Lindsey Buckingham And Christine McVie On Their Album - Great Interview :)

The Two Lives of Eugene Bullard

THE GREAT WAR | ARTICLE

The Two Lives of Eugene Bullard

How the first black combat pilot escaped America, 

became a hero in France, and ended up an elevator

operator in New York.

By Cori Brosnahan

Eugene Bullard (far left) in a group shot circa 1914–1918. Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

In his own words, Eugene Bullard was the “first known Negro military pilot.” 

That, at least, was what was printed on his business cards. By that time, after a 

quarter-century in France, Bullard was back in the U.S., living in New York City, 

where he worked variously as a security guard, a perfume vendor, and a 

Rockefeller Center elevator operator. First known Negro military pilot; Bullard 

was a man both proud and humble, and his business card reflected that. But it 

also reflected the world in which he lived. His was not a first that had been 

formally recognized — much less celebrated. The story of how Eugene Bullard 

became the first black combat pilot, and why his achievement stayed in the 

shadows for so long, is a tale of alternate realities, of what happens when 

opportunity is offered or denied — and, ultimately, seized regardless.

Born in Columbus, Georgia in 1895, Bullard would recall that as a child, he was 

“as trusting as a chickadee and as friendly.” For a while, his parents were able to

insulate him from the realities of racism so that he “loved everybody and thought

everybody loved me.” But they could only do so much. When Bullard’s father got 

into a fight with a racist supervisor, a lynch mob came to the house. Bullard’s 

father survived, but was forced to go into hiding. Dreaming of a place “where 

white people treated colored people like human beings,” Bullard decided to run 

away. Accounts vary, but he was likely only 11 when he left home.

For the next five years, Bullard roamed around Georgia, encountering kindness 

and cruelty from a wide cast of characters along the way. At one point, he joined

 a band of English gypsies who opened his eyes to the possibility of a better life 

for African Americans in Europe. Crossing the Atlantic would become Bullard’s 

new objective; in 1912, at the age of 16, he stowed away on a ship leaving 

Norfolk, Virginia for Germany. It dropped him off in Scotland, where people 

treated him “just like one of their own.” Within 24 hours, he was “born into a 

new world” and “began to love everyone” once again.

From Scotland, Bullard would make his way to England. He took whatever jobs he

could find, including: street performer, dock-worker, target for an amusement 

park game, helper on a fish wagon, and boxer — the last of which would eventually

 take him to France. Bullard was instantly smitten, recalling later how “it seemed

to me that the French democracy influenced the minds of both white and black 

Americans there and helped us to act like brothers as near as possible.” France 

would become so important to Bullard that he would rewrite his own biography to

imbue his arrival there with a sense of destiny; in Bullard’s memoir “All Blood 

Runs Red,” his father has French roots, and it is the dream of France that pulls 

him away from Georgia in the first place.

Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

So it was no surprise when, just 19-years-old, Bullard joined the fabled
French Foreign Legion to fight for his adopted country against Germany 
in the Great War. He was later transferred to a standard French army
unit and fought at the Battle of Verdun, where he was seriously injured
attempting to carry a message from one French officer to another. The 
wound would take him out of ground combat permanently; his heroism
would earn him the Croix de Guerre military decoration. 

It was during his convalescence at a clinic in Lyon that he became 
acquainted with a French air service officer who promised to help him 
become an aircraft gunner. The officer made good on his word; in 
October of 1916, Bullard began training as a gunner at a military air 
station near Bordeaux. There he learned about the Lafayette Escadrille,
a squad of American fighter pilots flying under the French flag. The 
Escadrille was well-compensatedand undeniably glamorous (their 
mascots were two lion cubs named Whiskey and Soda). 

Bullard immediately asked to train as a pilot rather than a gunner. He 
would receive his pilot’s license seven months later. Celebrating his 
achievement with friends in Paris, he later recalled that, “by midnight 
every American in Paris knew that an American Negro by the name of 
Eugene Bullard, born in Georgia, had obtained a military pilot’s license.”

As for Americans back in America, they remained ignorant of Bullard’s 

achievement. It was not reported in American newspapers or magazines, save a 

small item in the January 1918 issue of The Crisis, a journal produced by the 

NAACP, which said only that Bullard had “enlisted in the Aviation-Corps.” 

Bullard’s biographer Craig Lloyd notes that the American military had privately 

decided not to accept African Americans, and the media silence “may have been 

a result of censorship, official or self-imposed, by the American press.”

