Xinhua Zhang Zhang itibaren 880, Taiwan, 澎湖縣馬公市西衛里 itibaren 880, Taiwan, 澎湖縣馬公市西衛里

this is more of a three-and-a-half, really. i wish the goodreads rating system had more options. i really like this book, but i feel pretty conflicted about it too. blood on the forge is a nasty, honest account of three black men who flee the racism and agrarian life of the south to work in a steel mill in chicago. there's real honesty and sincerity to the story-telling. the characters feel pretty organic, and the novel does a nice job of rendering the multicultural world of mill-workers. i'm kind of a sucker for deflecting the most interesting character away from the center, and i appreciated its depiction of big mat as the eventual epicenter of tension and conflict (instead of melody, who initially appears to be the sensitive artist type i expected to anchor the story). at the same time, the women characters don't fair well. as honest as the novel's depictions of gang rape and domestic abuse appear to be (not that i have any real way of gauging what this world might really be like), attaway isn't sufficiently critical about them. the mexican woman at the center of its drama rarely rises above "jezebel" status, and the narrative surrounding her becomes less and less interesting accordingly. there's also an idealized assessment of the "natural" world that seems a bit dated. once the brothers arrive at the steel mill, they immediately long for the simple farming life again. i couldn't help wondering why, since their lives at its beginning seemed even worse than what they encounter in chicago. there's an anti-technology streak to the novel that feels much thinner than most of its insights. but my hesitations set aside the context blood was written in. if i encountered the atrocities these people experience day in and day out, i might fear technology myself. and i probably would have less enlightened opinions about the opposite sex, unfortunately. in the end, this book is well worth it. warts and all.