Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/30780
edge, or change the subject…but to let them watch us rise up in the face of the terrible knowledge and do something. The immediate lesson for me was: Stop acting like a Good Ger- man around your kids and let them see that you are a member of the French Resistance.” Raising Elijah is a call to arms, a cry for the moral soli- darity that we must forge to prevent environmental degradation and its as- sault on children’s health. Think silent playgrounds. LAURA ORLANDO is executive director of the Resource Institute for Low Entropy Systems; she teaches at the Boston Uni- versity School of Public Health. STUMBLING DOWN MEMORY LANE Lori L. Tharps If Sons, Then Heirs By Lorene Cary Atria Books LORENE CARY DOESN’T SHY AWAY from telling complicated stories about race in the United States. In Black Ice, her critically acclaimed memoir of integrating the elite St. Paul’s boarding school, and in The Price of a Child, her novel of a slave woman’s escape to freedom, she distilled taboo topics into mov- ing and accessible works of literature. She does it again with this latest novel. In If Sons, Then Heirs, Cary examines race and racism through the prism of land ownership in the South. We learn how three generations of an African American family are affected by prop- erty purchased by the family patri- arch, the aptly named KingNeedham, www.msmagazine.com and how holding on to that land through some of the most violent and racially charged periods of American history brings them a fair share of power, privilege and pain. The story is seen mostly through the eyes of King’s great-grandson Rayne, the child abandoned by King’s granddaughter and raised by King’s second wife, Selma. Thirty-year-old Rayne has made a comfortable life for himself in Philadelphia. He lives with his girlfriend and her son, runs his own construction business and is about to make his annual pilgrimage south to visit his step-great-grand- mother, Selma. But what starts as a perfunctory visit becomes a stumble down a memory lane strewn with generations of sorrow and regret. Ar- riving in South Carolina, he discovers Selma has aged considerably; she can scarcely manage upkeep on the land and wants Rayne to take over. And there’s a dark family secret plaguing the Needhams that Rayne must final- ly confront. The novel is epic in scope— King Needham bought his land dur- ing the Great Depression, King’s great-grandson communicates by texting—but Rayne keeps the story grounded in the here and now. Cary clearly wants to expose the often-overlooked histo- ry of African American land ownership and the overwhelming obsta- cles, including racist laws, threats of sadistic violence and even gov- ernment thievery, to keeping hold of the land. Sadly, many failed. “Fifty years ago, as a people, we owned 14 million acres. …Now we own little more than a million,” a legal expert tells Rayne as he tries to figure out if he should sell the family property. Cary makes a powerful statement ©Richard Lord Imagine you’re a 16-year -old gir There is no place nearby to get contraceptives. Y get pregnant. Y Y ou live several days travel from an abortion provider. Y . ou Y have no money . r-old girl -old girl.. Y ou services. Because magazine connects you to these Y women. Y ou’ll learn about the toll that unsafe abortion takes and the impact of U.S. policy on women’s U.S. policy on women’ reproductive health at home and abroad. Subscriptions are free. www www .ipas.org/getbecause Because women’ ’s s lives are worth saving Every year millions of women around the world risk their lives to end unintended pregnancies because they have no access safe abortion Because r,, millions of women Ipas is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. T o learn more about Ipas, visit www SPRING 2011 | 57 o learn more about Ipas, visit www .ipas.org