Juletane (Caribbean Writers Series)
While packing to move, Helene comes across Juletane's forgotten journal. Helene, a social worker, was given this journal to gain insights into Juletane's suffering and withdrawal from life. Helene didn't read it before; now she can't put it down. Juletane was born in the French West Indies; both her parents die before she is ten, and she is sent to Paris to live with a strict god-mother, whose death when Juletane is nineteen finally leaves her free and alone. Soon she meets and marries a West African, only to learn when she arrives in his homeland that she is his second wife. In France she and her husband shared the experience of being people of color in a predominately white society, but in West Africa, although she is the same color as those around her, Juletane can find nothing in common with the people or their customs. As she pours out her unhappiness in her journal - her village life, her interactions with the co-wives, her memories of the past - she discovers "that my life is not in pieces, that it had only been coiled deep down inside of me and now comes back in huge raging waves..." Helene, who has a geographic background similar to Juletane's, is a woman who feels very much in control of her life. As she reads Juletane's journal, Helene is forced to reconsider who she is and how she lives.-- For great reviews of books for girls, check outLet's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. --From500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith