Not my kind of read, so I won't rate it here. I had difficulty pushing through to make it through to the "good" parts - the scary stuff! For me, this Not my kind of read, so I won't rate it here. I had difficulty pushing through to make it through to the "good" parts - the scary stuff! For me, this book is so deeply culturally referential that I don't get a lot of the references and social commentary the author is making (which is usually my favorite part of any book) - and I understand this, because I prefer reading books about my own culture that are like that too, so I get why it would be in some ways counterproductive for the author to explain all of the references he inserts. It just doesn't work for me as a reader and really reminds me of a modern-day Native American version of an old Western, complete with bar fights and hunting through snow, etc., so not really my jam, but I can see how it would work for other readers! ...more
There are so many different moments of racial tension touched on in Last Call on Decatur Street that sung beautifully. Rosemary and Gabrielle have a lThere are so many different moments of racial tension touched on in Last Call on Decatur Street that sung beautifully. Rosemary and Gabrielle have a longstanding relationship that takes a pivotal turn one fateful night and perhaps may never recover. Rosemary’s feelings of being left out at times (when around Gabby and her family) and of not necessarily understanding where she went wrong in the relationship come off as a genuine and authentic look at community, "othering" and white privilege. Case in point:
Her tolerance made me feel special, a quick affirmation of intimacy. She was doing it now.
Here, Rosemary refers to Gabby’s tolerance for racial microaggressions—despite the numerous times she says something that could be offensive to Gabby throughout this book, she’s gotten used to Gabby waving or “patting” it off, but, because she doesn’t know any better, it’s never really addressed as a microaggression. Yet, Cohen did a good job of writing these scenes so that it’s obvious that she understands the nuances of these racially charged moments even if Rosemary does not.
Last Call on Decatur Street was a phenomenal novel full of beautiful cultural nuances and delicate cultural motivations, situations and references that rang absolutely true. This passage seemed to sum up Rosemary’s outlook on the racial tensions in New Orleans, and I found it to be completely true to her personality and understandable from a racial standpoint:
Or the Mardi Gras Indians, I was scared of them, preening and strutting, owning their streets with an aggressive beauty. I couldn’t explain that my fear was a sign of respect, my deference felt like the only gift I could offer them in the face of our brutal, messed up racial history. That was also my New Orleans, and we didn’t talk about it. Everything was unsaid but intuited, our way of doing things, a silence heavy as iron…Gaby knew my New Orleans, the million little rules we all implicitly followed. That first question we all asked each other: where’d you go to high school? That quick recognition of how everyone fit into the fabric of this dumb city, held by a million tiny knots of habit and expectation.
It was very interesting to see the cultural phenomenon of double consciousness viewed from the other side of the table (from the Caucasian POV) via this relationship between these two women. Iris Martin Cohen seems to accurately portray what it must be like to not understand the unspoken nuances of being black that other blacks do understand among themselves. In that way, this book seems very accurate.
What a heart-wrenching book. This biography will take you down into the deepest, most miserable and destitute depths of the human psyche and experiencWhat a heart-wrenching book. This biography will take you down into the deepest, most miserable and destitute depths of the human psyche and experience, roll you around a bit down there, and then start to pull you back toward the light. It's a journey I can only take once, but I'm so glad I did....more
I just finished this PHENOMENAL book–seriously, probably THE best autobiography I’ve ever laid my hands on! It’s now in vogue–the coolest new trend–foI just finished this PHENOMENAL book–seriously, probably THE best autobiography I’ve ever laid my hands on! It’s now in vogue–the coolest new trend–for people to write a book about their lives, and I respect that trend for allowing us to read more TRUE, REAL stories about REAL people. BUT, Becoming is the first autobiography I’ve ever felt I’ve truly connected with, learned from and became a better person for having read it. Within these pages, I both saw myself and re-found myself within Michelle Obama’s narrative; I saw myself in her story and have truly learned a few life changing lessons from this 421-page journey she’s shared with us. It is a rare thing, indeed, for me to be able to say that about any book—that I identified with the words, felt the words in a heartfelt way and came away changed because of those series of words on a page that had been so thoughtfully and candidly laid out.
