Racism, Antisemitism and Colorism in Romantic, Historical Novel 'Returning The Bones' Sheds Light on How Hate Groups Function
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Posted By: Reginald Culpepper on June 09, 2023 In her debut historical fiction novel, Returning The Bones (Wheatmark,June 2023,ISBN 9798887470573), Gin Hammond regales readers with an epic, globe-trotting adventure inspired by her Aunt Caroline (aka Bebe), an African American, barrier-breaking doctor from the small town of Bryan, Texas, who was determined to lead a quiet life as a librarian, until a life-altering family tragedy forced her to choose whether to follow in her father’s footsteps and take over his role as a civil rights crusader or to at last pursue her own deferred dreams. Returning The Bones is also a love letter to the role of historically Black colleges and universities in African American history, and an ode to the passionate romance she fought for despite her family’s objections. Bebe, a bookworm with an outlandish imagination, lives a peculiarly privileged life for a Black girl during the Great Depression. Her fearless father owns a hospital and an array of businesses, making him a keen target of the KKK. Her home life is filled with a panoply of distinctive family members, including: a psychic mother, a terrifying “spinster” aunt who’s having a secret affair with the local white sheriff, a renegade librarian aunt, a grandmother who might be the great-great Granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton, and Grandmother Betty, a Cherokee medicine woman who suffers no fools. Guilt over the death of a beloved family member quenches Bebe’s ability to rebel against her father’s suffocating expectations. A tempestuous relationship with her enigmatic boyfriend, and further challenges - both hilarious and heartbreaking - compound Bebe’s inability to live a life of her own choosing, until an unlikely opportunity in post-war Europe arises. Will Bebe relinquish dreams of being the architect of her own life, or abandon everything she’s ever known to reinvent herself in an unfamiliar world? Returning The Bones explores the question: How do you choose between your country, your people, and yourself? … and brings you on a journey of many miles, perspectives, and epiphanies. Some of the major themes running through the book include but are not limited to; Racism and Antisemitism are themes that run rampant throughout the book. Part of it is to demonstrate the normalization of it at that time, (30's -40's) and what Blacks and Jews were up against, and part of it is to show that Jews and Blacks have more of a shared history than we tend to remember. “Passing” also plays a role in Returning the Bones. Not only in African American culture, where the term passing refers to being light-skinned enough to pass for white. Passing can happen in many respects. One of the characters, Ben, passes as a WASP when he’s Jewish, and is not comfortable admitting even to himself that he is Jewish. The story also shines a light on how hate groups have tried to exterminate Jews and Blacks in different ways. The author said that what hit her the most was the day she learned that both the Nazi’s and the Apartheid government in South Africa modeled their policies after the U.S.’s Jim Crow laws. Bebe’s trip with some of her fellow students to the empty concentration camps relates to the role of racism and antisemitism in the book, but also to the fact that Fake News was alive and well back in those times too. And it wasn’t just white, anti-semetic people. “Even at Howard University Gin’s aunt said, “you would hear some people say that there was no Holocaust. That it was all made up.” Since starting my work on the book, it seems there has been a rise in Holocaust deniers. Themes of power and vulnerability also weave their way into the story too. In the first few pages, it’s made clear that Bebe’s father is shockingly powerful for a Black man in the American South in the 1930’s: he’s a physician with his own clinic, rental houses, a lumber company, a cafe, and more. And yet he’s still living in the Jim Crow era, receiving frequent death threats from whites, as well as the disapproval of Blacks in the community when he tries to shake things up too much during his civil rights meetings and they end up bearing the collateral damage. The fragility of her father’s situation is reflected in the parallel story of Max Erlich, who was close to one of Bebe’s Jewish friends. Like Dr. Hammond, he was wealthy, well-connected, and thought he could outsmart the Nazis, who based many of their ideas in American’s Jim Crow laws. Unfortunately, Max Erlich ended up perishing at Auschwitz. The book was originally written as a play, which has been performed at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, The Book-It Repertory in Seattle, and the Summer Play Festival (SPF) in Seattle. Here's a link to an excerpt of the play: https://youtu.be/oI9XnQ1dtcE More information is available on returningthebones.com. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gin Hammond is an award-winning Harvard University/Moscow Art Theatre grad. She teaches, directs, writes and has performed onstage both nationally and internationally. Returning The Bones was adapted into a Gypsy Rose Lee and Gregory Award-nominated play after a decade of interviews with the main character, her beloved Auntie Bebe. Gin is also a voice teacher, dialect coach, and voice-over artist known for her work in video games such as DoTA, BattleTech, Dayton, and State of Decay. She is also co-founder of MFA:meditationsforactors.com, a mobile meditation app specifically for actors. ABOUT THE BOOK The book was originally written as a play, which has been performed at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, The Book-It Repertory in Seattle, and the Summer Play Festival (SPF) in Seattle. ABOUT THE AUTHOR’S AUNT, CAROLINE BEATRICE HAMMOND MONTIER (BEBE) Bebe was a pioneer in her field, worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, was among the first African American women to helm a hospital, received a degree in psychiatry from Yale, and was invited to President Obama’s first inauguration. If you enjoyed this article, Join HBCU CONNECT today for similar content and opportunities via email! |
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Reginald Culpepper
President, Fulfillment and Web Services, HBCUCONNECT Clark Atlanta University class of 1998 Member Since September 2000 |
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