A Black woman who grew up amid prejudice and poverty in the South finds comfort and strength in the civil-rights movement.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Alice Walker won the Pulitzer prize and the American Book Award for The Color Purple. She is the author of many bestselling novels, essays and collections of poetry including Meridian, By the Light of My Father's Smile and The Third Life of Grange Copeland.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Last Return
Truman Held drove slowly into the small town of Chicokema as the two black men who worked at the station where he stopped for gas were breaking for lunch. They looked at him as he got out of his car and lifted their Coca-Colas in a slight salute. They were seated on two boxes in the garage, out of the sun, and talked in low, unhurried voices while Truman chewed on a candy bar and supervised the young white boy, who had come scowling out of the station office to fill up the car with gas. Truman had driven all night from New York City, and his green Volvo was covered with grease and dust; crushed insects blackened the silver slash across the grill.
"Know where I can get this thing washed?" he called, walking toward the garage.
"Sure do," one of the men said, and rose slowly, letting the last swallow of Coke leave the bottle into his mouth. He had just lifted a crooked forefinger to point when a small boy dressed in tattered jeans bounded up to him, the momentum of his flight almost knocking the older man down.
"Here, wait a minute," said the man, straightening up. "Where's the fire?"
"Ain't no fire," said the boy, breathlessly. "It's that woman in the cap. She's staring down the tank!"
"Goodness gracious," said the other man, who had been on the point of putting half a doughnut into his mouth. He and the other man wiped their hands quickly on their orange monkey suits and glanced at the clock over the garage. "We've got time," said the man with the doughnut.
"I reckon," said the other one.
"What's the matter?" asked Truman. "Where are you going?"
The boy who had brought the news had now somehow obtained the half-doughnut and was chewing it very fast, with one eye cocked on the soda that was left in one of the bottles.
"This town's got a big old army tank," he muttered, his mouth full, "and now they going to have to aim it on the woman in the cap, 'cause she act like she don't even know they got it."
He had swallowed the doughnut and also polished off the drink. "Gotta go," he said, taking off after the two service station men who were already running around the corner out of sight.
The town of Chicokema did indeed own a tank. It had been bought during the sixties when the townspeople who were white felt under attack from "outside agitators"-those members of the black community who thought equal rights for all should extend to blacks. They had painted it white, decked it with ribbons (red, white, and of course blue) and parked it in the public square. Beside it was a statue of a Confederate soldier facing north whose right leg, while the tank was being parked, was permanently crushed.
The first thing Truman noticed was that although the streets around the square were lined with people, no one was saying anything. There was such a deep silence they did not even seem to be breathing; his own footsteps sounded loud on the sidewalk. Except for the unnatural quiet it was a square exactly like that in hundreds of small Southern towns. There was an expanse of patchy sunburned lawn surrounding a brick courthouse, a fringe of towering pine and magnolia trees, and concrete walks that were hot and clean, except for an occasional wad of discarded chewing gum that stuck to the bottoms of one's shoes.
On the side of the square where Truman now was, the stores were run-down, their signs advertising tobacco and Olde Milwaukee beer faded from too many years under a hot sun. Across the square the stores were better kept. There were newly dressed manikins behind sparkling glass panes and window boxes filled with red impatiens.
"What's happening?" he asked, walking up to an old man who was bent carefully and still as a bird over his wide broom.
"Well," said the sweeper, giving Truman a guarded look as he clutched his broom, supporting himself on it, "some of the children wanted to get in to see the dead lady, you know, the mummy woman, in the trailer over there, and our day for seeing her ain't till Thursday."
"Your day?"
"That's what I said."
"But the Civil Rights Movement changed all that!"
"I seen rights come and I seen 'em go," said the sweeper sullenly, as if daring Truman to disagree. "You're a stranger here or you'd know this is for the folks that work in that guano plant outside town. Po' folks."
"The people who don't have to work in that plant claim the folks that do smells so bad they can't stand to be in the same place with 'em. But you know what guano is made out of. Whew. You'd smell worse than a dead fish, too!"
"But you don't work there, do you?"
"Used to. Laid off for being too old."
