The Living is Easy
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
This stunning first novel by the author of The Wedding is one of only a handful of novels published by black women during the 1940s. It tells the story of Cleo Judson—daughter of southern sharecroppers and wife of "Black Banana King" Bart Judson. Cleo seeks to recreate her original family by urging her sisters and their children to live with her, while rearing her daughter to be a member of Boston's black elite.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harlem Renaissance writer West (1907 1998) first published this biting satire of the Black upper class in 1948, almost 50 years before her second book, The Wedding. The novel tackles the elitist values bred among its marginalized characters when they are left with limited opportunities for upward mobility. Cleo Judson, Southern daughter of sharecroppers, is now married to wealthy "Black Banana King" Bart Judson and lives in Boston, where she is determined to become a member of Boston's Black elite, those who take pride in living next to white people and are unnerved by the advancing migration of Blacks from the South, driving them "to escape this plague of their own locusts." Cleo manipulates Bart into sending money to her sisters and into buying a 10-room mansion for them all to live in, the capstone in a spending spree that sets Bart up for financial peril after WWI threatens his business. With her sisters and their children under her roof, Cleo determines to assert her will on them as the house of cards begins to sway. Skillful prose and unmitigated societal critique will keep readers engaged to the end. West's essential classic continues to endure.
Customer Reviews
A Feminist Anti-Hero
In THE LIVING IS EASY, Cleo is a mother and wife in Boston in 1914. The novel starts with a description of her early life and how she was sent north from Carolina where she met her husband, Bart. Cleo is ambitious and trying to move up in status and class. Her husband is the banana king of Boston who makes money from bananas ripened in underground chambers. Cleo negotiates moving into a ten story house on the other side of town, explaining to her husband they can rent the rooms to boarders. Soon, Cleo convinces her three sister and their children to leave their husbands and the south to move in with her.
This book was difficult for me to get into. I didn’t start appreciating the rhythm until Chapter 4 when the plot started picking up. Cleo is a type of anti-hero not common in literature. She’s a black woman during World War I. She doesn’t have many opportunities herself so she manipulates her husband, friends, neighbors, her child, to get what she wants. Cleo is obsessed with color, status, and class and will do almost anything to move up. This novel explores large themes of race, colorism, feminism, class. Cleo is not likable, but I wonder if this is only because she’s a black woman. If she were a white business man, would she just be resourceful? That’s the question the reader carries through this book.
This novel feels like a first novel to me, everything is thrown into this book (and maybe West didn’t think she’d get another shot. She didn’t publish another book until the 1990s.) I don’t think this novel was well written. The sentences are clunky. The paragraphs are structured in a way that do not build suspense. However, I like that Cleo is a full character with flaws and strengths. I am very happy I read this book and I recommend this because we don’t have many books by black women from this time. We picked this book for the Spilling Tea book club for Black History month. If you want to read with us, send me a DM.▪️