Customer Reviews

Your Blues Ain't Like Mine

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

"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.

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.

This is the first book by Bebe Moore Campbell I have ever read and I fully intend to read the others. I felt that she had a very deep connection with all of her characters, regardlesss of color. I have read some black others that wrote with an obvious bias, and with this book I felt none of that. I also thought she did an excellent job of portraying the woman's role in a marriage and in society. I noticed that in with both the black and the white characters the woman were going through very similar trials. It was very interesting that when it came to an issue of social class as the years went on that the citizens of Hopewell became divided by how much money they had and no longer by the color of their skin. It just shows that money still transcends everyhting else to determine one's role in the social pyramid. Overall I would recommend this book to anyone, it gives a true understanding of the process of desegregation and the mindset people were living in.

I became familiar with Bebe Moore Campbell's work only after reading "Brothers & Sisters" because like Esther, I did identify with the challenges of being black and female on the job. In "Your Blues Ain't Like Mine", she shows the horror of how one misunderstanding can affect the lives of the people of a small town. Floyd is more interested in proving his manhood to his father and brother than protecting his wife's reputation. Delotha is wracked with guilt and shame for not keeping her son Armstrong the victim, and Armstrong's father Wydell realizes that his inability to be a father has to do with his own inability to come to terms with the horrible relationship that had with his father. Lily, the unintentional instigator of this whole affair realizes that as she grows older, life is harder, men aren't always going to be there when you need them and that things aren't as rosy for other people as they seem especially when she discovers how bad off her in-laws have become, but at least in the book the characters try to come to terms with the past and struggle to live in the present. I would recommend this book to anyone who would want to read it.

Campbell's novel is one that is to be commended. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and her writing style. Sticking to detail but not adding too much is just what any reader appreciates and she comes through time and time again. Campbell wrote a book that contains so many characters and covers the span of nearly four decades and not once did she lose my attention or respect for her genious. Lovers of Toni Morrisson and Maya Angelou will certainly want to give Bebe Moore Campbell a try.

The sign of a great book is that so consumes you that you dare not put the book down, and can genrate a wealth of emotions, from despair to hope, to joy. This novel is a case in point. It's been years since I picked this up, but even now I can remember and recall this novel most vivid parts. Racism and a sense of justice are two of the themes covered in this novel, and I am surprised this hasn't been adapted into a motion picture. Lastly I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs Moore Campbell not long after this was releashed, for a book reading of this novel, and was fortunate to get a sense of what she wanted to achieve with this novel, as well as a signed copy. If you like this, you may also like Brothers and Sisters

This is one of the best books I've ever read, and I've read hundreds of books. BMC did an excellent job travelling from the 1950's to the 1990's and from the stagnated deep south to the steadily progressing north. It was so detailed it was like this was her autobiography.

This novel is a great Book! I have to admit in the begining of the book, I found it a little boring. But as I continued reading, the novel got better. It sets back to from the 50s to the late 80's. It talks about character's races. Also how the murder of a young black boy changed society. It changed people's mind of the community. This book is excellent, I have no negative feedback. It is a MUST READ ANd BUY the Book! WOnderfUl Content. I did pay 14 bucks for the book! But the money was worth my Expense!

I found this story to very interesting and attention grabbing. I did not read the book, but listened to it on tape which made it even more intriging because they told the story from two perspectives ( a white voice and a black voice). This story told life from various aspects such as the life of blacks in the rural south, those of blacks in up north, and those of whites in the south. It showed different time frames and what time can do to an environment and the changes that are made as far as race and sexism. It potrayed African Americans as whites viewed them in the 1950's which is inferior. As time moved on, instead of blacks working for whites, they worked with whites and voiced their minds more as the story progressed into more modern days.