Harper Lee: Set the Watchman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Set_a_Watchman

This is a book that is making waves, the subject of many reviews. I enjoyed it enormously.

Coming at this time, it is a bombshell. Everyone is pleased that South Carolina has taken down the Confederate. It had become a symbol of racism and a growing obstacle to race relations in the South. Yet there are people, many people, in the South - Whites of course - who saw the flag in quite another light. The Civil War in the United States was a war about slavery and race, but it was also much more. It was a war to retain the agricultural society that had been built there over a period of two hundred years. Slavery and racism had to change; the society remains. Racism is still a key to understanding the South but so also is the distinct society that Southern Whites fought for.

Harper Lee and especially her publisher have taken on a huge issue in the South with the publication of this book. I cannot judge it on its literary merits. Many are saying it is a failed novel. Perhaps so; I enjoyed reading it and it spoke deeply to me. I think much of the criticism of the novel will come from Northerners. I am waiting for some reviews from the South.

Much of what I found in the novel has a parallel with the situation between Quebec and the ROC (Rest of Canada): Not an exact parallel but nonetheless…. French Quebecois are, for the Rest of Canada much like the South is for the North and the issue of racism, framed in terms of immigration and multiculturalism, is very much part of the tensions today.

White society lives on in the South and it includes the powerful issue of racism but also of the unique identity and sovereignty of the South.  The novel suggests that diversity in dialogue is the way forward. I deeply believe that!