The Wind Done Gone

by Alice Randall

Book Overview

In an inspired act of literary invention, Alice Randall supplies the story that has been missing from Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. Imagine that the black characters in Mitchell's tale were... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 061810450X
• ISBN13: 9780618104505
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Amazing, Very Intelligent

Alice Randall is so incredibly amazing and well written. Obviously these negative reviewers do not understand the art of making something one's own. What is art, but interpretation? I congratulate Alice Randall in being so insightful and taking such a unique perspective. Read this book!

a brave and often haunting novel

alice randall's writing took my breath away. she is tremendously talented, a powerful new literary voice. this book is not a sequel to gone with the wind--it is an answer to it.

A first rate piece of literature!

"The Wind Done Gone" is the story of a mulatto woman from Georgia after the Civil War. The main character, Cynara, is the half sister of Other, a character likened to the Scarlet O'Hara of "Gone With The Wind". "The Wind Done Gone" parodies Mitchell's novel in the truest sense, despite all the legal maneuvering by the Margaret Mitchell estate to keep it from being published. It mimics the characters and premise of "Gone With The Wind" in a manner that is both cleaver and creative.The slave-master relationship depicted in Mitchell's work is sharply ridiculed by Randall throughout her novel. On the surface, Mitchell's account shows a family in full command of riches, power, land and slaves. In Randall's portrayal, it is the slaves who truly maintain control of the family's destiny. From the marriage of the family's parental units, to the design of the house they will live in, to the day to day management of the estate, Mammy and Garlic remained in subtle yet assured control. Keepers of secrets and masters of manipulation, they created and secured a present and future ("What would we a done with a sober white man on the place?") that ensured safety and shelter in an atrociously oppressive environment. Randall's greatest stab at "Gone With The Wind" is the revelation that the mother's side of the family is of African slave ancestry. With all of their assumed notions of racial superiority, beneath the surface is a family passing as white to escape the plight of a being black. I find great solace in the daily agony such denial must have caused to the slavers."The Wind Done Gone" has earned its place among the great literature of this country. Anyone who has read "Gone With The Wind" (or has seen the movie) owes it to him/herself to know another side of story. The first person narrative approach (by way of the main character's diary) allows Randall to fully explore the thought processes and conflicts of the character. Writing in the voice of a slave deprived of an early education, who later cannot quench her thirst for it, must have posed challenges for the author. But she overcame them. The exhilaration of being exposed to new things and the confusion of trying to integrate those new experiences (so vastly contrary to the old ones) into her life, are communicated to the reader with exacting language that is true to both the characters and the time. Amidst the poetic writing is the backdrop of a conflicted romance between Cynara and R, the ex-husband of Other, who purchases Cynara off the auction block and later marries her. Throughout their relationship, Cynara is torn between two loves. A love she feels owed to R for "rescuing" her from a life of toil (only to imprison her to a life of domestic servitude) and the love that is awakened in her upon meeting a black Congressman during a visit to the nation's capital city. "Gone With The Wind" has enjoyed classic status in the absence of "The Wind Done Gone". "The Wind Done Gone" has mo

A Masterpiece.

Houghton Mifflin did a disservice to this novel by putting a false sticker on the cover calling The Wind Done Gone "an Unauthorized Parody". It's NOT one...A parody, according to Merriam-Webster's, is: "a humorous or satirical imitation". This novel is neither humorous or satirical in tone, nor is it a simple copying of Gone With the Wind. Like Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea is a revisioning of Jane Eyre from the perspective of Edward Rochester's "mad" wife so is The Wind Done Gone a revisioning of Gone With the Wind from a slave's perspective with the creation of a mixed-race half-sister for plantation belle "Other".This book stands on its own as a novel of significance. The Wind Done Gone is the fictionalized journal of Cynara, the daughter of a plantation farmer and the plantation's black Mammy. Cynara's life has been defined by what was denied her, growing up as Other's unacknowledged half-sister; shunted aside by her mother Mammy who dotes on Other, and being sold off the plantation as a young girl because Other becomes jealous of her.R., a rogueish Southern gentlemen, it turns out, is someone Cynara met before Other, but makes the mistake of whetting R.'s interest in Other by telling R. about her. After R. and Other's daughter dies and he leaves Other, he returns to Cynara and sets up a house for her. But the ghost of Other and Cynara's history is always between them.Alice Randall dwells on the hidden and unspoken truths of Southern gentility: the unacknowledged alliances and relationships between men of power and colored women, the unrecognized mixed-race children, and the crutch of slavery for the antebellum South. Ms. Randall's points especially hit home in the familiar framework of Gone With the Wind.After reading both Gone With the Wind and The Wind Done Gone, I don't prefer one novel over the other: I think that both viewpoints co-exist and that taken together they encapsulate the charm, hypocrisy, and inter-relationships of the South. Both are riveting stories. The Wind Done Gone is a much shorter novel, but Cynara's narrative voice and the detailed writing are excellent.In my opinion, The Wind Done Gone will be studied as an alternative vision to Gone With the Wind. If you like The Wind Done Gone, I recommend Wide Sargasso Sea and the movie Jefferson in Paris.