Love Cemetery: Unburying the Secret History of Slaves (Hardcover)

by China Galland (Author)
Key Phrases: rusted metal marker, descendant community, brush hog, Love Cemetery, East Texas, Caddo Lake (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Galland chronicles the restoration and reconsecration of an African-American cemetery in her East Texas childhood hometown in this inspirational first-person account. The author, who is white, uncovers a fragment of local history in the process of her participation in an interracial group of people who from 2003 to 2006 convened a series of "work parties" at the cemetery—hacking at weeds, repairing gravestones and making offerings to the ancestors. Galland reports the meetings, church services and potluck suppers she joins in around the communal cleanup of Love Cemetery, which may date back to the 1830s. She portrays the Boy Scout troop, various clergy, parishioners and the community elders ("keepers of the group memory") involved in the effort, with especially nuanced portraits of two African-American women, Doris Vittatoe (a direct descendant of a man buried there) and Nuthel Britton (the unofficial cemetery caretaker). Galland (The Bond Between Women, 1998), who leads spiritual retreats, was acutely aware of "the dissonance between the black and white experience of life in America," but comes to her own "understanding that enormous change happens through tiny choices." Despite some slack passages, this fresh if not always coherent tale will appeal to women readers eager for an uplifting story. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Visiting her hometown in East Texas, Galland learns of an unmarked cemetery for slaves. She joins a pair of elderly women whose ancestors are buried in what is called Love Cemetery to reclaim and restore the grave site. In the course of research, Galland uncovers a long history of mistreatment and exploitation of black residents after slavery, including theft of land and encroachment on the cemetery. She is personally engaged as she wonders how her own family, along with all whites, benefited from the racial imbalance. Galland recalls the collective work of an interracial committee to restore the overgrown and nearly forgotten cemetery located in the midst of mining property and the healing of the community as it owns up to its past. A moving and inspiring account of race and history in a small town. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; annotated edition edition (June 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060779314
• ISBN-13: 978-0060779313
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #450,012 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars opening of the heart and mind, June 27, 2007

By	Elizabeth Cherry Owen "Elizabeth" (Damariscotta Mills, Maine) - See all my reviews

I have read all of Ms. Galland's books and found life-changing hope there. They create within me renewed commitment to find a place in the world that might bring a bit of healing.
As a Louisiana native who has recently moved to Maine, so much of the material is familiar to me, yet seen from a slightly different lens can be life altering.
The message of unity and love stated and acted out in so many small and large ways is so important right now in our polarized nation.
Many thanks to the author.
Elizabeth Owen

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must read story on race and reconciliation, June 12, 2007

By	Kathleen Delaney "Kath Delaney" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Galland books is both moving and thought provoking. An important summer read, for families, students, historians, and social activists grappling with America's relationship with past and current civil rights.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Choosing Love, June 13, 2007

By	Kalev - See all my reviews

Here is a readable, moving, fascinating example of how a "grain of sand" can, indeed, contain the universe. The grain in this case is an out-of-the-way, overgrown, all-but-forgotten graveyard in East Texas. A true storyteller, Galland chronicles the work of a small, inter-racial group (which she convened) to regain access to Love Cemetery and then clear away forty years of enforced neglect to reveal markers and graves of African-Americans all the way back to slave times. In order to truly understand the deepest implications of the story that had claimed her, Galland "unburies" the complex history of racism in the U.S. with particular focus on the years between the end of hostilities in the Civil War and the end of federally protected reconstruction, a time in which hope flourished and black literacy, land-ownership and political access became a reality. But behind the story of Love Cemetery, Galland shows us, lie decades of land-theft, re-disenfranchisement and exclusion that began when federal troops were withdrawn from the South and, along with the slavery that preceded it, cast a long shadow over the present. But most importantly, she shows us that reconciliation is possible if we are able to "choose love when there is reason to hate."