story hits all the right notes, by turns poignant and devastating. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A violent and sorrowful Jim Crow South brims in this brutal novel. For his 17th book, poet and novelist Smith creates a harrowing, luminous Jim Crow story that takes its title from "a negro name, Ginny Gall, for the hell beyond hell, hell's hell." The terrain is so frequently hellishlynchings, firebombings, beatings, rapesthat one wonders how Smith stomached the work. His writing, in its lyricism, makes a queasy juxtaposition between horror and beauty. The story hinges on a reimagining of the Scottsboro Boys trials, in which nine African-American youth were railroaded on false rape charges. This novel begins "on the hot July day in 1913 exactly fifty years after the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, a day uncelebrated in Chattanooga." A prostitute named Cappie Florence gives birth to her fourth child, Delvin Walker, who becomes the Bigger Thomas-like protagonist here. The birth is perilous, the childwho reads at an astonishingly early ageis pronounced "wonderanemous," and the reader is gulled into thinking the story might be picaresque. Instead, Cappie flees police before Page 20 when Delvin isn't yet 5. He and his siblings are dumped into a foundling home, but the resourceful child finds himself, some two years later, apprenticed to a prosperous African-American funeral home director. Smith divides his novel into four books, and to start Book 2, he conjures a racial misunderstanding that puts teenage Delvin on the road at the cusp of the Great Depression. The adolescent traveler, like this novel, is ruminative, and for long stretches, his story is more pastoral than propulsive. Smith writes lushly, with a painterly eye. He depicts a mesmerizing, theologically rich funeral for a lynched man; Delvin's yearning for a college girl with whom he has one afternoon of rapturous conversation is achingly, gorgeously executed. Everywhere racism chars these pages. By Book 3, armed white men have forced Delvin and his doomed cohort off a Memphis-bound train. The writing can be a touch ripe: here is a man without consequence shutting a door in the street: "The sound was like a last clap of a civilization closing up." Still, for the resilient reader, a spell is cast. A riveting protagonist moves through unbearable racial carnage into a kind of legend. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Some life scars are formed early. When young Delvin Walker is just five, his prostitute mother abandons him to escape from the law. Surviving through his wits and charm, Delvin is initially taken in by a local funeral-home owner in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but the boy soon takes to traveling the rails in search of his destiny. The infamous Scottsboro Boys trial forms the beating heart of this languorous story, but veteran writer and poet Smith (Men in Miami Hotels, 2013) takes the reader on many a detour before he gets there. Delvin's life experiences add up over the course of this enormous boxcar of a novel as it wends its way through large swaths of the Deep South. What emerges are Jim Crow horrors: lynching, beatings, and, as the Great Depression approaches, the pervasive racism that is the lot of an entire people still grubbing in the dirt for Ol Massa. If at times the novel feels as saturated by its storytelling burden as a humid summer evening, it is nevertheless a stark and revealing portrait of our collective past, and the overarching theme of justice denied remains disturbingly relevant today.--Apte, Poornima Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WHEN DELVIN WALKER, the protagonist of Charlie Smith's novel "Ginny Gall," is deep into his prison sentence for a crime he did not commit, a fellow inmate introduces him to the work of Zora Neale Hurston. The inmate quotes a line memorized from Hurston's essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me": "I do not belong to that sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature has somehow given them a lowdown dirty deal." Delvin lets out a low whistle of disbelief in response. "Well, no wonder I never heard of that woman," he says, and the inmate posits that, unlike them, Hurston must be "somebody who's found a way out of the general disrespectfulness." "Ginny Gall," Smith's eighth novel, is an intricate examination of the coming-of-age of a young black man caught in the cross hairs of American racial history. It is a sustained look at black suffering in the Jim Crow South, and a meditation on the hows and whys of black endurance. The novel attempts to answer the question implied by Hurston's quote and rightly picked up by Delvin and his friend: How can a person resist succumbing to that sobbing school of Negrohood when his life is filled with racial injustice and general, persistent disrespect? And why not succumb? With a story that is equal parts - and often simultaneously - moving and harrowing, Smith offers no easy answer, but suggests that the small, fleeting, uninfringeable moments of life itself may hold the key. Delvin is the precocious and observant son of Cappie Florence, a prostitute in Red Row, the colored section of Chattanooga, Tenn. When he is not yet 5, his mother leaves town after being accused of killing a white man, one of her frequent customers. After living in a foundling home with his siblings, Delvin is taken in by Mr. Oliver, owner of the colored funeral home and mentor to young boys. The desire to reunite with his mother will stay with Delvin throughout his life, yet he quickly blossoms under Oliver's tutelage. He is a young boy hungry for knowledge. He takes pleasure in cataloging the flora and fauna, smells and sounds that populate his world. In Delvin, Smith creates a character sufficiently complex for the emotional tumult life will hand him. Young Delvin spends his days reading ancient tales of adventure and conquest, and trying to find the right words to describe specific moments and emotions. He has a poet's appreciation for the uncanny. "I want to see the world," Delvin writes, "but only the parts that are surprising." Smith's own background in poetry (he has published eight collections) is on impressive display throughout the novel. The quotidian