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I had the honor of going to see Michelle Obama on her book tour at her Washington D.C. stop the Sunday after Thanksgiving. (In an ironic full circle of events in my experience with this book, I went to see her speak with a friend I met here on Goodreads who has become a very close friend of mine.) Michelle Obama was…everything. She was witty and frankly hilarious; she was open and forthright; she was graceful and dignified, a true orator and inspiration.
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The tickets to this event sold out within hours--a completely filled arena, pictured above as it is starting to fill.
Both in her book and in her talks, she speaks openly about what it was like to be a young black girl from the South Side of Chicago—during the time when whites were fleeing the area and poverty seemed to be creeping its way in—to becoming a young woman at Princeton, unsure of her footing in the new social climate but still clinging to her rigidly drawn-up plan and schedule for her life (of which becoming First Lady was never a part).
I’d constructed my existence carefully, tucking and folding every loose and disorderly bit of it…I had labored over its creation. I was proud of how it looked. But it was delicate. If one corner came untucked, I might discover that I was restless. If another popped loose, it might reveal I was uncertain about the professional path I’d so deliberately put myself on, about all the things I told myself I wanted.
She walks us through graduating from college and enduring the loss of one of her best friends to an aggressive cancer at the young age of 26 years old and how this changed her outlook on the world and her path through it. Within these pages you’ll learn how she first met Barack Obama, a man who would change her world and ours in so many ways—how he arrived at work late that first day she was to mentor him, wet from the rainy day outside but still sure of himself and confident in a way that spoke of humility. From IVF to being a senator’s wife to the horrible shock of how dirty and personal politics can turn, Michelle Obama gives us an insightful glimpse into her journey into and out of the White House, her personal trek into becoming the icon she is today—a label she still humbly finds bewildering but that she has learned to hone for the betterment of our nation and the society-focused programs she has championed.
Throughout it all, Michelle Obama’s outlook is optimistic, her voice clear, witty, candid and insightful. How did she feel the first time she experienced life inside of the presidential motorcade? What fears did she have of exposing her daughters to the “maw” of public life? And how did she accommodate her outlook on politics –
I’ve never been a fan of politics, and my experience over the last ten years has done little to change that. I continue to be put off by the nastiness—the tribal segregation of red and blue, this idea that we’re supposed to choose one side and stick to it, unable to listen and compromise, or sometimes even to be civil.
–and her negative experience within the whirlwind of it—
A Fox news chyron referred to me as “Obama’s Baby Mama,” conjuring cliched notions of black-ghetto America, implying an otherness that put me outside even my own marriage. I was getting worn out, not physically, but emotionally. The punches hurt, even if I understood that they had little to do with who I really was as a person. It was as if there were some cartoon version of me out there wreaking havoc, a woman I kept hearing about but didn’t know—a too-tall, too-forceful, ready-to-emasculate Godzilla of a political wife named Michelle Obama.
–to achieve what she has, and with such grace, for our nation, the Democratic party, for children and for people (girls and women especially) of color?
Just as the discerning look at the viciousness of American politics will enrage you and make you question the leaders we’ve elected to power, so will Michelle Obama’s experience with the other side of her First Lady journey, the experience with the purity of spirit of genuinely good people—no matter their political affiliations, nationality or socio-economic status—move you.
One day in San Antonio, Texas, I noticed a minor commotion in the hallway of the military hospital I was visiting. Nurses shuffled urgently in and out of the room I was about to enter. “He won’t stay in bed,” I heard someone whisper. Inside, I found a broad-shouldered young man from rural Texas who had multiple injuries and whose body had been severely burned. He was in clear agony, tearing off the bedsheets and trying to slide his feet to the floor. It took us all a minute to understand what he was doing. Despite his pain, he was trying to stand up and salute the wife of his commander in chief.
