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Title details for The Wedding by Dorothy West - Available

The Wedding

A Novel

by Dorothy West
Robin Miles
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

In her final novel, Dorothy West offers an intimate glimpse into African American middle class.  Set on bucolic Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s, The Wedding tells the story of life in the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast's black bourgeoisie.  Within this inner circle of "blue-vein society," we witness the prominent Coles family gather for the wedding of the loveliest daughter, Shelby, who could have chosen from "a whole area of eligible men of the right colors and the right professions." Instead, she has fallen in love with and is about to be married to Meade Wyler, a white jazz musician from New York. A shock wave breaks over the Oval as its longtime members grapple with the changing face of its community.

With elegant, luminous prose, Dorothy West crowns her literary career by illustrating one family's struggle to break the shackles of race and class.

Norman Lewis (1909–1979), Girl with Yellow Hat (aka Woman with Yellow Hat and Yellow Hat), 1936, oil on burlap, 36 1/2 x 26 inches; Courtesy of Leslie Lewis and Christina Lewis Halpern from the Reginald F. Lewis Family Collection; © Estate of Norman Lewis; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 3, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593501948
      • File size: 211988 KB
      • Duration: 07:21:38

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from January 2, 1995
      The tranquility of a late summer weekend in 1953 is shattered by a tragic accident in this spare, affecting novel by one of the last surviving members of the Harlem Renaissance. The Oval, the exclusive black enclave on Martha's Vineyard, prepares for the marriage of Shelby Coles, daughter of one of the community's most admired couples. Shelby's choice of white jazz musician Meade Wyler awakens dormant but unresolved racial issues in her family, which includes her physician father, enduring a loveless but socially proper union; her mother, confronting a dwindling pool of partners for her discreet affairs, and her great-grandmother, who dreams of escaping her ambivalence by returning to her aristocratic Southern roots. The arrival of black artisan Lute McNeil upsets the precarious equilibrium of the Oval when his aggressive pursuit of Shelby leads to disaster. Through the ancestral histories of the Coles family, West (The Living Is Easy) subtly reveals the ways in which color can burden and codify behavior. The author makes her points with a delicate hand, maneuvering with confidence and ease through a sometimes incendiary subject. Populated by appealing characters who wrestle with the nuances of race at every stage of their lives, West's first novel in 45 years is a triumph. BOMC and QPB featured selection.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Summer is a season for weddings; this one, set on Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s, starts on the day before the wedding of Shelby, a beautiful, wealthy young woman from an established African-American family. Shelby is about to marry a white jazz musician, a cause for joy or consternation to different members of her family. The story makes its way backward and forward through the tangle of family trees and time, introducing a myriad of characters whose lives have led to this pivotal event. Cynthia Jones's rich, honey-colored voice is just right. She has the superb ability to actualize a character through the use of accent and dialect. She's also a fine singer and a good Bible declaimer. Dorothy West's sentences are as long and tangled as the family histories at the heart of this book; Jones keeps the narration right on track through West's thicket of words. L.R.S. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      Readers may remember Oprah Winfrey's television production of this novel by the last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance. Its unique story--about members of the black bourgeoisie in a Martha's Vineyard community called the Oval--is marred by the nasal timbre of Regina Taylor's voice. Further, her drawling delivery--perhaps an attempt to approximate a Boston accent--makes most of the story's characters seem unappealingly calculating. The sheltered Shelby, on the other hand, is painted by both West and Taylor as a near caricature of innocence. An impending wedding is the focus of the story, but the real subject is the inherent tension in the hierarchy of color within the African-American community. In this way, West gives non-African-American listeners a glimpse of a cultural irony that blacks have heretofore preferred to keep to themselves. E.K.D. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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