Althea
Click to order via Amazon

by Linda Watkins

ISBN: 0971513910
Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: March 2003
Publisher: Black Diamond Publishing

Reviewed by Leah Mullen

Few of us escape childhood without being tormented by our peers about some supposed shortcoming. I still remember being on the playground and hearing the taunts of other little Black girls as they yelled their critique of me, at the top of their lungs: "Yvonne (my middle name) is a white girl! Yvonne is a white girl!" You see, although I am African American, at the time I lived in a mostly white suburban neighborhood of Thorndale, while most Black families lived nearby in Coatesville. My playmates and friends were white back then, and I was told over and over that I "acted" and "sounded" white, which meant that I spoke properly and studied hard.

So when I read Althea, a novella by Linda Watkins, I identified with the main character Althea, or Allie, who faced the difficulty of growing up fair-skinned during the turbulent, racially charged 1960's. Like me she was also ostracized, but on a much different level. At first I thought the book was going centered on the politics of skin color, but the essence of the story was concerned with basic human needs that were much more personal.

For Althea her troubles begin at the opening of the story when her mother's sister, Aunt Darnella, is brutally murdered by a group of white men and unceremoniously dumped a few blocks from her apartment in the mostly "white gaslight district of Cincinnati."

One of Althea's father's friends, Mr. Johnson explained Darnella's death saying that she was just too beautiful and full of joy. "She looked white, lived with the white and when they found out that she was colored, they couldn't stand it," he said.

In a beautifully written flashback scene that takes place during Aunt Darnella's funeral, Althea remembers her Aunt tucking her in the night she is killed. That evening Darnella tells her five year-old niece about the family's "curse."

"...Sometimes we can pass for white, even though we are really colored. And,
sometimes, we get a break; get treated a little better than someone with darker
skin. We go where they can't go and they don't like it one bit," Aunt Darnella
explained.

"But we are still colored," I announced proudly.

"Still people take it out on you, by calling you names and not including you in
their lives. Sometimes, it's very painful when you are treated cruel. It's difficult
to fit in a world that thinks this way. That's why we say it's a curse. The white
side makes us different than colored."

Darnella met her death at the hands of white folks; it is Black people who were the bane of Althea's existence. From her first moment in kindergarten she became a target. On the first day of school as Althea played innocently with a set of colorful building blocks another little Black girl in the class began to pull her hair.

The abuse didn't stop there. Throughout the rest of her adolescence, whether she was attending the public school made up mostly of African American children or a high entrance criteria school, which was predominately Caucasian, it made no difference. Some group of Black girls would seek out Althea just to pick on her. Meanwhile Althea claimed to want nothing more than to just fit in and belong. She cut her hair into an Afro to look more Black and she smoked in the school bathroom hoping to be cool.

I longed for Althea to find a friend, because as I said I could feel her pain. I've also have known lonely days sitting alone at the lunch table. But things changed as I got older and I encountered others like me --black girls who were in advanced placement classes who were high achievers. That's when my real friendships began and the teasing stopped.

But unfortunately Althea couldn't find a kindred spirit, OR EVEN just one person of substance who didn't care what she looked like! When Althea kept finding more trouble instead of a sista soul mate, I began to wonder why.

On her first day at a new school when she's at the drinking fountain a group of girls approached her, and without any provocation called her a "Whore". That's when Tess, a dark-skinned, tomboyish girl came to her rescue. Finally, I thought as I read, here's a friend for Althea. But alas that friendship didn't last and was further stressed years later when Althea unknowingly kisses Tess' boyfriend, Warren, at a party. IN the very next chapter Warren is suddenly Althea's boyfriend, without any mention of what happened to Tess. I began to understand why Althea's peers did not like her. It had nothing to do with her light complexion or her great looks, which she mistakenly blamed for her chronic loneliness.

Despite her beauty, Althea had some serious internal character flaws. This always makes for good fiction, as none of us are perfect and readers can usually relate. However Watkins does not explore Althea's character deeply enough. Althea never thought that her problems were more than just "skin deep". At one point she reflects:

"...It was true, I got along very good with the boys. It was true that they hung
around me. But it was not true that I was screwing any of them. I wasn't doing
anything. More times than I can remember I heard girls remark that I thought I
was cute and I was. There was no doubt about it. I was blessed. But, I never
suspected people hated me for it."

With the exception of Althea's family, Watkins painted a shallow, superficial world, where characters existed only to antagonize Althea and upset her sense of well being.

Yet and still, ultimately, Althea, was a good read. Watkins' descriptive storytelling kept me turning the pages until I'd found that I read the entire book in just one sitting. The writing was absolutely gorgeous allowing me to picture each scene. I was especially moved by Althea's last encounter with Aunt Darnella.

However, the novella left me wanting more. There was a mysterious man at Darnella's gravesite, which wasn't explained. Further, I just wanted to see how Althea would develop as a grown woman, how her relationship with her mother would ultimately develop, and I'd really like to know if Althea ever finds the close friendship with another female that she desired.

I eagerly await Althea, Part 2.