This book may contain language, sexual content, and themes of grief and loss, which may be challenging for some readers. Reader caution advised.
The Suffering of Family and Wildlife
by Glenda Shepherd
I'm Glenda Shepard from Yucca Corners Farm in Stanton County KS. Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl, has HPPR radio readers book club theme, undercurrents of grief as a subtle and nonviolent form of grief.
Instead of conflict stemming from war between nations, Late Migration's untelevised conflicts evolve from nature's continuous ebb and flow of life. In Renkl’s backyard the quiet fight for survival plays out as a brown snake raids the wren’s nest. On the other hand, the carinal parents successfully raise another batch of offspring after losing their first family to a summer storm.
But this pretty series of essays has darker, undercurrents. Growing up in southern Alabama during the 1960's among her relatives going back 2 and 3 generations, Renkl does not overtly state race lines. In one chapter she lists the things she knew at six years old in 1967, “ You knew no black people lived in your neighborhood even though black people worked in every home in your neighborhood.” Later in her first year of college in Philadelphia, she joins the black Freedom Marchers crossing the William Pettis Bridge on Bloody Sunday. The violence and grief arising from racial prejudice is an undercurrent, but the stronger tide of racial violence is only alluded to.
In addition to references to racial prejudices, as a child, Renkl notes her mother's depression. In the chapter The Monster at the Window, Renkl's father carries his weeping wife to the car while Renkl and her brother stay with the maternal grandparents. Margaret stays in her mother's childhood bedroom and wonders at the pictures of a smiling girl taped on the dresser mirror. Margaret asks what happened to that smiling girl.
Death weighs heavily in the book. For human mothers, miscarriages take away the joy of having a baby. As Margaret grows up surrounded by her aging relatives, she hears stories of how great grand aunts, uncles, and parents died. She is steeped in the death of previous generations as she cares for dying parents. Then after her parents and her husband's parents die, one by one, Margaret is both saddened and relieved that she doesn't have to care for them anymore.
Nature In Margaret's backyard leaves grief aside. Margaret watches death in a baby bird that never left the nest or a cedar wax wing that died as it lost its way. But she knows those deaths are part of nature’s life and death cycle. However, the deaths of bees, milkweed, and the Monarch butterfly are different matters. She shakes her head at the neighbor who emptied a can of Raid on a beehive. She hopes her expenditures for milkweed will save the Monarchs.
As Margaret's essays go through years of her family's history and the seasonal migrations of birds and creatures, I admired how she weaves her family's suffering and grief into the wildlife of her backyard.
Thanks for listening to my BookByte for Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl. This is Glenda Shepard, a sustaining member of HPPR.
