A recommendation such as this is special, given that it is about a moving and shocking book like few are.
Betty, with its 500 pages, is the first book written by Tiffany McDaniel, almost two decades ago, when she was only 18. No publisher would publish her works back then, they said ‘because the manuscript was too dark, too personal and too feminine. So, this happened that her first publication was "The Summer that Melted Everything", in 2016.
Betty, published afterwards, in 2020, is inspired by her familiar history, with Betty’s mother at the centre of the unfolding events. Is an illuminating story, telling us about sexual abuse, racism, sexism and suicide. At the feet of the Appalachian Mountains in Ohio, in the 60’s, Betty was the fourth out of six girls. We are told about the mother, a White woman marrying a Cherokee native American who works in the mines, about her sisters and the abuses suffered inside and outside the family.
The relationship between Landon and Betty is at the heart of the book, a friendship and caring story that sooths the dark surroundings. Landon believes in her daughter and tells her stories that will help her endure. Betty is a curious child, who feels a deep attraction towards nature and her Cherokee inheritance.
Another interesting side to the story is the knowledge Betty’s father has about nature and its medicinal properties. The utter destruction of the Cherokee and their culture at the hands of white people is brilliantly knitted in the narrative, which is not felt as a lecture upon the reader.
Betty is not an easy reading. It is a powerful and relentless narrative, with a hypnotic rhetoric, which seeks to liberate those who are now living from the injustice of the past.
Would you like to dive in head first in these 500 pages and live alongside Betty her unfortunately-so-common, in America’s racist and sexist culture, story? You won’t ever be the same…
You can buy Betty, de Tiffany McDaniel here.
