From Rain Gods to Baseball Legends

Well, I guess it's been a while since I've written about my reading adventures! Since my last post, I finished the novel about the Angel family, The Rain God, and started a biography of Jackie Robinson, by Arnold Rampersad, entitled Jackie Robinson: A Biography, published in 1997.

The Rain God was an excellent book, and much better, I thought, than its sequel, Migrant Souls. Perhaps part of the reason Rain God was a better book is that it was largely autobiographical. The story is told mostly from the point of view of Miguel Chico (little Miguel), a gay man who drinks too much and suffers from intestinal cancer. The author is also a gay man with a difficult family and so is writing from his own point of view in this first book (as opposed to the sequel, where Islas is writing from the point of view of the women).

The Rain God is also better because it is better written, technically speaking.  I was much more able to get involved with the characters, I think, because of how smoothly the novel flows. The writing style enhances rather than obstructs the imaginative process.  I guess it's hard to explain!  By the time I finished this novel, I felt like I knew the people I met there.  And I learned a lot about the desert and Mexican Americans whose families have a long history of living in the borderland region (going back to the 1500s). I recommend both books highly.

So, now it's back to non-fiction, this time with a hefty biography by Arnold Rampersad, the biographer of Langston Hughes and other noted African Americans. (I've read the one about Langston Hughes.)  Jackie Robinson is 512 pages long and densely packed with factual and anecdotal information about the famous ballplayer, from his humble beginnings in Georgia to his late life business success.  It's written in chronological order; so far I've gotten to his World War II years.

I've found from reading just this small part of the book that I previously knew virtually nothing about Jackie Robinson; what I've learned so far is impressive.  What stands out more than anything is that Robinson was tremendously gifted athletically and incredibly disciplined and determined mentally.  What he was able to accomplish against formidable odds is astonishing.

Jackie was skilled in a wide variety of sports--football, basketball, baseball, track, tennis, table tennis. He lettered in four sports at UCLA, despite being there less than two years.  If he had been white, he would have been famous when he was in high school.  He would have been signed to a professional team as soon as he was eligible. He would have been celebrated across the country and treated with dignity, instead of being ignored or passed over for honors, and made to submit to Jim Crow humiliation everywhere he went.

So, this is a very interesting biography by a writer I enjoy.  I've had the book a number of years and started to read it once before, but got overwhelmed by its size. So I'm looking forward to getting to the end . . . sometime around May, I figure.  Stay tuned.