I received a copy of Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, for my fourteenth birthday. On the dust jacket of my copy are printed the following review excerpts: “Nobody who finds pleasure in the art of fiction can afford to neglect...Gone With the Wind...a book of uncommon quality, a superb piece of storytelling...” (The New York Times; “...the best novel that has ever come out of the South. In fact, I believe it is unsurpassed in the whole of American writing” (Washington Post); “For sheer readability I can think of nothing it must give way before. Miss Mitchell proves herself a staggeringly gifted storyteller” (The New Yorker); and “Fascinating and unforgettable. A remarkable book, a spectacular book...” (Chicago Tribune). High praise indeed, from high authorities. And my aunt’s giving me the book for my fourteenth birthday is also high praise: she gave it to me as a book that she herself had read and loved, and as a book that justifiedly occupies its place in the American popular canon.And I agree with these reviews, with my aunt, and with the millions of readers who love Gone With the Wind. It is a tremendous book. It is a tragic epic, the story of a beautiful, charming, gifted and ambitious young woman, Scarlett O’Hara, who blindly uses her own gifts to further herself, unconsciously destroying that which she loves in the process. I wept for Scarlett and – I am surprising no one when I say that the book is against the backdrop of the Civil War and Reconstruction – for the other women, young and old, who lost the men they love. Scarlett is a spirited and intelligent heroine (for all her lack of knowledge) with whom I identified as a fourteen-year-old and again as a married woman with children of her own.But – and I suppose this will also come as no surprise to anyone, who, like me, identifies with Scarlett – I am white. Of course I, a white girl, can identify with Scarlett! Can a black girl – a spirited and intelligent black girl, a beautiful, charming, gifted and ambitious black girl – identify with Scarlett when Ms. Mitchell’s novel contains the ugliest racist language I have ever read in my life? It would be one thing if this ugly racist language were confined to the mouths and thoughts of Ms. Mitchell’s characters (after all, her characters are drawn from the slave-owning planter class of antebellum Georgia), but Ms. Mitchell’s omniscient narrator – occupying the place of God on high – spouts, by far, the worst and foulest racist sentiments in the whole book. The vicious racist sentiments by the omniscient narrator do, truly, diminish the power of this otherwise great book.And so what is a spirited and intelligent, beautiful, charming, gifted and ambitious black girl supposed to do with Gone With the Wind? How can she deal with such a wonderful heroine, and such a great book, that occupies so high a place in the American popular canon, when it speaks such ugly language to her, personally, and about her, particularly? Well, Alice Randall dealt with Gone With the Wind by writing The Wind Done Gone. The Wind Done Gone tells the story of Gone With the Wind – that is, the story of how one woman chose to act during the Civil War and Reconstruction, and her choices’ consequences – from the point of view of Scarlett’s half-sister, Cynara, the daughter of her planter father, Gerald O’Hara, and Mammy, the black slave. Ms. Randall faces head on not just Ms. Mitchell’s ugly racist language but also the fact that the only black characters to have a voice in Ms. Mitchell’s novel were happy and content in slavery, and were frightened and affronted by emancipation, and the fact that in Ms. Mitchell’s novel, the only white men to rape black women were Yankees, not white slave-owners. To tell Cynara’s story and make her points, Ms. Randall uses and renames Ms. Mitchell’s characters: Scarlett is “Other,” Rhett Butler is “R.B.,” Ashley Wilkes is “Dreamy Gentleman, Melanie is “Mealy Mouth,” Gerald O’Hara is “Planter,” Pork is “Garlic,” and Prissy is “Miss Priss,” and so on. Ms. Randall also refers to several events that take place in Ms. Mitchell’s novel, explains and gives background to several others, besides creating an independent, stand-alone narrative and story.So, then, what do you do if you are the Estate of Margaret Mitchell and Ms. Randall has just written and published The Wind Done Gone? Well, you sue for copyright infringement, of course! I don’t blame the Estate; it has to protect the brand. I’ve seen Scarlett O’Hara Barbie dolls and Christmas ornaments, and the Estate has licensed another author or two to write sequels to Gone With the Wind, etc. This is big money. The Estate sued in federal district court in Georgia, and the court found that Ms. Randall’s novel indeed infringed on the Estate’s copyright, and enjoined publication of Ms. Randall’s novel. Ms. Randall’s