As I read Becoming, I HAD to read it with a pen and highlighter in hand, hence why it took me so long to complete it. I had to savor every word, go back and re-read passages. Just today, as I was nearing the epilogue, a woman sitting next to me asked, “What are you studying?” I turned the book over and told her, “Michelle Obama’s Becoming.” I hope that gives you an idea of the intensity and connection with which I read this book. To say that I highly recommend this book to any and everyone—especially to American women, women of color and people who have felt persecuted or “othered” by their upbringings or the color of their skin—would be a clear understatement. There is so much truth and integrity and raw emotion to be pointed out in this autobiography, but to do so here would be to write a whole book about the marvels of this book. What I will say is that Becoming earned an easy 5 stars before I’d even finished the preface and continued in its discerning excellence thereafter. There is truly something within these pages for everyone because, as Michelle Obama so elegantly states:
I’m an ordinary person who found herself on an extraordinary journey. In sharing my story, I hope to help create space for other stories and other voices, to widen the pathway for who belongs and why…It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.
The white kids will complain—another bullshit corporate condominium, destroying the neighborhood—but those same white kids will move in. I n4.5 stars!
The white kids will complain—another bullshit corporate condominium, destroying the neighborhood—but those same white kids will move in. I never thought I’d live in a place like this but, ugh, I need a dishwasher. And I hate laundromats. All my friends are here and besides, the design fits the neighborhood, not like those other buildings, plus a doorman. All the cachet of the neighborhood and none of the hassles. The guilty thrill of being surrounded by blackness without having to live like them. Not separate but unequal.
Wil Medearis’s debut novel, Restoration Heights, cleverly weaves together the lives of the wealthy and the destitute, the disenfranchised and the entitled, and the color lines between black and white into a sublimely realistic portrait of the class and race divisions in this country, as seen through the lens of gentrified Bed-Stuy, New York. More than that, though, this novel is a thrilling page-turner with a protagonist you can root for and supporting characters who aren’t often what they seem.
Leaving aside the summary of this novel, as the description blurb is wholly accurate, Restoration Heights was a delightfully surprising find for me. In many ways, it reminded me of Sam Graham-Felsen’s Green, published in 2018, in that it is a novel written by a young white man about the experiences of living in the middle of a mostly minority neighborhood. Medearis’s protagonist, Reddick, not only identifies with the neighborhood and feels wholly at home there, but he embarks on a search to find a missing woman he met only briefly the night before that ultimately forces him to confront his place within that neighborhood—and within society’s stone-set caste system as well. And as he explores economic disparities and racial tensions in the inner-city, Reddick, who constantly mentions his part African-American grandfather in innocent attempts at proving his authenticity, finds himself at the heart of a makeshift investigation of a young woman’s disappearance—a young woman who’s engaged to an old-money Upper East Side scion but is last seen drunk with two black men in Bed-Stuy. This such racial and class tensions in play, the stakes have never been higher.
I’ve got some sorry news. There is no people. That’s the hardest lesson this country taught me. It is the heart of my success. You want this to be a community but it’s only a territory. Individuals stuck in the same place, battered by the same forces.
Medearis shines in this debut as an emerging author who understands both the obvious and unspoken rules of various caste systems that converge in our society. He explores them skillfully through a fluid intermixing of characters who can use “slang so thick it bordered on code” side by side with those who own William Merritt Chase paintings and drink from Wedgwood cups. The way they brush against each other is both believable and simultaneously flushed with the acridity one would expect from such interactions. At the same time, Medearis does manage to bring something new to the table: He manages to both stun and thrill with unexpected plot twists and characters who are life-sized and realistic. While you’ll find a few well-known typecasts within these pages, Medearis manages to give them more dimension, life and bite; they never fall into the category of played-out stereotypes and that I appreciated. Restorations Heights offers addictive and authentic prose that moves in cadence with the realism of our everyday lives and interactions with the world around us, something I look for in contemporary writing. Thus, Wil Medearis won me over, and I give his debut novel 4.5 stars.
