{"id":5179,"date":"2021-05-16T11:40:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-16T09:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/?p=5179"},"modified":"2021-11-01T19:28:39","modified_gmt":"2021-11-01T18:28:39","slug":"bernard-and-the-cloth-monkey-judith-bryan-1998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/2021\/05\/16\/bernard-and-the-cloth-monkey-judith-bryan-1998\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard and the Cloth Monkey &#8211; Judith Bryan (1998)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anita goes home after a few years of absence. Her Dad is dead, her Mum that she carefully avoided is away on a cruise. At home is Beth, her elder sister\u2026 and a burden of childhood memories. These souvenirs include a twin sister who died, abuse, love stories, rivalry. And at the end, redemption and forgiveness. This book is part of the series &#8220;Black Britain : Writing Back series&#8221; curated by Bernardine Evaristo to bring back into circulation lost black writers. It&#8217;s the first book I read in this series. Multiple timelines and several names for the same character confused me a little at some points, but the story is beautiful and poignant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>&#8220;- So I&#8217;ve got a duty to her. I owe her something.<br>&#8211; Yes ! Yes, you do. Dette was scandalized. Honour your mother and father&#8230; &#8220;<br>&#8211; But what about the duties that parents owe their children ? &#8230;<br>&#8230;- It&#8217;s an old clich\u00e9, but think about it for a minute, Beth continued. Children don&#8217;t ask to be born. They don&#8217;t decide to be here, they don&#8217;t have any choice. How can they owe anything ?&#8230;<br>&#8211; This is in the Bible also. Beth looked at Dette. &#8220;As you sow, so shall you reap.&#8221; If you don&#8217;t invest real love and attention and respect&#8230; Yes, respect for your children ! It&#8217;s a two-way street you know. Our parents can&#8217;t expect it without earning it.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anita goes home after a few years of absence. Her Dad is dead, her Mum that she carefully avoided is away on a cruise. At home is Beth, her elder sister\u2026 and a burden of childhood memories. These souvenirs include a twin sister who died, abuse, love stories, rivalry. And at the end, redemption and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,19,43],"class_list":["post-5179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book","tag-abuse","tag-love","tag-racism"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/andre-mouton-GBEHjsPQbEQ-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5179"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7538,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5179\/revisions\/7538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}