Your Blues Ain't Like Mine [Paperback]

Bebe Moore Campbell (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: One World Books/Ballantine (1997)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000LW2FP0
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, May 3, 2005

By 

Justice - See all my reviews

This review is from: Your Blues Ain't Like Mine (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

This book is clearly based on the tragic story of Emmett Till, the young boy brutally killed for whistling at a white woman in the 1950s. However, it takes on a life and depth of its own, and is remarkable for its sensitive portrayal of how racism destroys both victim and perpetrator.

One of the most compelling aspects of Campbell's narrative is that she does show compassion and a deep understanding for the lives of poor southern whites. She tries to penetrate their consciousness without excusing their acts of violence. This leads to a greater understanding of why such atrocities could take place. The villains are mostly motivated by fear-fear of being seen as weak, for instance. It would be easier to not see them as human, but healing and prevention of future tragedies can only come from greater understanding.

Campbell's insights and skills as a storyteller make this a wonderful read, and her retelling of one of the most horrendous miscarriages of justice in the civil rights period (Emmett Till's murderers never did jail time) make this a book no one should miss.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very good novel that should have been great, June 15, 2002

By 

Stan Vernooy (Henderson, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Your Blues Ain't Like Mine: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

"Your Blues Ain't Like Mine" is an ambitious novel. It begins with the murder of an African-American teenager in rural Mississippi in the 1950's. It then follows the boy's family, the family of the murderers, and other citizens of that small Mississippi town, for the next 40 years or so. Many of the Blacks in the story move north to Chicago during this period. So the story describes not only the social and political changes in the deep South during those years, but also the experience of those who exchanged the seething racism of Mississippi for the northern big-city ghettos.

In choosing to portray such a vast - and critically important - period of American history, the author set herself a daunting task. There is a tremendous amount of material to cover in a novel like this. And the job can't be done thoroughly in 460 paperback pages. The author often condenses a major change in a character's lifestyle or philosophy into a single paragraph or even a single sentence.

The characters are well chosen and sympathetic (except the characters who weren't intended to be sympathetic), and the book is well written and well plotted. But for myself, I found myself wanting much more than Ms. Campbell was giving me. I suppose that a 1200-page novel wouldn't have sold nearly as well as this shorter one. But a 1200-page novel, on the same subject and by the same author, might have been a historically great achievement.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting and Intense, September 27, 2002

By 

leg "countedx58" (Livermore, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Your Blues Ain't Like Mine: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

There is nothing HAPPY in this book at all. But it's well written, and the story draws you in from the beginning and holds you until the end. I had to stop after every couple of chapters and kind of regroup emotionally because it was so intense.