Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush Published 1982 I ABOUT THE AUTHOR Virginia Hamilton was born in Yellow Springs,

Ohio, a town which had once been a station on the Underground Railroad and where many of the residents are descendants of fugitive slaves. Hamilton grew up surrounded by members of her extended family, who lived on nearby farms. She attributes her fascination with writing and literature to her parents, who loved to read, and to her family, who loved to tell stories. Hamilton received a scholarship to Antioch College, where she majored in writing, then continued her education at Ohio State University in Columbus, where she was a literature major. While living in New York, she studied novel writing at the New School for Social Research. But, after fifteen years, she returned to Ohio where she now resides with her poet-husband, Arnold Adoff, and their two children. Hamilton has been honored, not only for realistic fiction, such as M. C. Higgins, the Great, but also for her novels which are a mixture of folklore, fantasy, and realitynovels such as Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush. Hamilton explains that when she sits down to write a book, 'I don't sit down at my typewriter, determined to write a black story. It just happens, that I know black people better than I know any other kind of people because I am black and I am comfortable writing about the people I know best.' Hamilton believes that the appeal of her stories is not limited to a black audience because her concerns and her themes are a part of living: 'family unity, friendships, the importance of individual freedom, and the influence of our past heritage on the present.' Zeely, Hamilton's first book for young readers, was honored as an American Library Association Notable Book. This was the beginning of a career as an author who is admired and respected throughout the world, and who has won almost every major award for young adult literature. M. C. Higgins, the Great received three prestigious national awards: the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the National Book Award, and the Newbery Medal. Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush has been honored as an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and as Booklist Editor's Choice; it earned the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and was named a Newbery Honor Book. In 1992 Hamilton received the Hans Christian Andersen Award from the International Board on Books for Young People. This award, presented biennially, was awarded to Hamilton in recognition of her outstanding contribution to literature for young adults. Hamilton thanked the board for this award because 'they have affirmed their interest in multicultural concerns and their support for cultural diversity.' Hamilton has also published two books of interest for both young and adult readers: The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales (1985) and In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World (1988). II OVERVIEW Both 'family unity' and 'the influence of our past heritage on the present' are interwoven throughout the novel Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush. The family of Sweet Theresa Pratt, or Tree, is quite small. She loves her brother Dab with a fierce devotion, and she longs for the presence of Vy (short for Viola), her mother who works away from home as a practical nurse, leaving Tree and Dab alone for weeks at a time. Although Tree misses her mother, she does not resent her absence; she accepts this way of life, and her love for her mother is reflected in her name for Viola or Vy; it has been contracted to Muh Vy or M'Vythe name Tree utters with love and longing. Her love for Dab is equally strong. Even though he is older than Tree, because he is retarded, she takes care of him. She assumes the ordinary routine duties which are necessary to

keep their household functioning: Each day after school, she prepares their food, cleans the house, and encourages Dab to eat his meals and to take a bath. Living in the heart of a city in relative isolation, Tree meets another member of her family, Brother Rush, her uncle who died in a car crash when she was still quite young. Brother Rush appears as a ghost, holding a small oval space in his hand. Both Tree and Dab enter this space and find themselves in a new worldtheir own past. Tree learns that her family history includes child abuseher mother cruelly abused a young and retarded Daband a hereditary disease whose symptoms she now recognizes in her brother. When Dab eventually dies from porphyria, she cannot be consoled. But, eventually, she senses the freedom that will now be hers and learns to forgive and to love her mother once again. III SETTING The setting of Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush could be any contemporary city because most of the action takes place within the apartment where Tree, Dab, and Vy live. Tree rushes home from school to the safety of their home and to her special place, a closet-like room with a small round table where she draws pictures of open spaces and families. And, although Brother Rush first appears in the