Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart
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I was looking forward to another book by Alice Walker, but I just couldn't get into this one. While the connecction between people of color from various cultural backgrounds was a delight to hear, the middle class North American character's expensive shaman journeys and peyote-induced visions smacked too strongly of priviledge and appropriation. Sorry, Alice Walker fans.
The stories are what matter here. The story of Kate and Yolo's relationship. The stories of Kate's various physical/spiritual journeys. The stories of those she meets on her journeys. The story of Yolo's awakening in Hawaii. The story of how Kate's house comes to be painted the blue of the sky. It's the stories that matter, and they are beautifully told, with characters rendered with the tenderness Walker seems to lavish on all those who people her fiction. Unfortunately, Walker doesn't seem to trust the story's ability to teach her readers the lessons Kate has learned, so she gives way too often to long didactic passages that sound more like new-age philosophy or self-help than fiction. But the stories are, in the end, worth wading through the preaching, and the lessons learned through them are more beautifully learned from the narrative. Alfre Woodard's beautiful and expressive voice is a pleasure to listen to and helps bring these characters to vivid life.