Frank Lee ran before she had the legs to. She defied the grips of oppression before she could speak. At a time when an interracial union (sexual or otherwise) was forbidden and most always punished with imprisonment and/or death, a young Frank Lee had no choice.
Julie Miliner’s second novel The Sharecropper’s Daughter details the struggles of a young girl born to a white man and a black woman in the segregated deep south of the 1930’s.
The Sharecropper’s Daughter is a literary feat for Miliner’s growing stable of work. The period piece is crafted with vividly detailed prose and a stark departure in genre from her previous ode to single fatherhood woes, The Magic and the Mayhem.
Spanning the East coast, a myriad of interlocking characters and a couple of decades, The Sharecropper’s Daughter is a fiction-tinged study in a series of key early 20th century themes.
Decades prior to the civil rights movement; terse race relations are the norm and Frank Lee’s mother Sissy finds herself in the eye of the storm having conceived illegally. The novel begins on a back road South Carolina farm; hints of creek breezes and faint harmonica whispers oozing from the narrative. Similar to many African-Americans for centuries prior, Sissy is forced to flee North to escape hardship. Left behind, her daughter is shuttled between a host of relatives and makeshift orphanages; experiencing the self-loathing driven love and hate her fair complexion catalyzes among those encountered. The coming-of-age tale finds its wings once Frank Lee is called North to New York City by Sissy.
The Sharecropper’s Daughter is most inviting for the way it so effortlessly paints such a diverse portrait. With arresting first-person perspective Miliner allows the reader to fully realize the abundantly common path of small town yokels making forced attempts at big city assimilation. The bias which played a significant role in the lives of African-Americans at the time is present throughout but does not stymie the character development so key to the novel’s flow. Miliner’s ability to address the social issues on board yet not allow them to crowd the plot is impressive in its seamlessness.
Further displaying a mastery for breathing life into a vastly intricate plot, Miliner introduces a parallel tale midway through the novel. While Frank Lee has always known her mother but fails to form a genuine connection, Theo early on lacks even a line of communication with his. Theo’s childhood is similarly rife with abandonment, though as a male he seems to be given even less care, yet more expectation to figure out how to survive on his own. Naturally, Frank and Theo cross paths and the maturation-themed direction of the novel is almost immediately spun with love.
The Sharecropper’s Daughter is a crowning achievement on varying levels due to a foundation of rebellious determination. Despite a life immersed in scandal from the onset, Miliner’s portrait of Frank Lee prevails as one joyous and adventurous in all it’s uncertainty, subjugation and struggle.