Bullard would soon feel the sting of that rejection directly. After America entered

the war in April of 1917, Bullard — who still loved the country he’d left — applied to

fly for the American Expeditionary Forces. He was rejected. Still, he derived 

“some comfort out of knowing that I was able to go on fighting on the same front 

and in the same cause as other citizens of the U.S.”

He could not have known that his career would soon be cut short entirely. The 

end of the war was still a year away. Bullard, who had flown some 20 missions, 

was a competent pilot who had earned the trust and respect of his comrades. So 

the American was surprised and confused when French military authorities 

ordered him out of aviation and into a noncombat position in the infantry.

The exact reasons remain murky. According to Bullard, the dismissal could be 

traced back to Edmund C. Gros, the primary American liaison for the Lafayette 

Escadrille. Bullard had a tiff with a racist French officer and Gros had used what 

seemed to Bullard a minor incident to oust him. In their 1972 biography of 

Bullard, P.J. Carisella and James W. Ryan would reject their subject’s 

conjecture; instead, they relay a story ostensibly supported by Bullard’s 

wartime acquaintances, in which Bullard is relieved of his duties after 

committing a far greater offense — punching a French lieutenant. Craig 

Lloyd, writing almost three decades later, acknowledges that the 

evidence against Gros is circumstantial, but believes it ultimately 

“confirms Bullard’s suspicion.”

Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

 We may never know what happened, but context helps fill in the picture. 
When  Carisella and Ryan discarded the idea that Gros could have been 
behind Bullard’s dismissal, they did so reasoning that it “seems hardly 
credible that white Americans living in wartimeParis could still practice 

their age-old prejudices and deprive France of such a badly needed fighter.” 

But it is clear that Jim Crow had arrived in France with the American 
Expeditionary Force in late 1917 and early 1918. As Lloyd explains, 

American officers believed that the morale of their white American soldiers

would suffer if they “saw black American troops enjoying freedom from 

segregation and discrimination, and especially the freedom to 

associate with white women.” Measures were taken to disparage black troops;
 white officers publicly accused them of everything from cowardice to rape.

Perhaps the most blatant and notorious display of American racism in France was
 the Linard Memo. The confidential document advised French military and civilian
 authorities that “although a citizen of the United States, the black man is
regarded by the white American as an inferior being with whom relations of
business or service only are possible.” It went on urging them to “prevent the rise
of any pronounced degree of intimacy between French officers and black
 officers” because “we cannot deal with them on the same plane as with
 the white American officers without deeply wounding the latter.” 
Though signed by a Frenchman, it was composed by a French-American 
committee, and clearly reflects American attitudes; when the memo 
came to light in France, it was roundly denounced by the government.

For all the U.S. military’s attempts to re-create the American racial paradigm 

overseas, they couldn’t control everything. African American soldiers returned to

 America after the war with a wholly different sense of themselves and their 

place in the world. That newfound consciousness would influence the struggle for

equal rights in the decades to come.

Eugene Bullard, whose wounds entitled him to French citizenship, would remain 

in Paris after the war. There he became a successful nightclub impresario and 

gym owner. He lived at the starry center of a Parisian post-war society; Josephine

Baker babysat for him; Langston Hughes washed dishes at his cabaret; Ernest 

Hemingway based a character on him.

Bullard’s life in France came to an end with World War II. Volunteering once again

 to fight for France, he was wounded. Forced to flee to neutral Spain, Bullard 

would escape embattled Europe for America aboard a steamship, crossing the 

Atlantic for the second time, in the opposite direction, almost three decades 

after his original voyage. He would live out the rest of his days in New York, 

where he enthusiastically took part in the French cultural life of the city. Two 

years before his death in 1961, the French made him a Knight of the Legion of 

Honor; thirty-three years after his death, the United States Air Force appointed 

him a second lieutenant.

In 1959, Bullard appeared in his elevator operator’s uniform on the Today Show. 

Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

America was and is a country to which people from all over the world come for 

the opportunity to realize their full potential. But Eugene Bullard and countless 

other African Americans had to leave it to realize theirs, and many who stayed 

never had the chance. In that, Bullard’s story is a testament to what prejudice 

has cost all Americans. “Bullard’s two lives,” writes Lloyd in his epilogue, “the 

one in America and the other in France, illustrate the colossal spiritual, social, 

and economic waste to this nation caused by the tenacious denial to black
people of their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Sources:

Craig Lloyd, Eugene Bullard: Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris (Athens, Georgia: University 
of Georgia Press, 2000).
Eugene J. Bullard, manuscript for “All Blood Runs Red: My Adventurous Life in Search of 
Freedom,” 
Louise Fox Connell collection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
P.J. Carsella and James W. Ryan, The Black Swallow of Death (Boston: Marlborough House,
1972).

Article is courtesy of The American Experience, PBS. 

Modern Library's 100 Best Novels

How many have you read?  Favorites? 

THE BOARD'S LIST

1. ULYSSESby James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBYby F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MANby James Joyce
4. LOLITAby Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLDby Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURYby William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22by Joseph Heller
8. DARKNESS AT NOONby Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERSby D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATHby John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANOby Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESHby Samuel Butler
13. 1984by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUSby Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSEby Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDYby Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTERby Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVEby Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MANby Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SONby Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KINGby Saul Bellow
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRAby John O’Hara
23. U.S.A.(trilogy)by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIOby Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIAby E.M. Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVEby Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORSby Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHTby F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGYby James T. Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIERby Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARMby George Orwell
32. THE GOLDEN BOWLby Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIEby Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUSTby Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYINGby William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING’S MENby Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REYby Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARDS ENDby E.M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAINby James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTERby Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIESby William Golding
42. DELIVERANCEby James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series)by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINTby Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISESby Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENTby Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMOby Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOWby D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVEby D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCERby Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEADby Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY’S COMPLAINTby Philip Roth
53. PALE FIREby Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUSTby William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROADby Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCONby Dashiell Hammett
57. PARADE’S ENDby Ford Madox Ford
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCEby Edith Wharton
59. ZULEIKA DOBSONby Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOERby Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOPby Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITYby James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLESby John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYEby J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGEby Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGEby W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESSby Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREETby Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTHby Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTETby Lawrence Durell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICAby Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWASby V.S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUSTby Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMSby Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOPby Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIEby Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKEby James Joyce
78. KIMby Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEWby E.M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITEDby Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCHby Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSEby Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVERby V.S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEARTby Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIMby Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIMEby E.L. Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES’ TALEby Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILDby Jack London
89. LOVINGby Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT’S CHILDRENby Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROADby Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEEDby William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUSby John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEAby Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NETby Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE’S CHOICEby William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKYby Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICEby James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MANby J.P. Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONSby Booth Tarkington

