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The Pedestal Magazine -</i>Juanita Torrence Thompson's <i>Celebrating a Tapestry of Life</i>...reviewed by Barbara Hantman
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Juanita Torrence Thompson's Celebrating a Tapestry of Life...reviewed by Barbara Hantman |
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Celebrating a Tapestry of Life
Juanita Torrence-Thompson
Torderwarz (2003)
92 pages
ISBN number: 0-9652892-1-4
Reviewer: Barbara Hantman
How heartening that Mrs. Torrence-Thompson can hear her grandmother's sublime words: "Love your fellow man" ("Litany of Life"). "Nana's" magnanimity harmonizes with a high-minded American tradition that can be traced back to George Washington's letter to congregants of Rhode Island's Touro Synagogue: the firm intention to give "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." The most incisive poems in this volume, which are represented in the opening section, explore the gap between this noble ideal and actual experience-- a tragic fact of everyday life for Americans of dusky hue.
In "Why Aren't We In History Books?" the author exposes the mean-spiritedness of mainstream curriculum that has denied such creative and supremely accomplished individuals as Wells, Bolin, Drew, Latimer, Banneker, and Morgan their rightful place in our national pantheon of ground-breaking heroes worthy of homage. In "Summer Job Interview at Woolworth's" a job interviewer who was warm on the phone "ices over ... doodles and eyes her watch" when presented with the "exotic" applicant in the flesh. "Land of the Free" presents the reader with a query:
Had "Lady Liberty"
Been in the harbor
Would cruel masters
Have dared to bring
Slave labor
To build this country?
A peach in a spoiled child's lunchbox becomes a missile for thwarting desegregation. The assassination of JFK is felt more intensely by the narrator than her co-workers, for:
My God, this can't be true
We've lost our civil rights advocate
First Lincoln, now Kennedy. ("The Day JFK Died")
But what would the "tapestry of life" be without lighthearted threads of joy acting as balm to soothe disappointments and bind our soul's wounds? Knowing this, the author finishes her weft by including the delightful perfume of "fish, plantain and hot biscuits" for breakfast ("That Intricate Smell"). A family picnic almost marred by intermittent rain and sunshine that "plays upon New England curvy roads weaving among the meadows and still lakes" has her good-natured clan "laughing hysterically" ("The Picnic Game"). "Hats" belonging to parents reveal a mother's demure, gentle femininity and a father's spiffy, confident manhood. Finally, there is the innocence and euphoria of "Soweto Wedding."
Start in woe, end in joy: Mrs. Torrence-Thompson should be thanked for lending us her lucid, transcendent eye.
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