Percival Everett is quite unlike anyone else. Just like the university course in this novel given by a professor named Percival Everett, this book is Percival Everett is quite unlike anyone else. Just like the university course in this novel given by a professor named Percival Everett, this book is nonsense. A black man who looks like Sidney Poitier is named Not Sidney Poitier, which leads to some absurdist conversations. Not Sidney is rich as Croesus, or rather, as rich as Ted Turner of CNN fame, which allows him to do pretty much whatever he wants. But what does he want?
As with all Percival Everett books, this is worth reading just to see where his mind is going...we can all see his mind is going, but if you want to know where, check this out.
And please. Go see the film American Fiction. It is the film version of Erasure. I am looking forward to seeing it next week....more
The 28th president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust was the first woman and the first Southerner in the job. She had a relatively long tenure,The 28th president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust was the first woman and the first Southerner in the job. She had a relatively long tenure, 2007-2018, given the way things are going now. This memoir outlines her family's family and "how she got to be that way," but what it really does is show how she sprung singular from the head of Athena, the war goddess.
It seems Faust was always destined to fight against the strictures and unfairnesses she observed from her place in restricted White southern society. But her way of telling the story chafed. Perhaps it is because I am nearly her age and I ache to think no one was able to break down the barriers behind which her mother hid before her early death. Faust is smart, well-educated and articulate but she chafes, knowing so much.
She ends her memoir at the time of her graduation from college. One presumes she went on to honors and studying history. I remember when she was chosen to lead Harvard--I was impressed and proud, being a woman myself. I admire what she was able to do but I don't have to like her, do I?...more
Do I really need to tell you to read this book? It is not dense, but it is uncomfortable-making. That is a good thing. If you ever dared say you werenDo I really need to tell you to read this book? It is not dense, but it is uncomfortable-making. That is a good thing. If you ever dared say you weren't sure what a microaggression is, you will have example after example of the kind of rubbish Black Americans have had to put up with, like, forever. It pains me, but you can bet it pains them a great deal more.
There is so much we need to learn about the lives of Black Americans, how they were, how they are. I recall thinking when I was a teen that we white people were not privy to the mysteries...there seemed no way to get that knowledge unless one lived together in one neighborhood. And we did not. Shame, in all senses of the word.
One paragraph hit me like a club:
As a measure of the enduring role of caste interests in American politics, the shadow of the Civil War seemed to hang over the 2008 election. It turned out that Obama carried every state that Abraham Lincoln had won in 1860, an election with an almost entirely white electorate but one that became a proxy for egalitarian sentiment and for the future of slavery and of the Republic. "The cultural divide of the Civil War on racial grounds," wrote the political scientist Patrick Fisher of Seton Hall University, "can thus still be considered to be influencing American political culture a century and a half later."
Amazing book. Fascinating story, stupendous research. Woo keeps researching to the very end, looking at the families that came from the union of Willi Amazing book. Fascinating story, stupendous research. Woo keeps researching to the very end, looking at the families that came from the union of William and Ellen Craft, uncovering details that make the whole feel very real indeed. The world was in turmoil in 1848, you won’t be surprised to learn. But I wasn’t prepared for how the moment is mirrored in what is happening today: the sharp divides, fake news, screaming denunciations and posted threats.
Ellen and William Craft, two slaves owned by different masters, decided one Christmas that the time was ripe for them to escape to the north using a plan they’d prepared in four days. She would dress as a young man and he would be her manservant slave. She’d had experience traveling with her master and so knew how things outside her plantation worked. He was tall and capable and calm under stress, but their plans were upended more ways than one.
The Crafts were received with warmth by abolitionists in Philadelphia though they were cautious to the point of near-refusing the generosity of a Quaker family, the Ivins: “I have no confidence whatsoever in white people. They are only trying to get us back to slavery,” Ellen later reports. Later, Woo describes the sentiment among escaped slaves that included Frederick Douglass in Boston:
“once back in the States [from England], Douglass had grown increasingly angry, disillusioned, and impatient with American abolitionists, who moved so slowly and too often betrayed their own prejudices, subtle or not. Even some in [social reformer and journalist William Lloyd] Garrison’s closest circle were know to utter racial expletives on occasion.”
Once the Crafts were [safely? no…] on the lecture circuit in New England, I sought out Woo’s own explanation of how she did her research. Several of those interviews are on YouTube and in each, the questions and her answers are slightly different, but one comes away with the sense that the narrative propelled research into the time. The Crafts wrote their own personal histories, but with many pieces that Woo wanted to know missing.
The Craft’s escape from slavery wasn’t that long ago, a fact that continues to horrify me. We’re talking the length of two human lives ago. Crazy. But it’s been as chaotic and tempestuous and argumentative in the United States before now, and what we have learned is that people in general do not change until they are absolutely forced to change. Witness slavery. Witness environmental protection. There will still be breakouts of resistance against change going forward, but gradually we will come to see slavery and environmental degradation as great wrongs.
