Man, I have been staring and re-reading the title of this post for about 5 full minutes trying to really wrap my head around it and trying to come up with a good answer. And while in my previous post I noted that I probably didn't give July's People a fair enough read, there was certainly parts of, like statements like that, that would catch me re-reading and thinking about. Or a passage, further along the same page discussing death as a relative place based on an individual's place in the economy, a "purchase", describing the wealthy white architect who could afford the private jet in which he crashed and then describing the elderly tribal grandmother who would work the land, bending lower and lower to the earth until she returned to it. It was certainly a novel about race that is teeming with tension when, just that quickly, roles are reversed.
The story is about the Smales family and their servant July. The Smales are a liberal, upper class, white family in Johannesburg (Bam, Maureen, Gina, Victor, and Royce) who are forced to flee the city during a (fictional) violent civil war overturning the system of apartheid (note: Nadine Gordimer wrote the book prior to the end of apartheid, therefore, this was her fictionalization/prediction of what she thought might happen) and are aided by their loyal black servant of 15 years, July. He helps smuggle them out of the city during the fighting and takes them to his village a couple hundred miles away. Once there, they are now the minority and have to live according to July's rules and the ways of the village in order to survive. During this time they confront the immediate loss of comfort, living in huts with dirt ground and bathing in the river, and the fact that many of the other villagers (mostly the women) don't necessarily want them there. And they are living in absolute fear, knowing that many friends and other upper class whites in Johannesburg were killed, so knowing that if they are discovered, they may very well face the same fate.
Amongst all of this is the incredibly complex changing relationship they now face with July, in particular, Maureen (as she is the main narrator). The change in power dynamic, and the levels of trust that both of them have to demonstrate, which is tested many times. In the city as the head of the household, Maureen was generally the one who provided the orders to July, and now, in his tribe, gender roles are far different, which Maureen must adjust to. And back in the city, July had a mistress which Maureen knew about, and now back in his tribe, July must trust Maureen to maintain that secret from his wife. They must also entrust the keys to their truck to July, which could potentially be their only lifeline to getting out of the village if something were to happen.
The racial dynamics during the time of apartheid in South Africa are so well explored in this book in such a simple way and again, there was so much tension. You wanted to believe that because these characters knew each other for so long they would trust each other and everything would work out, but there was absolutely no certainty in that. And while the book was relatively short, it was the kind of book where I felt like every word was so much more deliberate than I was probably giving it credence. Again, the fact that I read this in a half-assed, less-than-focused way probably didn't allow me to get as much out of it as I probably could have. But I still found it engaging, nonetheless.
So after July's People, as I said, I devoured The Goldfinch. With this President's Day off, maybe I will get around to writing that badboy up too.
Oh and yeah, I'm only a couple stories into Dorothy Parker, and she's already a heroine. There is going to be a LOT that I'm going to have to say about her.
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