*I received a copy of this novel from the publisher, Hanover Square Press, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Femi makes three, you know. Three, and they label you a serial killer.
In case you haven't noticed, Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial KillerFemi makes three, you know. Three, and they label you a serial killer.
In case you haven't noticed, Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer has been taking the social media scene by storm the past few weeks. And I get it; the cover art is (pardon my pun) killer and the title exudes a certain titillation that will make a reader quickly reach for the book on the shelf. For me, My Sister, the Serial Killer, was an easy, brisk read that I mostly read in one sitting. And I was additionally excited to read it when I realized that the author and I graduated from the same university in England and likely had the same creative writing instructors! The short chapters (some only a few sentences long) created the effect of breezing through the novel at record speed, which is a plus, but it also created a few issues for this narrative.
Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut novel follows sisters Ayoola and Korede – Ayoola kills ‘em and Korede cleans ‘em up. But this isn’t just a novel about the boyfriends falling like flies; it’s a novel about the trials and bonds of sisterhood, an exploration of childhood abuse and a would-be love story all wrapped up tightly in the culture of Lagos, Nigeria. Now, that’s a lot to try to cram into 240 (not even full) pages, but it can be done; I’ve even seen it done well. Here, I wasn’t mind-blowingly impressed by the execution (again, couldn’t resist!) of My Sister, the Serial Killer. If you’re a reader who puts a lot of weight on pace, you might find that you’re in for a rather jerky ride with this novel. It flowed neither at a lyrically smooth pace nor at a heart-pounding thriller pace. It just sort of jerked from scene to scene with very little, if any, narrative connective tissue to sew the chapters seamlessly together. In short, while it a had a great plot and an ending that did manage to surprise me, it was not written with a lot of finesse. It read, to me, like a very first draft, not quite filled in enough to give us readers an entire picture. It was like a well-done sketch of artistry that hasn’t yet been filled in with color, like the structure of a building that has not yet been painted and offered windows and balconies.
Now, ONWARD to the pros that you’ll find within these pages, because there are several of those. For one, it was a plus that this novel read so fast. While the plotting was jerky, the pace was quick, and that pulls you in to the story fast as you realize that you’re already so deep into it with so little time spent on it. And one of the real gems of My Sister was how Braithwaite interlaced the heart-pounding narrative of the killings themselves with the humor of said serial killer’s indifference and feigned naiveté:
There is music blasting from Ayoola’s room. She is listening to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” It would be more appropriate to play Brymo or Lourde, something solemn or yearning, rather than the musical equivalent of a pack of M&Ms.
This novel is fully current, with narrative tools and chapter titles like “Instagram.” Ayoola is addicted to SnapChat and Instagram, often being scolded by Korede for posting frivolous updates for her followers when she’s supposed to be mourning her missing boyfriend, whom she herself has killed. Ayoola has forgotten, just that quickly about the fallen men and goes on with her life in a way that baffles her sister – enter The Comedy.
So, while I wished that My Sister, the Serial Killer was better built out as a narrative, there is merit to it as a quick, amusing little read. It all comes down to what you’re looking for on your TBR. If you’re interested in a narrative set in Nigeria, this may be a great pick for you. If you’re looking for lightness and humor, a read you can breeze through easily that still offers some suspense, then you’ve absolutely come to the right place. But, if you’re more in the market for a side of intellectual stimulation with your killer thriller, then you may want to side step this one; you want find a lot of that here. 3 stars. ***
I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Doubleday, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
The description of this novella only vaguely resembles how it actually reads. What really seems to be happening here is a narration style similar to sThe description of this novella only vaguely resembles how it actually reads. What really seems to be happening here is a narration style similar to stream of consciousness, where this budding teenage narrator learns first-hand about sex the summer that Barbra, an Ethiopian Jewish girl of 18, comes to stay with his family for the summer.