This story of escape is dense. There is so much Woo is telling us that we did not know that three hundred some-odd pages does not feel too long. We sense the depth of research and know there is more to mine from this story. Context is everything. Woo writes sentences that hint at interesting side trails; she names names in the places the Crafts overnighted. Even though it probably should be self-evident that by the 1848 the antislavery movement was well established, this feels new.
One thing that stuck with me is that Ellen Craft was ‘owned’ by her blood sister when she escaped. In fact, Ellen was gifted to that sister Eliza upon Eliza’s marriage because the wife of Ellen’s father and mistress of the house in which she worked was angry that people kept mistaking Ellen for one of that mistress’ white daughters. She looked so much like the husband…But forever after Ellen Craft would not speak ill of Eliza, her sister by blood and her mistress at the time of her abscondment.
Woo speculates that the names of Ellen and William Craft are not better known because their lives were complicated and had no period of ‘happily ever after.’ Perhaps that is true. Certainly it casts a pall over their American story to know how hard it was for them right to the end, and how one obstacle overcome only showed a higher mountain right behind. But it is also true that in America, white folks do not like to be reminded of times when they relied on the labor of slaves to build their fortunes. That could be a reason their story is not retold in schools and in theatre.
This totally fascinating book well deserves the raining plaudits. ...more
Percival Everett is a Black man. And he does something very special in this book—his 1000th, I think, or something like that. He imagines what would hPercival Everett is a Black man. And he does something very special in this book—his 1000th, I think, or something like that. He imagines what would happen when time come for retribution. And it ain’t gonna look like Donald Trump imagines it. (view spoiler)[ The thing is, he’s so funny when he’s telling us what could happen. We’re snickering and really, it is pretty gruesome. But he’s got the whole security pyramid working on the case before they realize exactly what is happening, the FBI, the state police, the local cops…everybody is trying to figure out who is doing these killings.
The thing is, it isn’t just killings. It is mutilations, and inventive ways of killing that are each a little different across the country. To remind folks about Emmett Till, and to take their pound of flesh for what happened to him. But my goodness, to make that funny, one has to be some kind of writer. And Everett is that. (hide spoiler)]...more
Everett does what he has done so often in the past: stares at a thing so long it is burned on the retina. Then he writes about it in a way that is heaEverett does what he has done so often in the past: stares at a thing so long it is burned on the retina. Then he writes about it in a way that is heartbreaking, funny, painful and very human. We move through his fictional world seeing more ironic reality than fiction. But there is a way his fiction is unlike other people’s fiction, and each new fiction is unlike his previous fictions.
There is a distinct sense of Everett literally making it all up as he goes along. Not for him the grand sagas where “it is written…” There is an untidiness and crazy ridiculousness that I love, wondering how his characters, beaten and bruised, are going to get out of this. I mean, at one point in this tale, Ol’ Jim gets shot up by his onetime owner, floats downstream on a log, manages to climb onto a paddle boat plying the Mississippi, gets blown up on said paddle boat and finds Huck Finn, from whom he’d been separated when they started their journey south.
The book ends in a way I wasn’t expecting. Most of what happens in the novel is something I wasn’t expecting. It is a series of painful truths that we should have heard long ago, but should be grateful to be hearing now. In the end, the white people in this book are more afraid of language spoken properly than they are of a gun. They are more afraid of Black folks finding their freedoms than of anything else. After all, gun owners “are not after me” they may imagine. How much of today is explained and revealed by this humorous tale of Huck Finn and Ol’ Jim?...more
Remarkably revealing and useful for understanding what it is like to be an actor before one hits it big in the movies. The only reason I gave it less Remarkably revealing and useful for understanding what it is like to be an actor before one hits it big in the movies. The only reason I gave it less than five stars is that the later years in her life were not so much part of this. I can understand why, but that is why it is hard to write . Anyway, she did a brilliant job considering the forces arrayed against organizing one's thoughts and finding the time to do a project like this. I admire her more for having pulled it off without melting down completely. ...more
Horse, the story of a great racing stallion from Kentucky named Lexington, encompasses an arc of American history that cuts still today. Australian auHorse, the story of a great racing stallion from Kentucky named Lexington, encompasses an arc of American history that cuts still today. Australian author Geraldine Brooks puts her finger on the sensitive places in America’s living history which we as a society have not yet resolved: our relationship with America’s early racial legacy, slavery.
The colonial powers of the 18th- and 19th centuries all have complicated histories with race, but America stands apart as a country built explicitly on the notion of equality for all men. The founders just didn’t ‘cotton’ the connection properly between Blackness, economic prosperity, rights and freedom. The Civil War was meant to set them straight, but it didn’t actually do that. Nothing civil about it…then or now.
The horse Lexington, described on two continents as the “greatest racing stallion in American turf history,” and slavery have a shared history, both in reality and in this fiction. There are pre-Civil War written and painted records of Lexington’s groom and trainer, both Black men in Kentucky, a state which would hover in-between the Union and Confederate armies and be bled by both.
We hear the story of a White Union soldier who initially finds himself seeking out prisoners “to better understand their minds.” Gradually, he realizes those men “were lost to a narrative untethered to anything he recognized as true.” Author Brooks connects our history with America today.
