A Sitting in St. James
By: Rita Williams-Garcia / Narrated By: Machelle Williams
Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
Not “Mesmerizing”! Not “A Masterpiece”! Not “Honest And Authentic”! Not ANY “…”!
Here’s how I like to set up reviews within our weekly newsletters:
I pretty much always put first, right up there, top o’ the list, my favorite Listen of the week. Nothing better than opening a series of reviews with an Almighty YOWZA!!! That said? Every now and again I come across a Listen that I’d eagerly anticipated, one with simply stunning reviews. Better yet? One that comes from an author I’m well-acquainted with and whose previous works… I’d aDORed. Rita Williams-Garcia would be that author.
A Sitting in St. James would be that Listen. And?
My disappointment, right here, right now, knows no bounds. Plus? This shows that Cultural Appropriation, oh so ironically, can go a MULtitude of ways. Yeh yeh yeh, whites ARE the Colonizers, but Williams-Garcia patently shows that an entire huuuge culture can be written reeeeally quite poorly. Dunno why she chose to even tho’ the Author’s Note at the end gives her thoughts on her attempt -BUT-
There you are.
And what cracks me up, what absoLUTEly boggles my mind are the negative reviews that ding this enTIREly feeble flailing for being tooooo violent, tooooo graphic, tooooo sexually explicit. They say things like: Yeh yeh yeh, the history of the U.S. MUST be known, but this is entirely too much for teens and, well, anyone.
Ooooh, how I disagree. This made me wince, this 13 1/2-hour feeble flailing with ridiculously lame word-smithing, the two-dimensional characters, the complete lack of even an attempt to depict the horrors of enslavement.
But let’s get to what we have as far as Story goes because I do believe my head would explode were it not for the fact that listening to this was as thrilling, as hard-hitting, as gut-wrenching as listening to elevator music.
After falling from the heights during the French Revolution, Sylvie married as well as possible, was taken to the New World, and is now the grande dame of Le Petit Cottage, a plantation in Louisiana. She’s desperately clung to her belief that she should’ve been breathing the rarified air on a vineyard her family owned in France. As things stand, the Guilbert family are baaaarely holding on, and they loathe each other. Her son Lucien is a gadabout impregnating all the slaves; her grandson Byron is to marry well to save their way o’ life and bring honor to the family (Too bad he’s desperately in love with a fellow Cadet from West Point—yeh a bit o’ sex but dude! if it doesn’t make MY toes curl, one can be fair certain it ain’t all that bad… unless you squirm at the thought of homosexuality). The family, to help line the depleted coffers, takes in Jane, a Man-Woman, raised by a long dead Papa who’d desperately wanted a son and found that in her (She’s actually the best, most fleshed-out character in the book). She gets into all sorts of scrapes where Williams-Garcia gets to show how much different it was to be a woman in the South than a man.
And then, to cap off a last-gasp Ball, Madame Sylvie wishes to unveil a portrait she’s been sitting for.
And that’s it.
Seriously.
Mostly this is the flimsiest of story-crafting, an occasional mention of: I’ll Send You To Cuba! to show how tenuous existence was, how much worse things could get. AND THEN: Williams-Garcia, seeing as she for some reason does NOT use the writing skills she possesses (Think: One Crazy Summer series!!!), has the ridiculousness to Break The Fourth Wall and directly addresses us with a Dear Reader, Can You Imagine How Horrible This Must Have Been? … Uhm… well, I HAVE to imagine it cuz you, m’ dear, sure as heck didn’t SHOW it. Always Show, Don’t Tell. And NEVER TELL About The Poor Telling You Were Doing Since You Never Showed ANYthing In This Entire Book…
And egad! let’s get on to the From-The-First-Few-Seconds Boooo! narration. Again, I’d been so spoiled by William-Garcia’s earlier use of Sisi Aisha Johnson and how wonderful Ms. Johnson is. Sooo, I was expecting, esPECially this first and most important foray into Historical Fiction for an older audience, someone ZOUNDS!!! and WOW!!! Nope, got a monotone for the most part, like she was reading street directions for GPS (Turn Right For 13 1/2-Hours, And Your Destination Of NOWHERE Will Be On Your Left…). The men were caricatures, her French accents were riDICulous (No, really, William-Garcia? You suuuure ya wanna write something from Louisiana without experience of the land and culture? You suuuure ya wanna get Machelle Williams to just “wing it” like this is her first HALTING reading of your work?).
-BUT- Good Thing? Seeing as Machelle Williams can’t do intensity or rawness? Well, it worked out well seeing as William-Garcia didn’t write ANY intensity or rawness.
Dunno why people found this so powerful when there was no power to be found.
Dunno, but maybe I found this to be soooo WOEfully inadequate because Big Sis and I juuuust listened to The Darkest Child which was GORGEOUSLY written, absolutely BRUTAL (Besides sumptuous writing/word choice/imagery, that author wrote so very well you weren’t just listening, you were THERE, WITHIN the characters!), and dude! EXQUISITELY narrated. Maybe ANYthing that was s’POsed to be “shocking and dramatic” and was NOT? would earn my almighty Booooo!s…
So, I’m ending with the most desperate, most heartfelt plea EVER: PLEASE, Rita Williams-Garcia! Go back to hard-hitting Kids books. Gads, those? Are magNIFicent! And PLEASE, do NOT use Machelle Williams Ever. Again! Certainly not if you want a powerhouse reading.
Just?
DO get that powerhouse writing thing down first…
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