The Wedding (1995) - Dorothy West

Written by Dorothy West
Read by Robin Miles
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Books on Tape
Release date: August 3, 2021
Duration: 07:21:38

In her final novel, Dorothy West offers an intimate glimpse into African American middle class. Set on bucolic Martha’s Vineyard in the 1950s, The Wedding tells the story of life in the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast’s black bourgeoisie. Within this inner circle of “blue-vein society,” we witness the prominent Coles family gather for the wedding of the loveliest daughter, Shelby, who could have chosen from “a whole area of eligible men of the right colors and the right professions.” Instead, she has fallen in love with and is about to be married to Meade Wyler, a white jazz musician from New York. A shock wave breaks over the Oval as its longtime members grapple with the changing face of its community.

With elegant, luminous prose, Dorothy West crowns her literary career by illustrating one family’s struggle to break the shackles of race and class.

An impending wedding is the focus of the story, but the real subject is the inherent tension in the hierarchy of color within the African-American community. In this way, West gives non-African-American listeners a glimpse of a cultural irony that blacks have heretofore preferred to keep to themselves.”—AudioFile

Cover picture—
Norman Lewis (1909–1979), Girl with Yellow Hat (aka Woman with Yellow Hat and Yellow Hat), 1936, oil on burlap, 36 1/2 x 26 inches; Courtesy of Leslie Lewis and Christina Lewis Halpern from the Reginald F. Lewis Family Collection; © Estate of Norman Lewis; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

Trivia—Mildred A Wirt (1905 - 2002) wrote primarily Young Adult Fiction, Children’s Fiction, and Mystery under 11 names, Dorothy West was one, during her 80-year career. She wrote the Nancy Drew Mysteries as Carolyn Keene from 1929 to 1947,