In a Brooks novel, readers enjoy the author’s passions…for history, science, horses, art…and for her native land, Australia. Brooks doesn’t give her own country a pass in the race relations area, giving voice to a critic of Canberra’s policies. She successfully details examples of microaggressions, some that go out into the world and are recognized for such, just as they land, by all witnesses.
The embarrassment of recognizing one’s own prejudices spills onto the reader, making us cautious but willing to learn more about how these impulses buried deep inside suddenly materialize and how they impact those around us. One of the more interesting characters who brings out the reader’s prejudices remains only sketched lightly in the background: a gruff woman of diminished means who throws out on the sidewalk an old and dirty painting of a horse and to whom we impute a nasty attitude totally dissimilar to our own good intentions.
Horse is a wonderful read, filled with surprising discoveries and twists we do not see coming. In the Afterword, Brooks reminds us that her husband, Tony Horwitz, was a Civil War historian who approved of her turn towards this history in her novel before his untimely and sudden death in 2019. What a wonder that this terrific book was birthed in midst of such great sorrow and loss....more
She has reason to be angry but she is only occasionally lashing. I know our history was hidden from us because i raised it also, in high school. Why dShe has reason to be angry but she is only occasionally lashing. I know our history was hidden from us because i raised it also, in high school. Why didn't we know more about Black people? ...more
Charlotte Carter. We are lucky to be alive in this time when publishers are doing the right thing for themselves AND for us by republishing terrific, Charlotte Carter. We are lucky to be alive in this time when publishers are doing the right thing for themselves AND for us by republishing terrific, under-read authors. Charlotte Carter is new to me but she is one of the best writers for a kind of hard-boiled mystery reminiscent of Raymond Chandler and the kind of glamour and won’t-look-away savvy of Nina Simone and James Baldwin.
Nanette Hayes is the series. Described as “a Grace Jones lookalike in terms of coloring and body type (she has the better waist, I win for tits)”, Nan is, when we meet her, busking on NYC streets with a saxophone, supplementing part-time work as a translator, French to English.
As far as I can tell, the series is only three novels long, but Carter has such a delicious and particular voice, you’re going to want to read all of this in a rush of indulgence. The first book in the series, Rhode Island Red, comes out July 27, just in time for long hot days in the hammock. August and September bring the last two, Coq Au Vin and Drumsticks. It’s like eating bonbons—very hard to resist.
First published in 1997, Rhode Island Red is written from a Black woman’s perspective and set in New York City just after stop-and-frisk was added to our lexicon. Cops were hated then, maybe even more than now? Even the title is a mystery; we don’t even know what the title means until close to the end but if you were to guess…
Nanette longs for France but grew up in the States as a child prodigy in maths, languages and spelling, of all things. One day another sax street player—a White man a little older than she—shows up needing a place to stay…and who ends up dead within hours.
It’s a complicated story, as it always must be when a stranger gets killed inside one’s own apartment. Nan calls the cops, only to have them question her motivation in bringing him home to her apartment. It’s a good question, one that Nanette will spend the rest of the story asking herself.
Carter wasn’t ahead of her time. She was playing old tunes in the 90s, but they were the anthem of the century. In a sense, she was closing the joint. We as a country are just catching up with her now. Radical. Real. Rhode Island Red....more
I finished this at least a year ago. The book was thoroughly spiked with markers pointing to remarkable notes of historical fact or insights that onlyI finished this at least a year ago. The book was thoroughly spiked with markers pointing to remarkable notes of historical fact or insights that only this woman at this time could make. I hadn't known very much about the institution called League of Women Voters before picking this up but since that time, I have learned much more.
We can see so clearly how imperfect we are and get some notion of what we need to do to make this group work for everyone. For change to be effective, we would have to stay working with an imperfect organization to make it better. You know how sometimes your instinct is to just leave...that you cannot change it all by yourself...and then you see someone who is leading by example?
This book is like that. Real leadership. Real work. Real....more
Selena Montgomery is the pen name of Stacey Abrams. This is not the typical bodice-ripper of old or a gritty “urban” novel in the style of Wahida ClarSelena Montgomery is the pen name of Stacey Abrams. This is not the typical bodice-ripper of old or a gritty “urban” novel in the style of Wahida Clark. This is more Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope’s role in Shonda Rhimes’ Netflix series Scandal.
The central character is powerful, and that power had questionable origins. What she did was legal, but was it right?
One of the most interesting things about this novel is that the characters do not have especially easy lives. Everyone has something in their background they wish they didn’t, and therefore it is relatively easy to feel sympathy except for the most wicked. There are some surprises, too, which add to the glamour, and one very-difficult-to-resist sheriff with his heart in the right place, throbbing.
The other most interesting thing is imagining Stacey Abrams writing some of the steamy attraction scenes. No, she never loses control of the narrative, but we have curiosity about her own choices. Novels tell us a great deal about the author, despite some writers saying, “it is complete fiction.“ I mean, how can someone write this stuff without having at least thought it in the first place? Kind of revealing, but I come from the never-share-a-stray-thought school of professional development because someone is sure to use it against you.
