Review of The Wind Done Gone

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The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall
Reviewed by Valerie Hawkins

As the big red decal on the cover announces, this book is "an unauthorized parody" of Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, "Gone with the Wind." Mitchell's "Wind" was an unqualified success from day one, selling over 176,000 copies in its first three weeks of release and securing the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. Hollywood turned itself upside down to make a movie of the book, deciding against such talents as Katharine Hepburn and Errol Flynn, to settle on relative unknown Vivien Leigh to play the remarkable Scarlett O'Hara and film star Clark Gable as rascal Rhett Butler, in a 1939 MGM Studios production, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1940.

Perhaps the most well-known parody of the work--admittedly the film version--is the classic 1970s "Carol Burnett Show" TV sketch where Burnett's Scarlett makes a fancy dress out of curtains in order to impress Harvey Korman's Rhett Butler--but leaves in the curtain rod, stretching it across her shoulders! However, the estate of Margaret Mitchell unintentionally brought much attention to this book by suing, unsuccessfully, to prevent its release. The lawsuit stated the objections were due to copyright violations. But is that all?

In reading Randall's "Wind," it helps to have seen the 1939 film, but it most helps to have read Mitchell's original 1936 novel. Characters that were left out of Hollywood's adaptation figure very prominently here. In fact, Randall's main emphasis seems to be to spotlight and expand upon the characters given the briefest attention by Mitchell. Timewise, Randall picks up where Mitchell left off, telling her side of the story through a character "left out" of the novel and film altogether, Miss Cynara "Cindy" Brown, the daughter of Mammy, and "Planter," the owner of "Cotton Farm"--or rather, Gerald O'Hara, owner of Tara, and Scarlett's father. It is Cynara's diary that makes up the bulk of Randall's novel.

Randall's book is full of alternate names for Mitchell's characters (except for Mammy) and its plantations. But she doesn't stop there. Mitchell paints the various slave characters, especially her Pork and Prissy, as dialect-speaking simpletons with not an original thought in their heads. Randall presents a very different view of "Garlic" and "Miss Priss," respectively, showing that their ignorance in front of the white folks is a sham, a shield that hides their true agendas. Gerald may have won Pork in a card game, but "Planter" won "Garlic" after the latter poisoned his original master in the course of the game, to make sure that the former would win, as "Garlic" knew he could better manipulate "Planter" into creating such a destiny as becoming the owner of the "Cotton Farm" plantation. One of the film's most famous scenes shows Scarlett slapping Prissy, who earlier had bragged about her midwife abilities but now admits, in the face of Scarlett's sister-in-law, Melanie, undergoing a painful labor and the town doctor unavailable, that she "don' know nuthin' 'bout birthin' babies!" Randall's interpretation of the scene is much more chilling, saying that "Miss Priss" hoped that "Mealy Mouth" died in childbirth, as revenge for having her brother killed.

Beyond the slaves, Randall also fleshes out the character of Scarlett's mother, Ellen, called "Lady" here, especially Ellen's doomed romance with her cousin, Philippe Robillard. Secrets are revealed in letters that point to Scarlett having more in common with Cynara than she could ever have dreamed.

This book may be "an unauthorized parody" of "Gone with the Wind," but it is clearly so much more. Cynara is an educated young woman who has to make some very difficult decisions, all while she learns more about her family and tries to decide if she really loves the white man who "owns" her, an old friend who is as surprised to see her one day standing nude in the hot sun at a slave auction as she is to be there, and buys her, setting her up in her own home. She struggles to understand the continuous absence of her own biological mother, Mammy, always there to dry Scarlett's tears, but also reflects on the closeness she found with the likewise abandoned "Lady."

Overall, Randall taps into the taboo subject of race mixing and its effects upon racial identity in America. As also explored in such movies as "A Family Thing," starring Robert Duvall, and such non-fiction books as Gregory Howard Williams's "Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black," America's definitions of "white" and "black"--and the extent of the opportunities available to each--are strict and polarizing. The legend goes that one drop of black blood makes you black. But what if, despite the blood, your appearance betrayed that sentiment? Would you stay black--stay back--or would you pass as white, taking the greater opportunities? And how long would you live the lie? Would you ever tell your white spouse the truth--or tell any of your children their true mixed racial heritage? Because of slavery and both its consensual and non-consensual unions that produced children of every shade between "black" and "white," this is a story that continues to play out across America, from the controversy surrounding the descendants of President Thomas Jefferson and slave Sally Hemings to the recent publication of "Just Lucky I Guess: A Memoir of Sorts," by Broadway living legend, Carol Channing, who chose to reveal, however belatedly at the age of 82, that her father was black.

Randall's greatest accomplishment with this book is that through the most well-known fictional slavery-era characters in American history, she legitimizes the experience of blacks in America and gives clues as to why such a persecuted people have been able to survive and even thrive. Four stars.

Mariner, 2001, $13