Across the square to their left was a red and gold circus wagon that glittered in the sun. In tall, ornate gold letters over the side were the words, outlined in silver, "Marilene O'Shay, One of the Twelve Human Wonders of the World: Dead for Twenty-Five Years, Preserved in Life-Like Condition." Below this, a smaller legend was scrawled in red paint on four large stars: "Obedient Daughter," read one, "Devoted Wife," said another. The third was "Adoring Mother" and the fourth was "Gone Wrong." Over the fourth a vertical line of progressively flickering light bulbs moved continually downward like a perpetually cascading tear.
Truman laughed. "That's got to be a rip-off," he said.
"Course it is," said the sweeper, and spat. "But you know how childrens is, love to see anything that's weird."
The children were on the opposite side of the square from the circus wagon, the army tank partially blocking their view of it. They were dressed in black and yellow school uniforms and surrounded somebody or something like so many bees. Talking and gesticulating all at once, they raised a busy, humming sound.
The sweeper dug into his back pocket and produced a pink flier. He handed it to Truman to read. It was "The True Story of Marilene O'Shay."
According to the writer, Marilene's husband, Henry, Marilene had been an ideal woman, a "goddess," who had been given "everything she thought she wanted." She had owned a washing machine, furs, her own car and a fulltime housekeeper-cook. All she had to do, wrote Henry, was "lay back and be pleasured." But she, "corrupted by the honeyed tongues of evildoers that dwell in high places far away," had gone outside the home to seek her "pleasuring," while still expecting him to foot the bills.
The oddest thing about her dried-up body, according to Henry's flier, and the one that-though it only reflected her sinfulness-bothered him most, was that its exposure to salt had caused it to darken. And, though he had attempted to paint her her original color from time to time, the paint always discolored. Viewers of her remains should be convinced of his wife's race, therefore, by the straightness and reddish color of her hair.
Truman returned the flier with a disgusted grunt. Across the square the children had begun to shuffle and dart about as if trying to get in line. Something about the composition of the group bothered him.
"They are all black," he said after a while, looking back at the sweeper. "Besides, they're too small to work in a plant."
"In the first place," said the sweeper, pointing, "there is some white kids in the bunch. They sort of overpower by all the color. And in the second place, the folks who don't work in the guano plant don't draw the line at the mamas and papas, they throw in the childrens, too. Claim the smell of guano don't wash off.
"That mummy lady's husband, he got on the good side of the upper crust real quick: When the plant workers' children come round trying to get a peek at his old salty broad while some of them was over there, he called 'em dirty little bastards and shoo'em away. That's when this weird gal that strolled into town last year come in. She started to round up every one of the po' kids she could get her hands on. She look so burnt out and weird in that old cap she wear you'd think they'd be afraid of her-they too young to 'member when black folks marched a lot-but they not."
Catching his breath, Truman stood on tiptoe and squinted across the square. Standing with the children, directly opposite both the circus wagon and the tank, was Meridian, dressed in dungarees and wearing a light-colored, visored cap, of the sort worn by motormen on trains. On one side of them, along the line of bright stores, stood a growing crowd of white people. Along the shabby stores where Truman and the sweeper stood was a still-as-death crowd of blacks. A white woman flew out of the white crowd and snatched one of the white children, slapping the child's shoulders as she hustled it out of sight. With alarm, Truman glanced at the tank in the center of the square. At that moment, two men were crawling into it, and a phalanx of police, their rifles pointing upward, rushed to defend the circus wagon.
It was as if Meridian waited for them to get themselves nicely arranged. When the two were in the tank and swinging its muzzle in her direction, and the others were making a line across the front of the wagon, she raised her hand once and marched off the curb. The children fell into line behind her, their heads held high and their feet scraping the pavement.
"Now they will burst into song," muttered Truman, but they did not.
Meridian did not look to the right or to the left. She passed the people watching her as if she didn't know it was on her account they were there. As she approached the tank the blast of its engine starting sent a cloud of pigeons fluttering, with the sound of rapid, distant shelling, through the air, and the muzzle of the tank swung tantalizingly side to side-as if to tease her-before it settled directly toward her chest. As she drew nearer the tank, it seemed to grow larger and whiter than ever and she seemed smaller and blacker than ever. And then, when she reached the tank she stepped lightly, deliberately, right in front of it, rapped smartly on its carapace-as i...