I like everything about this novel and about Stacey Abrams. She is unapologetic for living her life as big as she can make it, and since it is hers to live, I give her kudos for for it. And when I first encountered Kerry Washington in the role of Olivia Pope, it was difficult to look away. Same here. It is light, romantic fare, but it has enough body to fill the ‘crime novel’ slot on our reading list as well.
This work is called a novel but it is a ball of flame tossed into a dark night, blinding, brilliant, searing. Who knows if it is poetry or novel or meThis work is called a novel but it is a ball of flame tossed into a dark night, blinding, brilliant, searing. Who knows if it is poetry or novel or memoir; the language fills the mouth and is saturated with truth. We recognize it. We’ve tasted it. We are pained by it. It still hurts.
Something here is reminiscent of the epic poetry of Homer. Life's brutality, man’s frailty, the odyssey, the clash of civilizations, the incomparable language undeniably capturing human experience, these things make Vuong someone who heightens our awareness, deepens our experience, shocks us into acknowledgement of our shared experiences. What have we in common with a Greek of ancient times singing of a war and the personal trials of man? What have we in common with a gay immigrant boy writing of war and the personal trials of man?
The story is clear enough but fragmentary. In a Nov 2017 LitHub interview, Vuong tells us
”I’m writing a novel composed of woven inter-genre fragments. To me, a book made entirely out of unbridged fractures feels most faithful to the physical and psychological displacement I experience as a human being. I’m interested in a novel that consciously rejects the notion that something has to be whole in order to tell a complete story. I also want to interrogate the arbitrary measurements of a “successful” literary work, particularly as it relates to canonical Western values. For example, we traditionally privilege congruency and balance in fiction, we want our themes linked, our conflicts “resolved,” and our plots “ironed out.” But when one arrives at the page through colonized, plundered, and erased histories and diasporas, to write a smooth and cohesive novel is to ultimately write a lie. In a way, I’m curious about a work that rejects its patriarchal predecessors as a way of accepting its fissured self. I think, perennially, of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée. This resistance to dominant convention is not only the isolated concern of marginalized writers—but all writers—and perhaps especially white writers, who can gain so much by questioning how the ways we value art can replicate the very oppressive legacies we strive to end.”
The novel he speaks of is this one. I did not understand that paragraph when I first read it as well as I do now. I am more aware, too, having looked closely for the Western world’s acknowledged historical tendency to erase or ignore pieces of experience not congruent with their own worldview.
The language Vuong brings is exquisite and extraordinary: “The fluorescent hums steady above them, as if the scene is a dream the light is having.” “…the thing about beauty is that it’s only beautiful outside of itself.” “The carpet under his bare feet is shiny as spilled oil from years of wear.” “…repeating piles of rotted firewood, the oily mounds gone mushy…” “He had a thick face and pomaded hair, even at this hour, like Elvis on on his last day on earth.”
Vuong repeats motifs to tie the experiences of one person to the rest of his life, to tie one person’s experiences to those of others: “I’m at war.” “We cracked up. We cracked open.” “…you never see yourself if you’re the sun. You don’t even know where you are in the sky.” “…my cheek bone stinging from the first blow.” “I was yellow.”
A teen, immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam with his mother, grandmother, and aunt finds himself fleeing his “shitty high school to spend [his] days in New York lost in library stacks,” from whence he, first in this family to go to college, squanders his opportunity on an English degree.
The teen discovers his gayness and does not flee it, though his white lover agonizes and denies all his life. We watch that boy fall, wither, die under the scourge of fentanyl and opioid addiction and Vuong places the scourge in the wider context of an awry world.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the fragmented, shattered nature of the tale, there is a real momentum to this novel, Vuong telling us things not articulated in this way before: a familiar war from a new angle, the friction burn of the immigrant experience, the roughness of gay sex, the madness of living untethered in the world. The language is so precise, so surprising, so wide-awake and fresh, that we read to see.
Last year, in September of 2018, I reviewed Vuong’s first book of poetry, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. The poems had many of the same tendencies toward epic poetry—they were big, and meaningful. On my blog I have attached a short video of Vuong reading from that collection to give you some idea of his power. You're welcome, readers....more
Stacey Abrams learned not always to kick right at her goal. Watching her stand back and assess a situation can be a fearsome thing. You know she is goStacey Abrams learned not always to kick right at her goal. Watching her stand back and assess a situation can be a fearsome thing. You know she is going to do something oh-so-effective and she is going to use her team to get there, those who mentored her and those she mentored herself. I just love that teamwork.
This memoir is unlike any other presidential-hopeful memoir out there. Abrams has not declared herself for the 2020 race, but running for president is on her to-do list. I read the library edition of her book quickly and wondered why she’d write it this way; she’s a writer and this is written in a workbook self-help style. But something she’d said about ambition was so clarifying and electrifying that I ended up buying the book to study what she was doing.
“Ambition should be an animation of soul…a disquiet that requires you to take action…Ambition means being proactive…If you can walk away [from your ambition] for days, weeks, or years at a time, it is not an ambition—it’s a wish.”
