For two years, now, I have been teaching Christopher Paul Curtis’s Bud, not Buddy to my writing students. One of the things we discuss is how Curtis takes an orphaned ten-year-old boy living during the depression and makes such a charming, heartwarming story out of it. Along Bud’s adventurous journey in Bud not Buddy he has an encounter with a girl in a Hooverville located in the woods just outside Flint, Michigan. Her name is Deza Malone. I think most readers who read Bud not Buddy are curious about this girl. I certainly was and so picked up her book, The Mighty Miss Malone. Although the books have their similarities—young black children in search of family during the depression—they are as different as snow and rain.
Bud’s story is focused on his quest to find his father. Curtis skillfully uses Bud’s charming and naïve way of viewing the world to soften the harsh realities surrounding Bud. In Bud, not Buddy the fact that he is black and living in the depression aren’t major issues. The focus is on Bud and his thoughts and his charming and naive responses to the difficulties of his journey. Deza’s story also involves a family themed quest, but this time Curtis explores the themes of race and poverty. While showing thoughtful discretion, The Mighty Miss Malone shows the harshness of the times much more clearly. Deza’s story is less charm and more reality.
While Bud’s story starts at an emotional low (however charmingly), Deza’s story starts higher up the emotional scale. Instead of being locked into a vampire bat infested shed in the middle of the night, Deza is dealing with problems like getting her first A- on an essay. She’s devastated. Unlike Bud, who is an orphan, Deza has a home with a mother, father, and brother who love her. It sounds like she has it easy, right? I’ve been around long enough to know that happiness often leads to difficulty. I was anxious about this happiness from the beginning because I knew from Bud, not Buddy that Deza is going to end up living in a blanket hut in a Hooverville with her family broken. As I expected, getting to this point in the book was emotionally difficult for me. It’s hard to watch a family break apart.
The thing is, I have faith in Christopher Paul Curtis as an author and as a human being. He’s not the kind of author to hit me in the emotional gut and leave me lying on the street heaving in the gutter. He’s actually quite amazing. At the most difficult parts of his books, he is able to summon strength and hope. He does this without resorting to sentimentality. Let me just say that getting to the ‘hard’ part of the Mighty Miss Malone is well worth the struggle.
The Mighty Miss Malone does explore race and poverty in the Great Depression, but even more importantly it explores the heart of a human being and a family’s hopeful struggle. Like Curtis’s other books, The Mighty Miss Malone makes me feel proud to be a human being despite our ugly side. He makes me feel proud to be a family man. In short, his book makes me happy.
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These books by Tory Anderson are now available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback format:
