Her Own Place. - book reviews

American Visions, April-May, 1993 by K. Anthony Norris

Dori Sanders, author of the award-winning and critically acclaimed novel Clover (Algonquin Books, 1990), is more comfortable behind the wheel of a tractor than she is at a typewriter, and she is more likely to fret about crop damage than she is about characterization or dialogue. You see, there's a difference between what she is and what she does. Sanders is "a very good farmer." What she does is write. Her writing has been compared to that of Zora Neale Hurston, whom, along with Eudora Welty, she credits as an influence.

Clover, her debut novel, is a moving story about a young black girl whose widowed father marries a white woman. He dies tragically hours after the ceremony, and his wife takes on the responsibility of raising his child. The story involves the child, her father's family and the stepmother coming to terms with one another. The book has gone through multiple soft- and hardcover printings and has been translated into five languages. Disney Studios has optioned the film rights.

Sanders - who politely refuses to give her age - grew up on a farm in York County, S.C., during a time of de jure segregation. Her father, a rural elementary school principal and landowner, was well respected by blacks and whites.

Sanders speaks lovingly and proudly of her father as she tells the story of how, as a child, she stabbed her eye with a pair of scissors. The only ophthalmologist in the area had a sign in front that read, "For Whites Only." "I was old enough to know what the sign meant, and I was terrified. If my father hadn't been as tall as he was, about 6 feet 1 inch, and if I hadn't had a firm grip on his hand, I don't think I could have made it through that door. I was really afraid, but he wasn't. ... I could tell because his grip was firm and I felt as though I was surrounded by a tower of strength. He marched me up to the desk and, as the nurse gasped, he said, |I must see the doctor now. This is an emergency. My daughter has a serious eye injury.' " Not only did the doctor see them, but he also provided the necessary follow-up care.

Sanders has never taken a creative writing course. She says her father, who published a history of several organizations in York County in 1924, inspired her to write. To manage the numerous complaints his 10 children brought to him, he required that they present them in writing. Sanders freely admits to embellishing hers: "In trying to write down a complaint, I think I honed my fictional skills."

She spends the growing season working the farm her father started in 1915 and staffing the family's produce stand, occasionally jotting down story ideas on scraps of paper and on the bottoms of peach baskets. In the winter, she concentrates almost exclusively on writing. Before the success of Clover, Sanders spent her winters working as an assistant banquet manager in a motel in southern Maryland to help subsidize the farm's operation. That was where her writing ability was first noticed and encouraged.

Sanders had been writing vignettes of farming and growing up for her nieces and nephew. Her former boss read them and said, "Oh, you can write. You ought to try to get published." According to Sanders, she was insistent. "That woman pushed me and pushed me until she made me so angry, I decided I'd show her she was wrong," she says.

The first manuscript Sanders submitted, a novel about black share-croppers, was rejected. But the editor encouraged her to try again, choosing a subject more familiar to her. "When I tried again, I sent in a portion of Clover, and I was offered a contract to finish it. Isn't that amazing? The truth is, I didn't set out to become a writer; I just wanted to get this woman off my back."

How have her experiences growing up in the segregated South influenced her writing? "For me it was a wonderful life. I had 81 acres to roam free." She also had a pet hen, Copper. "Now, tell me," she asks, "with your own laying hen, whose eggs you could barter at the store for cake and candy, how could you be unhappy?" Yes, she was aware of racial incidents, but, "When I decided to write from my view, I could not write ... of hatred I had never experienced."

Sanders' portrayal of Southern life has been criticized as being overly optimistic, minimizing the racial tension that still exists. She counters this criticism by pointing out that "there is not a single, monolithic experience. We cannot say, because you are black you have been affected by what all blacks perhaps should have been, or were, affected by."

How has the evolution of the New South influenced her writing? "I don't think I could have written Clover years before and had it accepted. ... In my day, Clover Lee Hill would not be attending an integrated school and her father would not have been the principal. And Clover would have never ended up in that village with a white stepmother. The change in the South is real, and sometimes I think people underestimate the change, but it is a new day."

Sanders' new novel, Her Own Place (Algonquin Books, 1993), was inspired by her memories of the experiences of black women during World War II. The novel traces 50 years in the life of Mae Lee Barnes as she struggles to raise her family and run her farm. Readers witness changes in Mae Lee's life and the lives of those around her, black and white. In showing the changes in attitude and opportunity that her characters experience over the years, Sanders subtly shows a transforming South: segregation gives way to integration, and rural life loses ground to urban and suburban life.