Ambition is not something you can be passive about. You feel you must act on it or you will regret it all your days. Ambition should not a job title but something that helps you to answer “why”.
Now I know why Abrams wrote her book like this. After all, she’s a writer; she could write whatever kind of book she wanted. Her ambition is to have readers feel strong and capable enough to do whatever they put their minds to, whether it is to aid someone in office or be that person in office. She learned a lot on her path to this place and she doesn’t necessarily want to get to the top of the mountain without her cohort. Her ambition is not an office, it is a result.
What Abrams relates about her failures is most instructive. After all, none of us achieve all we set our minds to, at least on the first try. But Abrams shows that one has to be relentlessly honest with oneself about one’s advantages and deficiencies, even asking others in case one’s own interpretations are skewed by fear or previous failure. By writing her book this way, Abrams is unapologetic about some areas she could have handled better, personal finances for instance, that could have been used as a weapon against her. She explains her situation at the time and recommends better pathways for those who follow.
A former member of the Georgia State Legislature, Abrams found herself a different breed of politician than most who had achieved that rank. She was less attuned to social sway than she was to marshaling her intellect to overcome roadblocks to effective legislation. This undoubtedly had some genesis in the reactions she’d gotten her entire life as a black woman. She wasn’t going to wait for folks to accept her; she planned to take her earned seat at the table but she was going to be prepared.
She found that she needed both skills to succeed in business and in politics. She needed the support of a base and she needed an understanding of what would move the ball forward. And she learned what real power means.
“Access to real power also acknowledges that sometimes we need to collaborate rather than compete. We have to work with our least favorite colleague or with folks whose ideologies differ greatly from our own…But working together for a common end, if not for the same reason, means that more can be accomplished.”
Abrams discusses strategies and tactics for acquiring and wielding power and reminds us that “sometimes winning takes longer than we hope” and leaders facing long odds on worthy goals best be prepared for the “slow-burn” where victory doesn’t arrive quickly. But every small victory or single act of defiance can inspire someone else to take action.
If defeat is inevitable, reevaluate. Abrams suggests that one may need to change the rules of engagement so that instead of a ‘win’ one may be happy to ‘stay alive’ to fight another day.
The last fifty pages of the book put words to things we may know but haven’t articulated before. Abrams acknowledges that beliefs are anchors which help to direct us in decision-making but should never be used to block critical thinking, reasonable compromise, and thoughtful engagement.
“Collaboration and compromise are necessary tools in gaining and holding power.”
The GOP also believes this, but I think they use the notion within their coalition: they use discipline to keep their team in order and members may need to compromise their values to stay in the power group. Democrats must hold onto the notion of compromise within and without their coalition to succeed, while never compromising values.
It is difficult to believe there is anyone out there who doesn’t admire Stacey Abrams’ guts and perseverance. Her friends stood by her in times of stress because Abrams made efforts to acknowledge her weaknesses while not allowing them to break down her spirit. She built every pillar of the leadership role she talks about and can stand before us, challenging us to do the same. She is a powerhouse. ...more
Brad Parks’ compulsively readable standalone crime thriller is nearly flawless. The author takes risks by making his protagonist a woman, a young whitBrad Parks’ compulsively readable standalone crime thriller is nearly flawless. The author takes risks by making his protagonist a woman, a young white mother married to a black man. While he might make a misstep or two in how a woman might react to rape or a first-time mother might react to being wrongly accused of several crimes and then having her child taken by social services, he has a strong enough case that we keep reading to see how he will explain it all.
Technically, the book works well. We move between points of view easily, from accused, to police, to perp, to innocent victim. Our own opinions are in flux as we get pushed and pulled with every new development in the case against the mother. She is a victim several times over, and we can explain her reticence to spill her guts and tell all she knows to her attorney at first by considering her foster-care background.
The whole builds up to a situation in which good people can get hurt by other well-meaning people because everyone is being manipulated by normal human perceptions and reactions. Preet Bharara, former Chief Prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, recently wrote in his memoir that he learned in his time working at one of the most visible courts in the land that “[a]nyone is capable of anything.”
I read this book at first because the author is the son of one of my brother’s best friends, but I am pleased to be able to report that the skill, talent, and sheer dare-devil chutzpah of the author is on full display. Brad Parks takes risks but is able to pull off the heist. ...more
I finished Edugyan's third novel today in a fog, reading the last hundred pages completely engrossed in the strangely unreal world and story Edugyan hI finished Edugyan's third novel today in a fog, reading the last hundred pages completely engrossed in the strangely unreal world and story Edugyan had created, about a former slave, physically damaged from years in captivity but involved in the science of creating an indoor aquarium in London—something never done before.
If at first—and I have seen such criticism—the story seemed a little derivative of Jules Verne with wondrous and far-flung adventures, Edugyan pulled it off. There were wondrous adventures when naturalists and people of science began to turn their attention outside their own environments to the larger world. Anything they could conceive of was about to be tried…travel to the Arctic, say, or to the bottom of the ocean, or ballooning long distances. The story is an absolute feast of imagination.
