Wednesday, December 2, 2015

" I'd like to think there is a separate section of Heaven where us Negroes get to go."


Another excerpt from 2016 Man Booker Prize Winner "The Negro of Madison County."

Sarah Lowenstein watches the snow begin to fall again, as if answering a question she never asked. Or perhaps was afraid to ask. As her dentist husband slept in the upstairs bedroom Sarah's mind once again slipped wistfully into the past, to that One Hot Summer in 1957 in Madison County...

"Miss Sarah, I cants believe that this was the last time I will ever make love to you."

"Oh, my Mandingo, this World is too Hard for a Love like ours. I will always remember this tin shack behind the junkyard, with the bucket of chicken bones beside the stained mattress on the dirty dirt floor."

"I had dreams, Miss Sarah. We'd add a second floor to this shack and make it a real home -- a Real Home, just for us. Maybe even indoor plumbings."

"That is a beautiful thought, my Love. But the World will never accept a white woman going beneath her station in life to marry a negro."

"Miss Sarah?"

"Yes, my Love?"

"Do you think it will always be this way? Do you think, fifty years from now, that a white woman and a negro could live together in Love, and the World would accepts it?"

"My silly Mandingo. Not in a million years. God would never let a white woman live peacefully with a Negro, or even a Chink or a Jap or a Jew. I am destined for a Life of God's Gift of Whiteness; I just hope He doesn't send ALL Negroes to Hell. I don't think I could bear it, knowing my Mandingo was spending eternity in a Pit of Fire with the other Negroes."

"That's horrible to even think, Miss Sarah! I'd like to think there is a separate section of Heaven where us Negroes get to go."

"Even if it wasn't as beautiful as White Heaven I'd like to think God would let that happen."

"Yeah, that'd be nice."

"But the Negroes that rape white women would still go to Hell."

"Of course, Miss Sarah: of course..."

I am Laslo.

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