Freedom's Just Another Word

Gr 8 Up—Eighteen-year-old Easy lives in Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1970. Hers is the only black family in town, and her father runs the local garage. She is a skilled mechanic, but her dream is to sing the blues. Her heroine is Janis Joplin. When Janis invites Easy to sing for her in Texas, Easy will stop at nothing to make her way to the recently desegregated South to chase her dream. The teen embarks upon a road trip accompanied by two nuns. While this setup sounds like the makings of a great novel, the story suffers in execution. The casual racism that Easy experiences during her trip does not create the expected responses of anger and sorrow but feels much more cerebral. This may be the result of the author's heavy reliance on telling rather than showing. There are lost opportunities in the narrative to evoke the sense of danger of traveling as a lone black woman in the South in the 1970s, even one who is somewhat naive about her situation. Easy's ultimate decision not to sing at Threadgill's in Austin will be confusing to readers because she doesn't seem overly concerned about racism until the moment when she might achieve her dream if she sings in front of racists. In spite of this, the well-researched setting makes for interesting reading.