Billy

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B IL LY

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U.S
$19.
0
0

Canada
$z
4
.
99

Albert French
lights up the
monstrous face of
American racism
in this
harrowing tale of ten
y
ear
-
old
Billy Lee Turner, who is convicted of
and
executed
for murdering a white girl
in Banes County
, Mississippi,
in 1937.
BI
LL
Y
is about the deaths
of two
children,
one girl
.
one
boy,
the
girl's death an
accident,
the
boy's
a
murder perpetrated
by
th
e
state.
Though
the
events
BILLY
records occur
during
the 1930s in a
sma
ll Missi
ssippi
town
.
th
e
range of characters. emotions, and
social for
c
e
s, and
the
in
exorab
le
march to doom
of a
ten-year
old
boy and the
soc
iety
that
do
o
m
s
him
,
catap
ul
t the story
far beyond a specific time and lo
.
catio
n.
Narrated by an anonymous observer in the
r
ich
accents of the
region
,
con
s
tructed in
a series
of powerfully
l
ean v
ign
ettes.
B1LL
Y imparts an
i
nten
sity
that is nearly unbearable
.
It is a tour de force of
dramatic compression
.

Albert
French evokes with cinematic vividness
the picking
fields and town streets;
the heat. the dust
,
the
unrelenting
s
un
,
the poverty
of
1930s Missis
sippi. High
-
spirit
e
d Billy
;
his
mysterious
and pas
sionat
e
rnother
.
Cind
e
r
;
his friend.
Gumpy
;
a
nd
other rharncwrs black and white are
realized
wit
h
depth
and authorit
y.
Told in classic.
unrelieved terms

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