A story of survival and war; love and madness; loyalty and forgiveness; Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is an intimate exploration of Fuller’s parents; whom readers first met in Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight; and of the price of being possessed by Africa’s uncompromising; fertile; death-dealing land. We follow Tim and Nicola Fuller hopscotching the continent; restlessly trying to establish a home. War; hardship; and tragedy follow the family even as Nicola fights to hold on to her children; her land; her sanity. But just when it seems that Nicola has been broken by the continent she loves; it is the African earth that revives and nurtures her. Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is Fuller at her very best.Alexandra Fuller is also the author of the forthcoming novel; Quiet Until the Thaw.
#291609 in Books Penguin Books 2011-05-31 2011-05-31Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.40 x .90 x 5.50l; .72 #File Name: 0143119435384 pagesGreat product!
Review
43 of 43 people found the following review helpful. As it was - 1964 MississippiBy Steven BrodyBruce Watson talks about my teen years; in his "Freedom Summer." He talks about my people; as he describes one of the most significant years of the country's civil rights struggle. In the summer of 1964 I was a 14 year old Mississippi boy; actually; a Mississippi good-ol'-boy-in-training. The three civil rights workers were killed in my regional neighborhood. They were communist agitators; invading my land; stirring things up.Watson wasn't there; that hot; hot Mississippi summer; he really wasn't. But the reader of his "Freedom Summer" wouldn't know that; as they are transported in his narrative to that time and place.As I read Watson; it was; for me; mostly a poignant and painful reminder of my past; as he narrates my 1964 summer. I was there; and he will put you there; with me; as social forces transform the cultural landscape -- not just in Mississippi; but the very consciousness of the nation. "Freedom Summer" is that good.In a most compelling manner; Watson describes the hundreds of civil rights activists as they arrive in Mississippi; having no real idea as to the world they were entering; settling into towns and communities throughout the state. He puts the reader into the lives of the activists; as they help invigorate and support the black population to register to vote; as they are all spit upon; cursed; beaten; jailed; terrorized; and killed.In addition to the terror; Watson describes; in an equally compelling manner; the forever-kindled hope and commitment of both the outsider civil rights workers and the local black communities. One small victory after another; and another; he describes the joy of the movement from within.As in insider of that Freedom Summer; I know that Watson's description is more than fair. It is an accurate depiction of that time and place; as accurate a description as I have known. It will become an important contribution to the history of civil rights.48 of 49 people found the following review helpful. Just The Way It WasBy Ira Landess"Freedom Summer" is likely to be recognized as the definitive account of a seemingly all-but-forgotten but nevertheless enduringly transformative episode in American history. That I myself was a volunteer in the Mississippi Summer Project necessarily colors my perception; but I little doubt that a reader more objective of mind will draw the same conclusion. Bruce Watson; a meticulous journalist; takes you into every nook and cranny of Mississippi with an abundance of crackling anecdotage recounting the actualities that transpired during this unprecedented surge into a higher level of American democracy; and he does so with an imagination suggestive of the gift one expects of a novelist; so much so that; on the one hand; I found myself reading his compelling narrative as if I were entering Mississippi for the very first time; while on the other I was able to locate myself in the there-and-then of my actual experience as I was never able to do heretofore. He tells his story so empathically that; did I not know otherwise; I'd be thinking he himself was a Mississippi volunteer.Watson gives his tale luminous specificity by threading it through the experiences of four particular volunteers. We find out why they came to Mississippi; what they were thinking and feeling as they were either teaching in a freedom school or canvassing door-to-door for voter registrants; and how their Freedom Summer experience impacted their lives thereafter. Lurking with a tumescent tension behind the accounts of their unique travails is the tragic story of the disappearance and murder of the three advance-guard civil rights workers whose names--Schwerner; Chaney and Goodman--will forever be paradigmatic for the savageness that permeated Missssippi not only that summer but for all-too-many prior years as well.As an engaging counterpoint to the goings-on within Mississippi; Watson keeps us abreast of how the nation is responding to all that it's seeing and hearing; and how the federal government--J. Edgar Hoover; RFK; LBJ--struggles to cope with it; all of which adds to the tale a welcome historical perspective.19 of 19 people found the following review helpful. A Powerful Reminder of Those Hate-Filled YearsBy Bill EmblomThis is a powerful book; and reminds me of the excellent book written a few years ago entitled We Are Not Afraid. If you are a volunteer in any capacity don't ever say you are JUST a volunteer. The fact that you are working without pay aptly illustrates you are dedicated to doing a good job. The individuals involved in this 1964 Freedom Summer program in Mississippi are not widely remembered today for their efforts. That distinction goes to Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. However; these young individuals; many of them college students; who chose to spend their summer helping those who never had others who thought of them as anything worthy of a human being left their positive mark on history in an environment that looked upon them as interlopers to say the least.Mississippi was filled with domestic terrorists with names such as Rainey; Price; Killen; Roberts; and several others who would stop at nothing; including murder; to preserve their bigoted way of life. Judges and juries were such that justice was a farce in regard to matters regarding civil rights. Even though he masterminded the murders of James Chaney; Andrew Goodman; and Michael Schwerner; Edgar Ray Killen enjoyed several years of freedom because one of the jurors in his trial stated she could "never convict a preacher." You have to wonder why she was on the jury in the first place with that attitude. Several others eventually got off with light sentences several years later with some of them still out and about.These volunteers literally took their lives in their hands to correct the indignities that were taking place in the police state that was Mississippi. Young people today have a hard time believing that blacks and whites were not allowed to marry; attend school together; eat in the same restaurants; or having to duck down to prevent law officers from seeing mixed races riding in an automobile together.We have come a long way since those terror-filled years of the 1960s; but we still have a long way to go since bigotry still raises its ugly head when we turn on the news. We need to be vigilant to prevent returning to those days when an individual was judged by the color of their skin rather than by their character.This is an important book to remind us what others have gone through to achieve the gains that have been made in the area of civil rights. An outstanding DVD you may want to buy on this subject is entitled Murder in Mississippi. It is available here on .
