Love affairs, an engagement party, ski trips, a French magazine publisher – and the life stories of three generations of women, the grandmother, the mother and the daughter. All three of them are trying to figure out who the daughter is going to marry.
It’s a three-part story: Geneva tells her life story, how she married a jazz musician and she is a grandmother. Now the mother is Camille, and her story is that she thought that she had brought shame to her mother Geneva when she had a child – her daughter Aisha – when she was 18 years old.
And now there is Aisha. Aisha has gone to some of the best schools herself, and she is one who is really hard to please. She has straight hair and her father was half-white, with green eyes. She is sporty and high-spirited and she loves life to the fullest.
The story revolves around Aisha, who is supposed to get married to a guy named Will, who is a rich white man. She threw herself at Will to get him; he’s a rich Yuppie who came from a really rich area.
When Will’s mother had lunch with Aisha she had asked her what did her name mean. Aisha said well she could have called me Sunshine. Will’s mother was trying to figure out who this is, that her son was going to marry. And her son is going to marry a black woman. They left on good terms.
But Will is so spoiled and used to having his own way. And at a party Aisha meets Miles, an upper-class black man, and she starts trying to catch his attention. Will can’t believe he won’t get whatever he wants, and that’s where Aisha thought the problem lay.
According to this book, the women wanted what they wanted out of life for themselves and they did not care who got hurt. And how does it feel for a white and black couple to get married? How does it feel for a white and black in America to have a relationship? The women all had ideas of how it was to be married to a white man.
Did I learn anything about love? After all this mayhem, someone got someone and they all ended up happy. And what did I learn about Aisha?
One of Aisha’s friends asks her “Who does she think she is?” The answer is complicated. It involves race, sex, and class.
I had fun reading this book because there’s the saying “how do you catch a man?” This book had all the elements of “how do you catch a man?” in it. Read the book, and find out for yourself.
Patty is in school studying math and she is originally from Pittsburgh.
“Who Does She Think She Is?” by Benilde Little, Simon & Schuster, Inc. 2005
