Review: Hamilton, V. (2006). Zeely.
Hamilton, V. (2006). Zeely. New York, NY: Aladdin Paperbacks.
Reprint edition; originally published 1967.
Originally published in 1967, this short novel has remained a favorite read among Virginia Hamilton fans for decades. The main protagonist in Zeely is actually a young African American girl named Elizabeth, who, along with her younger brother John Perry, is spending the entire summer on their Uncle Ross’ rural farm. Elizabeth is given to fantasy, and from the moment she and her brother begin their independent train ride to the farm, she proclaims that they have new identities for the summer: “Geeder” for herself, and “Toeboy” for him, because he would go barefoot all the time that they stayed.
Uncle Ross is a widower who is slow to speak or interfere with the children’s adventures, but clearly has affection for them. No longer farming full time, he leases out some land on which to raise razorback hogs to a man named Nat Tayber and his young adult daughter, Zeely. The farm lends a mystical quality to the children’s stay, with the mist over the land, the antiquities, and sleeping outside under the stars, and from the moment Geeder lays eyes on Zeely, she is mesmerized. Zeely is over six and a half feet tall, slender and graceful, with a complexion as “deeply dark as a pole of Ceylon ebony” (31).
Geeder’s propensity for fancy and fabrication actually leads to a certain detachment from reality, as she doesn’t seek the company of the local children like Toeboy does, and spends a great deal of time on her own daydreaming about an imagined friendship with the mysterious Zeely, sometimes until she is in a feverish state from her isolation. It likewise leads her to tell her brother stories about “night travellers,” even convincing and frightening herself. These tendencies give rise to the delusions she conjures about Zeely when she is cleaning out her uncle’s old magazines and finds an image of “an African woman of royal birth,” (49) thus convincing herself that Zeely is a descendent and herself a Watutsi queen--an idea she then goes on to share with a number of other children while visiting their bonfire, before slipping away on her own.
When word of these stories reaches Zeely, it prompts her to seek out a conversation with Geeder for the first time at the catalpa forest. These trees along with the inclusion of razorback hogs suggests the story’s setting is the farmlands of Hamilton’s home state, Ohio. Geeder is shy and uncertain about the meeting, and the forest adds to the overall mystical tone. She is surprised, however, to learn that the Taybers hail from a normal place like Canada. While Zeely empathizes with the young girl’s imagination, she calls her by her true name, Elizabeth, and urges her to be more grounded in the here and now--reminding her of truths like “we all came out of Africa,” (97) and that we are ourselves and “no more” (113).
Elizabeth leaves with a newfound respect, abandoning her “silly” ideas, now considering Zeely a queen of different sorts because she realizes “it’s what’s inside you” that matters (120), an understanding that shows she is growing beyond childhood. The novel’s messages of knowing oneself, combined with the dialogues about racial awareness and the history of songs of the underground railroad, remain as culturally relevant today as they were at its publication during the height of the civil rights movement.
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