There is a lot of crude language, which wouldn't have bothered me if it come from a more mature mind (the narrator, not the author) and had a meaningful purpose to the narrative. This wasn't a narrative vehicle I would have driven to deliver the message it intended, but I'm sure that that will be the appeal for some. However, for me, the dialogue seemed stilted and unnatural and the plot was smothered in descriptions. For such a short literary narrative, this book would have been better served with plot than with the often meaningless descriptions that take up, ultimately, pages and pages of space. If you're looking to jump inside the mind of a Jewish teenage boy (who uses words like tits and cock and "seriously?!" for over 100 pages, you've come to the right place. Other than that, I never really got into it and was grateful that Queen Solomon read so quickly. I wouldn't say that it was a bad book, just not one that's for me. Definitely more of a "niche" read. The cover art, though, is eye-catching and very striking; that I thought was well-done.**
I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Coach House Books, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
How were they to know the moment that would define them? It will affect his personality for his whole life, someone is saying to her, and whose fault How were they to know the moment that would define them? It will affect his personality for his whole life, someone is saying to her, and whose fault will it be then? Mine, a voice replies, and the voice is hers…What had she done to her brother, so that she could survive, so that she could be the one who thrived?
Fatima Farheen Mirza's A Place for Us has been widely celebrated since its release in mid-June. Lauded for the brilliant display of writing found within these pages equally as much as it has been coveted as Sarah Jessica Parker’s first release from her own publishing imprint, SJP for Hogarth, putting on display her own eye for literary fiction. It was a read that built upon itself in a sort of snowball effect: slow and gently vibrating beneath the surface as the foundation was laid then tumbling still gently but faster down the slope. I found myself comparing it to Everything I Never Told You in its elegance of execution and vibrant, meaningful display of first-generation families trying to navigate the complexities of American life, of a culture so unlike their own. This story is told in metaphors and blood ties. It’s told in memories, regrets, hopes and fears. It’s told in a universal language embedded in one specific culture that any reader can see embodied in their own families. Novels like this one remind us that our families are not so strange or cruel or different at their cores. We all speak the same universal language.
There were so many beautiful moments in Mirza’s debut novel—a book written in vignettes of this family’s life like they jumbled together then come back into focus like a stunning glimpse through a kaleidoscope. I won’t give a synopsis here because the one provided is so fiercely accurate, but I will say that there was so much more to the estrangement of the son and brother, Amar, than I had hoped for. At the start of the novel, with no chapter titles or markers for whose POV was coming next, I couldn’t seem to get my bearings enough to plant roots in the narrative and grow with it. But, eventually, I found my way and moved with the story faster and faster as it picked up speed.
The vignettes were light as a gentle breeze softly lifting a lock of hair, like whispers in your ear. And that was lovely, sure. But, admittedly, there were times when I found myself looking for something more—a climax, any hint of tangible, startling tension. And when I did find it, I couldn’t hold on to it long enough to feel fully satisfied. Perhaps that was the point of the read--Mirza's parting message to us, among others--but it left me unfulfilled. (view spoiler)[Then I realized what it was: I wanted to know what had happened to Amar, in many ways the most complex character in the novel. I wanted to know where he’d landed, if he was strung out, if he was now the head of a family of his own and how he would react if he ever called back and got the message from his father through little Abbas. Rafiq’s chapters shed so much light on a multi-faceted story, BUT how I longed for his insight to have been shorter and for revelations about Abbas to finally come to light—where did he go and what became of him when he walked away that final time? (hide spoiler)] Yet, I felt like I got an honest glimpse at a culture I’m unfamiliar with, like I was sitting at their dinner table with them. At the start I didn’t feel fully embedded in the story. But toward the end, I knew I couldn’t get up from that dinner table and walk away.
