United We Read

 

The Year the Colored Sisters Came to Town

By Jacqueline Guidry

 

CHARACTER  DESCRIPTIONS

 

Vivien Leigh Dubois is the 10-year-old narrator of The Year the Colored Sisters Came to Town. She is precocious and curious and has strong opinions, which are not always based on objective facts, about almost everything. She is trying to make sense of the adult world she will soon be entering, struggling to reconcile what she sees and experiences with what adults say, and searching for keys to living a moral life. All those struggles are consolidated by two events: the arrival of African-American nuns to teach in the all-white Catholic elementary school and the pregnancy of her aunt, Tante Deacy, with a change-of-life baby.

 

Mavis Dubois is Vivien Leigh’s 7-year-old sister. Although they argue constantly, jockeying for best position in their family, they love and know each other as only sisters can. Mavis’s best friend is Marydale Arceneaux, daughter of Aussie Arceneaux, black neighbor and long-time housekeeper. Mavis is initially fairly oblivious to the uproar caused by the arrival of African-American nuns at her school, content to continue the imaginative games which entertain her and Marydale—digging for gold in the backyard, planning to plant peanuts and become successful entrepreneurs, constructing furniture from random branches and twigs. But during the course of the year, Mavis’s life is uprooted and her relationship with Marydale seriously affected.

 

Marydale Arceneaux is Mavis’s 7-year-old best friend. She is a bright, imaginative girl who dreams of flying helicopters one day, despite adults who tell her she should be a housekeeper like her mother. As a change-of-life baby, she is spoiled and indulged by her mother and, presumably also by her father and older sisters, and accustomed to getting her way.

 

Aussie Arceneaux is the black woman who’s worked  as housekeeper for the Dubois family for many years. She and Hazey have been as close as the racial barrier allowed and, under different circumstances, would have lived their lives as best friends. She is fully aware of the limits placed on her by the overt racism of the times, but is also determined to protect her family, most especially Marydale, and, at the same time, maintain her own dignity.

 

Hazel “Hazeyâ€