street, it is here in this little room that he offers the oval space through which Tree and Dab enter into their past and find a time and place where they did not live in isolation. Their world expands beyond their apartment as they take rides in the country, visit the house where they used to live, and meet family members they have never known. But when they leave Rush's world, once again their lives are focused on their small apartment. It is only when Vy realizes that Dab is critically ill that they emerge and enter the world for a trip to the hospital. Ironically, Tree's second encounter with the world is the day of Dab's funeral. The end of his existence is the beginning of a new life for her. IV THEMES AND CHARACTERS Tree is the focus of the story, and the themes of family unity and the influence of past heritage are interwoven into the development of her character and the plot that evolves around her. Tree loves Dab and willingly cares for him. She realizes that when he spends too much time alone, he becomes less and less capable of performing even the simplest tasks. She vows 'to play with him and pay attention to him every day.' She realizes that he will regress if left too much to himself, and that she must always be thinking about him, watching out for him. Dab is handsome and gentle and regularly brings girls to the apartment, but Tree never tells her mother. When Tree overhears Dab talking to a girl outside their building, she becomes furious when the girl calls her brother a 'loony tune.' Tree rushes into the street, threatens the girl with physical harm, and brings Dab back to the safety of their apartment. When he is upset and frightened, she reads his favorite story to him. 'The Time I Got Lost' is the story of a little boy, lost in the woods, who waits patiently, knowing his Grandpa will find him. So Dab and Tree wait patiently in their apartment, knowing Vy will come back to them. Although Tree's life revolves around caring for her brother, she does not complain: 'Maybe some could feel evil to a brother they had to care for more than themselves, the way she did for Dab. But she never could. Dab was so much a part of her. She couldn't feel evil about him without feeling the same way about herself.' Dab returns Tree's love. He patiently follows her directions to take a bath and eat his dinner. When he is ill, he comes to Tree and tells her his stomach hurts. As his symptoms worsen, he becomes more and more dependent upon her. When his hands are too weak to hold the silverware, she feeds him the meal she has prepared for them. Finally, he becomes so ill he cannot move, cannot stand the slightest pressure on his body, and cannot bear any light to shine

upon him. By the time Vy finally returns to them, Dab is dangerously ill; and, although Vy rushes him to a hospital, it is too late. He dies of porphyria, just as her own brothers did. Vy is a symbol of love and strength and security for Tree. When she returns to their apartment, Tree, who has been struggling with the responsibility of caring for Dab, breaks down as she flings herself into her mother's arms: 'Vy staggered under Tree's force. Then Vy held her, lifting her off the floor. She swayed with Tree from side to side, smothering the child against her.' Vy has a life outside their apartment. She has a boyfriend, Silversmith, and she has bought a car which Tree longs to ride in. Vy's past becomes known to Tree through her journeys with Brother Rush. When Dab was quite little and Vy was still young, she realized he was retarded and, feeling angry and helpless, she abused Dab, keeping him tied to a bedpost and beating him if he disobeyed. A more mature Vy acknowledges her guilt: She couldn't help it: he made her sick to death. She blamed him for his own half-wittedness. Knew she was wrong. How could a mother feel that way about her own child? But she did; she had from the time she realized he was going to be so different. Dab turned her stomach. Always had. Even as they rush him to the hospital, she finds it hard to touch him or to speak his name. Tree notes this reaction and judges her mother for these feelings. When Dab dies and Vy cannot afford an expensive funeral, Tree lashes out in anger toward her mother, blaming her for mistreating the child Dab and for neglecting the young man's illness. Vy acknowledges her guilt and patiently allows Tree's grief and anger to run their course. When Tree threatens to run away, Vy does not try to restrain her; instead, she offers her a new kind of freedom by surrounding her with love and providing Miss Pricherd, a housekeeper who will release Tree from the responsibilities that have confined her so long in their apartment. Brother Rush's character is revealed to Tree as she travels back in time. He was a favorite uncle who took Tree and Dab for rides in the country, who tried to stop Vy when she beat Dab for misbehaving, and who eventually, when his pain becomes unbearable, causes his own death in an auto accident. He is still a good uncle when he comes to Tree as a ghost and shows her what she has missed, living in isolation with no friends or family beyond her mother and brother. Because of these journeys with Rush, Tree is ready