SATURDAY, AUGUST 1 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C3
Justine takes on multiple jobs, at
one point becoming a Mary Kay
saleswoman — in direct opposi-
tion to the teachings of the
church. But even as she leaves
one form of family behind, anoth-
er emerges, along with the prom-
ise of stability in a new place.
Ford’s connection to her char-acters shines through the writ-
ing, infusing these voices with a
sweet, sidelong zing. Reney sums
up her family dynamic in a few
sharp sentences: “My father
wasn’t a wound or even a scar,
not a black hole or a dry desert.
He just wasn’t. Not for me any-
way. Mom was my sun and mythrough the Holiness communi-
ty. Justine is determined to go,
but the trip turns out to be a
disaster — her father seems to
have little idea of how to interact
with his daughter, and Justine is
overwhelmed: “By the time they
got there, Justine felt so nauseous
and frightened of dying and go-
ing to hell that Six Flags was one
of the worst days of her life.”
In many ways, the church
functions as a stand-in for Jus-
tine’s broken family and commu-
nity. This is one of the central
paradoxes of the book: The
church provides coherence and
connections, but it’s also harsh
and unyielding, imposing outside
values on the Cherokee commu-
nity. Going on an excursion to Six
Flags is seen as disloyal to her
mother and community — choos-
ing her father and his callow
world, if only temporarily, over
the one that has nurtured her.
Ford unfolds Justine’s story
without passing judgment, which
is one of the great strengths of
“Crooked Hallelujah”; she writes
close to her characters, the narra-
tive stripping away explanations,
allowing readers to feel real in-
volvement in the action.
Both protected and hemmed
in by the church, Justine conse-
quently has trouble telling the
difference between her mother’s
projected fears and more tangi-
ble dangers. When she sneaks out
with a boy, he assaults her, and in
a paroxysm of guilt and disorien-
tation, she fears she might have
somehow been responsible.
She doesn’t tell anyone what
happened, but the evidence still
emerges: At a far too young age,
Justine becomes a mother. In
effect, Justine and her little
daughter, Reney, must grow up
together, the two of them strug-
gling and scrimping to get by.
BOOK WORLD FROM C1 moon. I was her all, too, and that
was us.”
This language is rich but never
dense. There’s a lightness to the
perspective which shifts and
bends, prismed by a matrilineal
succession of Cherokee and
mixed-race women. At one point,
Reney observes, “It hadn’t taken
many run-ins with boys for me to
realize that I’d met my soul mate
as a girl, and she was my great-
grandmother.” In fact, there are
so many parallels among the
women’s stories, in both experi-
ences and sensibility, that at
times it’s difficult to tell them
apart, as Lula blurs into Justine
and Justine into Reney. Though
this may be deliberate on the part
of the author as these characters
live an ambivalent plurality, si-
multaneously running away from
and toward each other.
The stories of Lula, Justine and
Reney, along with Lula’s mother,
Granny, feature generations of
problem men, terrible back-
breaking jobs, and children hav-
ing children. But while there is
great pain, there’s also great com-
passion and generosity toward
these characters. Reney muses,
“She thought she was long past
crying over her place in life. It
was a place she had made as a
girl, and then as a young woman
in a wave of stubbornness, and
now in near indifference. She
hadn’t seen community college as
a means to an end. She hadn’t
stopped long enough to consider
the end.” As the newest genera-
tion, Reney carries the hopes and
expectations of this family line,
and we are fortunate readers to
be taken along on her remarkable
journey.
[email protected]
Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of
“Birds of Paradise” and “Origin.” Her
most recent book is the culinary
memoir “Life Without a Recipe.”Author unfolds story without passing judgment
VAL FORD HANCOCK
Kelli Jo Ford’s “Crooked Hallelujah” follows multiple generations
of Cherokee women who are facing the same relentless struggles.Dear Readers:
It’s Aug. 1, known
by dog lovers as
DOGust 1st! It’s the
day to celebrate
shelter dogs. When you adopt a
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To celebrate, take your dog to
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P.S.: According to the American
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Dear Readers: With today be-
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sassy fawn chihuahua. To meet
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click on “Pet of the Week.”
To find your own four-legged,
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cal shelter or rescue group. Email
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fect pet to [email protected].Dear Heloise: When I launder
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matter to recuff them.
— Heidi in TennesseeDear Heloise: I nstead of cleaning
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And perhaps the best part...
