White Romance A - Hardcover

Hamilton, Virginia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399212132 ISBN 13: 9780399212130

Publisher: Philomel, 1987

Synopsis

As her all-black high school becomes more racially mixed, Talley befriends a white girl who shares her passion for running and becomes romantically involved with a drug dealer.

About this title

About the Author:

Virginia Esther Hamilton was born, as she said, "on the outer edge of the Great Depression," on March 12, 1934. The youngest of five children of Kenneth James and Etta Belle Perry Hamilton, Virginia grew up amid a large extended family in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The farmlands of southwestern Ohio had been home to her mother's family since the late 1850s, when Virginia's grandfather, Levi Perry, was brought into the state as an infant via the Underground Railroad.

Virginia graduated at the top of her high-school class and received a full scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs. In 1956, she transferred to the Ohio State University in Columbus and majored in literature and creative writing. She moved to New York City in 1958, working as a museum receptionist, cost accountant, and nightclub singer, while she pursued her dream of being a published writer. She studied fiction writing at the New School for Social Research under Hiram Haydn, one of the founders of Atheneum Press.

It was also in New York that Virginia met poet Arnold Adoff. They were married in 1960. Arnold worked as a teacher, and Virginia was able to devote her full attention to writing, at least until daughter Leigh was born in 1963 and son Jaime in 1967. In 1969, Virginia and Arnold built their "dream home" in Yellow Springs, on the last remaining acres of the old Hamilton/Perry family farm, and settled into a life of serious literary work and achievement.

In her lifetime, Virginia wrote and published 41 books in multiple genres that spanned picture books and folktales, mysteries and science fiction, realistic novels and biography. Woven into her books is a deep concern with memory, tradition, and generational legacy, especially as they helped define the lives of African Americans. Virginia described her work as "Liberation Literature." She won every major award in youth literature.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 8 Up Hamilton's novel works on at least five levels: within the personality of the protagonist, within her immediate circle, within her setting of school and neighborhood, between her world and the intrusive white world, and between the novel and the reader, especially if that reader is unfamiliar with the details of black urban American life. Talley's formerly all-black high school has been converted to an integrated magnet school for the entire district. This means an influx of white students. The culture shock is immediate and prolonged. Add to the mix drugs, heavy metal rock, Talley's struggles to establish her own values, and an almost unbearable level of adolescent sexual tension, and you have a very potent brew indeed. Talley and her circle of friends are effectively portrayed: Didi, her white best friend, hopelessly involved with Roady, who is crippled both in mind and body through drug use; David, his dealer, who now has his eye on Talley; and Victor, who is attempting to save her from her fixation on David. The setting of school corridors, city streets, and a rock concert right out of Hieronymous Bosch is equally real. The use of black English throughout may be a challenge to some readers, but is well worth the effort, since the book would be weakened in any other idiom. Not a happy book, but a vivid, even surrealistic and insightful depiction of painful relationships. Barbara Hutcheson, Greater Victoria Public Library, B.C., Canada
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Philomel
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0399212132
• ISBN 13: 9780399212130
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 191