A Teen Book for African American Heritage Month

Mare and her two granddaughters, Octavia (Tave) and Talitha (Tali), left me in Alabama as they continued driving east.  Weeks earlier, we all left California, headed for Mare's family reunion in Alabama.  I finished reading the book only an hour ago and already feel homesick for their company.  Octavia tells the travel story and shares the postcards she sends home to friends, while Mare spins tales of growing up in Alabama and gaining her own kind of independence in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) in the European theater during the 1940s.

Mare's War, by Tanita S. Davis, is the story of two wars--a psychological mother-daughter war, and a physical war in Europe.  In addition, there was a type of war at home in Alabama that kept colored and white people separated by neighborhood boundaries, old "traditions," and job possibilities.

Marey Lee Boylen was seventeen when she forged her mother's signature to the enlistment permission form and joined the WACs.  After her father died, she had to quit school to help her mother out with the farm he had purchased and the house he had built and the mortgage he had left.  She worked two jobs--as a house girl for Mrs. Ida Payne, and as kitchen help for Young's Diner.  Since her mother was constantly taking up with unsuitable men and hiding in her bottle of whiskey, Mare was also left to care for her younger sister, Feen.  Then her mother stopped talking to her after Mare used an ax to fend off an attack on her sister from "Uncle" Toby.  Feen was shipped off to live with her aunt in Philadelphia, and Mare's purpose in life--to take care of her sister--was taken away.

In the Army, Mare met colored women who grew up in other parts of the United States and had finished high school.  One in particular, Peach, immediately befriended her and began teaching her skills she could not afford to learn at home--including how to speak standard English.  All the girls in her unit became a family, watched each other's backs, and helped each other out.  Together, they made it through basic training, escaped an attack by a Nazi submarine as they were deployed to England, survived air raids over England, and endured both squalor in northern France and luxury accommodations in Paris.  Still they managed to squeeze in a bit of site-seeing and partying.

Finally, World War II's western battles were ended, American personnel left the clean-up of Axis force prisoners-of-war and unexploded mines to their European Allied forces, and Mare was sent home--but not before Peach told her that she was going on to San Francisco, where there were more job opportunities for colored women.  Mare considered the possibility of moving to San Francisco, too, and taking Feen along with her.  After all, her mother had remarried (although Mare learned this from a neighbor) and Feen was back home in Alabama.  Mare was determined that Feen would finish school and have more opportunities than being household help.  First, she had to settle things with her mother.

The chapters of Mare's story are broken up with Octavia's perception of the trip and the postcards she sends back to her friends.  Although two years younger than her sister Tali, Octavia seems the more mature of the two.  Or maybe she is just more timid.  Through Octavia's chapters, we learn that Mare knows them better than they thought she did, and that the sisters knew each other better than the other knew.  They stay in hotels and motels along the route, take some side trips (since Mare is the only one who knows where they are going, even when she lets Tali drive her car on Interstate 10), and learn about their grandmother as she tells the girls about just a few years of her life.  In fact, although they start out being unhappy about the road trip, the girls find themselves more and more interested about their grandmother's stories and their journey.

Mare's War is a story of bridging a generation gap as much as about life for African American women during the 1940's.  It helps modern teens understand that, although much progress had been made in American society between the Civil War and World War II in some parts of the country, other areas still had--and continue to have--a distance to go.
















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