Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: Cane River: defining and securing identity

This is Lalita Tademy's fictionalised but historical reconstruction of the lives of four generations of women in her family.Through their eyes, we view some of the realities of life for women born into slavery, living through the Civil War, and then dealing with the consequences of emancipation. Throughout this novel there is a quiet sense of strength, dignity, purpose and endurance.While it is Ms Tademy's ancestors who are speaking, they are speaking on behalf of many. From my perspective, this has two separate impacts on the novel: while it sometimes makes the individual characters more shadowy and difficult to discern, it underlines the reality that slaves of the time were viewed as possessions rather than as people.I recommend that those who read this novel also read 'Red River'.Jennifer Cameron-Smith