Source of book: Audiobook from the library, but we also own this.
While I haven’t yet finished any of my “official” Black History Month selections, I suppose this book could qualify.
Virginia Hamilton was an African American author, primarily of books for children. She remains today one of the most award-winning American childrens’ author of all time. M. C. Higgins, the Great won the Newbery award in 1975. Unfortunately, with a handful of exceptions, her books are a bit hard to find 50 years later, which is a shame. The Library of America published a collection of her best known works a few years ago, which I purchased for our home library. I encourage others to do so as well - we preserve Black History (which is a key part of an accurate and complete American history) when we purchase and read books which tell it.
You can find my complete list of Black History Month and works by black authors here. You can read my thoughts on Black History in this post.
My youngest and I previously read Zeely by this author. I decided to take this one along as an audiobook for our recent trip to Death Valley.
Like Zeely, M. C. Higgins, the Great is a coming of age story, which takes place primarily internally. The story takes place over a mere three days, and honestly, not that much happens.
You can kind of summarize it as this: teen boy had an epiphany on the way to manhood as the result of two visits. One is an an ethnographer, James Lewis, who is recording folk singing in the rural Appalachian community M. C. lives in. The other is a mysterious girl, Lurhetta Outlaw, who camps near M. C.’s home. As the result of the meetings, M. C. changes.
There is a lot more, though, internally and in the setting. The hills above where M. C. and his family live have been strip mined for coal, and the waste rock is slipping down, threatening their home.
Their closest neighbors are the eccentric Killburn clan, vegetarian farmers of Irish descent who share polydactyly (12 fingers, 12 toes) and combined traditional healing and superstition in their ways, which give them the reputation of “witchy.” Despite this, M. C. plays with Ben, a Killburn his age, on the sly.
Lewis helps M. C. appreciate his family for who they are, while warning them of the impending landslide. Luhretta is able to see things without the prejudice that plagues M. C.’s father, and deliberately breaches the separation imposed on the Killburns.
M. C., in turn, takes Luhretta through a tunnel in the local lake, at peril to them both, and finally comes to see the Killburns as fellow humans. He also comes to a more constructive relationship to his father (who is a mix of good and bad traits) and to his remaining years living at home in the shadow of the mountains.
As I noted above, the book isn’t about what happens in the outside world. It is very introspective, interior, thoughtful, emotional. It unfolds slowly one layer at a time. In this, it reminds me more of authors like Anthony Trollope and Henry James (two favorites), even as the books are aimed at children.
Another thing that occurred to me while listening to this book is that Hamilton isn’t really writing for white readers, although her books are perfectly comprehensible by young readers with the patience for introspection.
We know that M. C. and his family are black, but only because Hamilton describes certain physical features in the same way white authors might mention a character’s blue eyes, or blond hair. There are multiple words used to lovingly describe the various shades of skin color (particularly M. C.’s reaction to Luhretta, who he crushes on pretty hard.)
In contrast, the Killburns are explicitly described as being of Irish descent in addition to their red hair and extra digits. It isn’t entirely clear what race Lewis is, but probably he is white given his profession, which he inherited from his father.
As a story, while this book isn’t particularly exciting, it is very real. After all, most of us “formerly young men” can remember feeling like M. C. Those stirrings of puberty, when we have our first hard crush - oh man, I can remember that. Most of us likely had a crush on an older teen around that time, whether that was our first or not.
And who hasn’t had complicated relationships with parents? The teen years are a time of separation and embrace of selfhood, and even with the best of parents, this is a fraught time. I remember being torn between the natural love children have for their parents and my frustration with their refusal to listen or see my point of view.
For M. C., that his parents remain steadfastly in denial about the threat to their safety is thoroughly frustrating to him. And he is right, as confirmed by Lewis and others.
By the end of the book, he has come to completely doubt his parents’ superstition about the Killburns, and in fact allows their skin to touch his, freaking his father out. M. C. is right about this, though. For all their own odd beliefs, the Killburns are just people, and right decent people too, as it turns out. Would that more of us would reject prejudice like M. C. does.
The audiobook was narrated by Roscoe Lee Browne, who matches the languid speed of the text with an unhurried, warm reading. In particular, his singing of the folk songs that M. C.’s mother sings is evocative and moving.
I believe that children are often more thoughtful than we give them credit for being. Books like this will resonate with children like that, and I would definitely give this book a shot. Not everything has to be exciting and fast paced. It is okay to sit with feelings sometimes, and this book does that very well.
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