Maggie's Amerikay

Maggie's Amerikay

• author: Barbara Timberlake Russell  "no author website"
• illustrator:  Jim Burke  http://www.jimburkeart.com
• year of publication: 2006
• publisher city: New York
• publisher:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• ISBN:  0-374-34722-0

Annotation:  In new Orleans, 1898, while her mother talks of saving to buy land and her father insists on the importance of an eduction, young Irish immigrant, Maggie McCrary is determined to find her own way in their new home, America.

Personal Thoughts: 

In Maggie’s Amerikay, Barbara Timberlake Russell has crafted a heartfelt yet realistic portrayal of clashing cultures and a character learning to transcend cultural differences. 

It’s 1898 and Maggie McCray is growing up in New Orleans with her Irish immigrant family.  They are poor but hard working.  The Irish immigrants distrusted and quarreled with the blacks and the blacks felt the same distrust towards the Irish.  This was due to pressure and competition for jobs.  The portrayal of the different ethnic groups quarreling seemed realistic to me and I appreciated the honest writing. 

The characters' motivations are convincing.  While Maggie’s mother is driven by money and property ownership, she scorns time wasted on education and resents Negros for taking up jobs.  Maggie’s father on the other hand pushes for education and insists his children get schooling over manual labor.  His character is compassionate and charitable.  When he gives an aspiring musician, a young negro boy, a free cornet, Maggie is mortified, having lost the value of the horn, a whopping sum of $1.  But no good deed goes unreturned and the boy hooks Maggie up with work writing down the words of an old Negro storyteller.  Incidentally, her education and book-learning pays off in the end. 

The story is so cultural rich and believable, never seeming condescending or false.  I enjoyed the book for female protagonist, who struggles to help her family and finds strength in her intelligence, while learning to appreciate her neighbors, despite their cultural differences.