{"id":37108,"date":"2015-02-24T10:04:20","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T15:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=37108"},"modified":"2017-11-01T21:54:46","modified_gmt":"2017-11-02T01:54:46","slug":"ruby-by-cynthia-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/ruby-by-cynthia-bond\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruby by Cynthia Bond"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ruby<\/a>How surprised was I to hear earlier this month that Oprah’s latest Book Club 2.0 pick<\/a> just happened to be on my iPod! I suppose the fact that I always have no fewer than a couple dozen books on my phone at all times makes the odds less slim, but still I was rather tickled to have such instant access. So, of course, I hit ‘play’ almost immediately and finished the 11.5 hours quickly (helps to have endless moving boxes to mindlessly unpack). In spite of that initial alacrity, I’ve needed these weeks of distance to actually set thoughts\u00a0to the screen … author Cynthia Bond<\/a>\u00a0herself\u00a0narrates, which makes her debut\u00a0that much more immediate … and, that much more relentless.<\/p>\n

Like (too) many of Oprah’s anointed picks (since 1996, 70 titles total in\u00a0the original incarnation; since 2012,\u00a0four in 2.0 mode<\/a>), Ruby<\/i>\u00a0exudes abuse and misery. [I haven’t parsed the exact numbers, but flipping through the 74 titles<\/a>,\u00a0many,\u00a0many<\/em>\u00a0are immediately recognizable as narratives of death and\/or destruction.]\u00a0Southern suffering seems to be\u00a0a recurring theme, and\u00a0Ruby<\/em> fits right in \u2013 her novel takes place mostly in a small East Texas town. That Bond reveals in a Q&A on her website<\/a>\u00a0the many autobiographical elements she used in Ruby<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 “scars,” “murdered,” “dehumanization,” “victim,” “horror,” “rage,” “torment”\u00a0\u2013 enhances the unbearable truth of Bond’s fiction. As gorgeously arranged as her words, phrases, sentences are, no letters in any formations\u00a0can mask the terror within.<\/p>\n

For all of his 45 years, Ephram Jennings has lived a life someone else has dictated: first his father, and then his sister who he calls Mama since losing their mother to a mental hospital decades earlier. When the one woman he’s never stopped loving returns to their hometown\u00a0\u2013 ironically, tragically named Liberty\u00a0\u2013 he’s finally determined to claim his independence to be with Ruby. The once lively, exquisitely beautiful girl is an unrecognizable, tormented woman who left Liberty to escape all\u00a0that destroyed the rest of her family, only to come home\u00a0to the same\u00a0exploitation and injustice. Liberty’s\u00a0men continue to debase her, the women judge and condemn her; only Ephram intends to save her.<\/p>\n

The past Ruby\u00a0inherits is filled with violence, gore, and utter inhumanity:\u00a0America’s racist history is laid wholly bare here. Ruby’s\u00a0own story begins in brutality and never abates:\u00a0the life she will live \u2013 at least in\u00a0these pages \u2013 barely rises above excruciatingly wretched. She’s initiated into horror\u00a0as a little girl amidst monstrous men of God in\u00a0a ritual so heinous as to induce insanity in an unintended spectator. Her adolescence is spent\u00a0trapped\u00a0in\u00a0underage trafficking as she’s\u00a0sold to murderous men, setting in motion an adulthood defined by manipulation and degradation. She carries with her the tortured souls of not only those she has lost, but the souls of all the motherless children who have no one else to cling to. Not even the dead, however, refrain from desecrating her\u00a0weakening body.<\/p>\n

Bond, who took 10 years to write this book, was 53 when it hit shelves in April 2014. In the past few weeks, surely she’s already\u00a0found that those who bypassed Ruby<\/em>\u00a0last year\u00a0are now returning in multiplying throngs as\u00a0Oprah-obeying\u00a0consumers. To track what percentage of\u00a0those ready book-buyers\u00a0become fully committed readers to the final pages\u00a0might\u00a0be interesting data to someday examine.<\/p>\n

Literature clearly provides a means to bear witness to tragedies, and even inspire demands for change, improvement, solutions. That said, at what point can bearing witness tip into voyeurism? At what point does relentlessness devolve into shutting down and turning away? Where Ruby<\/em> falls on that spectrum is not for me to determine; I can only confess that yes, I regret reading\u00a0Ruby<\/em> to the very end. It joins a growing number of exceptional titles on my ‘regret list’ …\u00a0because once seen, un-seeing is\u00a0impossible. Given her dexterity\u00a0with language, Bond can conjure images as well as any camera\u00a0\u2013 her words, actually, have greater power to linger, to haunt. For those yet to begin, use caution: read at great risk.<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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