“I read one of your poems a few days ago and thought I would write you a letter. I hope you don’t mind.
The library has not been the same since you went away to school. There are still spirited discussions about race issues at the forums and new authors reading at the Booklover’s Club meetings, but no one talks about poetry, books or writing the way you and I did over the last year.”
Hughes writes her back and encourages her writing. Still, Cora feels troubled and often can’t sleep. She envies the ease of her husband’s life:
“He goes to work, plays the music he loves, and comes home. The rest is left to me.”
“What would life be like if I were a writer? Maybe I’d be like Zora Neale Hurston. She strides into the library with such fanfare and confidence. She’s not running around Harlem after a hard-headed 13-year-old.”
When Cora’s aunt begs her to fill in for her daughter Agnes at her housekeeping job for a white family after Agnes is beaten by her husband and can’t work, Cora takes time off from the library to save her cousin’s job. She cooks, cleans, and takes care of the Fitzgerald family and finds that the work leaves her with time to write. Later, Mrs. Fitzgerald gives Cora Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening. When Cora reads it, she’s inspired to write about marriage and being a woman. When Mrs. Fitzgerald learns of Cora’s ambitions, she becomes Cora’s patron offering her time at a country estate where she can write.
When Cora’s writing veers toward women’s struggles and she writes a story about a cardinal that focuses on the difficulties women, even those like her white patron, face, Langston Hughes reads it and tries to change her direction in a letter to her:
“Cora, you are a beautiful, smart black woman. Don’t lose that in your writing. Tell the story of the strength and perseverance that courses through your veins. Don’t strive to be a great writer. Be a great black writer.”
The response from Hughes confuses Cora, but a dramatic event intervenes and leads to a tragedy forcing Cora to re-examine her life. She remembers a passage in The Awakening: “The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.”
Cora’s Kitchen illuminates the life of one strong Black woman as it offers a universal portrait of every woman challenged by her dreams and a longing to be her true self. Reading Cora’s Kitchen will make you want to reread The Awakening (or read it for the first time, if you haven’t read the classic). Cora’s Kitchen will make you feel how caring so much about your dream that you’re willing to risk everything will change you. It will also force you to think about developing your own strong wings.
Summing it Up: Read Cora’s Kitchen to enter 1928 Harlem and the life of an educated Black woman who wants the life she deserves. Watch Cora’s growth as a writer as she confronts prejudice and cultural norms that work to drown her ambitions. Celebrate the words of debut author Kimberly Garrett Brown as she shows the power of a “troubled woman, bowed by weariness and pain, like an Autumn flower in the frozen rain.” —Langston Hughes, “Troubled Woman” From The Weary Blues (1926)
Kudos to Val Fullard for the cover and its evocation of a strong Black woman in 1928.
Finalist, 2018 William Faulkner - William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition
Finalist, 2016 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize
Rating: 5 Stars
Publication Date: September 20, 2022
Categories: Fiction, Five Stars, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Pigeon Pie, Super Nutrition, Book Club
Author Website: https://kimberlygarrettbrown.com/
What Others are Saying:
Compulsive Reader: http://www.compulsivereader.com/2022/07/30/a-review-of-coras-kitchen-by-kimberly-garrett-brown/
Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/kimberly-garrett-brown/coras-kitchen/
Cora’s Kitchen delves deeply into what it means to be a Black woman with ambition, to make choices and keep secrets, and to have an unexpected alliance with a white woman that ultimately may save both of them. Kimberly Garrett Brown renders Cora with immense empathy, acknowledging and confronting Cora’s own prejudices and allegiances and the social pressures that continue to reverberate far beyond this story. Cora’s Kitchen is a poignant, compelling story in which misfortune and fortune cannot be teased apart, and literature and life have everything to do with each other.”
—Anna Leahy, author of What Happened Was: and Tumor
“It has been said, the universal is found in the specific, and in Cora’s Kitchen, all women will find their challenges and longings expressed with unflinching honesty. Kimberly Garrett Brown’s characters are faithful to a time, yet timeless, transcending the years to both painfully and beautifully illustrate the struggles women face to find and fulfill their vocations. Spellbinding.”
—Erika Robuck, national bestselling author of The Invisible Woman
Sounds like an amazing read. Going on my TBR list.
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