Review of 'Mille Femmes blanches : Les Carnets de May Dodd' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
[Vous pouvez lire mon avis sur mon blog, merci :)]
French language
Published May 5, 2011
Mille Femmes blanches : Les Carnets de May Dodd
by Jim Fergus
3 stars
(5 reviews)
One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd (published by St. Martin's Press in 1998) is the first novel by journalist Jim Fergus. The novel is written as a series of journals chronicling the fictitious adventures of "J. Will Dodd's" ostensibly real ancestor in an imagined "Brides for Indians" program of the United States government. An introduction by "J. Will Dodd" places the journals in a contemporary context, and lends an air of realism. The book won the 1999 Fiction of the Year Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association. It has since sold over 250,000 copies in the United States, and its French translation was on the French bestseller list for 57 weeks and has sold over 400,000 copies in that country. Its sequel, published in 2017, is The Vengeance of Mothers.
settingshadow reviewed One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
Review of 'One Thousand White Women' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
I tend not to rest my estimation of the quality of a book on unsavory elements included, understanding that violence is sometimes necessary for realism, plot, theme or character development. However, in this case, Fergus abandoned realism and character integrity early on, stretching his historic setting with unrealistic and misplaced values (which I hesitate to call feminism, for reasons that I'll get to.) Therefore, there is little excuse for the repeated sexual assault scenes, especially given that Fergus seemed to expect the reader to casually forgive the assailants as easily as his protagonists did. (So easily that the narrator, who was expected to be a reliable, sympathetic narrator, refers to the rape of another character as "nonconsensual" in scare quotes.)
Similarly, there is little excuse for Fergus' rampant use of the N-word. It's supposed to be a historic piece? Thanks, I got that without the casual slurs. I don't agree …
I tend not to rest my estimation of the quality of a book on unsavory elements included, understanding that violence is sometimes necessary for realism, plot, theme or character development. However, in this case, Fergus abandoned realism and character integrity early on, stretching his historic setting with unrealistic and misplaced values (which I hesitate to call feminism, for reasons that I'll get to.) Therefore, there is little excuse for the repeated sexual assault scenes, especially given that Fergus seemed to expect the reader to casually forgive the assailants as easily as his protagonists did. (So easily that the narrator, who was expected to be a reliable, sympathetic narrator, refers to the rape of another character as "nonconsensual" in scare quotes.)
Similarly, there is little excuse for Fergus' rampant use of the N-word. It's supposed to be a historic piece? Thanks, I got that without the casual slurs. I don't agree with censoring (or self-censoring) literature, but if you're going to be throwing around loaded words/scenarios, do it for a reason.
Fantastic idea. Execution lacking.