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Truman Held drove slowly into the small town of Chicokema as the two black men who worked at the station where he stopped for gas were breaking for lunch. They looked at him as he got out of his car and lifted their Coca-Colas in a slight salute. They were seated on two boxes in the garage, out of the sun, and talked in low, unhurried voices while Truman chewed on a candy bar and supervised the young white boy, who had come scowling out of the station office to fill up the car with gas. Truman had driven all night from New York City, and his green Volvo was covered with grease and dust; crushed insects blackened the silver slash across the grill.
"Know where I can get this thing washed?" he called, walking toward the garage.
"Sure do," one of the men said, and rose slowly, letting the last swallow of Coke leave the bottle into his mouth. He had just lifted a crooked forefinger to point when a small boy dressed in tattered jeans bounded up to him, the momentum of his flight almost knocking the older man down.
"Here, wait a minute," said the man, straightening up. "Where's the fire?"
"Ain't no fire," said the boy, breathlessly. "It's that woman in the cap. She's staring down the tank!"
"Goodness gracious," said the other man, who had been on the point of putting half a doughnut into his mouth. He and the other man wiped their hands quickly on their orange monkey suits and glanced at the clock over the garage. "We've got time," said the man with the doughnut.
"I reckon," said the other one.
"What's the matter?" asked Truman. "Where are you going?"
The boy who had brought the news had now somehow obtained the half-doughnut and was chewing it very fast, with one eye cocked on the soda that was left in one of the bottles.
"This town's got a big old army tank," he muttered, his mouth full, "and now they going to have to aim it on the woman in the cap, 'cause she act like she don't even know they got it."
He had swallowed the doughnut and also polished off the drink. "Gotta go," he said, taking off after the two service station men who were already running around the corner out of sight.
The town of Chicokema did indeed own a tank. It had been bought during the sixties when the townspeople who were white felt under attack from "outside agitators"-those members of the black community who thought equal rights for all should extend to blacks. They had painted it white, decked it with ribbons (red, white, and of course blue) and parked it in the public square. Beside it was a statue of a Confederate soldier facing north whose right leg, while the tank was being parked, was permanently crushed.
The first thing Truman noticed was that although the streets around the square were lined with people, no one was saying anything. There was such a deep silence they did not even seem to be breathing; his own footsteps sounded loud on the sidewalk. Except for the unnatural quiet it was a square exactly like that in hundreds of small Southern towns. There was an expanse of patchy sunburned lawn surrounding a brick courthouse, a fringe of towering pine and magnolia trees, and concrete walks that were hot and clean, except for an occasional wad of discarded chewing gum that stuck to the bottoms of one's shoes.
On the side of the square where Truman now was, the stores were run-down, their signs advertising tobacco and Olde Milwaukee beer faded from too many years under a hot sun. Across the square the stores were better kept. There were newly dressed manikins behind sparkling glass panes and window boxes filled with red impatiens.
"What's happening?" he asked, walking up to an old man who was bent carefully and still as a bird over his wide broom.
"Well," said the sweeper, giving Truman a guarded look as he clutched his broom, supporting himself on it, "some of the children wanted to get in to see the dead lady, you know, the mummy woman, in the trailer over there, and our day for seeing her ain't till Thursday."
"Your day?"
"That's what I said."
"But the Civil Rights Movement changed all that!"
"I seen rights come and I seen 'em go," said the sweeper sullenly, as if daring Truman to disagree. "You're a stranger here or you'd know this is for the folks that work in that guano plant outside town. Po' folks."
"The people who don't have to work in that plant claim the folks that do smells so bad they can't stand to be in the same place with 'em. But you know what guano is made out of. Whew. You'd smell worse than a dead fish, too!"
"But you don't work there, do you?"
"Used to. Laid off for being too old."
Across the square to their left was a red and gold circus wagon that glittered in the sun. In tall, ornate gold letters over the side were the words, outlined in silver, "Marilene O'Shay, One of the Twelve Human Wonders of the World: Dead for Twenty-Five Years, Preserved in Life-Like Condition." Below this, a smaller legend was scrawled in red paint on four large stars: "Obedient Daughter," read one, "Devoted Wife," said another. The third was "Adoring Mother" and the fourth was "Gone Wrong." Over the fourth a vertical line of progressively flickering light bulbs moved continually downward like a perpetually cascading tear.
