“The Magnolia Palace”

 

New York City 1919

New York City 1966

Fiona Davis always draws me in. The history. The layers of fictional and non-fictional characters. The settings.

The Frick Mansion. The Gilded Age. The supermodel of the 1910s. An heiress. A suitor. An organist. A murder. The Magnolia Diamond. An intern. A wanna-be-model. Wealth. An unbelievable art collection.

The Frick mansion is the perfect backdrop for a juxtaposition between the ultra wealthy and the working class. The haves and have-nots. Impropriety. Social stigmas. Greed. Jealousy. AND a who-done-it! Jumping back and forth between 1919 and 1966 - seeing the Frick Mansion change from residence to art museum. The one constant throughout the novel is the artwork itself. 

Women breaking the mold. Facing the challenges of being “working girls.” Finding their way in a man’s world. Settling for nothing. Grabbing with both hands, until…

“The Undertaker’s Assistant”

 

1875. New Orleans. 

What we choose to remember from our childhood is but a snapshot. Events that live in our hearts. But what if those same pieces of our past were so ugly, those memories simply weren’t there? How could you live a life devoid of a past? What choices would you make? What if that past nawed at you? Jumped out at you in glimpses? 

Add to that the fact that you are a professional black woman in a community that doesn’t even see you. How do you reconcile your missing past with the future that you see for yourself? How will history write your chapter? Will it be “whitewashed”? Fitting a narrative that is far from the truth?

Jumping back to 1875. Post Reconstruction. Waiting another 90 years for anything close to being on equal terms with the community as a whole. That strong black woman, whose shoulders so many other women stood…

Seems odd that in 2024 we are fighting some of the same fights that Skenandore’s main character fought. Equal rights. Reproductive freedom. Remember the past. Learn from it. Work to make the future what we want, as women.

“Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions

A jigsaw puzzle. 

Pieces from Nigeria. Pieces from the United States. Pieces that fit perfectly. Pieces missing. Pieces that wouldn’t go together in my head as I read. Trying to follow where this story was going as each chapter unfolded proved difficult…like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together without a picture for reference. Pieces scattered all over the table. Some pieces dropped, lost.

In the end I found the author’s message about the future rather foreboding. I also found a piece missing from my own life: “…how little he needed me, how irrelevant I was in the grand scheme of his life.” (206) Those pieces are misshapen, making the puzzle impossible to complete.