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TOTAL BILL Expires 3/31/03. Not good with any other offer. I ■■ LUNCH DINNER Hours: mon, - Fri. II am - 2:30pm Mon. - Thurs. Spm - 9:30pm Friday-Sat Spm -i 0:30pm Sun. 5pm- 10:00pm Siam Spicy II 32425 Northwestern Hwy. • Farmington Hills 248-626-2092 • 248-626-0270 • FAX: 248-626-3744 67 3/ 7 2003 74 jewi Fragile Bond shocked and distressed by the idea of this marriage. But her family makes them a wed- ding, after the couple are married by a justice of the peace. David and Delia jump the broom, in family tradition, "so that all the bad past that ever hap- pened to you — is swept away by this broom," as Delia's mother explains to her newly acquired son-in-law. he color line -- which the eminent sociologist W.E. DuBois described 100 years ago as "the problem of the 20th century" — winds its way through Richard Powers' remarkable new novel, The Time of Our Singing (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $28). Sometimes more arced than Cut Off From Family straight, that line surrounds the mul- The Stroms raise and nourish their tiracial Strom family as though to three children on music. "Singing, protect them, but ultimately the they spoke the same language. In racism they don't speak of seeps music they always found their pitch," through. Powers, a 45-year-old author of seven previous novels who has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and other honors, unravels a story that spans about 60 years and loops around in time. His narrative is energized with rich and sensitive descriptions, set pieces that transport the reader. It's a novel that explores many themes in its more than 600 pages, most prominently race and identity, music and time, love and family. Albert Einstein makes a cameo appearance, and events like the 1955 murder of Emmett Till and the 1965 Watts riots shade in the background. The novel opens in 1961, but the story begins in 1939, with a scene described later on in the According to the author, racism is not novel, when David Strom, a driven only by fear of difference but Jewish emigre scientist from Germany, and Delia Daley, _a by fear of similari ty. black Philadelphian studying music, meet each other at the Powers writes. historic concert Marian Anderson Nightly, in their home in upper gave on the Washington Mall. Manhattan, on the border between Their shared passion for music Hamilton Heights and Washington makes for a profound and loving con- Heights, the quintet make music nection across their apparent differ- together. ences, and they marry, at a time when Their eldest son, Jonah, is a musical their union is illegal in many states. prodigy with a voice that will be Strom, an atheist, a great-grandson internationally acclaimed; the middle of a cantor, doesn't know the fate of son, Joseph, is also very talented and his family, trapped in Europe, while is his brother's accompanist and pro- her family — she's the daughter of a tector in rhe world; the youngest, physician and "generations of she Ruth, Carolina church-going mothers" — is pursues other things. • They grow up cut off from extend- ed families on both sides; separately and together, they face moments of hatred large and small. A professor at Columbia, David Strom's field is theoretical physics, with a special interest in the study of time. And the theme of time is 'woven through this novel in . every direction — in its very structure of fractured time, in its descriptions of musical movements, and in the ways that David and Delia try to create a future where their children can live "beyond race. As much as they set their formida- ble wills on this future tense, the past — their very different pasts — comes blustering through. The novel follows black-Jewish relations as they are played out across the family, and beyond them. David tells his father-in-law that he is not white but a Jew, in a con- versation that breaks their ties. And after Delia's tragic death, when Ruth and her father travel to Washington, D.C., together in 1963 to hear Martin Luther King Jr., Ruth is already ashamed of her white father. "The black-Jewish alliance is crum- bling all around them. It won't even sur- vive the bus ride home," Powers writes. Breaking with her father, Ruth runs away and joins the Black Panthers. The most devoted to their father, Joseph is the sometimes narrator, negotiating between his sister's mili- tant lifestyle and his brother's travels in the white musical world. At David's deathbed, Joseph rebukes the old man for not telling them of his family history, depriving them of a sense of continuity and belonging. . Interracial Alliances In a recent interview, Powers, who teaches at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, called the rela- tionship between the Afro-American and Jewish communities "a huge and highly charged interaction." "You cannot simply walk into this ter- rain without feeling how volatile and painful are the times and the barriers the