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Publication
Description
History. Multi-Cultural. African American Nonfiction. Nonfiction. HTML:The true story of two African-American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back. The year was 1899 and the place a sweltering tobacco farm in the Jim Crow South town of Truevine, Virginia. George and Willie Muse were two little boys born to a sharecropper family. One day a white man offered them a piece of candy, setting off events that would take them around the world and change their lives forever. Captured into the circus, the Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. They were global superstars in a pre-broadcast era. But the very root of their success was in the color of their skin and in the outrageous caricatures they were forced to assume: supposed cannibals, sheep-headed freaks, even "Ambassadors from Mars." Back home, their mother never accepted that they were "gone" and spent 28 years trying to get them back. Through hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Beth Macy expertly explores a central and difficult question: Where were the brothers better off? On the world stage as stars or in poverty at home? Truevine is a compelling narrative rich in historical detail and rife with implications to race relations today.… (more)
User reviews
The author dug deep into this story, with a journalistic furor, interviewing descendants from the Muse family, similar to the approach of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. She explores many issues and events from the early 20th century, touching on poverty and the rampant racism that flourished in the south. It also documents the bravery and tenacity of the boy's mother, as she never gives up hope, for her lost sons. Highly recommended.
All this sounds like a great premise for creative nonfiction, but the whole thing falls apart in the execution. The written documentation on George and Willie is meager, so author Beth Macy fills in the tale with long digressions, including a lot of Truevine and freak show history and details about people who remember when George and Willie were alive. Some of this material is interesting, but there is way too much of it, and it interferes with the dramatic arc of the story. I found this book disappointing.