Race is an important component of the story in that we have an abolitionist white scientist who chooses a young slave boy to be ballast for his balloon adventure. When the white master discovers his black ballast has exceptional drawing skills, the boy’s role changes. Though they are close, there is always a power differential in their relationship that keeps the friendship from meaning as much to the white man as it does to the black man.
Edugyan sketches this kind of unconscious racism so clearly, and points to it, that one can hardly walk away from the book with one’s vision unchanged, whichever side one is on. We can put words to a feeling of alienation we may have seen or felt before but weren’t able to express.
It turns out the history of the world’s first public aquarium is much as is described in this novel, though I was unable to discover whether a very young black man was the first to come up with the idea and design of the tanks for public display of sea creatures in the mid-nineteenth century. It seems perfectly likely, as does the fact that such a man would never be acknowledged, his history expunged as a matter of course.
Edugyan is Canadian, which is not obvious. She sets a portion of the novel in Newfoundland, but otherwise the characters travel far and wide on nearly every continent. She adds an intriguing love interest for George Washington Black, the main character and former slave from Barbados. We presume Black is originally from Dahoumey in west Africa because that place name is buried deep in his subconscious and is resurrected when his life is in danger.
Black’s love interest is a mixed-race island woman of great beauty and intelligence and a rounded sense of her own potential. Her father, also a scientist, did not encourage her to develop her physical charms. One day he allowed her to purchase a few small concessions to beauty that she craved: red lipstick, a diaphanous dress, an emerald clasp. She discovered that people noticed her more but saw her less. This lesson all women must learn and decide whether to exploit or not.
The start of the novel was not particularly convincing and had the feel of a young adult novel, but it began as it meant to go on, and by midway I was involved, suspending belief, rapt, and curious. There was something about the way the role of the one-time slave was progressing that held some hope that his potential would be developed. And the history of race is not yet finished being told, since we write it every day.
It's a wonderful novel. Edugyan has written two other critically-acclaimed novels and at least two collections of stories. She has taught creative writing and has won several international awards for her work....more
Can I have more than one favorite author? Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl is a playwright but she put her hand to a murder mystery after writing several succCan I have more than one favorite author? Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl is a playwright but she put her hand to a murder mystery after writing several successful plays. This is a true gem: multi-faceted, with rich portrayals of Pacific Island peoples and their beliefs as well as believable motivations for murder. We get the native Hawaiian perspective on why America the mainland was interested to annex the islands, and all of it so light, so fragrant, so beautiful, like Kneubuhl’s descriptions of the dawn, the surf, the flora.
The time described is the 1930’s and the characters we meet are glamorous, sophisticated, smart, and sound an awful lot as though they could be speaking today. The women, in particular one woman, Mina, is fully-realized and unafraid to reveal her doubts, her passions, her intents. Others may gossip, but she is guileless. She is beautiful and suffers from the attentions of men. She sets the parameters of a working relationship right from the start with a man she doesn’t know well, suspecting he will, as they all do, eventually fall under her spell.
Native names may be a challenge for some but I relish the added authenticity and depth to the story as it unfolds. A museum director, a white man, is murdered. The police chief, also white but married to one of twin sisters descended from island royalty, hosts a Pacific Islander playwright and sometime British spy who has come to Hawai’i to return the portrait of a Hawaiian king once misappropriated from the islands. When the portrait goes missing at the time of the murder, Mina, one of the twins and a part-time journalist, works to uncover the perpetrators.
Kneubuhl doesn’t put a foot wrong while effectively throwing red-herrings into the story at every turn. While it appears several people have a motive for murder, we never see the ending coming, though it had been spotlighted a few times earlier in the drama. Kneubuhl has a theatre artist’s skill of involving our every sense, beginning on page one when someone spills a glass of brandy over their costume at a gala. Taste, scent fill the air directly and hit the bloodstream quickly.
She does the same with her descriptions of sunrises in the outer islands, the condition of the sea, the torrential rains, the lava-rock cliffs—the physical fact of the islands are as important as anything or anyone else in this story. It is a real achievement to have highlighted the natural beauty of a place while sharing its history, all the while amusing us with a plausible murder mystery.
The cast of characters is plausible, too, from Mina’s best friend, the daughter of a Chinese immigrant who likes cooking French food more than his native cuisine to a Japanese maid, we learn later, who happens to be very knowledgable about Asian antiques.
Kuebuhl has written more than two dozen plays and three of her most celebrated plays are collected in an edition called Hawaii Nei: Island Plays. This mystery novel has become a series with two other books featuring its main characters, including the indomitable Mina. Most important, perhaps, is Kneubuhl's celebration of island customs and placing the islands in the context of America’s sometimes bloody and racist history.
“Our stories are so worth telling…you are leaving a gift for your community.”--Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl in an interview in 2015 for PBS Hawaii with with by the Hawaiian talk show host.
Who would have guessed there would be two such popular and talented writers in one family as there are in the Obamas? I guess we will have to wait to Who would have guessed there would be two such popular and talented writers in one family as there are in the Obamas? I guess we will have to wait to see if their kids, Malia and Sasha, have inherited the gene. Michelle’s book is ravishingly interesting and so smoothly written I was happy sitting there and reading it at the neglect of less pleasurable duties.
