Toning the Sweep

By

Angela Johnson

Johnson, Angela. Toning the Sweep. 103p. (Orchard Books) Scholastic. 1993 ISBN 0-590-48142.8 GR 7 up.

Toning the Sweep by Angela Johnson is a fictional story of three generations of African-American women. Grandmama Ola has been diagnosed with cancer. Ola’s daughter, Diane, and her fourteen-year-old granddaughter, Emily, travel from their home in Cincinatti to the desert to help Grandma pack her house and move back with them. Emmie has always loved the time spent with her grandmother in the desert, even though her mother has always hated the desert. Emily and her grandmother have a very special relationship. Emily realizes her grandmother is not a typical grandmother. According to her grandmother, "You have to try everything if you want to live in this world."

Emmie decides to make a video for her grandmother, and as she records Ola’s friends, she learns more about Ola and her mother. Emmie finds out about things in the past that help her understand the present. She finally understands why Mama has been so angry and so sad at times. Mama had found her father’s body after he had been murdered in Alabama in 1964 for being an "uppity nigger." Mama was upset that her mother had taken her away from Alabama so quickly after the tragedy. She felt that she had never had a chance to say good-bye to her father. Emmie and her mother perform the ritual of "toning the sweep" for her grandfather, so that her grandfather and her mother can be at peace. This book is a culturally specific type of multicultural literature.

The author does a wonderful job of intertwining the past with the present, for the past is so much a part of the present. Emmie narrates the book, so that we become very involved with her feelings of confusion, realization, and love.

This book could be used in the classroom to discuss the relationship between the grandmother and granddaughter, or mother and daughter. You could also discuss the theme of the elderly. Another point of discussion could be what it would be like to be a black in Alabama in 1964. This was a book that I thoroughly enjoyed and did not want to put down until I was finished.

By Joanne Olsen