The Magazine Novels of Pauline Hopkins: (Including Hagar's Daughter, Winona, and of One Blood)

When I first saw this book, I groaned. Not because of the title, or the subject, or the author -- I wasn't familiar with any of the above. I groaned because it was an assigned text for the African American Literature class in which I was enrolled. The book is, frankly, huge -- and size is much more daunting to our modern 20th/21st century eyes than it was to our predecessors. The reason for its immense number of pages, however, is that it is three novels bound into one edition -- and to my greater surprise, I was floored by the two I was assigned to read: "Hagar's Daughter" and "Of One Blood".Pauline Hopkins wrote these stories, as well as the middle one, "Winona", not to be published all at once, but as serial installments in 'Colored American Magazine' 1901-1903. Having never before read stories written for such format, I was amazed by the rich complexity of each plot. Very rarely can I say that "I *never* saw that coming" when reading a novel. Usually there is some hint of plot that we can follow, however intricately-wrought, perhaps because we have seen so very many stories. These stories, however -- like fabled Shaharazad tales of the 'Arabian Nights' -- depended upon keeping the readers hooked on every word, every 'cliff-hanger' that ended a section of chapters. And Hopkins succeeded incredibly well!While the end of "Hagar's Daughter" is a little too pat (again, perhaps for these jaded late-20th century eyes), the entirety of the novel keeps you dangling expertly in suspense, at some points practically chewing your nails because you desperately want to see HOW the "hero" or "heroine" are going to escape each predicament. The same is true of "Of One Blood," although that story goes even further by introducing near-fanastical elements of mysticism, as well as mystery. Hopkins delves deeply and with tremendous talent and effect into the 'race problem' of the late 19th and early 20th century -- namely, the treatment and self-perception of people of African descent, especially when also of Anglo descent. These issues are often intrinsic to the plot, but they do not overwhelm the plot -- or, more often, multiple plots -- even as they wrap the audience closer and closer to each character and its dilemma.The Magazine Novels are a collection I will not soon let out of my grasp -- and I will be eternally grateful to the foresight of the professor here at Tulane University for assigning the text. For all the daunting thickness of the book, the language and the stories are well worth an investment of time and money. Hopkins was a true master of the art of fiction, character-development, and driving (and meshing) plot-lines.