Truman laughed. "That's got to be a rip-off," he said.
"Course it is," said the sweeper, and spat. "But you know how childrens is, love to see anything that's weird."
The children were on the opposite side of the square from the circus wagon, the army tank partially blocking their view of it. They were dressed in black and yellow school uniforms and surrounded somebody or something like so many bees. Talking and gesticulating all at once, they raised a busy, humming sound.
The sweeper dug into his back pocket and produced a pink flier. He handed it to Truman to read. It was "The True Story of Marilene O'Shay."
According to the writer, Marilene's husband, Henry, Marilene had been an ideal woman, a "goddess," who had been given "everything she thought she wanted." She had owned a washing machine, furs, her own car and a fulltime housekeeper-cook. All she had to do, wrote Henry, was "lay back and be pleasured." But she, "corrupted by the honeyed tongues of evildoers that dwell in high places far away," had gone outside the home to seek her "pleasuring," while still expecting him to foot the bills.
The oddest thing about her dried-up body, according to Henry's flier, and the one that-though it only reflected her sinfulness-bothered him most, was that its exposure to salt had caused it to darken. And, though he had attempted to paint her her original color from time to time, the paint always discolored. Viewers of her remains should be convinced of his wife's race, therefore, by the straightness and reddish color of her hair.
Truman returned the flier with a disgusted grunt. Across the square the children had begun to shuffle and dart about as if trying to get in line. Something about the composition of the group bothered him.
"They are all black," he said after a while, looking back at the sweeper. "Besides, they're too small to work in a plant."
"In the first place," said the sweeper, pointing, "there is some white kids in the bunch. They sort of overpower by all the color. And in the second place, the folks who don't work in the guano plant don't draw the line at the mamas and papas, they throw in the childrens, too. Claim the smell of guano don't wash off.
"That mummy lady's husband, he got on the good side of the upper crust real quick: When the plant workers' children come round trying to get a peek at his old salty broad while some of them was over there, he called 'em dirty little bastards and shoo'em away. That's when this weird gal that strolled into town last year come in. She started to round up every one of the po' kids she could get her hands on. She look so burnt out and weird in that old cap she wear you'd think they'd be afraid of her-they too young to 'member when black folks marched a lot-but they not."
Catching his breath, Truman stood on tiptoe and squinted across the square. Standing with the children, directly opposite both the circus wagon and the tank, was Meridian, dressed in dungarees and wearing a light-colored, visored cap, of the sort worn by motormen on trains. On one side of them, along the line of bright stores, stood a growing crowd of white people. Along the shabby stores where Truman and the sweeper stood was a still-as-death crowd of blacks. A white woman flew out of the white crowd and snatched one of the white children, slapping the child's shoulders as she hustled it out of sight. With alarm, Truman glanced at the tank in the center of the square. At that moment, two men were crawling into it, and a phalanx of police, their rifles pointing upward, rushed to defend the circus wagon.
It was as if Meridian waited for them to get themselves nicely arranged. When the two were in the tank and swinging its muzzle in her direction, and the others were making a line across the front of the wagon, she raised her hand once and marched off the curb. The children fell into line behind her, their heads held high and their feet scraping the pavement.
"Now they will burst into song," muttered Truman, but they did not.
Meridian did not look to the right or to the left. She passed the people watching her as if she didn't know it was on her account they were there. As she approached the tank the blast of its engine starting sent a cloud of pigeons fluttering, with the sound of rapid, distant shelling, through the air, and the muzzle of the tank swung tantalizingly side to side-as if to tease her-before it settled directly toward her chest. As she drew nearer the tank, it seemed to grow larger and whiter than ever and she seemed smaller and blacker than ever. And then, when she reached the tank she stepped lightly, deliberately, right in front of it, rapped smartly on its carapace-as i...
