Ginny Gall
Delvin, Ginny Gall’s African-American protagonist, is born in 1913 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His mother, a “good-time gal,” has to disappear fast when she’s accused of killing a white man. The proprietor of a funeral home takes Delvin in, and there he learns about dignity and empathy – but then history repeats itself, and he is himself forced to flee to save himself from false accusations.
It’s the Great Depression, and Delvin is hoboing rides on trains when he and others are accused of raping two white women: a part of the story closely modeled on the true story of the Scottsboro Boys, the nine African-American young men accused of raping a white woman on a train in 1931. Now Delvin is imprisoned in those Southern prisons that weren’t about justice but were about replacing slavery to provide the South with free labor.
Smith, a white writer, has done something incredibly brave here: basing his story in the world of African-Americans trying to survive the brutality of the 1930s Jim Crow South. Smith brings his young black protagonist to life in that world with details that are overwhelming, heart-wrenching, matter-of-fact, and specific. Smith is a poet as well as a novelist, and his language is Shakespearean in Ginny Gall, his images rich, and his story true.
This is a classic, a brilliant story about America’s original sin – racism – and how a smart and good boy grows to manhood without losing his own humanity in those beastly times. I didn’t “fall in love with” Delvin, I rather loved him and cared about him, because he felt like a friend, like family, in trouble. One trouble after another. Recommended.
