Say It Loud

EDITORIAL REVIEW 'SAY IT LOUD' is a partial historical fiction that deals with racism during the late sixties and seventies on throughout the early nineties. Set in a local Albany, Ga. Housing project which is the equivalent of the renowned defunct Cabrini Green Housing Projects in Chicago, the main character Ivory White has to deal with racism as to how it relates to interracial people who are often characterized as neither white nor black. She is the product of a black welfare mother and a white man, a Mr. Clops, whose strong Ties to the KKK serves as the only clue to his identity. Life for the timid young heroine has never been easy-until fourth grade when she finally meets her future best friend Bessie Cummins. Bessie is an almost exact carbon of Ivory with the same almost blue eyes and the same almost blonde hair. Living with an abusive mother who hates her skin hair and eyes one day, and then loves them the very next when they are in public and everyone is oohing and awing over her is a recipe for confusion. Being raised in the projects where there is constant fear of gang activities and violence is the least of her worries. All the blacks in her community from the time when she was little have always Looked at her as being an outsider, clearly offensive and not one of them as they are hell bent on reparations, and hate anything WHITE that moves; as did her late grandfather Johnny Lee White Sr. While the few whites she has encountered such as her fourth grade teacher Mrs. Summerville and Mrs. Bitter toe for whom her mother scrubs toilets, clearly thinks she is just as unconnected to them as well. Ivory lives through all the pain, drama and hardships of her life before finally embracing PROVIDENTIAL POWER as the one and only absolute capable of making life not only livable, but certainly worthwhile.