FICTION There was a time in the South when colored school teachers were revered by everybody in the community, white and colored. Th ese respected mentors were predominantly female and taught in elementary schools where the bulk of southern school attendance was concentrated. Traditionally these respected women were choice ladies sought after and targeted by a coterie of colored men, many who had not completed the elementary grades, and were low wage earners. Th eir thang was to marry one of these women distinguished by their roll books. Most of these men were decent, and some loved the women who would elevate them to statures they would never attain otherwise. And there was Joe Cephus Divine who rejected all women but school teachers and who justifi ed his rejection: I didnt LOVE none of them--other women. A mans got to at least LOVE a woman he doesnt want. I MARRIED WHO I WANTED. A MAN DOESNT HAVE TO LOVE WHO HE WANTS. After two marriages and two divorces, Joe Cephus marries Johnnye Jamison, who also has an agenda remembering you are a walking cosmos.
This Days Madness justifiably earns its title of madness, because there is no other way to describe or rationalize what happens to Frankie, an eight year old orphan black girl entrusted to the care of Tom, a white man and the owner of Doub Circus in which Frankie performs as the WORLDS YOUNGEST TRAPEZIST. This Days Madness is a quasi-tragedy in which the gods and poetic justice are absent. For, Frankies unrelenting tragic suffering is created by an evil-meaning group of people, who kidnap her, only to set her up for ruin. The story lures the reader in with the jovial mood created by the circus. But then, Frankie is torn from her circus family and they are chased out of town. Frankie is sent to an orphanage, where she is stripped of her circus name and becomes Thomasena. Her life becomes a nerve-wrecking and pathetic saga of erased identity, smothered truth, stolen innocence and crushed ambition. Her final hopes for rescue are dashed when Tom Doub dies. Frankie is forced to adjust to life in a hostile environment where she is treated like a parolee from jail. Despite her brilliant performance in school and upright behavior in the community, fate and events conspire to bring her down in shame. Frankie is raped and impregnated by a rich white college student who would have nothing to do with her when she goes looking for him in New York.. where she starts a new life. Phanuel Akubueze Egejuru, Professor of English, Loyola University New Orleans
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