Claiming Georgia Tate

by Gigi Amateau

Overview

"It’s rare and exciting to discover a talented new writer like Gigi Amateau." — Judy Blume

Twelve-year-old Georgia Tate wishes she could stay home in Mississippi forever with her preacher granddaddy and her best friend Ginger. After losing her nana to a heart attack, she desperately wishes she could tell her granddaddy why she can’t possibly move in with Daddy — about the things he does that make her feel so ashamed. With a vivid narrative voice, Gigi Amateau tells an unflinching tale of a sensitive girl caught in the trauma of incestuous abuse. But it is also a story of survival — an ode to the solace of family, the mercy of strangers, and the possibility of hope and healing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763633110
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	04/10/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.76(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	880L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Gigi Amateau is the author of Macadoo of the Maury River, Chancey of the Maury River, Dante of the Maury River, Come August, Come Freedom and A Certain Strain of Peculiar. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Read an Excerpt

Sometimes he goes out so deep with me that the water is over my head and I get scared. Then he picks me up and holds me close to him — too close for me, but we are so far out that I can't let go. In the city pool at home, I am a good swimmer. I don’t even mind going down to the deep end sometimes, but it's different being here in the ocean.

His wife, Sissy, has frosted blond hair. She is the prettiest woman I have ever seen. She doesn't swim or make sandcastles. She sleeps on the blanket while my father and I swim.

I am wearing my purple two-piece bathing suit with white flowers all over the top and bottom. I am staying with my father for the summer. Even though I don't know him so well, he makes me call him Daddy. Daddy picked me up from Nana and Granddaddy Tate's, and we drove all the way from Mississippi to Jacksonville, Florida, where he and Sissy live. As soon as we walked in the door, Sissy started complaining about feeling cooped up. So we packed up and drove here to Panama City.

I don't really remember much about my daddy before now. He moved away when my mama died, and I'm real glad that I don't live with him all the time. Sometimes I'll get a card at Christmas or on what he thinks is my birthday. Nana always asks me if the card has any money in it. It never does.

"You sure are a pretty little girl" was all my father said when he first saw me at Nana's. I just kept on looking at the ground, hoping he'd go away, until Nana poked me in ribs. Then I said, "Thank you."

"How old are you now, ten?"

"No, sir, I’m twelve."

I could tell Nana really didn't want me to go with him, and I certainly didn't want to go, either. But she and I already had a big fuss about it — more than one fuss, in fact. Nana has never really liked my daddy, or his family. They are what she calls social — that means they drink.

In my mind, it would all be a whole lot easier on everybody if my daddy just stayed away. But Nana and Granddaddy Tate say he's got rights. If you ask me, which nobody does, they don't want to cause a big stink about me going with him, because they're scared of him.

CLAIMING GEORGIA TATE by Gigi Amateau. Copyright (c) 2005 by Gigi Amateau. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 8 Up-Having been told that her mother is dead, 12-year-old Georgia Tate Jamison has enjoyed an idyllic childhood in the warm embrace of her maternal grandparents. When her mostly absent father demands that she vacation with him and his new wife, Sissy, in Florida, Reverend and Mrs. Tate reluctantly allow him to assert his parental rights. Soon, Georgia calls her grandmother for rescue from her father's sexual advances. The Tates come for her immediately, but neither Georgia nor her grandmother can bring herself to tell anyone else what has happened. Then the girl learns that her mother is not dead, but has left after being discharged from an insane asylum, and Nana suddenly passes away. Believing he is doing the right thing, Grandfather Tate sends her to be with her father. Infuriated by the obvious sexual seduction, Sissy kicks them out, and Georgia finds herself in a filthy apartment, hoping her father will get drunk enough each night to leave her alone. As she is more severely sexually battered, Tamika, a transvestite, helps her. Amateau offers numerous well-developed characters including positive male role models in her grandfather and an unlikely ex-con who befriends her on the bus. The '70s social pecking order seen through Georgia's eyes is unvarnished and truthful. From the smell of the fish frying at home to the feasts offered at summer revivals, this novel is very Southern, yet universal in essence. Encompassing terrible things, this is still a story of faith and differing facets of individual spirituality. A moving first offering.-Cindy Darling Codell, formerly at Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Although this debut shows promise in its engaging narrative voice, too many tragedies and unusual characters, including a transvestite and a generous ex-con, overwhelm the plot. Twelve-year-old Georgia Tate Jamison has a contented life with her grandparents in Mississippi in 1975, until the father she barely knows invites her to visit him and then sexually abuses her. She returns to her grandparents' home, but when her grandmother dies, her caring grandfather, unaware of the abuse, ignores Georgia's fear of her father and sends her off to live with him, where the abuse worsens. Ample details create a strong sense of time and place, and Georgia gains the reader's sympathy with her friendliness and love of life. However, the ending is marred by her implausibly quick emotional recovery from the incest, and, equally implausible, the implication that her father will be easily made to forfeit custody of her and even be imprisoned for the abuse. (Fiction. 13+)

Kirkus Reviews