The fairy-tale aspect of growing up “with a disabled dad in a too-small house with not much money in a starting-to-fail neighborhood” and ascending to the most admired and coveted house in the land is not emphasized until the last pages. Michelle looks back at Barack’s eight years in office, and how he was followed by a con man with a filthy mouth. The contrast between the two men is not subtle, and neither is Michelle’s distress.
Before the disappointing turnover at the end of Barack’s time in office, the story is filled with hope—hope that Americans will see change for the better in their opportunities, schooling, wages, and leadership. Michelle’s emphasis mostly stays squarely on her own hopes rather than those of her husband, and focuses on her plans to institute mentoring for teens of color, and the building of a system for providing good food for kids in schools.
Michelle made no bones about the fact that she was more a homebody than her cerebral husband who, in one anecdote, laid in bed late one night gazing at the ceiling. When asked what he was thinking about, he sheepishly answered, “income inequality.”
Michelle had come from a family that was large and loud and lived close by one another in Chicago. After claiming an undergraduate degree at Princeton, Michelle moved on to Harvard Law, taking advantage of the momentum. the opportunity, and the expectation that she would achieve what her parents did not. She may not have been timid, but she wasn’t exactly expansive in her view of herself or her life. She acknowledges Barack introduced her to a larger world with different but equally important personal and societal goals and expectations that are shared by millions.
I have seen in comments about this book that Michelle dodged important questions about Barack’s time in office that involved decisions the two of them would have made together, e.g., Reverend Wright, etc. and while her opinion may have added something to the narrative, I tend to agree with “write your own darn story” pushback. Michelle’s considered take on what it meant to her and her family when some people seemed to lay in wait to broadcast misinterpretations of her campaign stump speeches makes it clear we are lucky to get anything more. It is easy for us to forget Michelle was an actual surrogate for Barack. She had a heavy speechmaking schedule and drew such crowds that she finally scored a plane and a team of her own.
Probably the thing I am most impressed with—and what Michelle herself is most proud of—is her raising two consequential young girls in the fishbowl that is the White House. The girls survived, even thrived, in that place, and hopefully will have absorbed some of the grace and resilience of their parents. What we don’t know is what Michelle’s next act will be, for she is still a relatively young and IVy- trained lawyer. We know she doesn’t like politics, never has, but would still like to make a contribution.
Just having withstood the pressures of the White House without cracking and having takien the time to write a book that encourages others to see themselves as aspirants to national office is something to be thankful for. I am also grateful she provided the home life and support Barack needed in such a difficult job with such a difficult Congress. It wasn’t easy for either of them and in many ways it did not turn out as they had envisioned.
The Obamas could have had a more placid life without trying to handle affairs of state, so their attempt to share their strong family values was a kind of blessing. The book is a wonderfully smooth read (or audio!), and is hard-to-put-down. The audio is read by Michelle herself and therefore has the emphases she wanted. Published by Crown and Random House Audio in North America, this book sold more copies in the U.S. than any other book in 2018 and will be published in 24 languages.
A section of color photographs is reason enough to choose the book over the audio, but the audio is interesting because Michelle herself reads it. She has chosen to discuss things we are intrinsically interested in, like choosing a college, a major, a job, and a husband, and while many of us have had similar decisions to make we would not have had Michelle’s set of choices. The book is absolutely worthwhile....more
I forget where I first heard of Adjei-Brenyah, but the name of his debut story collection was so similar to Esi Edugyan’s much-lauded Washington BlackI forget where I first heard of Adjei-Brenyah, but the name of his debut story collection was so similar to Esi Edugyan’s much-lauded Washington Black that I wanted to read both to make sure they were separated in my mind. Now it is difficult to imagine I would ever forget the title story “Friday Black,” about a young man in a retail store setting dealing with the sales and buying mania of Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the official opening of the Christmas season. There is indeed something black in the American psyche, that would celebrate a day of such whipped-up and fruitless passion for more than we need or can effectively use.
I did not read the first story in the collection, “The Finkelstein 5,” until long into my perusal of the collection. Just as well, because it is a staring full-face into the racism we still see and hear all around us today. The characters who are black adjust themselves to fit into the white overculture, adjusting their “blackness” on a ten-point scale.
Adjei-Brenyah draws from the incidental murders of young girls attending Sunday school, of a young man shot as he walked down the night-darkened street of his neighborhood, of a young man so angry at the deaths of the others that he considers, for a moment, fighting back. There is a barely-disguised cameo of the talking heads on right-wing TV talk shows, with Adjei-Brenyah carefully picking out for us the most offensive and patently absurd of their comments regarding white fear of unarmed teens and children of color.
My favorite of the stories in the collection has to be “Zimmer Land.” In this significant piece, which I can imagine being chosen for Best-Of collections until Adjei-Brenyah is old and gray, a young man works at a kind of play-station where members of the community are given the opportunity to see how they would react when their fear or anger instincts are aroused.
