Book Description
for A Sitting in St. James by Rita Williams-Garcia
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
St. James Parish, Louisiana, 1860: Aging, bitter, spiteful Madame Sylvie Guilbert and her rakish son, Lucien, embody entitlement even as the family plantation struggles financially. Lucien’s son Byron is secretly, passionately in love with his West Point classmate Pearce but will do his family duty and marry into wealth. Rosalie is Lucien’s talented quadroon daughter (Lucien raped her mother years before, just as he continues to matter-of-factly rape other enslaved women); she knows more about the business of the estate than Byron, while Madame Sylvia doesn’t acknowledge her existence. Visiting Jane Chatham is a young white woman who cares single-mindedly for her horse, enduring Madame Sylvie’s irrelevant tutelage on being a lady because she’s been told she must if she wants to keep riding. Thisbe, Madame Sylvie’s maid, is a smart and observant young Black woman who knows to keep her thoughts, ideas, and feelings to herself. Into this world comes Claude Le Brun, a white northern painter descended from a French artist; Madame Sylvie, unaware of how deeply Claude’s perspective differs from her own, insists he paint her portrait. The white characters in this masterful, mature work are diverse and singular; many face or have faced their own unique struggles, challenges, and tragedies. But what almost all have in common is unquestioning allegiance—whether casual or vehement—to ideas and a way of life that deny the humanity of the Black lives in their midst. (Age 16 and older)
CCBC Choices 2022. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2022. Used with permission.