Sherry Chandler

I learned this morning on NPR that Barbara Kingsolver has awarded the 2006 Bellweather Prize to Barbara Jordon for her novel Mudbound.

First I even heard of the prize, which Kingsolver established to support a literature of social change:

…issues of social responsibility have in recent decades held a less commanding place in U.S. literature than in the wider world. Social commentary in our art is frequently viewed with suspicion. Its advocacy does not fall within the stated goals of any major North American publisher, endowment, or prize for the arts. The Bellwether Prize was conceived to address this deficiency. We would like to see the place of conscience in our nation’s artistic landscape restored to the same high position it holds elsewhere in the world. By means of this prize we hope to enlist North American writers, publishers, and readers to share in this crucial endeavor.

I’m not sure why the 2006 award is just now getting coverage on NPR but I recommend the piece to you. You can listen to it here, along with some readings from the novel.

Hillary Jordan’s first novel, Mudbound, is a story of racism and well-kept secrets. Set on a desolate farm in the Mississippi Delta at the end of World War II, the novel explores the complex relations between two families: the owners of the land, and the sharecroppers who live and work on it.

…

Kingsolver says Mudbound is a beautifully written novel that examines the roots of racism through the distinct voices of its characters.

“I love that you understand everybody, even though everyone isn’t right, and in the long run some people are very wrong,” she says. “But you begin by feeling their own perspective, and you have some sympathy for every character.”

Jordan says Mudbound was inspired by her mother’s family stories of the year they spent on an isolated farm without running water or electricity. Eventually, it grew into a larger story with darker themes. But the first character she wrote about, Laura, was based on her own grandmother.

“I started out writing what I thought was going to be a short story in the voice of Laura,” Jordan says, “and as the story grew, I just found myself wanting to hear from other people. As the story got larger, as it embraced these other themes, these larger themes about war and about Jim Crow, I wanted to hear from those people.”

Me, too.

2008 awards are currently under review.

Speaking of novels of social conscience, today is the 69th anniversary of the publication of The Grapes of Wrath (in 1939).

I give you the red-winged blackbird I saw in top of a tree on Wednesday evening.

For more on the species, I recommend All About Birds. This guy might be the envy of Eliot Spitzer (or perhaps not):

The Red-winged Blackbird is a highly polygynous species, with one male having up to 15 different females making nests in his territory. In some populations 90% of territorial males have more than one female. But, from one quarter to up to half of the young in “his” nests do not belong to the territorial male. Instead they have been sired by neighboring males.

The grove encompasses half an acre. The sycamores are spindly from youth and crowding. The bush honeysuckle, grown ten feet tall, looks exotic and twisted as a giant Bonsai plant. Its canopy invites the cave-dwelling child in me. A wild grapevine the size of my arm twists along the grove floor like a creature out of “The Ancient Mariner.”

The stream crosses Ruddles Mills Road by culvert and runs through the neighbor’s place to debouch into Stoner Creek. Stoner Creek meets Hinkston Creek at Ruddles Mill, where they become the South Fork of the Licking, one of Kentucky’s pre-glacial rivers.