to open up her world and accept Silversmith and Miss Pricherd into her life. Initially, she resents sharing M'Vy with Silversmith, but she comes to appreciate his strength and gentleness and enjoys thinking people may mistake her for his daughter. And at first, she resents Miss Pricherd, the old lady who comes to clean for them, seeing her as an intruder and a spy who is forcing herself into their worldtheir apartment. But by the end of the novel, Tree accepts her as a part of her new life, and when she finds her preparing dinner, 'The smell of good chicken, plus having this much of a family, gave Tree the best feeling she'd had in a while.' V LITERARY QUALITIES Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush is a skillful blend of realism and fantasy. A one-parent family, mental retardation, child abuse, isolation within a crowded citythese are the realistic reflections of contemporary life. But traveling back in time through a small space held in the hand of a ghostthis is reminiscent of the classic fantasies of childhood when Alice traveled down the rabbit hole into Wonderland and Dorothy was carried by a tornado into Oz. Hamilton parallels most closely the C. S. Lewis fantasy, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), where four children, brothers and sisters, step into a wardrobe, push their way through the winter coats and enter the fantasy world of Narnia. Lucy, the youngest child is the first to discover this new world: Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no

longer soft but something hard and prickly. 'Why it is just like branches of trees!' exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air. Tree, also the youngest child, is the first to enter their new world. She too notes the light and the change in temperature: She was looking in and seeing herself walk away. She heard leaves crunch under her feet. Tree was in a place she did not know. It was so warm, and she could feel the water in the air. There was a road going off through open spaces. Warm and sunny out. Then, shade she could walk through. But if it was a hard-surfaced road, where did the sound of dry leaves come from? 'Oh, I see,' thought Tree, 'leaves at the side of the road. Is it fall?' Both Tree and Dab are transported into their own pasts, but even in this 'fantasy' world, reality intrudes. Tree sees both the love and the suffering in her own family when she was a very small child. And what she sees is true; her mother confirms it. Reality intrudes even into the fantastic. Hamilton admits she worried about the ghost of Brother Rush and wondered if readers would accept him. But, she felt his presence so strongly whenever she thought about Tree, she decided she must include him. Critics note that the presence of Brother Rush is not without precedent; it 'is consistent with African American folk beliefs which hold that children entering adolescence often see ghosts'. Neither Vy nor Silversmith question the appearance of the ghost, although neither one has seen it. Rush himself contributes to the blend of fantasy and reality. In the real world, he is simply a life-size picture, a reflection of a young and handsome man. But in the fantasy world, he becomes real. He is the adored uncle of Tree and Dab and the man suffering the unbearable pain of porphyria. He is a man pushed to take his own life. Hamilton is able to bring together the best of two genres which are popular with young readers; she draws upon the motifs of classic fantasy and combines them with the elements of a contemporary realistic novel. Hamilton's recreation of one form of Black English illustrates another realistic element in the text. Not only is it spoken by Tree and her family, but it is used by the narrator when she relates Tree's thoughts, as when Tree recalls a conversation with her English teacher: 'You couldn't tell about teachers. Think they class, Tree thought. Then they dog you down.' Hamilton earned praise from the International Board on Books for Young People for her use of 'the many types of Black English'. Author Katherine Paterson commends Hamilton for the way she 'uses speech forms of the young to enhance rather than restrict the music of the book'. VI SOCIAL SENSITIVITY Hamilton handles skillfully issues not usually associated with young adult literature: sex, mental retardation, child abuse, and a fatal hereditary disease. The issue of sex is presented openly. The teenage Dab is gentle and handsome; and, although a failure at school, he has no problem finding girls to bring to their apartment. It is not unusual for Tree to wake him in the morning and find the girl still in his room. Vy worries about Tree and questions her about boys, but she has no questions or concerns about Dab. Ironically, Vy is questioning the wrong child. Tree is so absorbed in caring for her brother that she seems to have no interest in boys until the end of the novel. Then, when she is in a sense released from the apartment, she enjoys a flirtation with Silversmith's son, although still under the watchful eye of her mother. Because Dab is retarded, Tree must take care of his basic needs. After preparing their meal, she cuts his baked potato, adding the butter and seasonings for him. When she gets a 'whiff of him,'