publisher appealed, and the case went to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.There are some court opinions that are well-nigh inspirational, when the court not only does what is so fundamentally, down-deep-in-your-bones the right thing, but also gives a well-reasoned, thoughtful basis for doing so. The opinion in Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co., 268 F.3d 1257 (11th Cir. 2001), is one of those opinions. The Court started its analysis with something that to me, not versed in intellectual property law, was quite extraordinary: “The Copyright Clause and the First Amendment, while intuitively in conflict, were drafted to work together to prevent censorship; copyright laws were enacted in part to prevent private censorship and the First Amendment was enacted to prevent public censorship.” Suntrust, 268 F.3d at 1263. Thus signaling from the beginning that it was not going to censor Ms. Randall’s novel, the Court went on to analyze the “fair use” defense to copyright infringement, which includes parody. And for purposes of the fair-use analysis, the Court defined “parody” as a work whose “aim is to comment upon or criticize a prior work by appropriating elements of the original in creating a new artistic, as opposed to scholarly or journalistic, work.” 268 F.3d at 1268-69. The Court concluded that “The Wind Done Gone is more than an abstract, pure fictional work. It is principally and purposefully a critical statement that seeks to rebut and destroy the perspective, judgments, and mythology of Gone With the Wind.” 268 F.3d at 1270. So concluding, the Court lifted the lower court’s injunction and let Ms. Randall’s publishers publish her book. And this conclusion of the Court’s begs the question that I myself was asking as I read Ms. Randall’s book: can this work stand alone, apart from Gone With the Wind? Could I read it without having read Ms. Mitchell’s book and figure out what is going on? Could I enjoy it? Is it, by itself, a good book? And the answer to all these questions is certainly “yes.” But would I have enjoyed it as much? No. The power in The Wind Done Gone is derived primarily from the fact that it is a potent criticism of such a tremendous work as Gone With the Wind. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I've seen the film, but have not read Gone With The Wind. This novel is a rejoinder, a rebuttal, a reply from the fictional mixed-race daughter of Mammy and Mr O’Hara, telling the story of her life at Twelve Oaks on the Tara plantation and beyond. Language and naming are particularly important in this book, Twelve Oaks is called Twelve Slaves Strong as Trees, our heroine is christened Cinnamon (because she is sweet and spicy, or maybe because she is just another product of the plantation), nicknamed Cindy, she renames herself Cynara. Rhett Butler, with whom Cinnamon has a a book-long affair, is just R. (or Debt). Scarlett, Cinnamon’s half-sister, is Other (her light shadow?). Cinnamon doesn't find out her mother's true name until she dies: she is just Mammy. Cinnamon’s renaming echoes the owners giving their slaves their surnames, killing off the African names. Randall uses the antebellum language of the south: "He flatters me by claiming the superiority of my table and I reward him with an invitation to take a rest with me on the green velvet couch" mixed with black vernacular and utilitarian (but poetic) language – Cinnamon is a “fetchshawl” house servant, she talks of the “shoofly” curtain.The brutality of life for women and “coloureds” is reported in a matter of fact way. Working as a maid in a brothel, Cinnamon reports that plantation bosses rarely visit the whore-house as they have slaves to provide that function, and they prefer having sex with the pre-pubescent slaves in their charge – less bastards born that way.As with Beloved by Toni Morrison, it’s fascinating to find out what happened afterwards. Whereas the civil war is disastrous for Scarlett, it works out well for Cinnamon: after emancipation, she lives in a house in a coloured area with coloured shops, schools, pharmacies, undertakers, doctors, churches, even a university. Whereas segregation was quite rightly challenged in the 20th century, the fact that 8 years after the war ends, black people can go shopping is a source of pride to Cinnamon.Gone With The Wind's history is re-written. Despite their situation, the Tara plantation slaves are not downtrodden, they manipulate their masters and drug their mistresses, kill babies at birth and generally behave in a way that behoves their situation. It turns out that Scarlett O'Hara is 1/16th black – her great great grandmother on her mother's side was Haitian; this (revised) fact makes a mockery of the Southern one-drop rule and the different situations the two "mulatto" sisters find themselves in.
