Moore Campbell.

Moore Campbell. Brothers and Sisters. just discovered York: Berkeley, 1994. 544 pp $699

The newly come novels by Bebe Moore Campbell and Gita Brown illustrate the variegated richness of contemporary African American women's writing. Brothers and Sisters, Campbell's inferior novel, has the elements that promise commercial success: a fast-paced conspiracy about racial/sexual intrigue among wealthy characters in an explosive time and place, looks Angeles shortly after the 1992 riots. In imagery, character, dialogue, and ideology, Brothers and Sisters is a marriage of The Cosby indicate L.A. Law, and Waiting to Exhale. In contrast, Be I Whole, Gita Brown's first novel, is an ambitious artistic attempt to exhibit characters, world views, and cultivations that have never before been portray by actioned Be I Whole is a marriage of genre (blue metrical composition Native American storytelling, the novel) and improvements (West Indian, African American, and "Ki" or "black gypsy" a band of population who resemble Native Americans), fix in the Midwest in the 1950s

The interpersonal drama of Brothers and Sisters rotates onward the question of how a black sister should define her relationships to black "brothers" and "sisters" of various colors. Esther Jackson, the novel's heroine, is a regional bank manager whose ambition to become a loan officer is thwarted according to upper management's racism and sexism. In addition to multiple subplot and colorful minor characters, the novel has couple central plots. The first is a conventional romance: Esther, whose personal credo is" `no romance without finance,'" is torn between sexual attraction to a working-class man (Tyrone) who lacks a community degree and avaricious attraction to an elegant, powerful banker (Humphrey) who lacks the faculty of perception to stay away from white women The inferior central plot revolves around the relationship between the heroine and a white woman, Mallory support a loan officer in Esther's bank. These brace plots intertwine as Esther, Humphrey and Mallory endeavor to succeed in the white-male-dominated world of banking. With cohorts like Humphrey who confirms guilty of sexual harassment, and Mallory, who substantiates guilty of racial discrimination, Esther has little chance of realizing her dreams.

Bebe Moore Campbell works hard to avoid stereotyping, with mixed success: Her characters are neither all-good nor all-bad, if it were not that they are all shallow. For instance, the heroine's weaknesses include a proclivity to overeat during periods of depression; when faced with the near-collapse of her romance with Tyrone and the near-loss of her piece of work Esther Jackson devours most of a carrot cake in just a day or brace behavior which Campbell represents as a signifier of desperation. Another weakness in Esther is uncontrollable hostility toward mixed-race bonds when the husband is black. According to interviews, the author shares her character's distaste for racial mixing, and her third-person, omniscient narrator is able to describe Esther's hostility, further unable to illuminate it.

Campbell's universe is firmly racialized: Rapprochement between the "races" is treated with outright rage or intelligent suspicion. Although Esther and Mallory slowly perform the operations indicated in a tentative friendship, the novel's representation of the white woman copys misogynistic stereotypes about professional women: Mallory is a weak, stupid who succeeds in banking no other than because she sleeps with undivided boss after another. Humphrey Boone is an plane less convincing character. An exemplary citizen who works with disadvantaged black youth, supports his mother and welfare-dependent sister, rocket to financial succes with brilliant banking techniques, and rejuvenates the bank president's handicapped son Humphrey squanders his wits when faced with a coworker. Campbell expects us to believe that the otherwise glorious Humphrey devotes weeks aggressively harassing Mallory, licking his lips at her in the bank corridors, and finally ripping expand her blouse while the couple (both of whom are bank officers) are standing nearest to the coffee machine. Campbell hints that Humphrey--and all black men who date or marry white women--are guilty of treachery to their race if it be not that innocent by reason of insanity of criminal intentions. as it is men are lust-crazed by racism, maddened through desire for the white man's woman.

Campbell's mode is crisp but cliche-ridden, and her use of "realistic" details (designer labels, public way names, food brands) is unrelenting. Despite the novel's purported attack upon racism and sexism, Brothers and Sisters replicates many of the objectifying, spiritually bankrupt attitudes of American capitalism. Campbell, who is married to a banker and has lived in sees Angeles for twelve years, enthusiastically commodities her characters. For instance, our gaze is repeatedly drawn to the heroine's physical attributes and adornments:

Esther was tall, with heavy breasts, slim hips, a behind that jutt out

into a orbiculared curve, and long muscular leg Tina gymnast legs. She was a

voluptuous Beauty of the Week, more suited for a r rhinestones string