she insists he take a bath. In contrast, Vy's abuse of her son is clearly documented as Tree watches her own past unfold. When Tree first enters this new world, she stands apart from the scene which she is watching, identifying more with her mother than herself as a small child; that is, until the first sign of abuse when Vy threatens Dab: 'I ain't coming in there yet, she told him. But when I do, that be the last nose snot you ever eat! After that, Tree separated from the woman.' Later, during another trip into the past, the two children are enjoying a ride in Brother Rush's car. But, when Dab misbehaves, 'The woman bent down and came up with a stick. She struck the boy's legs back and forth, whipping back and forth. The boy's screams rang out.' But, the abuse is not sensationalized or dwelt upon; and, later, a more mature Vy acknowledges her guilt and her shame, admitting that, when she realized Dab was going to be different, he 'turned her stomach. Always had. Tears welled in her eyes. She bowed her head in shame.' Porphyria, an inherited disease, has been killing the men in Vy's family. As Dab's condition worsens, he cries out in pain; he cannot stand the slightest pressure anywhere on his body; he cannot bear any light to shine upon him. Brother Rush exhibits the same symptoms in the fantasy world. He doubles over with pain. His face is red and raw where the sun strikes him, and his hands are covered with white scars. Back in the real world, Tree acknowledges the irony of it: 'Ain't it strange, black men get a disease where no light can touch their skin? Ain't it so awful strange?' But Vy assures Tree that, although women too may inherit this disease, it is no longer a hopeless situation; they can be tested and treated if the symptoms are recognized soon enough. Child abuse, mental retardation, and a fatal disease are all part of Tree's family heritage. But through Hamilton's skillful narration, these tragedies present neither a sensational nor a depressing picture of life. Instead, they are simply a part of life, a part that must be recognized before the characters can move beyond them to more open and fulfilling lives. VII TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Evaluate Vy as a mother. Consider her abuse of Dab as a child and the burden she places on Tree as a young girl. What are her redeeming qualities? What is your overall evaluation of her? 2. Is the ghost of Brother Rush believable as he is incorporated into the story? If yes, what makes him so? If no, why is he not plausible? 3. What is the message which Brother Rush has brought to Tree through their journeys into the past? Does she understand? 4. Tree has some anxious moments, but she is not terrified of the ghost. Why not? 5. Not only Dab and Tree but also Miss Pricherd can see the ghost. However, Vy cannot. What point is Hamilton making about the characters? 6. Why do Tree and Dab experience different episodes whenever they enter the fantasy world together? VIII IDEAS FOR REPORTS AND PAPERS 1. Read a classic for children that could be classified as a fantasy. Compare and contrast the literary elements with those found in Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush. 2. Since Hamilton is writing for young adults, is she too explicit in her description of child abuse, of mental retardation, and of sex? Defend your answer. 3. Read another novel by Hamilton and compare her use of fantasy in Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush with your selected text. 4. Author and critic Katherine Paterson claims that 'Miss Hamilton has taken ideas that occur repeatedly in books for the young and bathed them in her unique black light'. Use evidence from Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush to support this evaluation.

5. When Hamilton was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, she was praised for her 'insight into the human experience'. Read another novel by Hamilton and use it as well as Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush to support this comment. IX RELATED TITLES The influence of past heritage and family unity are constant themes in Hamilton's work. M. C. Higgins, the Great is the story of a young boy growing up, as Tree Sweet did, in relative isolation. While Tree's world revolves around the inner-city apartment she shares with her brother and mother, M. C.'s world is wide and spacious for his family lives near the top of Sarah's Mountain with no nearby neighbors or towns. However, M. C., like Tree, is visited by the ghost of an ancestor. He sees his great grandmother Sarah, an escaped slave, making her way to freedom as she climbs the mountain which was later named for her. M. C., however, does not enter into the world of fantasy; his problems are rooted in the reality of the present. Together, he and his father work to save their home from an inevitable landslide. Although M. C. Higgins, the Great and Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush are set in very different locations and their protagonists face their own unique problems, both Tree and M. C. are influenced in a positive way by family unity and family history.