Cane River by Lalita Tademy a Review and Reflection

I finished reading the book, Cane River by Lalita Tademy.

The author, Lalita Tademy, writes about her heritage. Lalita researched the women in her family going back five generations. The early women were slaves in Louisiana.

The book tells of the hardships these women faced, how their body and spirits were broken on a daily basis, but how family and the hope for their children helped them to carry on.

This book graphically tells about the despicable treatment Lalita's family had to go through. It also tells of how these women loved and cherished the children they had even though some of the children came about in heartbreaking ways.

As I read this book my heart went out to all the people who suffered under slavery, how their families were torn apart. How children were sold from their mothers. I tried to wrap my brain around how something like this could happen in my country, how all emotions were turned off for the human beings being tortured, whether physically or mentally.

The only thing the woman of this book had to hold on to were their families and children, and even those things could be taken away in a blink of an eye.

There were times when I was reading this book with my mouth open in disbelief, wondering how in the world this could have happened, how could so many people believe owning slaves was a right? The thought disgusted me.

This book made me reflect on the issues of human rights in America today. How many people in this country still believe that some human beings are not worth having rights? How many people will look at a pregnant mother who may be poor, alone, scared, or became pregnant in a horrible way and think abortion is the answer. Taking away the rights of that child and taking away the only thing that mother may have to hold on to.

Unlike slavery, the practice of abortion does not only exist for a certain group, it is the oppression and slavery of all women.

In this book the women hold onto their children and the thought of children. Even knowing these children will most likely be slaves, they hold on to the hope that the next generation will make a difference.

How can we have that hope today when women are taught that it is their right to kill their children if the timing or the way they were brought into this world is not perfect?

The right of abortion has made women into the slave masters and slaves all at once.

One of the lines I love in this book is when a mother and daughter are talking and the mother is trying to console her daughter. The mother says, “I am the rock in your garden, and you are the bloom in mine.”

To fix abortion we have to fix the family.

I had chills down my spine when I read about the slave masters and the people who had their mind and heart in a place that did not have room for certain humans, God’s children, I was frightened. I was overwhelmed at the lack of love and the insanity of it all. I was scared because I could see all of what I was reading happening right now in America.

With abortion, we have been tricked into thinking that these children are not even human. We can close our eyes and hearts because we can’t see their flesh or look into their eyes. We cover it up as a women’s right, but really we are being enslaved, having our children taken from us, our legacy, apart of us that will live on and be apart of God’s plan. At the very same time abortion causes us to be a slave master, deciding who is worth the right to life and who is not.

Will there ever be a day when every parent will look at their children, whether born or unborn and say, “I am the rock in your garden, and you are the bloom in mine.”

I hope so.