country world is full of magic in his hands; characters walk through "emollient, fribbly sunshine" and eat cornbread with textures as varied as the streaks of red in Southern clay. Smith's fondness for lists leads to surprising juxtapositions that are a joy to read: "Bole and bunch, dry squeak of old runner carpet, a cracked vase painted blue, a white shirt on a hanger hooked on a bedroom wire, smell of liver frying in the morning." He heaps images on top of images, conjuring snatches of life until the reader feels as if she's flipping through a stack of Eudora Welty photos on every page. After an incident in the woods as a teenager, Delvin fears for his life and leaves Chattanooga by freight train. He takes to life on the rails, and for a few pages there is hope he might become a hobo of the Jack Kerouac variety, traveling the country in search of self-actualization and worthwhile stories. But Delvin has black skin, and his rails traverse the South. He encounters a world that is free of responsibility yet constrained, occasionally fraternal and utterly segregated. It is a peculiar landscape through which men walk the "Negro half-towns and sham-cities" delivering messages verbatim for a few dollars, and elderly Confederate soldiers are alive and doddering just over yonder hill. It is a land full of wanton violence, but also good will. "People, no matter what happened," Delvin observes, "kept their eye on the living side of things." SMITH SMARTLY USES Delvin's journeys and maturation as a way to explore the novel's central question. Seeking to find a mentor who might be able to fill the hole left by Mr. Oliver, Delvin works as an assistant to Professor Carmel, an eccentric self-styled scholar with a traveling collection of photos of "the Negro's trials and sufferings and joys on this side of the Atlantic Ocean." Carmel possesses a wide variety of books on black political thought - from Sojourner Truth to W. E. B. Du Bois to lesser-known pamphleteers - which gives Delvin an opportunity to wrestle with his own beliefs. Does he agree with writers who proclaim that the Negro man should rise up in violent revolt, or is he more in line with Truth, who focuses on the need to love one another, regardless of color? For Delvin, who is nothing if not measured, the raising of the question is more important than the answer. The fear of white violence undergirds the narrative of "Ginny Gall" like a buzzing in Delvin's ear that never ceases. His own eventual captivity is precipitated by a moment of scorn from the white world, and a split-second decision to stand up for himself. Delvin and seven other black boys are accused of raping two white women. Smith presents the arrests and sentencing as swift and startling, yet inevitable. Delvin becomes one of the K. O. Boys, a fictional group of falsely accused black teenagers reminiscent of the reallife Scottsboro Boys who were accused of a similar crime in 1931. Perhaps in an attempt to memorialize lawyers like Samuel Leibowitz, famous for defending the Scottsboro Boys, Smith offers glimpses into the points of view of Delvin's defense attorneys. These men are difficult to tell apart, with leaden language and dialogue ascribed to them. "Those boys' lives and everything they got inside em, good or bad, is forever lost," one says. Well, yes, of course. That is one potential result of prolonged false imprisonment. The novel up to this point excels at making the reader understand the disastrous ramifications of institutionalized bigotry via Delvin's experiences. It is a shame Smith does not trust readers enough to continue in that vein. Zora Neale Hurston described the term Ginny Gall as a Negro name for a suburb of hell. Smith describes the place as "the hell beyond hell, hell's hell." Perhaps blacks of previous generations had to believe such a place existed for the worst people, the sort who would doom an innocent man to the electric chair or noose. Or perhaps it is a commentary on humankind's ability to endure the unendurable; there is always a pain worse than the one bearing down on you. In any case, Delvin's years in prison provide an answer to the question of how to endure. He clings to his sense of self throughout the physical, psychological and sexual abuse he sustains. After one of his many escape attempts, he lies prone and broken in a solitary confinement hole: "It is here he discovers that his spirit has the kind of amplification and reaching toward far places that allows him to lie still while snakes crawl over him." What an amplification, indeed. A land of wanton violence and good will, where Confederate soldiers live over the next hill. ANGELA FLOURNOY'S debut novel, "The Turner House," was a 2015 National Book Award finalist.
Library Journal Review
After Delvin Walker's mom flees Chattanooga in 1918 because she killed a white shopkeeper, the five-year-old child is separated from his siblings and taken in by funeral home director Cornelius Oliver, the richest black man in town. In the following years, despite rumors of becoming Mr. Oliver's heir, Delvin is drawn to the Emporium, the local brothel and his mom's former employer. Novelist and poet Smith (Three Delays) lushly captures Delvin's coming of age as he prepares for a career he doesn't want and flees town because of a crime he didn't commit. While hopping trains in Alabama, the teenager finds a benefactor in Professor Carmel, proprietor of a traveling black history museum, who nurtures Delvin's passion for writing. The two travel to Louisiana, where Delvin falls in love, and on to Alabama, where they are unexpectedly separated. Smith excels in creating rich secondary characters such as Mr. Rome, a verbatim messenger sent by the professor who joins Delvin on the rails. When 18-year-old Delvin is falsely accused of raping a white woman, Lucille, his life becomes a blur of prison stints, physical abuse, and escape attempts. Ultimately, he finds himself back on the rails and back in Chattanooga, where Mr. Oliver and Lucille are never far from his mind. VERDICT Transporting readers to town after town, this haunting tale is for fans of crime thrillers and travel narratives. [See Prepub Alert, 8/3/15; Ginny Gall is an African American term for a punishment worse than hell.-Ed.]-Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
