The Shadow (Black Heritage Library Collection) [Hardcover]

Mary White Ovington (Author)

Book Description

Series: Black Heritage Library Collection | Publication Date: June 1972

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ayer Co Pub (June 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0836991184
• ISBN-13: 978-0836991185
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Historical Novel About Race, June 11, 2011

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moo dog - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Shadow (Paperback)

Written by a co-founder of the NAACP, this novel is set in turn of the century Florida and New York City. It is the story of an illegitimate white girl raised by the black workers on an orange plantation. The girl, Hertha, is brought up to believe she is colored, though so light skinned she could pass for white, and she works at the "big house" as a maid for one of the white owners. She is very close to her loving adopted black family, and though she knows she is not related by blood, she believes she is related by race. This story was set during the time of Jim Crow laws in the south and in the North, when blacks were not allowed in white restuarants, parks, churches, schools, theaters. Even where they could sit on buses and streetcars was determined by law. Breaking one of those laws could get a black person lynched, or at the very least badly beaten and thrown in jail. When Hertha is in her early 20's, the truth comes out, that she is actually white, and has a small inheritence from her white grandfather. Immediately, all the white people change their attitude toward her, from a beloved "pet" and servant to one of them, and set about establishing a future for her in white society. She thwarts their plans, and goes to New York. There she meets labor activists (as the author was), a southern white man who falls in love with her, and her black adopted brother, who left school in the north to work in New York City. Hertha chooses to keep her story a secret from all the whites she meets, letting everyone believe she is a poor white woman from the south. After her story comes out (thanks to an article in a southern newspaper that makes its way north), she experiences the racism of the north, every bit as ugly and cruel as it was in the south.

This novel affected me profoundly, as it described Hertha's turmoil of being black, then suddenly white. First she was of the underclass, and then, in less than an hour, one of hte ruling class. At no time did she ever forget that she was raised black, that the family she knew and loved were black, the world and customs she knew were black. The only reason she could act "white" was because from childhood she had served as a colored maid to a white woman, and had learned to move in that world as well. Once she becomes white, her inner turmoil, the strain of acting a part she feels does not fit her is described and believable. She no longer lives into the black world, but she cannot fully enter the white world, either.

If this book as a fault, it is the long conversations of the labor movement among factory workers in New York City. I didn't feel it advanced Hertha's story, especially as she didn't feel the struggle was hers, as it involved primarily white and Jewish workers. For this reason alone, I gave the book 4 stars, rather than 5 . . . but only because I couldn't give it 4.9 stars.