THE READER'S LIST

1. ATLAS SHRUGGEDby Ayn Rand
2. THE FOUNTAINHEADby Ayn Rand
3. BATTLEFIELD EARTHby L. Ron Hubbard
4. THE LORD OF THE RINGSby J.R.R. Tolkien
5. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRDby Harper Lee
6. 1984by George Orwell
7. ANTHEMby Ayn Rand
8. WE THE LIVINGby Ayn Rand
9. MISSION EARTHby L. Ron Hubbard
10. FEARby L. Ron Hubbard
11. ULYSSESby James Joyce
12. CATCH-22by Joseph Heller
13. THE GREAT GATSBYby F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. DUNEby Frank Herbert
15. THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESSby Robert Heinlein
16. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LANDby Robert Heinlein
17. A TOWN LIKE ALICEby Nevil Shute
18. BRAVE NEW WORLDby Aldous Huxley
19. THE CATCHER IN THE RYEby J.D. Salinger
20. ANIMAL FARMby George Orwell
21. GRAVITY’S RAINBOWby Thomas Pynchon
22. THE GRAPES OF WRATHby John Steinbeck
23. SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVEby Kurt Vonnegut
24. GONE WITH THE WINDby Margaret Mitchell
25. LORD OF THE FLIESby William Golding
26. SHANEby Jack Schaefer
27. TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOLROOMby Nevil Shute
28. A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANYby John Irving
29. THE STANDby Stephen King
30. THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMANby John Fowles
31. BELOVEDby Toni Morrison
32. THE WORM OUROBOROSby E.R. Eddison
33. THE SOUND AND THE FURYby William Faulkner
34. LOLITAby Vladimir Nabokov
35. MOONHEARTby Charles de Lint
36. ABSALOM, ABSALOM!by William Faulkner
37. OF HUMAN BONDAGEby W. Somerset Maugham
38. WISE BLOODby Flannery O’Connor
39. UNDER THE VOLCANOby Malcolm Lowry
40. FIFTH BUSINESSby Robertson Davies
41. SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYINGby Charles de Lint
42. ON THE ROADby Jack Kerouac
43. HEART OF DARKNESSby Joseph Conrad
44. YARROWby Charles de Lint
45. AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESSby H.P. Lovecraft
46. ONE LONELY NIGHTby Mickey Spillane
47. MEMORY AND DREAMby Charles de Lint
48. TO THE LIGHTHOUSEby Virginia Woolf
49. THE MOVIEGOERby Walker Percy
50. TRADERby Charles de Lint
51. THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXYby Douglas Adams
52. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTERby Carson McCullers
53. THE HANDMAID’S TALEby Margaret Atwood
54. BLOOD MERIDIANby Cormac McCarthy
55. A CLOCKWORK ORANGEby Anthony Burgess
56. ON THE BEACHby Nevil Shute
57. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MANby James Joyce
58. GREENMANTLEby Charles de Lint
59. ENDER’S GAMEby Orson Scott Card
60. THE LITTLE COUNTRYby Charles de Lint
61. THE RECOGNITIONSby William Gaddis
62. STARSHIP TROOPERSby Robert Heinlein
63. THE SUN ALSO RISESby Ernest Hemingway
64. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARPby John Irving
65. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMESby Ray Bradbury
66. THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSEby Shirley Jackson
67. AS I LAY DYINGby William Faulkner
68. TROPIC OF CANCERby Henry Miller
69. INVISIBLE MANby Ralph Ellison
70. THE WOOD WIFEby Terri Windling
71. THE MAGUSby John Fowles
72. THE DOOR INTO SUMMERby Robert Heinlein
73. ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCEby Robert Pirsig
74. I, CLAUDIUSby Robert Graves
75. THE CALL OF THE WILDby Jack London
76. AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDSby Flann O’Brien
77. FARENHEIT 451by Ray Bradbury
78. ARROWSMITHby Sinclair Lewis
79. WATERSHIP DOWNby Richard Adams
80. NAKED LUNCHby William S. Burroughs
81. THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBERby Tom Clancy
82. GUILTY PLEASURESby Laurell K. Hamilton
83. THE PUPPET MASTERSby Robert Heinlein
84. ITby Stephen King
85. V.by Thomas Pynchon
86. DOUBLE STARby Robert Heinlein
87. CITIZEN OF THE GALAXYby Robert Heinlein
88. BRIDESHEAD REVISITEDby Evelyn Waugh
89. LIGHT IN AUGUSTby William Faulkner
90. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NESTby Ken Kesey
91. A FAREWELL TO ARMSby Ernest Hemingway
92. THE SHELTERING SKYby Paul Bowles
93. SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTIONby Ken Kesey
94. MY ANTONIAby Willa Cather
95. MULENGROby Charles de Lint
96. SUTTREEby Cormac McCarthy
97. MYTHAGO WOODby Robert Holdstock
98. ILLUSIONSby Richard Bach
99. THE CUNNING MANby Robertson Davies
100. THE SATANIC VERSESby Salman Rushdie

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

"Everyone believes the world's greatest lie."

"What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised.

"It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.  That's the world's greatest lie."

Not going to say much about The Alchemist.

It's the story of a shepherd boy in Spain, who one days meets a king who tells him there's a treasure waiting for him at the Pyramids in Egypt.  He tells the boy that it is his destiny to seek and find that treasure.  

So the boy sells his sheep and departs for Africa and crosses the Sahara to get to Egypt.  The book is the journey, and it's almost myth-like.  

I enjoyed this book.  

Go Tell it on the Mountain ~ James Baldwin

Well, it's been a good while.  I've been finding it a little difficult to write lately, but I've been wanting to get back to it.  So here goes...

James Baldwin is becoming a favorite of mine.  I've been slow to discover him - I read Sonny's Blues in high school, then it took me fifteen years to discover Giovanni's Room & Go Tell It On the Mountain.  What I most admire about him is his willingness to examine, and follow his thoughts where they take him.  That's been true of all his works that I've read, but it was especially true of this book.

Go Tell It On the Mountain is a coming-of-age story and semi-autobiographical of Baldwin.  It's about origins, about the people you are born of and how their story, preoccupations and troubles can consume your life before it even begins.  John Grimes is the central character, he is a fourteen year old boy living in Harlem in the 1920's.  His father, Gabriel Grimes, is a preacher and his mother, Elizabeth, is a homemaker.  John has three other siblings.

