Sugar

Sugar

Juvenile fiction
Sugar, title character of Jewell Parker Rhodes' Sugar, despises
the substance she's named after. Living alone (father was sold away
during slavery time, mother died) in a shack on a sugar plantation, at
the age of ten she knows the back-breaking work that goes into
producing this sweetener. "Cane is all I know. Cutting, cracking,
carrying pieces of cane. My back hurts. Feet hurt. Hands get
syrupy. Bugs come. Sugar calls--all kinds of bugs, crawling,
inching, flying. Nasty, icky bugs."
Emancipation has caused young adult workers to flee to the North
in search of a better life. There aren't enough workers to handle
harvest rush times. Sugar, left without peers, is terribly lonely.
She often wonders why she and Billy, the plantation owner's son who is
also socially isolated, have to keep their friendship secret.
Billy's father decides to solve his personpower problem by
hiring a gang of Chinese workers. To the elderly black workers this
presents a serious threat. These young, faster workers may cost them
the only work they know how to do and the only home they've ever had.
Where can they go and what can they do? Sugar thinks the two groups
of workers have a lot to offer each other. But how can she convince
the adults who feel so terribly threatened?
On a personal note, Sugar is sadly still relevant today. Just as the
two groups of workers in the book wasted suspicion on one another
initially, we in the insecure 98% of Americans spend too much time
feuding among ourselves (working poor/welfare; native/immigrant)
instead of working together to address the greatest income gap since
the 1920's.
A great big shout goes out to my soul sister, Lily, and all others who
are brave enough to embrace solidarity. In my mind, strength through
unity needs to be the ideal and goal of the twenty-first century.
Julia Emily Hathaway



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