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— Mike, via emailDear Readers: Walking in the
city on a summer’s evening is
great exercise, but it must be done
safely. According to the National
Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NH TSA.gov),
stay safe by:
l Staying on the sidewalk, but
if there’s no sidewalk, walk facing
oncoming traffic.
l Carrying a flashlight, ID and
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l Wearing bright or reflective
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l Crossing only in marked
crosswalks and obeying traffic
signals.Dear Heloise: When it’s time to
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bath, I’ve resigned myself to the
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— Betty in ColoradoDear Readers: If your garden
yield is too big for your personal
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food bank to help the needy in
your community. Give them a call.Heloise’s column appears six days a
week at washingtonpost.com/advice.
Send a hint to Heloise, P.O. Box
795001, San Antonio, TX 78279-
5000 , or email it to
[email protected].
© 2 020, King Features SyndicateFete your shelter dog,
or consider adopting one
Hints from
Heloisetough, issue-oriented investiga-
tions of everything from poverty
and inequality to sexual orienta-
tion and women’s issues. And all
reflected a singular style, one that
combined Grant’s native curiosi-
ty with disarming intimacy and
compassion.
“Maybe because of my back-
ground as an actor, I so identify
with who I’m talking to and
what’s coming at me,” she ex-
plained. “Whatever style there is
comes out of my identification
with what’s being said to me.”
Perhaps most meaningfully,
Grant never appears on screen in
her documentaries, and only
rarely allows her voice to be
heard. Rather, her subjects and
the films themselves become her
emotional instrument. Even after
her heady days of near-constant
work in Hollywood, it wasn’t
until she began to direct that she
truly found the voice that had
been silenced decades ago.
“I’d had to shut up for so long,”
she said, describing the paranoia
and paralyzing self-doubt that
she suffered while being black-
listed. “You’re worried that if you
open your mouth, somebody’s
name is going to come out and
hurt them. So getting to do docu-
mentaries was such a door
[swinging] open for me. I could
ask anything, I could say any-
thing and I could address some of
the things I felt deeply about in a
very real way.”
[email protected]HOPE RUNS HIGH FILMSHOPE RUNS HIGH DISTRIBUTIONwas the intellectual engagement
of her first husband, Arnold
Manoff, and his friends that at-
tracted her. “I hadn’t become a
communist because I didn’t un-
derstand it.”
Grant received her first Oscar
nomination for her poignantly
funny performance in “Detective
Story.” But the career that should
have taken off was effectively
destroyed. (“I’d been blacklisted
from the time I was 24 until the
time I was 36,” she noted, “which
is really a Hollywood actor’s life-
time in film.”)
For the next decade she
worked when she could, in the-
ater and occasionally TV, until
she was hired on the hit soap
opera “Peyton Place.” As the
blacklist began to loosen and
eventually disappear, she said
“yes to everything,” to quote the
title of her memoir. Grant’s insa-
tiable appetite for work allowed
her to work with some of the era’s
most legendary directors, includ-
ing Hal Ashby (“The Landlord,”
“Shampoo”), and do some of the
era’s most fabulous schlock.
She still cracks up remember-
ing her big line in the 1978
disaster flick “The Swarm,” in
which she played a TV news
reporter: “The bees are coming!”
She laughed so hard doing the
scene that the director made her
go collect herself. “It was the
funniest lowest point,” she re-
called, “and I was absolutely
grateful for the chance to do it
and bring home the paycheck.”
By then, Grant had enrolled in
the American Film Institute’s
newly minted Directing Work-
shop for Women, where she gravi-
tated toward adaptations of Au-
gust Strindberg (“The Stronger”)
and Tillie Olsen (“Tell Me a Rid-
dle”). In 1979, she began filming
her first documentary, “The Will-
mar 8,” an account of women
going on strike against the bank
where they work in a small Min-
nesota town. It was the astonish-
ingly assured debut of a natural
documentarian; Grant won an-
other Oscar for directing “Down
and Out in America,” her 1986
film about the social, economic
and political fallout of the Reagan
era, that kicks off AFI Silver’s
six-week series.
Those films also exemplified
an oeuvre that gravitated toward
HORNADAY FROM C1
Grant blacklisted
for much of career
CHARLEY GALLAY/GETTY IMAGES FOR TCMCLOCKWISE FROM TOP
LEFT: Lee Grant attends the
50th-anniversary screening of
“In the Heat of the Night”
during the 2017 TCM Classic
Film Festival in Los Angeles; a
scene from Grant’s 1980s
documentary “What Sex Am
I?”; a scene from “Down and
Out in America,” another
documentary that Grant filmed
in the 1980s.The Movie Directory has gone dark.We will raise the curtain again
as soon as events warrant.