About this title: Intertwining historical actors and fictional characters, "Scottsboro" is a powerful novel about race, class, sex, and a lie that refuses to die.
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Description: Very Good. Former Library book. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. 0393064905 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Like New. 2008-Hardcover-May contain minor shelf-wear. Otherwise, volume un-read and in "As-New" condition. -Used-Like New-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Description: Good. 2009-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780330456142ISBN:0330456148
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780330456135ISBN:033045613X
Description: Good. Cover type-This book is a paperback copy. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
Date Published: 2009-05-20
ISBN-13:9780393333527ISBN:0393333523
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780393333527. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: PAN MACMILLAN Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780330456142ISBN:0330456148
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 363 pages. Alabama, 1931. a posse stops a freight train and arrests nine black youths. their crime: fighting with white boys. then two white girls emerge from another freight car, and within seconds the cry of rape goes up. one of the girls sticks to her story. the other changes her tune, again and again. (Paperback) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
Date Published: 2008-04-01
ISBN-13:9780393064902ISBN:0393064905
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780393064902. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780393064902ISBN:0393064905
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: PAN MACMILLAN Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780330456135ISBN:033045613X
Description: BRAND NEW HARDBACK. 368 pages. Intertwining historical actors and fictional characters, stirring racism, sexism, and anti-semitism into an explosive brew, this is a novel of a shocking injustice that convulsed the nation and reverberated around the world, destroyed lives, forged careers, and brought out the worst and the best in the men and women who fought for the cause. (Hardback) read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Date Published: 4/17/2008
ISBN-13:9780393064902ISBN:0393064905
Description: Good. 0393064905 Ex-library book with usual markings. Clean text. SATISF GNTD + SHIPS W/IN 24 HRS. Ships in a padded envelope with free tracking. 4153p. read more
Description: Good or better. May have price sticker and/or some shop wear-Because of our high volume, we can not accurately describe each book, so we list the MINIMUM condition you can expect; most are better than the condition listed. read more
"Ellen Feldman seamlessly weaves historical perspective into a myriad tapestry of the mores of a small Southern town that not only provided insight into black and white lives, but also how poverty alters truth as easily as racism.
As nine black youths travelled in the Alabama Great Southern Railroad freight cars on an early spring day in 1931, a historical event of reprehensible proportions was about to alter their lives forever. What began as a simple misunderstanding quickly exacerbated into an avoidable altercation with white men aboard. The train approaches Scottsboro, and already word has reached men ready with rifles waiting for its arrival. In an attempt to save their dignity, two young white women on the same freight car, fabricate a vicious tale of violence, torture, and rape by those nine black youths.
Alice Whittier, one of the fictional narrators utilizes her faultless skills as a liberal, early feminist New York City newspaper reporter to convey the individual life histories of each of the accused, in an audacious attempt to encourage those outside this provincial circle of life to protest the indecency of fallacious crimes inflicted upon the genuinely innocent victims. As the news reaches the world, the Scottsboro incident becomes a rancorous hornet's nest of eminent lawyers, unpredictable judges, and an insidious competition between the liberal Communist organization and the conservative NAACP. Languishing in a repulsive jail, constantly assured that freedom is imminent, and lost in this muddled legal battle are the powerless defendants.
Meanwhile, the allegedly vanquished Southern young women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates bask in the unwarranted limelight as the townspeople bestow new dresses and gifts as a way to soothe their own guilt. Conflicted and fearful of eternal damnation, Ruby Bates, the second fictional narrator recants in a pitiful attempt to aid the true victims.
Ellen Feldman's considerable research and flawless writing creates a vastly invaluable source of knowledge about nine black men who unwillingly and tragically sacrificed dignity and freedom because poverty, ignorance, fear, and injustice triumphed.
Undoubtedly, one of the most engrossing and unforgettable books I have read."
"In the interest of disclosure I should note that I have family from Scottsboro, although not related to any of the characters in this book. I am also from Alabama, which means I have to work harder to give any novel set in my state a fair shake, especially when written by an outsider who's never set foot here. With that in mind, read on.
Pluses: the main character of Alice, who was uniquely poised to reach from the humblest mill towns of dirt-road no-plumbing Alabama all the way to the White House and beyond, to Broadway and Times Square in New York. Alice was a brilliant invention, and kudos to the author for creating her. Another plus was Alice's career as a journalist, which was helpful both in granting her access to information and locations normally inaccessible to others, and also in maintaining an emotional distance from the subject at hand. The snippets of quotes at chapter beginnings also presented an air of authority to the novel.
