Swan

Swan by Africa Fine is a novel in three parts. The main character is an African-American girl named Delia, but she has acquired the unfortunate nickname of Duck. The novel starts off from Delia's point of view and is told in the first person  narrative style. You get the impression that her sister and mother are horrible people, but later chapters are told from their points of view in the third person. The book kind of lets you see different perspectives and all perspectives have different ideas of what love looks like.
Delia has always been given the impression that she is not only unattractive, but unmemorable which allows her to blend into the background and get secrets. This is how she discovers that her sister is in a relationship with not only a white man (a scandelous affair in 1950's Texas), but the son of the most affluent man in the town. Her sister becomes pregnant and as a result their mother violently kicks her out of the house at age 17. With no where to go she becomes a maid at the home of her boyfriend's family though her boyfriend was sent away to finish school at a boarding school before being sent to a far away college.
Violet, the mother falls for a man who attempts to molest Delia and though Delia only has a few months of school and promising prospects for college scholarships she drops out and runs away to Chicago to get away from her neglectful mother and her abusive new husband. Delia had a teacher who had spoken of Chicago and it seemed to Delia that it would be a good place to start a new life.
In Chicago Duck becomes Delia and she goes from cleaning jazz clubs to singing in them. She becomes fairly successful as a singer as she navigates lifes ups and downs through drugs and negative influences to a point in her life when she begins to respect herself.
This novel is as much about coming to love oneself as it is about loving the men in their lives. I very much enjoyed this book and the way it's written gives you the idea that you never know what's going in someone's life without having lived it.
32 Candles by Ernessa Carter is a book I read a while ago and has a lot of similar features so if you decide to read Swan and enjoy it, 32 Candles should be next on your list.


Summarized by Randalee