Book Review: A Pair of Wings: An Historical Fiction
A Pair of Wings : A Novel Inspired by Pioneer Aviatrix Bessie Coleman
by
By 1921, America was a nation of change, steeped in both turmoil and progress. Jim Crow laws forced segregation in the South, lynchings terrorized, prohibition loomed, and Tulsa, Oklahoma smoldered after being bombed from the air. While American women had just earned the right to vote, Coleman can find no one willing to teach a Black woman to fly. Undaunted, she learns French and travels by ship to France in order to fulfill her dream of earning a brevet.
As the 1920s progress, Coleman comes of age, and both aviation and the Great Migration continue in parallel. Hardscrabble and burnished, Coleman becomes the only woman in the world to compel these lines of latitude to bend and intersect. Just as she translates deftly from English to French, she also converts wargame maneuvers into daring, graceful, and swashbuckling performances which she brings back to the United States. This fearless woman inspires a nation, earning the nicknames Daredevil, Queen Bess, and Brave Bessie for her breathtaking airshows.
A full century after her accomplishments, Coleman’s story is brought to life by author Carole Hopson. A United Airlines pilot who flies the Boeing 737, Hopson, considers Bessie Coleman the pioneer who cut the path for her and believes that it is her job to continue Coleman’s work to make that path wider for those who follow. It’s Coleman’s bold determination and courage that lifted Hopson, as well as an entire people upon A Pair of Wings.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, America was a nation in turmoil. A hopeful ferment of progressive social change was countered by a longstanding conservative impulse. In the South, the promises of Reconstruction had withered, to be replaced by Jim Crow laws that reintroduced pre-Emancipation oppression, lynchings, and hopelessness.
Arriving in Chicago in 1915, Coleman was in the first wave of African Americans to take part in the Great Migration, the largest movement of Blacks who fled the jobless agricultural South for the promise of work in the industrial North. Although by 1920 American women had finally earned the right to vote.
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Born to a family of sharecroppers in Atlanta, Texas, the tenth of thirteen children. Coleman worked in the cotton fields at a young age while also studying in a small segregated school. She walked four miles each day to her segregated, one-room school, where she loved to read and established herself as an outstanding math student.
Coleman developed an early interest in flying, but African Americans, Native Americans, and women had no flight training opportunities in the United States, so she saved and obtained sponsorships to go to France for flight school. She then became a high-profile pilot in notoriously dangerous air shows in the United States. She was popularly known as Queen Bess and Brave Bessie, and hoped to start a school for African-American fliers. Coleman quickly realized that in order to make a living as a civilian aviator she would have to become a “barnstorming” stunt flier, performing dangerous tricks in the then still early technology of airplanes for paying audiences. Committed to promoting aviation and combating racism. She absolutely refused to participate in aviation events that prohibited the attendance of African Americans. She quickly gained a reputation as a skilled and daring pilot who would stop at nothing to complete a difficult stunt. Coleman died in a plane crash in 1926. Her pioneering role was an inspiration to early pilots and to the African-American and Native American communities. (Wikipedia.org)
A Pair of Wings is a novel based on the life of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman. Arriving in Chicago in 1915 from Waxahachie, Texas, Coleman is among the first wave of African Americans to take part in the Great Migration, the largest movement of Black people fleeing the oppression of the agricultural South for greater freedom and the promise of jobs in the industrialized North.
Set in the 1915s, this historical fiction was a delight to read, and true to its historical timeline chronicling the great migration, systematic racism, and disparities. Real life figures, such as Jesse Binga, Oscar Stanton De Priest, Robert Sengstacke Abbott, Anthony Overton, Charlotta Bass, Olen P. Dewalt and many more.
The beginning of the novel was a dramatic intro into the story of Bessie Coleman. I was so moved by Hopson’s novel, at 9% of the book read, I decided that I wanted a hardcover copy for my library, so I brought it as a birthday gift to myself! I wanted to take my time and read it slow, to soak up every detail. The print was small for a 423 page novel.
I was awakened by the fact that Blacks were not paid as equally as their White counterparts, despite the unions and denied housing, so instead they purchased fancy cars to express their new found status. I witness the same in my day and time. Many African Americans are shut out of homeownership completely, so instead of houses they buy cars, the biggest, fanciest ones they could finance.
My grandfather was a Pullman Porter, and when my mother wasn’t attending school, usually during the summer, she would ride the railway system with him, while my grandmother ran a boarding home for teachers in Alabama. Hopson perfectly referenced airplanes to the time period as aeroplane. Hopsons’ description of emotions that Bessie felt during her first flight was so well written that you could feel her exact joy. Although this is a fiction novel, it is chocked full of historical people, places, events and things to the time period. Such as Juneteenth’s emancipation of Texas slaves, who waited two years longer than slaves in the rest of the country to know that they were free from bondage. At no point did the story seemed forced or drag on. This was a five star read for me.
“The air is the only place free from prejudices. I knew we had no aviators, neither men nor women, and I knew the Race needed to be represented along this most important line, so I thought it my duty to risk my life to learn aviation...”
– Bessie Coleman
The Coast Tire and Rubber Company was incorporated in California on August 29, 1919 . The company had a manufacturing plant in Oakland.The company manufactured fabric and cord tires and tubes.The company used Bessie Coleman - the first African American female aviator - in some of their print ads. She was well-known in Oakland where she appeared in ads for the Coast Tire and Rubber Company. She also put the Coast logo on her plane and dropped Coast advertising leaflets from her plane during her shows.
In 1921, Bessie Coleman became the first African-American pilot. One of the jobs she took in the mid 1920's was to drop advertising leaflets from her airplane over Oakland, California for the Coast Tire and Rubber Company. Because she was big news, Coleman also conducted interviews to promote the tire company.
This story of Bessie Coleman is written in an entertaining and captivating way from cover-to-cover, including photos, and an extraordinary reveal that Carole Hopson is the sister to award winning and best selling author, Lorene Cary. What a great journey this novel took me on. Well written!
Recommended Reading:
- Ida: A Sword Among Lions by Paula J. Giddings
- Frederick Douglas: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
- Josephine: The Hungry Heart by Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase
- Heat Wave: The Life and Career of Ether Waters by Donald Bogle
- The Red Record by Ida B. Wells Barnett
- Juneteenth: A Novel by Ralph Ellison
- Queen Bess:Daredevil Aviator by Doris L. Rich
Published by Jet Black Press (June 15, 2021)
432 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
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