It’s a touchy subject, understandably, but I think there are ‘good’ psychological reasons by some women kill their babies. But the mothers in these two novels would very much have liked to have kept theirs had circumstances allowed. In the first, set in a bruised post-war Japan, Naoko is sent to an extremely dodgy maternity home when she becomes pregnant by an American sailor. In the second, set between 1860 and 1910, the women on a Maryland plantation will do anything to avoid their children growing up as slaves.
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The Woman in the White Kimono by Ana Johns
Seventeen-year-old Naoko is in love with an American sailor, but that’s not going down well in late 1950s Japan, only a couple of years after the end of the American occupation. What’s more, the future of the family business rests on her marriage to another man. Without permission from either his superior officers or her parents, the couple marry in secret the night before Hajime’s ship leaves the port. Although willing to await his return, a crisis summons Naoko back to the family home. There, while accepting they won’t exactly rejoice in the prospect of a mixed-raced baby, she is devastated by the lengths to which her relatives seem prepared to go to expunge the perceived shame.
This poignant tale of honour and racism, based on real-life cases of infanticide and abandonment of babies whose eyes were the wrong colour and skin too light, is interspersed with the contemporary strand about an American woman travelling to Japan to investigate her father’s past. This device, with a character uncovering a family secret on the death of a parent, is reminiscent of Madeleine Bunting’s Island Song, and various other novels that don’t so readily come to mind. In most cases, and certainly in this, I’m much more interested in the historical narrative and find the bereaved daughter’s quest weakens the book. Ana Johns’ writing style verges on the melodramatic, so not for me, but seems to have done well on its release earlier this year in the US. Thanks to Legend Press for my review copy.
This poignant tale of honour and racism, based on real-life cases of infanticide and abandonment of babies whose eyes were the wrong colour and skin too light, is interspersed with the contemporary strand about an American woman travelling to Japan to investigate her father’s past. This device, with a character uncovering a family secret on the death of a parent, is reminiscent of Madeleine Bunting’s Island Song, and various other novels that don’t so readily come to mind. In most cases, and certainly in this, I’m much more interested in the historical narrative and find the bereaved daughter’s quest weakens the book. Ana Johns’ writing style verges on the melodramatic, so not for me, but seems to have done well on its release earlier this year in the US. Thanks to Legend Press for my review copy.
Remembered by Yvonne Battle-Felton
When Spring wakes to the smouldering ghost of her sister, she knows something’s wrong. Sure enough, the neighbourhood – where she’s lived since arriving in Philadelphia forty years earlier as a recently emancipated slave – is abuzz. The word is that her son, Edward, has driven a streetcar into a department store window and sparked a riot. How can this be when ‘coloureds’ aren’t allowed to operate the controls?
Sitting at his bedside in the rundown hospital, Spring relates the story of his origins, and hers. It starts with Ella, a feisty eleven-year-old from a free black family in Pennsylvania, abducted on her way home from church and transported to a Maryland plantation. She’s been brought in for ‘breeding’ purposes: Walker needs more workers but no babies have survived there since Agnes, now fourteen.
While Ella suffers numerous cruelties, including rape, Agnes’ foster mother, along with a coterie of other women, attempts to moderate the damage. But there’s no easy way of preventing more children being born into slavery: what Walker knows as ‘the curse’ is a meticulously orchestrated system of infanticide, suicide and poisonous herbs used as contraception. Nevertheless, both girls become pregnant, one to the girl who will go on to give birth to Edward, on the night they discover they’re free.
This familiar story of institutionalised injustice is given a fresh slant in Yvonne Battle-Felton’s focus on motherhood and the women’s determination to claw back a shred of autonomy within lives bounded by bigots’ whims. Structured around (genuine?) newspaper clippings from the era, with a distinctive voice, I welcomed the subtlety, despite still being unsure as to Edward’s exact motivation at the end. But there’s a strong thread of righteous anger; sometimes protest is the only sane response. Thanks to publishers Dialogue for my review copy.
My flash fiction piece “Return to Paradise”, published by Foliate Oak, also explores plantation life, this time from the perspective of a slave-owner’s son.
Sitting at his bedside in the rundown hospital, Spring relates the story of his origins, and hers. It starts with Ella, a feisty eleven-year-old from a free black family in Pennsylvania, abducted on her way home from church and transported to a Maryland plantation. She’s been brought in for ‘breeding’ purposes: Walker needs more workers but no babies have survived there since Agnes, now fourteen.
While Ella suffers numerous cruelties, including rape, Agnes’ foster mother, along with a coterie of other women, attempts to moderate the damage. But there’s no easy way of preventing more children being born into slavery: what Walker knows as ‘the curse’ is a meticulously orchestrated system of infanticide, suicide and poisonous herbs used as contraception. Nevertheless, both girls become pregnant, one to the girl who will go on to give birth to Edward, on the night they discover they’re free.
This familiar story of institutionalised injustice is given a fresh slant in Yvonne Battle-Felton’s focus on motherhood and the women’s determination to claw back a shred of autonomy within lives bounded by bigots’ whims. Structured around (genuine?) newspaper clippings from the era, with a distinctive voice, I welcomed the subtlety, despite still being unsure as to Edward’s exact motivation at the end. But there’s a strong thread of righteous anger; sometimes protest is the only sane response. Thanks to publishers Dialogue for my review copy.
My flash fiction piece “Return to Paradise”, published by Foliate Oak, also explores plantation life, this time from the perspective of a slave-owner’s son.
 | If you need something cheery after this heavy stuff, let me invite you on a virtual visit to our gorgeous garden meadows. |
| If you’re near Newark, Nottinghamshire, this Saturday, 13th July, do come and meet me at the Nottingham Writers’ Studio stall in the marketplace. If you’re shopping in Meadowhall the Saturday after, you can find me signing copies of my books at WH Smiths. |  |
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