ROAR Blog #2:Rattlebone

Courtney Patterson
ROAR Blog
November 27, 2009

ROAR Blog #2
Summary: In the book Rattlebone by Maxine Clair, Irene and her friends Wanda and Puddin who are brothers and sisters, are playing a game called lemonade. To play this game they were supposed to act like they were famous and then they would show their talents. While they were playing this game they met a white woman that was dressed up in all white clothing. This woman looked unfamiliar to the kids, because they didn’t know too any white people in their community because Irene lives in an African American community. Ms. Joan was the women’s name and she started talking to the kids to find out more about them.
Ms. Joan was there to teach the children that they could pray to the mother of Jesus who is Mother Mary. At first Irene being the tallest, but not the oldest knew that her mother wouldn’t stand for her praying to another god, but she still stayed a listened to Ms. Joan. Over a small period of time, Ms. Joan was teaching the kids to repeat prayers and she gave them little gifts that helped them feel close to Mother Mary.
While Ms. Joan was stopping by to teach the kids, Irene began to take piano with Wanda after they had their meetings with Ms. Joan. Wanda began to lose interest in piano because Mr. Heltzberg, the piano teacher had spent a large amount of time with Irene. One day after Mr. Heltzberg was playing a song that Irene would learn; Puddin played the same song on the piano. This came to a surprise to everyone because Puddin has learning disabilities and he never was able to learn how to talk or how to do any activities that most people his age were able to do. When Ms. Joan heard about Puddin’s performance she said that it was all of Mother Mary’s doing and Puddin’s family should thank her. Puddin and Wanda’s mother along with Irene’s mom, Pearlean started to yell at Ms. Joan and told her that it was not Mary’s doing that made Puddin played the piano, but it was God’s doing. Ms. Joan tried to defend herself, but she soon realized that she couldn’t compete with the angry mothers.
*Summarize pages are 23-38


Quote: “Over and over again they said prayers to statues, which everybody knew was a sin. I knew my mother would have a fit if she knew we were putting some other god before God, even if it was Jesus’ mother.” (Clair 28)


Reaction: My reaction is that this quote shows how the two different races (white and black) were different. The Black community believed that God is the only person who is the most important and the white community that Ms. Joan represented believed that Mother Mary was the most important person. This is a important quote in the story because it shows that Irene’s mother didn’t want Irene to put another god before their God and Irene knew that there was problems between people who different believes then her family. Max Clair’s style is creative because she showed the glitches between the two different communities by showing how the characters felt about their gods. Clair’s style continues to show strong writing that keeps the readers reading more.