Bride, a dark-skinned woman rejected in childhood by her light-skinned mother Sweetness for the color of her own skin, builds a glamorous cosmetics-executive life for herself in adulthood, but it begins to unravel after her lover Booker leaves her and she sets out to find him, uncovering both his and her own buried childhood wounds along the way.
Books mentioned in God Help the Child (5)
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco: “he visited the library often to read or reread books he had ignored or misunderstood while at university. The Name of the Rose, for one, and Remembering Slavery...”
Remembering Slavery by Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller: “The Name of the Rose, for one, and Remembering Slavery, a collection that so moved him he composed some mediocre, sentimental music to commemorate the narratives.”
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville: “He read Herman Melville, and let Pip break his heart, reminding him of Adam alone, abandoned, swallowed by waves of casual evil.”
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass: “he read Frederick Douglass's autobiography again, relishing for the first time the eloquence that both hid and displayed his hatred.”
The Odyssey by Homer: “Until I was in prison I'd never read The Odyssey or Jane Austen.”