Minuses: early in the novel (page 13) the author is describing the train journey Victoria and Ruby took from Chattanooga to Huntsville. After being on board the train for awhile, "Lookout Mountain came into sight." If you've been to Chattanooga, you know there are very few views outdoors that won't include Lookout Mountain. I was immediately disappointed, for I had hoped the author had at least taken the time to visit the communities she purported to write about. Which leads me to my second minus - although the book jacket states the story is set in "the South in the early 1930's" at least half the book is actually set in New York City, a locale the author is clearly more familiar with. Next minus: Ruby mentions getting "jazzed" by her beau in a field next to a pond the night before the alleged rape... March 25, 1931. She mentions the "smell of spring and honeysuckle in the air" ... except that the honeysuckle won't bloom until May, well after the danger of frost is past. In March, in Chattanooga, it still gets cold at night, too cold for the honeysuckle to bloom. When in bloom, it is a lovely smell, and I invite the author to visit sometime to experience it for herself. My last picky point is the First Monday of the Month "Fair Day" in Scottsboro. Yes, folks gather on the first Monday of the Month but they call it Trade Day, because those in attendance barter (or "trade") their wares much more than they buy and sell. All of these details are lost on the casual reader, but they are important to me and suggest a slovenly approach to accuracy on the part of the author, her editor and publisher. Also a big minus for me: the author's clumsy attempt to mimic the North Alabama vernacular - in places she will capture the unique way the locals speak in a phrase, and before finishing the sentence will be using the Queen's English. The mill folks had their own way of talking. In my experience it is best captured in Rick Bragg's "All Over But The Shoutin'" and "Ava's Man." This sloppiness with the Ruby's "voice" left me feeling, again, like the novel was written by someone who never left Manhattan to come to the area and hear how the people speak for herself (her loss, sadly).
I felt the author glossed over a lot of things, such as the brutal poverty in Scottsboro in 1931, the astonishing illiteracy rate for both races in the area and how easily the parties involved were manipulated by their educated bretheren... also glossed over were any signs of emotion from Alice, especially from her towards her family and lovers. I found that highly unrealistic, almost a caricature of the hard-boiled female reporter. Especially glossed over were the characters of the seven black "Scottsboro Boys." Some detail was provided, but never enough to make them seem more than two-dimensional props for Alice, Harry and Abel. As the Scottsboro Boys lament in the book how they made a lot of other folks rich, there rings an indictment of the author as just another person making a buck off their misery...
All of this knocked down my opinion from three stars to two... which is sad, because if these details had been properly attended to, if Alice could have shown a little more than academic interest in the men between her legs and the actual Scottsboro Boys this would have been a four star novel..."
"Each generation of Americans, and indeed each decade, seems to have its own trial of the century. The 20th century had many. Sacco and Vanzetti, the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping and murder trial, Fatty Arbuckle's murder trial, and of course the O.J. Simpson murder trial are just a few.
In the 1930s none were bigger than the trial of the Scottsboro boys for raping two white women on a freight train. The trouble with this trial was the nine Scottsboro boys were tried and sentenced to death for a crime that never happened.
The trial itself brought together disparate groups that each had their own agenda for their involvement in the proceedings. The state of Alabama was out to protect southern white supremacy at all costs, even if those cost meant executing innocent men. The Communist Party, which was influential in those depression-filled, pre-WWII days, was said to be interested in the boys as dead martyrs or live members and did not care which it was.
The NAACP wanted in on the action and through it all the US government kept strangely quiet. One of the two white women the boys were accused of raping recanted her story, then later accused them again.
All of this is brought to life Ellen Feldman in a novel that will keep you turning the pages. Ellen's main character, Alice Whittier, takes you to a front row seat for a story that dominated the 1930s and whose main characters continued to show up in the newspapers until the last Scottsboro boy died in 1976.
Feldman has done an excellent job of making you feel as though you are there for the trial and events surrounding it. Her description of some of the Scottsboro boys, as well as some of the spectators can make you feel as though Alice was not fictional and was actually there.
All in all this was an excellent book that I would recommend to anyone trying to learn about 20th century southern justice."
"This novel, written primarily from the viewpoint of Alice Whittier, a (fictional) Northern reporter from a privileged background writing for a labor/communist paper, and secondarily by Ruby Bates, one of the (actual) Scottsboro accusers, gives an interesting window into the "Scottsboro boys" case and the many, many trials that ensue. Whittier is sympathetic, caring, yet still quite distanced from the events, even when she's making them her personal crusade. Bates's limitations -- the small world she lives in, the limited choices she has -- are made clear, even while her shifting testimonies and the struggle between her conscience and her mercenary impulse make her a less-than-sympathetic character."
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