Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
This was an excellent book! It was in the running for our Zoom Reading Circle summer 2022 but didn’t quite make it to the top. So I was thrilled when it was chosen for our ‘fill in’ month of Feb.
The story follows a woman named Eleanor Bennett, who before she dies leaves an audio for her two children sharing about her childhood and into her young adult years. She tells them secrets she has kept for her whole life and asks both their forgiveness and offers a request for moving forward. All of this plays out against the ‘then and now’ story-telling of a young girl growing up in the Caribbean and the various hardships she faced (and what made her flee), to Byron and Benny’s stories in more modern times. The author slowly unfolded a story that held me rapt throughout... rooting for the main characters and marveling at their resiliency. This was a 5 star read for me, for sure. Zoom Reading Circle rated this book 4.7 stars.
This is now a mini-series on Hulu and I do plan to watch. But wanted to read the book first. Glad I did!
Some of my favorite passages from the book...
And what about a person’s life? How do you make a map of that? The borders people draw between themselves. The scars left along the ground of one’s heart.
Sometimes, the stories we don’t tell people about ourselves matter even more than the things we do say.
...but she saw that who you knew yourself to be on the insdie was not the same as how others saw you. Who you knew yourself to be wasn’t always enough to help you make it in this world.
...nothing else she did would ever bas as important as this, this raising up of a decent young person and sending them into the world. Because the world needed decent, even more than it needed brillian, which her son also happened to be.
Terrain and climate aside, food was often about who had colonized whom, who had been based where during wartime, who had been forced to feed what to their children when there was nothing else left. And, of course, it was about geography, too.
The three of them sit there silently for a moment, thinking nof small but profound inheritances. Of how untold stories shape people’s lives, both when they are withheld and when they are revealed.
Note from author - ...black cake, that led obliquely to this book. It started me thinking about the emotional weight carried by recipes and other familial markers that are handed down from one generation to the next.
from book club questions - The thing about identity. There’s your family history, there’s how you see yourself, and then there’s what others see in you.”
Discussion Questions our group looked at - among the general discussion (this book spurred a lot of that!)
Wilkerson writes, “Sometimes, the stories we don’t tell people about ourselves matter even more than the things we do say.” What does this mean in your life?
One of the characters in this book believes her father has stolen her destiny. Is such a thing possible?
At some point in this book, every character is an outsider. What makes each of them feel as if he or she belongs — or is at least standing on firm ground?
Following up on that very interesting thought about what we share and what we don’t... especially regarding our children... this article...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/books/group-text-black-cake-charmaine-wilkerson.html
I am sometimes wary of movies or TV shows made from books... but this one looks pretty good. Here are two trailers...
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