What do You think about The Wind Done Gone (2002)?
I was so moved by the prose in this book! The Amazon review are FULL of haters! I have actually marked this book like it was a religious text so that I can go back and feel the words. I consider myself a wordsmith of sorts and I LOVE when they are strung together perfectly and this book does that. I met Alice Randall at the recent Book Club Conference in Atlanta and was intrigued and humbled by her spirit. I couldn't believe as a fan of Gone With The Wind, I had missed this book. I immediately got it from the library. I found it to be an interesting 'other view' of the story and combined with the original story gave the overall saga much more depth. As a woman of color, I desire to have some indication of how WE felt or how WE survived during these horrible times and she gave me that.The premise was as believable as the original - who said it only had to go that way? GOOD GOOD BOOK!! I applaud Mrs. Randall and now I need to buy this book. I'm ranking it up there in terms of words that truly moved me with "Manchild in the Promise land" "Message to the Blackman" and "Someone Knows My Name"
—Pamela
I would love to read a good sequel to the original _Gone With the Wind_, but I have yet to find one. This is the worst one yet. In fact, I didn't even finish it. This is one of the most poorly written, self-indulgent, bits of dreck through which I have ever tried to wade. "Parody" is supposed to involve humour, but the clumsily constructed prose impedes the author's attempt to amuse. I suspect the only reasons this piece made it to bestseller status were 1) riding on the coattails of the actual Pulitzer winning novel on which it is supposed to be based and 2) the publicity granted it by the lawsuit brought by Margaret Mitchell's estate.Aside from the poor writing, it denies the reality created in the original novel by its very premise. The author of this slave diary is supposedly Scarlett's half sister by her father and Mammy. Gerald would NEVER have fathered a child with Mammy. Especially Mammy! As stated in the original book, she would have mumbled just loud enough for the white folks to hear all about it, even though they would have to pretend they didn't. He respected Ellen entirely too much and no way would that ever be part of Margaret Mitchell's vision of him, although I suppose it's possible he may have visited women like that Belle Watling in Atlanta, but it would have to be far enough away so that Mrs. O'Hara's feelings and pride could spared, certainly not in her own house or plantation! I can see Alexandra Ripley's version of Scarlett going to Ireland. I can even believe in the version of Rhett's childhood in _Rhett Butler's People_ because MM alludes to something like that in GWTW, but Gerald in the slave quarters? Nope, not buying it.The reader seeking a new take on a classic novel would be far better served by such offerings as _Pride and Prejudice and Zombies_ or _Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer_. _Wind Done Gone_ belongs on fanfic.net, not in print where people are tricked into paying for something that is not worth the ink to print or the time spent digitalizing.
—Lisa Crow
I'm tempted to send the author a thank you card for expressing what I've always felt about Scarlet O'Hara, namely, that the whinny brat had NO idea what real problems were, like the kind of problems her half sister has in this book, daughter of "mammy" and the plantation owner. I really liked the nicknames she assigns everyone (mostly for legal purposes, but it works), with a resonating subtext about the power for names.The disjointed time frame almost works, a little more fleshing out of certain sequences would have helped, since it isn't always clear how the main character gets from point a to point b and how on earth she wound up at point c. Good portrayal of history - obviously very well researched. Excellent portrayal of a truly effed up family.Biggest critique - the dialogue. Sometimes it was just too modern, as if the characters were already aware of the 20th century. Worst example - Rhett Butler actually says "Once you go black, you never go back." Oy.
—Kara