Patrons are issued a weapon when they enter the play space set, a paint gun whose force can rupture fake blood sensors in the mecha-suit of the player. Mecha-suits sound like transformer kits, inflating to protect the torso, legs, and arms of players, and to intimidate. Patrons are not told to use the weapons, but the mere convenience of the weapons is an opportunity, and the rush of shooting is like a fast-acting drug.
Isaiah is black and he is the player white patrons come to test their emotions against in a “highly curated environment.” When Isaiah complains to management that most of the patrons are repeats, coming frequently to fake-kill him and not learning anything new about the sources of their aggression, perhaps even “equating killing with justice,” his bosses tell him his heart better be in the job ‘cause there are others who’ll do the work with real aggression and commitment.
At least four of Adjei-Brenyah’s signature pieces in this collection describe the soul-destroying unreality of America’s retail space, where salespeople are rewarded for up-selling and given praise, if not bonuses, for selling the most [unnecessary] stuff to the most [vulnerable] people. We are reminded that there are several ways to make money to live while writing, and in Adjei-Brenyah’s case it is retail sales rather than, say, restaurant work or construction. He gives us a look at what we never thought to ask as we made our way through the racks of shirts or stacks of jeans.
Highly praised by other acclaimed writers in front-page and back-cover blurbs, this collection heralds the arrival of someone we will continue to look out for. The ideas behind the work is what is impressive, besides just the writing skill. Adjei-Brenyah knows one doesn’t have to be sky-diving to make the work interesting. It’s about what you’re thinking about while sky-diving.
I listened to this novel months ago—just about the time it came out. I haven’t been able to adequately put into words how I felt about it. This was thI listened to this novel months ago—just about the time it came out. I haven’t been able to adequately put into words how I felt about it. This was the first time I’ve partaken of a Shteyngart novel, and it is more in every way than I was expecting. There is a shadow of Pynchon’s frank absurdity there, and some bungee-cord despair—the kind that bounces back, irrepressible.
Shteyngart’s novel is overstuffed with funny, sad, true, caustic, simplistic, derogatory observations about life in America that somehow capture us in all our glory. He is not dismissive; I think he likes us. The main character in this novel, Barry Cohen, is nothing if not representative of what we have taught ourselves to be: money-mad and self-pitying, educated enough to capture our own market but too stupid to see the big picture. What introspection we have is wasted on divining the motivations of others rather than our own triggers.
Barry is a man America loves to hate. He is a successful hedge fund manager who emerged from the economic crisis in fine shape—it was only his clients who suffered. And his clients suffered because the government finally caught on to some irregularities in Barry’s operations that allowed him to win so much. While the SEC investigated, Barry left Seema, his wife and an attorney, with his son Shiva to see if he could find an old flame. Last he’d heard she was living in the South.
Right there Barry made a big mistake. One doesn’t leave an attorney for another woman. I mean, how stupid do you have to be? Barry and Seema had been doing okay marriage-wise, though it turns out Shiva is autistic. Unable to speak and often looking as though he does not even comprehend what words and comments are directed to him, Shiva is unknowable.
Barry wants to love him, but maybe wants Shiva to love Barry himself more. Seema handles most of Shiva's care which means she cannot work. More and more absorbed with her son’s care, she recognizes and relishes small victories of understanding his internal world while her husband languishes.
Barry Cohen’s odyssey from New York by bus to various destinations in the south features a man with a skill set that serves him surprisingly well when traveling by bus on limited cash, no credit, and a roller-board of fancy watches. He almost can’t be shamed because he’s a bigger crook than anyone. Dragging around his collection of fancy watches turns out not to be very lucrative—who recognizes their value? But they do get him food occasionally, and a little tradable currency.
Barry spends relatively little psychic energy pondering the sources of his Wall Street wealth, but somehow recognizes it’s probably not worth as much as he was getting paid to do it. His long-story-short gives us cameos of American ‘types’: street-wise salesmen, long-suffering nannies, practical mothers, and money managers who believe their work confers some kind of godliness on their financial outcomes. Because we win, we are meant to win. Yes, this all takes place in the first year of the Trump administration.
Barry Cohen is hard to take. “See, this is the thing about America,” he tells his former employee in Atlanta, a man named Park that Barry keeps referring to as Chinese, “You can never guess who’s going to turn out to be a nice person.”
Well. Barry is not a very nice person, really. He simply is not reflective enough. We can feel twinges at his angst, but ultimately we make our own beds, don’t we? Barry is tiresome, that’s the problem. His adventures are quite something, but we grow weary of his queer decision-making and slow recognition that he does, in fact, love his imperfect family. It’s all he’s got, the silly doofus, and they are worthy of his love. We’d rather spend time with them.
"I think racism undergirds all of this, no question. It’s a huge part of it. When we were immigrants and couldn’t speak the language, the one thing this country told us was: ‘You’re white, there’s always somebody lower than you.’"
Shteyngart thought he might add a gender dimension to the story, and was going to make his main character a woman, but the few female hedge fund managers he found were rational and didn’t take such big crazy risks that they end up blowing up the world. Right, I think. Exactly right....more
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