Mammy is Free at Last!

Though the controversial novel The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall was reviewed by BIBR in the May/June 2001 issue (p. 22), the book's originally scheduled publication was blocked by a court order obtained by the estate of Margaret Mitchell, the late author of the Gone With The Wind, the novel Randall's book parodied. (Randall's story spins out from the scenario that the white plantation heroine had a mulatto sister, offspring of Mammy and the Master.) Margaret Mitchell's estate may have in essence claimed that they still owned Mammy, but this year's highest profile copyright suit resulted in Mammy being finally free to tell her story. A federal appeals court reversed a lower court's judgment that Alice Randall infringed on Mitchell's copyright. The court lifted the injunction against the publication of The Wind Done Gone, so now you can buy and read this clever retelling of Mitchell's classic from a black point of view. "I'm so glad that the court will allow that message to get heard" author Randall said of the judgment. Publisher Houghton Mifflin is shipping 89,000 copies--a number anticipating bestseller status.