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More About the Author
Alice Walker is one of the most prolific writers of our time, known for her literary fiction, including the Pultizer Prize-winning The Color Purple, her many volumes of poetry, and her powerful nonfiction collections. Walker's most recent book is The Chicken Chronicles, a memoir. Her advocacy for the dispossessed has spanned the globe. She lives in Northern California.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A triumph for the opressed, and for humans everywhere.,
By Lilliana Meredith (New Hartford, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Meridian (Mass Market Paperback)
Alice Walker's book Meridian is a passionate, touching book, in a variety of ways. First of all, it depicts the warped minds and hearts of blacks (and non-racist whites) living in the South in the 1960s. Meridian is a young black woman- who is slightly crazy, yet completely involving and entertaining. Meridian is very different from other people- she feels things more acutely, sensitively, and strongly than other people. Her emotions- anger, hate, pain, suffering, are all depicted with startling clarity. Ths book is in some ways like a poem- and is very different from any other book I've ever read- almost as if the story is a series of dream sequences. Meridian, who is a civil rights worker, is deeply afraid that her people, and race, will dehumanize themselves and lose their souls. I disagree with a reviewer who gave it one star, and critized it for having no ''rising action''. The book has rising action, conflict, and literary techniques, they are just related in a different way- this book does not havea standard chapter form- instead it is a book based entirely on emotions, told in three parts, by Meridian, her black on-and-off boyfriend Truman Held, and her white Northern best friend Lynne. The books clearly conveys that all three of these people have parts of themselves missing- bits of humanity that have been desensitized in the civil rights struggle- and the hate passed from whites to blacks. All of these people are shown as simple young adults- none of them entirely evil, or entirely good, simply trying to survive in this tumultous era. The ending is bittersweet, not entirely happy, but not hopeless either. This book is more about a journey of human beings- than anythng else. It focuses more on characterization than plot- the events seem to be less important than the feelings, thoughts and passions of Meridian, Lynne, and Truman. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to read about the worries, cares, and journey of the soul.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Under the microscope,
By Jess D. (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Meridian (Paperback)
Much as I've enjoyed Walker's more well-known novels, I'm afraid that this one failed to move me. The main problem was that I always felt at least one level of remove from the characters. The reader is informed that such-and-such behaves in a certain way in order to elicit a particular reaction, or because of some or other damaging past experience, but we are never allowed to feel any of the characters' emotions or see them as real people. At one point in the novel, we are informed that Truman thinks that Meridian's problem is her habit of over-analysis (not, frustratingly, through dialogue, but through narration), and Walker could certainly have taken that advice to heart. The book read at times like a lyrical essay.Having finished the book, I know little about the character Meridian other than that Alice Walker worships her and that she suffered through many terrible experiences. The two main female characters seem to have so many horrific problems thrown their way that they become martyrs. Far from empowering these women, Walker has defined them only by their suffering and their mysterious paralytic illnesses; I may as well have been reading a Victorian melodrama. Toward the end, a few passages shone with the kind of honesty and beauty that I had expected from this book, and I was at last allowed glimpses of the characters' inner lives rather than being told what their motivations were - but at that point it was more frustrating than inspiring, because it teased me with what might have been.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Absorbing, complex, provocative,
By A Customer
This review is from: Meridian (Mass Market Paperback)
Alice Walker writes about the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's through the eyes of Meridian Hill. Walker forces us -- poetically -- to consider our stance on questions of racism, sexism, love and faith. By doing so she causes us to look at how we align ourselves with friends, lovers and family, and what it means to be part of a "community." I read this book the first time 20 years ago and it's themes have stayed fresh for me. A hope-inspiring book, despite the painful issues it addresses. An original novel in all respects.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Truman Held drove slowly into the small town of Chicokema as the two black men who worked at the station where he stopped for gas were breaking for lunch. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Miss Margaret, Miss Treasure, The Wild Child, The Sojourner, Miss Winter, New York, Sacred Serpent, Saxon College, The Assistant, Wile Chile, Feather Mae, Civil Rights, Atlanta Movement, Little Sister Lucille New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Truman Held drove slowly into the small town of Chicokema as the two black men who worked at the station where he stopped for gas were breaking for lunch. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Miss Margaret, Miss Treasure, The Wild Child, The Sojourner, Miss Winter, New York, Sacred Serpent, Saxon College, The Assistant, Wile Chile, Feather Mae, Civil Rights, Atlanta Movement, Little Sister Lucille New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 10
books:
See all 10 books this book cites
- The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- The Same River Twice: A Memoir by Alice Walker in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker in Front Matter, and Back Matter
See all 10 books this book cites
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