"No one could understand why Emma Lou's mother had married Jim Morgan, least of all Jane herself. In fact, she hadn't thought much about it until Emma Lou had been born. She had first met Jim at a church picnic, given in a woodlawn meadow on the outskirts of the city, and almost before she recognized what was happening she found herself slipping away from home, night after night, to stroll down a well-shaded street known as Lover's Lane, with the man her mother had forbidden her to see. And it hadn't been long before they decided that an elopement would be the only thing to assure themselves of the pleasure of being together without worrying about Mama Lightfoot's wrath, talkative neighbors, prying town marshals, and grass stains.
"Despite the rancor of her mother and the whisperings of her mother's friends, Jane hadn't really found anything to regret in her choice of a husband until Emma Lou had been born. Then all the fears her mother had instilled in her about the penalties inflicted by society upon black Negroes, especially upon black Negro girls, came to the fore. She was abysmally stunned by the color of her child, for she had been certain that since she herself was so fair that her child could not possibly be as dark as its father. She had been certain it would be a luscious admixture, a golden brown with all of its mother's desirable facial features and its mother's hair. But she hadn't reckoned with nature's perversity, nor had she taken under consideration the unescapable fact that some of her ancestors, too, had been black and that some of their color chromosomes were still embedded within her. Emma Lou had been fortunate enough to have hair like her mother's, a thick, curly black mass of hair, rich and easily controlled, but she had also been unfortunate enough to have a face as black as her father's, and a nose which, while not exactly flat, was as distinctly negroid as her too thick lips."
P.8, THE BLACKER THE BERRY, by Wallace Thurman (Dover Pubs., Mineola, NY: 1929, 2008)
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
BLACKER THE BERRY, EXCERPT...
"No one could understand why Emma Lou's mother had married Jim Morgan, least of all Jane herself. In fact, she hadn't thought much about it until Emma Lou had been born. She had first met Jim at a church picnic, given in a woodlawn meadow on the outskirts of the city, and almost before she recognized what was happening she found herself slipping away from home, night after night, to stroll down a well-shaded street known as Lover's Lane, with the man her mother had forbidden her to see. And it hadn't been long before they decided that an elopement would be the only thing to assure themselves of the pleasure of being together without worrying about Mama Lightfoot's wrath, talkative neighbors, prying town marshals, and grass stains.
"Despite the rancor of her mother and the whisperings of her mother's friends, Jane hadn't really found anything to regret in her choice of a husband until Emma Lou had been born. Then all the fears her mother had instilled in her about the penalties inflicted by society upon black Negroes, especially upon black Negro girls, came to the fore. She was abysmally stunned by the color of her child, for she had been certain that since she herself was so fair that her child could not possibly be as dark as its father. She had been certain it would be a luscious admixture, a golden brown with all of its mother's desirable facial features and its mother's hair. But she hadn't reckoned with nature's perversity, nor had she taken under consideration the unescapable fact that some of her ancestors, too, had been black and that some of their color chromosomes were still embedded within her. Emma Lou had been fortunate enough to have hair like her mother's, a thick, curly black mass of hair, rich and easily controlled, but she had also been unfortunate enough to have a face as black as her father's, and a nose which, while not exactly flat, was as distinctly negroid as her too thick lips."
P.8, THE BLACKER THE BERRY, by Wallace Thurman (Dover Pubs., Mineola, NY: 1929, 2008)