The Wind Done Gone FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
This ambitious novel has stirred up quite a bit of controversy for its poignant ridicule of one of our nation's most celebrated stories, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, which by now has achieved an almost mythic status in America's cultural history.
Many Americans are troubled by Mitchell's portrayal of life in the Antebellum South. Alice Randall read the novel as a young girl and loved it. But as the years passed, certain questions about the novel persisted in her mind and inspired the writer to imagine an alternate version of what life might actually have been like for African Americans living in the Atlanta of Gone with the Wind.
At the center of The Wind Done Gone is the beautiful and fiercely intelligent Cindy, an illegitimate mulatto woman who is unacknowledged by her father and ignored by her mother. Sold off by slaveholders, and eventually making her way back to Atlanta during Reconstruction, Cindy becomes involved with a white politician, only to leave him for a politician of her own color.
Endorsed by the likes of Quincy Jones, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Tony Earley, and Rita Mae Brown -- to name only a few -- The Wind Done Gone promises to leave an indelible mark on the literature of the early 21st century for its startling and realistic portrait of the South. Cindy's internal struggle to come to grips with her own identity as a woman of color mirrors our nation's own attempts to reckon with the horrifying and destructive legacy left behind by the institution of slavery.
(Cary Goldstein)
ANNOTATION
In a brilliant rejoinder and an inspired act of literary invention, Alice Randall explodes the world created in Margaret Mitchell's famous 1936 novel, the work that more than any other has defined our image of the antebellum South. Imagine simply that the black characters peopling that world were completely different, not egregious, one-dimensional stereotypes but fully alive, complex human beings.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Alice Randall explodes the world created in Margaret Mitchell's famous 1936 novel, the work that more than any other has defined our image of the antebellum South. Imagine simply that the black characters peopling that world were completely different, not egregious, one-dimensional stereotypes but fully alive, complex human beings. And then imagine, quite plausibly, that at the center of this world moves an illegitimate mulatto woman, and that this woman, Cynara, Cinnamon, or Cindy - beautiful and brown - gets to tell her story." "Cindy is born into a world in which she is unacknowledged by her plantation-owning father and passed over by her mother in favor of her white charges. Sold off like so much used furniture, she eventually makes her way back to Atlanta to take up with a prominent white businessman, only to leave him for an aspiring politician of her own color. Moving from the Deep South to the exhilarating freedom of Reconstruction Washington, with its thriving black citizenry of statesmen, professionals, and strivers of every persuasion, Cindy experiences firsthand the promise of the new era at its dizzying peak, just before it begins to slip away."--BOOK JACKET.
SYNOPSIS
In a brilliant rejoinder and an inspired act of literary invention, Alice Randall explodes the world created in Margaret Mitchell's famous 1936 novel, the work that more than any other has defined our image of the antebellum South. Imagine simply that the black characters peopling that world were completely different, not egregious, one-dimensional stereotypes but fully alive, complex human beings. And then imagine, quite plausibly, that at the center of this world moves an illegitimate mulatto woman, and that this woman, Cynara, Cinnamon, or Cindy -- beautiful and brown -- gets to tell her story.
Cindy is born into a world in which she is unacknowledged by her plantation-owning father and passed over by her mother in favor of her white charges. Sold off like so much used furniture, she eventually makes her way back to Atlanta to take up with a prominent white businessman, only to leave him for an aspiring politician of her own color. Moving from the Deep South to the exhilarating freedom of Reconstruction Washington, with its thriving black citizenry of statesmen, professionals, and strivers of every persuasion, Cindy experiences firsthand the promise of the new era at its dizzying peak, just before it begins to slip away.
Alluding to events in Mitchell's novel but ingeniously and ironically transforming them, The Wind Done Gone is an exquisitely written, emotionally complex story of a strong, resourceful black woman breaking away from the damaging world of the Old South to emerge into her own, a person capable of not only receiving but giving love, as daughter, lover, and mother. A passionate love story, a wrenching portrait of a tangled mother-daughter relationship, and a book that gives a voice to those history has silenced, The Wind Done Gone is an elegant literary achievement of significant political force and a novel whose time has finally come.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Think of Margaret Mitchell's epic Gone with the Wind condensed and told from the perspectives of Mammy and the Tara slaves, and you have Randall's debut novel. This sometimes cryptic but always fascinating story is narrated by Cynara (also Cinnamon or Cindi), the daughter of a slave and a white plantation owner. As the story unfolds, we learn of Cynara's hatred of the white half-sister she calls Other and the privileges bestowed upon Other yet denied Cynara even though they are raised side by side. Both sisters vie for the attentions of Mammy (Cynara's mother and Other's nanny) as children, and for the love of the same man as adults. Through the eyes of Cynara and the other now freed slaves, we get unique perspectives of life on a Southern plantation and of the Reconstruction era. Randall, an established country songwriter, uses language and idiom to haunting and poetic effect. Fans of Toni Morrison's Beloved will enjoy this well-written historical fiction. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/01; a trust for Margaret Mitchell's heirs has filed an injunction to stop this book's publication as a violation of copyright. Ed.] Karen Traynor, Sullivan Free Lib., Chittenango, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
AudioFile
The bestselling and critically acclaimed parody—or more accurate "correction" —of GONE WITH THE WIND, the first-person story of Rhet Butler's black mistress, is here read by the author. Randall writes far better than she reads. In her mouth, her clever, articulate deconstruction is only tedious. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Songwriter Randall's audacious, highly controversial (the Margaret Mitchell estate is not amused) debut retells Gone With the Wind from the point of view of Scarlett O'Hara's mulatto half-sister. Like many a slave child, Cynara was born out of wedlock, fathered by "Planter," the white man who owned her mother. She grew up in relatively protected circumstances, able to read and write (unlike her Mammy), her life holding an off-center mirror to the experiences of her famously headstrong white half-sister, here known only as "Other." Cynara's sly sketches of Dreamy Gentleman (Ashley Wilkes), Miss Mealy Mouth (the irritatingly saintlike Melanie), and a host of other supporting characters from the original enliven this pseudo-memoir. Cynara and R. (Rhett Butler) become lovers—what Other doesn't know won't hurt her, Cynara reasons. R. turns to her in secret when his beloved little daughter dies, but he refuses to give her the child of her own she yearns for. Openly his mistress after Emancipation, Cynara travels to Europe and throughout the South, meeting Frederick Douglass, colored congressmen, and other dignitaries of the new black elite, although she discovers that the mulatto mistresses of Confederate aristocracy have little standing in Negro society. The real story here, however, is the parallel lives of the sisters, whose fates are forever entwined. Cynara offers a shrewd assessment of her white Other, who "has the vitality, vigor, and the pragmatism of a slave, and into this water you stir as much refinement as you can without leaving any grains of sugar at the bottom of the glass. She was a slave in a white woman's body, and that's a sweet drink of cold water." But Cynara, aremarkable woman in her own right, outshines her on every page. Randall's vivid prose skillfully captures the color of a mind, which is something much subtler than skin shades of brown or black or white. Sure to outrage a few diehard traditionalists—and entertain everyone else.
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