The Sectarian: Story of a Somewhat Lovable Religigo - Synopsis (Super-Short Summary)

And here's my synopsis for the SECTARIAN: Story of a Somewhat Lovable Religigo

If you go deep enough into some places in this country, you find a whole different attitude.  Call it a mindset, or a way of life that’s so unbending, it’s almost religious.  That’s how some minorities might feel, traveling from the west coast to the deep south.   That’s how Luzy-Ann felt at first, growing up the only Asian in a small southern town, adopted from Vietnam, or some country from the Orient.  Her parents: flower children, Brent and Violet, were told they could not have children, but after adopting Luzy-Ann, “Luz” for short, Brent and Violet had a biological child, named Lake.

Discriminated against, picked on by the prejudiced children and parents of the neighborhood, frightened, made to feel “yellow”, left out if she would not fit in, morbidly exacerbating her “yellowness”, Luzy-Ann squeezes herself into the southern mold: church-going, god-fearing, clinging to the white ideal, placating the matrons of the local church until she is as sectarian as if she were a real white person. 

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Luzy-Ann and Lake both grew up in a small southern town.  No big deal.  They were the daughters of flower children Brent and Violet, who moved from California to Mississippi to care for Violet’s sick, aging Aunt Tatem.  Luzy-Ann was older and adopted from Vietnam.  Lake was younger and the real, biological child.  The real child because she really was similar to her parents, free spirited and autonomous.  Luzy-Ann, crushingly out-of-place in the Bible-belt mindset of the south, squeezed herself into a white mold that was so pristine, her “yellowness” shone through all the more garishly.  Here is the story of two sisters, whose ties ended with their last name but whose love for each other remained the same. 

When the playground bullies picked on Luzy-Ann and knocked the books out of her hand, she fought back, and was punished by the teacher.  When the church-wives commented on her yellow skin, she donned gloves and wide-brim hats, and even bought some “brightening” lotion (a.k.a. “whitening” lotion).  None of this advanced her much in the eyes of the wicked-tongue matrons of that pious town, until she figured in a vague way that she could only gain acceptance by beating them in their own devotion.  To god.  Values.  And small-town smugness. 

(In short, she becomes so sectarian )