All of the characters, especially the siblings at the forefront of the narrative--Hadia, Huda and Amar--are so beautifully and delicately rendered and allowed to unfold. They are complete characters--their parents Rafiq and Layla included--set in their ways and flaws and hopes and dreams in a way that grabs our hearts because we understand them; we root for them and believe we know what their next moves would be, what their truest fears are. A Place for Us is a character-driven piece with such fully imagined characters who quietly take up the page. It tied loose ends together with stunning clarity (view spoiler)[yet the most important threads of all it left unraveled, flapping in the breeze (hide spoiler)].
I truly loved how embedded in the Hyderabadi culture this novel was. I knew nothing of the culture and traditions—had never even heard the word “Hyderabadi” before—and yet I could feel the resolution with which this family lived in their faith, the effect it had on them, the generations upon generations of history that each of them carried—both in their routines handed down and in their hearts.
If his father had just hit him back, cursed at him, said to Mumma look how despicable our son is, how batamiz, anything—then maybe he could have gone home again. A punishment was a mercy. It marked the end of a sentence. Without one, he could not imagine recovering from his shame. Nor could he forgive himself for giving action to the hatred he had felt for his father, wanting to hurt him the way he had been hurt by him.
There were moments here where Mirza truly brought these characters into focus even from a Western standpoint, painting them at the time of 9/11—their reaction to it and the fear they carried with them not at all unlike our own. The racism they endured; the ignorance others harbored about them. Those moments stung the way they were intended to; they spoke loudly as they needed to. I will say I'm not a huge fan of the book title or the cover, but this was certainly a brilliant debut from both Fatima Farheen Mirza and this new imprint--both of which I’ll be sure to keep a lookout for in the future! 4 stars ****
Prayer was all the recommendation he heard for Nigeria these days. For every crisis, eyes were shut, knees engaged, heads pointed to Mecca and backs tPrayer was all the recommendation he heard for Nigeria these days. For every crisis, eyes were shut, knees engaged, heads pointed to Mecca and backs turned to the matter at hand.
Chibundu Onuzo’s sophomore novel, Welcome to Lagos, is a novel deeply embedded in the heart and soul of Lagos, Nigeria. This is book is not meant to be a tourist's guide to the city. It is neither positive propaganda nor demonstratively negative toward the culture or the state; it is simply a snapshot in Nigerian truth. Matter of fact but witty, emotional but not melodramatic. It is a balance that any reader can enjoy. The prose drips with the Lagosian culture and the atmosphere around the characters within these pages is busy with a sense of urgency and the fervency of life that is often overlooked in comforts of first-world life. Skillfully weaving multiple storylines together, Lagos laces together a tale where the powerful meet the poor head on, where Robin Hood-like morals still exist and where the cultures of London and Lagos blend and clash as colorfully as the gorgeous cover art that wraps this. I opened these pages not knowing what to expect as someone unfamiliar with the culture but, as I’d hoped, this novel took me by the hand and showed me the way, navigating me through the gates of wealth and under the bridges of poverty with both grace and heart.
Welcome to Lagos features a cast of unlikely companions who are bound together by circumstance but wield their circumstances into the bonds of a true family. When Chike and Yemi desert the Nigerian army—a capital offense—they know that they must escape down roads less traveled until they can get as far away from the Niger Delta as possible. Along the way, they meet Fineboy, a mischievous youngster with a carefully crafted American accent who dreams of becoming a radio presenter and whose scrappy street smarts they come to depend on; Isoken, a beautiful adolescent separated from her family in the fighting who’s still traumatized and guarded from an attempted rape she suspects Fineboy of being a part of; and Oma who is fleeing from the damaging fists of her abusive husband who knows the next time he hits her could kill her. This unlikely band of characters just trying to survive finds themselves brushing up against the law in more ways than one and changing the course of history when an unlikely intruder to their home comes a-knocking.
This novel is so full of the soul and ethos of Nigeria. The dialogue drips with authenticity right down to the colorful pidgin dialogue that Onuzo skillfully weaves in, authentically portraying a culture while navigating readers who are unfamiliar with such dialogue. There are several references and language switches you may not immediately grasp unless you intimately understand this world yourself, but that makes it all the more realistic and immersive in setting. The best literature isn’t watered down for the masses. Sometimes, we have to go it.
