Green Thursday

Julia Peterkin's connected set of stories tells of the travails of rural blacks at the beginning of the 20th century buffeted by every kind of misfortune: natural, man-made, and spiritual. A rooster plucks out the eye of a child in a crib; an old woman burns down a neighboring house to preserve her own; pangs of an unmentionable love stir in an adolescent girl. Peterkin's use of black dialect -- "ebry," "gwine," etc. -- is a legitimate technique, but taken to extremes it brings a choppiness to the text that dialogue pitched slightly more toward standard English would avoid. Still, Peterkin was the one who lived on a plantation, and listened to the stories, and her sensitivity shines through.