Second Wind

Alice Randall

The Wind Done Gone (Houghton Mifflin Trade, $22, 224 pp.)

Gone With the Wind has long been considered a classic. Author Margaret Mitchell’s language has become a part of the Southern novelist’s vernacular since the work’s debut 65 years ago. Yet, while Mitchell may have perfected the dialect, the storyline is a myth of Southern gentility, focusing on the lives of only half of the narrative’s participants. It is a division of black and white—one that portrays a white world of complexity and intelligence and a black world of one-dimensional, cartoonish characters.

In her now-famous debut novel The Wind Done Gone, Nashville songwriter Alice Randall parodies Mitchell’s work, centering the story on an intelligent black woman and exploring the lives of characters considered minor in the earlier novel. Controversy came before Randall’s book ever made it to press; the Mitchell Estate set out to halt publication, claiming The Wind Done Gone was too closely linked to, and taking much from, Mitchell’s original story. Randall defended her work by the nature of the book itself, a parody, and under this premise a judge allowed its publication. The novel has garnered a lot of attention as a result of the lawsuit, more than it has as a literary work. So, what of its value beyond the hype?

Just as the judge looked to the book’s concept for his decision, it is on this same basis that The Wind Done Gone should be evaluated. Parody has long served the literary world as a source of intelligent humor, usually reflecting the current, collective mind-set. It has also been an important tradition of the African American community. Randall’s interpretation of parody seems to hover between the traditional concept and a parallel approach to the Mitchell work.

Written as a diary, The Wind Done Gone follows the life of Cynara, daughter of plantation slave Mammy and Irish landowner Planter. Through thoughtful journal entries, the young woman searches for answers to questions of her own upbringing while struggling to find a place in a world that is not yet ready for a strong, independent black woman. The first entry provides vital connections in her family tree, one composed of the plantations’ owners, dwellers, and slaves. Among the relations is her half-sister and doppelganger, Other. Clearly Mitchell’s Scarlett O’Hara character, Other is portrayed as a well-intended, not-so-bright, fragile Southern belle. She is the link to an all-white world that is merely peripheral in Randall’s novel. Randall transforms Mitchell’s Scarlett into Cynara as well, affixing many of the same moral dilemmas and values of the earlier character to her protagonist. Deconstructing the myths depicted in Gone With the Wind, Randall provides a history that is certainly more accurate. Neither timid nor apologetic, The Wind Done Gone sets the record straight by debunking the notions of pure bloodlines and perfect parentage that were frequently perpetuated in Old South mythology.

Interestingly, an ongoing theme of nursing or suckling mixes nourishment with sexuality, adding to the many dark little secrets that abound in Randall’s book. At one point, she writes, “The Rosebud mouth attached to the black woman lifting the child to her pleasures, as the child, awake, untouched by stays and hoops, stands on tippy-toe to get her fill of pleasure, all raven-haired and unashamed of hunger. Him laughed. For his first-born daughter the pangs of hunger were as delightful as a mosquito bite: something to scratch in the next moment, the promise of pleasure to come.”

As a reassessment of the Civil War-era South, the novel rattles the world Mitchell created. But what of its integrity as a work of literature? Though on occasion the dialogue gets a bit predictable, particularly in the earlier entries, the book’s greatest strengths lie in the depth and complexity of its characters. Especially interesting are the parallels between the narrator and Sally Hemings. For example, both Hemings and the fictional character have politicians for lovers; because of this, each had opportunities that exceeded those allowed in their own times for black women.

But even more intriguing is the twist of portraying both Cynara and Other as Scarlett. This complicated weaving of one of Mitchell’s characters into two different women allows Randall to exemplify all of Scarlett’s strengths in Cynara and her weaknesses in the white character, Other—thus explaining Randall’s inventive name for this secondary character.

Randall’s songwriting background is evident in the book’s distinct lyrical quality, with the repetition of key phrases being reminiscent of many classic country songs. Consider the following lines: “Was it always there for me to suck in on the tip of your pap and I didn’t taste it, in your eye when you watched Other? In your eye when you watched Planter? The trick you played on him. And what about the trick you played on me? That I was the one flavor and she was—other—and better than me? Other and better than my mother?”