Customer Reviews

The Mixed Blessing

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I first read this book in the mid 1970s when I was a teenager. I enjoyed it then and decided to read it again last week. WOW. This book is so dated! I think it was dated back when it was written! The tragic mulatto is a thing of the past! Toni Jenkins is advised by her father in the late 1960s (!) to pass for white. He was not proud of his Blackness and therefore gave his daughter no Black pride. As a biracial woman, I know that it is important to be proud of all facets of your heritage. Poor Toni Jenkins, as she is torn from marrying her (White) FIRST COUSIN, who knows that she is Black and is OK with it or marrying a White advertising exec. When the exec finds out that Toni has a Black father, his true colors, no pun intended, appear. Toni herself is quite shallow and unlikeable. She flits around from school to school, from the cousin to the advertising exec and then back to the cousin. She turns herself inside out to conceal her Blackness from her husband. When she finally gets to meet her Black family, she sees them as stereotypes - because she really doesn't know any Black people. Helen Van Slyke can write - it's an entertaining, fast moving story, if you like soap operas. Yet it is unsettling to read a tragic mulatto story in 1999.

Not a single character is likeable because we see their weakness and prejudice. That said there is some truth in each of the characters. Sure the sterio types are obvious but it says as much for the time this was written as it offends todays sensibilities. I liked the story because of it's period ideas. I grew up in the time frame of this story and although stilted it did give me some of the feel of the time and how far we have come.

This is a must read after reading Heart Listens. I love the way Helen Van Slyke wrote. I wished the she was still around to write more books.

I had read this book originally in the 70s and it was a hoot to read it now. Attitudes certainly have changed since the late 60s when it was written. As I write this, we have just nominated an African American to be President!

I was amazed that this author, who wrote about the injustice of racial prejudice, referred to homosexuals in this book as "limp-wristed." All my respect for what she was trying to achieve went right out the window. What an ignoramus.