Gone Crazy in Alabama
Series: One Crazy Summer, Book 3
By: Rita Williams-Garcia / Narrated By: Sisi Aisha Johnson
Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
Oh gosh how I’ve LOVED this Trilogy!!!
I dunno if maybe you’ve noticed it: I do Teens literature, yes, but noooo: Sometimes Teens is just too gosh-darned angsty for me. But Middle Grade lit?
Yesssss!
And the Gaither sisters? Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern?
Yesssss!!!!
Our little audiobook listening club hit the milestone: This, Gone Crazy in Alabama, the final book in the Trilogy. And oh how very sad we are.
Still in one of America's most turbulent eras, the 60s, Delphine and her little sisters leave Brooklyn for waaaay rural Alabama to visit their grandmother Big Ma, their great-grandmother Ma Charles, and to see how their Uncle Darnell is, after his stint at the VA dealing with drug addiction. They’ve already been dealing with Oakland’s strong Black Panthers earlier, then with Vietnam’s personal collateral damage more recently, and now the newly Black Power girls (As opposed to Big Ma’s use of Colored) are off to a place in the country where saying Black Power could get you killed. This is the reality their grandmother and their father have come from. Maybe their mother Cecile could step away to be her own person, but independence to Big Ma and Pa? Independence could literally mean a lynching where it takes awhile for Delphine to understand that the Sheriff is the Law by day but rides by night on a horse and in a robe and hood.
Yes it’s “Oppression” to have to say “Yes Suh, Yes Suh,” over and over to the whites, esPECially the Sheriff. But No, one simply does it to get along. It’s the way of the South, and it’s “Alabama Crazy” as Delphine soon discovers. It’s a whoooole ‘nother way of life down there.
In this final installment, Delphine is still catching all sorts of holy hell for just trying to be a kid every now and again. And once again, it’s been put on her to keep her little sisters in line, which is almost impossible given Vonetta truly coming into her own here. Vonetta, li’l actress that she is, canNOT help but take center stage as the sisters come and go between the OTHER warring sisters Ma Charles and Miss Trotter. Ms. Vonetta takes their sniping gossip and backstories and family secrets and histories and drives everyone to distraction. Indeed, Vonetta became quiiiiite unlikable to me with her telling of tales, her backtalk, her taunting and tormenting of Fern. Each Gaither girl starts coming into their own in this book, with them all becoming less a trio and more three truly different girls with strong personalities. Even little Fern is turning all stubborn as she discovers her conscience and learns that “meat” was once living, breathing, loving animals—she fully becomes her poet name of Afua then and turns out some fine poetry that expresses her discontent.
Delphine, who gets it from the grownups and gets it from her sisters, is kinda at sea here. She receives assistance from no one, and finally she’s had it and puts her foot down and reeeeeally tries to check Vonetta. Unfortunately, it makes Vonetta disappear in a huff… right before a tornado hits… and Vonetta really and truly disappears then.
This is where the strength of family, the friendship of neighbors comes to play. Cuz down South, they’re nothing if not all about helping loved ones out. Could Ma Charles and Miss Trotter be reunited? By the devastation a storm leaves behind? Could Cecile leave her Oakland stomping grounds to see about her daughter? Would it be enough for her and Pa to show a connection more than that of simple and oh-so-cold civility that Delphine wishes for?
And how about Marva, aka Missus? Delphine’s new stepmom? How does a morning sick women’s libber take to the South? How does she adjust to being married to a man who’s from the South, where the husband always gets to say how it goes? Is she well and truly stuck now that a baby is on the way?
So many questions, and poor Delphine has to struggle through it all, even as she tries to live with the consequences of her words, live with the possibility that the trio might just be a duo forever and ever as the days wear on. You can’t HELP but feel for Delphine!
Sisi Aisha Johnson is a marvel yet again. How on earth can a single person do an entire family, generATIONs of folks so easily and so well? Whether it’s the sparring old ladies, the huffing Big Ma, strong Cecile (Okay, she’s NOT a Gaither, but she’s family!), to all three young girls, Ms. Johnson has their back and forth and their comings, their goings. Throw in Pa, Uncle Darnell, young cousin Jimmy Trotter, and neighbor (And Big Ma-wooing) Mr. Lucas, and Ms. Johnson does the male of our species AWEsomely also!
Not gonna tell you how it all ends, but ends this trilogy does. I’m soooo sad, even tho’ I can see now, having listened to the trilogy three times, that it’s at its conclusion as far as character delineation goes. Stilllll, our club started tossing around how it COULD possibly hit another book, a fourth, There are oh such possibilities with a baby brother or sister on the way. How could that NOT affect Delphine, one of the strongest and most likable characters ever?
Uhm…
You listening, Ms. Williams-Garcia? You reading this? May I BEG for another?!!!
Pleeeeeeeeeeze?!?
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