Pearl
Neil Henry's Pearl's Secret is a fascinating autobiographical journey of an African American man's search for his racial identity. Henry is a light-skinned African American man who tries to piece together a few scraps passed down in his family and many years of family stories to figure out what lies behind his dual-race history. He has been plagued throughout his entire life by confusion over his skin color and how it allows him to fit into society. The birth of his daughter finally triggers him to begin his journey, because he does not want her to suffer the same confusing fate. The search concludes in a lunch with his "white" family, filled with emotion, confusion and curiosity on both sides. Henry's great-great grandmother Laura Brumley had an extensive (believed consensual through family lore) affair with a wealthy white landowner, Arthur Beaumont, in post Civil War Louisiana. That relationship bore one quadroon daughter, Pearl, for whom the book is named. Beaumont later married a white woman and had a white family and turned his back on his black family for many years. After generations of family stories about a white patriarch, Henry decides to find this other family, this white family.
For all of the progress that has been made in race relations over the past 140 years (since the Civil War and when Arthur Beaumont fathered Pearl Brumley), the widest divide in our country is still that between blacks and whites. First there is a groundswell of emotion he feels when he meets the family. ) Their social outings especially in the first years in the community were only with other black couples, playing cards and listening to music at someone's house. He wants his daughter to grow up with a strong understanding of who she is and more specifically where she comes from. He never considered not living in such a community "because of everything we went through. Henry receives his job at the Washington Post partly because he's black, as the industry tried to become more diverse in response to the Kerner Commission's findings in 1968. After a few friendly exchanges with her and her daughter he plans to meet them along with much of their family. After having a white developer buy them the land (because that was the only way they could get around unspoken policies of racism) they then rebuff numerous offers from their white neighbors to buy them out and eventually the Henry's move into their home. ) In the end, after what must have been one of the most emotional days of his life, Henry's feelings appear to come full circle. John, Henry's father went to the neighbors to try and greet them "my father got little satisfaction when he visited our white neighbors on those cool autumn nights after dinner - only fear and empty words about declining property values" (Pg. The effects of growing up in such surroundings are not as obvious in Henry's childhood as they become later in life, but they are still influential. He continues to be both curious and hopeful for a peaceful and happy reunion, while at the same time continuing to hold a deep-seated anger for the injustice of slavery and particularly how Beaumont treated Laura and Pearl. Similar to his great-grandmother Pearl's search a century before.
Common topics in this essay:
John Henry's,
Motley Pgs,
Pearl Besides,
Patrick Beaumont's,
Jew Finally,
Pearl Laura,
Civil War,
African American,
Seattle Neil's,
Power Pg,
white family,
meets family,
search racial,
civil war,
family stories,
pearl's secret,
racial identity,
beaumont's granddaughter,
throughout entire life,
family particularly,
throughout life,
search racial identity,
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Acceptance Essays