The book begins with John's perspective (called "The Seventh Day").  It's his birthday, and he has to spend it doing his Saturday morning chores.  He feels defeated and stifled by a house that never really gets cleaned and by an abusive, overlord father.  He thinks his mother forgot his birthday and is angry with her.  While he's sitting in the kitchen with her he begins to criticize her in his mind - to him, she is looking old, worn-out and has relinquished the best parts of herself to a dominating husband.  His thoughts are very keen, and he is able to disregard most emotional attachment.  Although I liked seeing so much maturity and willingness to put aside childish things in such a young child - the scene alienated me a little from John as a realistic narrator.  There's nothing more challenging than learning to objectively criticize your family of origin.

But his mother does remember his birthday, and gives him a handful of change to get whatever he'd like.  What follows is one of my favorite scenes in the book and, at risk of making this too long, I'm going to describe it a little.  John comes out of Harlem and enters Central Park.  He acts like an unleashed creature, and runs excitedly down a hill, bumping into an older man.  John's scared because the older man is white.  But the older man just smiles at him.  He walks along the outer edge of the park along 5th Avenue.  He watches the horse and carriages go by with their passengers.  He thinks about racism and about his father's fear of white men, while fervently establishing how he doesn't want to live in the same way. 

He thinks about how there are two worlds : the white world and the black world.  The latter is aware of suffering but the former exists oblivious to many of the world's realities.  He doesn't want to languish in the black world where people suffer for no gain.  Even if the white world is hollow, he wants to walk among it because of its luxuries.  He walks east towards 3rd Avenue where some movie theaters are and buys a ticket.  He selects a film noir featuring a femme-fatale.  John realizes that he doesn't dislike the woman at all.  He likes her for her boldness, he thinks her contempt of others is truthful.  She is herself and doesn't put on airs.  He realizes he admires her, and becomes fearful of what that means about his own character.   It's a wonderful scene of trying to find your way as a young person, of discovering your identity even if some of it scares you.  John mixes with the world around him, yet his thoughts remain private.  Not only is this scene really well-written and evokes a lot (especially if you've spent time in New York City), it establishes a lot about John who really is the story's main character.

The book changes course after that.  Oddly enough it forgets its protagonist completely.  It goes backward in time and focuses on a character who's only been briefly mentioned thus far: John's aunt, Florence.  Florence is sister to John's father. We learn of her struggles to leave home, and to be regarded for her skills/intelligence rather than as no more than a woman.  We see how much she tries to over-compensate for being treated as merely a buoy to bolster up the lives of men around her.  She does this by speaking out about everything - she tells her truth without fail and consequently alienates men who could be potential partners, but even women friends.  She's a know-it-all, too proud & very stubborn  but Baldwin wants you to see these traits as part of her attempt to overcome the deprivations of her young life.  Considering that will not change her fate, she is an older woman and alone & Baldwin suggests that will not change for her.

The next section focuses on Gabriel, John's father.  This section is too dense to touch upon, you'd simply have to read it.  But very basically it's about a young man trying to find something to dedicate his life to and the desire to have children.  As with Florence, Gabriel must work to find his way.

Then comes Elizabeth's prayer - she is John's mother.  The background of who John has descended from continues to be painted in and the reader begins to see how much pressure John is under.  This pressure is do to things that happened before he was even born, decisions that his parents made.  It makes it all the more important that John begin to be his own advocate & to differentiate himself from those who bore him.  The book continues it's strong writing and depiction of violent, racially motivated events in this family's life.

The final section is called, "The Threshing Floor."  I didn't know what a threshing floor was - if the same is true for you, you can go here.  Essentially, this is the process by which humans manually separate grain from the chaff (pre-machine days).  Not to get too lodged in the world of metaphor, but I do think that Baldwin's content in this part of the book is meant to be thematically exploring how what is of value is extracted from what is dead weight/superfluous.  In this section, questions of religion in John's life are answered.  Will he find God?  Will he be delivered from his past into a future worth living?

This final section can make for difficult reading.  John has a religious epiphany accompanied by esoteric visions that can be difficult to understand (especially for a literal-minded reader).  It remains a well-written story, but definitely gets tougher to read towards its end.

So basically, if you like coming of age stories, do not mind stories that have a religious aspect to it & like good writing than this book is recommended.  If not, you should pass.