Jackson-Brown, Angela. Drinking from a Bitter Cup

Salt Lake City, Utah: WiDo Publishing, 2014. Pp. 294.

Abstract

Literature is not always read only for pleasure, at times it can be read as a social and historical document. If the text of novel Drinking from a Bitter Cup is read with the same notion it can inform its reader about the history and society of the United States of America. The plot focuses on some of the most crucial issues in the history of the United States of America. The text not only focuses on the problem of race relations but also highlights the post Vietnam War psychological traumas of the soldiers. The text of Drinking from a Bitter Cup does not only incorporate the general state of the African-Americans during 1970s but also voices the conflicting ideologies of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcom X.
The novel starts in the year 1978 when Sylvia Butler is left alone after the death of her mother. She meets her father Hank Butler for the first time after this fateful incident. Butler meant nothing to Sylvia during her mother’s life. He was nothing more than a face in the old photos, however, after her mother’s demise she is dependent on her father completely. Her father takes her from Louisville, Kentucky to Ozark, Alabama to live with his family. Life is not easy for Sylvia in her father’s house, because her stepmother considers her an intruder. Sylvia’s situation is awkward because she is a child born out of wedlock. Her stepmother resents everything about her from the colour of skin to the texture of hair to her social position as Hank Butler’s illegitimate child.
Although, Sylvia has a hard life in her father’s house but she finds a friend and confidant in the personality of Chalres (her stepmother’s younger brother). Charles is a veteran who has just come back from Vietnam War. He is psychologically shattered and physically handicapped. War has impacted him badly and he is no more the same Charles who left his family a few years back. Sylvia finds a good friend in Charles but it also proves to be deceptive and after some time she is hurt again in a manner she never could have imagined.
The story is set in the Deep South during the decades of 1970s and 80s. It does not only incorporate personal but also political. It is the story of a young girl who triumphs and becomes a successful young woman who stands all alone to face the world she once was afraid of. The story can be read and understood at multiple levels, it is not only the story of a young African-American girl’s struggle for survival in the White society but also the struggle of a female figure who is triumphant at the end of a very hard phase.
70s was an exuberant period for the African-Americans because after the successful completion of the Civil Rights movement the Blacks had ultimately got the right of citizenship. Now they were considered equal to the Whites in the USA, and this change in the status of the African-Americans also altered the society. The text focuses not only on the issue of racism according to the colour of the skin i.e. White and Black as binary opposites, ‘colours’ that mistrust, mistreat and discriminate against each other but it also explores the idea of racism within the same race. Angela Jackson-Brown explores the idea of racism on the basis of the shade of the skin within the Black community. The text also elaborates how racism can exist within same race. Angela Jackson-Brown explains how less black people are treated in a better way as compared to the people who have darker skin colour. Furthermore, she also focuses on the issues of mixed race.