Word: hermans
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Julia feels that she has betrayed her race. A romantic idealist, she struggles to convince herself that her love for Herman is a simple emotion, uncomplicated by their racial difference. But America's history of sexual relations between white men and Black women echoes of ugly racism: Southern gentlemen--even Jefferson--enjoyed frequent midnight strolls through their slave quarters, looking for Black women to sleep with; in most cases, these country squires took no responsibility for the slave children they fathered. Julia's female neighbors have not forgotten that sexual abuse and cannot help feeling that she allows Herman...
Wedding Band tells the story of Julia Augustine, a Black seamstress who lives in a secluded backyard where Herman, her white lover of ten years, can pay inconspicuous visits. In Childress' South Carolina of 1918, "mixed" affairs must be kept as clandestine as possible to prevent public humiliation, ridicule, or surprise late night visits from the local Ku Klux Klan. The two keep to themselves, celebrating their tenth anniversary alone in her shabby room with a small wedding cake. They profess undying love for each other and hope for the day when they can go North to marry. Yet guilt...
Julia's neighbors fail to realize that Herman lives one step ahead of the bill collectors and the people who want to buy him out of his bakery shop. Alienated from the charmed world of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara by the South's rigid social hierarchy, Herman empathizes with Julia and her fellow Blacks. "I'm white," he says, "did it give me favors and friends?" The guilt that tortures him is more personal than Julia's; Herman feels he has betrayed his family, particularly his mother, with his love for a Black woman...
...Herman's sister and mother, Gretchen Klopfer and Laurie Patton surmount the formidable task of transforming characters written as villains into people whose prejudices, though painfully unjustified, can still be understood. Klopfer gives young Anabelle unexpected sensitivity. More than just a racist bitch, Patton's aging matriarch is a woman who, unable to accept her status as "poor white trash," clings to a delusion of superiority, the dying idea of white supremacy. In contrast to Herman's identification with Blacks, his mother hates them because she needs someone to despise in the same way that she suffers the condescension...
...Julia's neighbors, the more sympathetic Black counterparts of Herman's mother and sister, Connie Sullivan, Valerie Graves and Kevin Porter poignantly capture the desperation of a people struggling to retain their self-esteem in the face of daily abasement. Unfortunately, Wanda Whitmore, as landlady Fanny Johnson, mugs, contorts, and overacts her way through a performance that recalls the conniving but ignorant Black stereotypes in Hollywood's old plantation films...