THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 15, 1995 TAG: 9501110378
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER
BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD
Crown. 467 pp. $24.
BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD'S The President's Daughter overlaps history and fiction; they meld into one another and seem to fuse into a higher truth.
This novel continues Chase-Riboud's fictional historical chronicle of Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson's alleged mistress and mother of his children, and the slave he never freed. The author's earlier novel, Sally Hemings, spent six weeks on The New York Times best-seller list and sold 1.6 million copies in eight languages worldwide. Chase-Riboud's other books include From Memphis to Peking, Valide and Portrait of a Nude Woman as Cleopatra.
The President's Daughter tells the daring and passionate tale of Harriet Hemings, the beautiful green-eyed, red-headed daughter of Jefferson and Sally Hemings who leaves Monticello as a fugitive slave on her 21st birthday. Harriet is born anew by ``passing for white,'' renouncing her heritage and assimilating into white society. It becomes a secret that plagues her forever.
``I understood that it was not fear nor search for freedom that had driven me out of the negro race,'' Harriet says. ``I knew it was shame, unbearable shame. Shame at being part of a race of people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals.''
Chase-Riboud's writing is flowery. She slips into a pattern of describing eyes and faces that is nearly comical; and the book could stand to be shorter. Nevertheless, she writes with clarity and bite. This is a story of friendships, of sexual liaisons, of slavery. Chase-Riboud crafts images that defy us to forget them.
When one of Jefferson's lovers counsels Harriet to reinvent herself and reach out for the life she wants, the language is eloquent.
``. . . I must tell you that color only exists in relation to another color, that the edges of one color touching another is not only what produces both colors, but a third color that lies between the two and which defines the first two,'' says Maria Cosway, a woman Jefferson once loved.
Chase-Riboud lets Harriet tell her own story. We become deeply immersed in her thoughts and dreams. Occasionally we get a glimpse into the minds of other characters - always so we can understand Harriet better. Some readers may have to fight the feeling of being manipulated by such obvious writing devices and against results that seem too contrived.
As the book develops, Harriet becomes active in the abolition movement and operates a station in the Underground Railroad. Once a slave herself, she struggles to understand the concept of slavery. ``It must have been something we did to them. Or, I thought suddenly, that they did it to us. Our skin was merely the mirror of their own crime. If a man wrongs you, he also hates you because he's wronged you. We never forgive those whom we have wronged.''
For all the secrecy of her life, Harriet comes to realize in the end that the joke is on her: ``I was what people perceived me to be, and there was nothing I could do about it. . . . ''
Chase-Riboud tells us much about ourselves, about the color line between black and white and about the places where it blurs. She reminds us how far we have to go, and she teaches us some history along the way. MEMO: June Arney is a staff writer. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
KUSCONI
Barbara Chase-Riboud continues the saga of Sally Hemings, Thomas
Jefferson's alleged mistress, in ``The President's Daughter.''
by CNB