Short chapters made for a quick and jaunty pace. There’s very little, if any, fat to be trimmed on this story—just enough to create a trim and attractive figure, not bloated with unnecessary prose that should have been shaved away instead of sitting like a pot belly at the center of the narrative. Welcome to Lagos links the narratives of each character together, even introducing new characters with their own POV chapters late in the novel. It creates the effect of effortlessly swinging from vine to vine, each one a new chapter with voices that overlap then recede into the distance, reappear then recede again as another voice takes over. There’s something in this novel for everyone, whether you are familiar with the culture or not. This is a novel that addresses real issues head on while avoiding soapboxing and proselytizing. Rape, domestic abuse, war, corruption, poverty, class relations, family, and duty all play major parts in this narrative production in a way that is as poetic as it is gritty.
“Say it out loud so it doesn’t have power over you again. My husband used to beat me. I only married him because I was afraid of being a spinster for the rest of my life. Say it.” “I was attacked by some men. They tried to rape me. I can’t forget. I’ve tried everything but I can’t forget. Semen everywhere. On my face. On my stomach. In my ears. I can still feel it.”
The sense of place and scenery here is alive. You can feel the dust in the air and the boli on your tongue. Welcome to Lagos offers up beautiful prose and thoughtful innuendos while never shying away from real matters, hard glimpses in the mirror for both the characters and their country.
“In your country, the descendants of the biggest thieves, are they not the ones making the decisions? Your House of Lords. Who made them so? Was it not by oppressing the poor, by swallowing all the land? Today, we are calling them ‘my Lord,’ calling them ‘Honorable.’ Your banks built on the slave trade, Lloyds, have they returned any compensation?”
The characters here are vivid with voices that raise loudly above the noise of the city, their storylines woven together with care and utter believability. Many of the chapters are marked with newspaper excerpts, both tying together the storylines and highlighting the state of Nigeria, functioning as a back drop for the novel’s unfolding. That was a clever choice. It allowed Onuzo to fill in the circumstances of Lagos, the state of the country and its people, without having to pound it home ad nauseum in the narrative, allowing room for social commentary at its finest—biting and poetic. And for that Welcome to Lagos earned 4 stars and a high recommendation from me that you add it to your shelves! ****
**Thank you so much to the publicity department at Catapult/Counterpoint Press for reaching out to me and sending me copies of this lovely book!**
P.S. If you've never been to a Chibundu Onuzo signing, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you go to one. She's hilarious and engaging, down to earth and extremely, extremely intelligent and thoughtful when she speaks. Check out my interview with her on my Instagram, and it will soon be added to my blog as well!...more
See my EXCLUSIVE interview with the author HERE! Malcolm Hansen Chats With Me About His Debut Novel
Malcolm Hansen’s debut novel They Come in All ColoSee my EXCLUSIVE interview with the author HERE! Malcolm Hansen Chats With Me About His Debut Novel
Malcolm Hansen’s debut novel They Come in All Colors is a satirical narrative worthy of Paul Beatty’s stamp of approval. By that I mean it’s obvious that this book was either inspired or nurtured in some way by the Man Booker Prize-winning Beatty, if not both, and his style is so evident here that there were times this novel could have been written by the same hand. (He is even thanked in Color’s acknowledgements.) For those of you who follow my reviews, you’ll recall that I couldn’t stand Beatty’s award-winning The Sellout and marked it DNF, but just because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree doesn’t mean it may not taste different.
They Come in All Colors is the story of one boy’s realization that the color of his skin does make a difference one long summer when the Freedom Riders come to his small town and the status quo around him is thrown into upheaval. Meet Huey, the smart-mouthed eight-year-old son of a white peanut farmer and a “mulatto’’ woman. Because of his Caucasian features and his close relationship with his father, Huey has always been allowed to pass as white, but when racial tensions erupt, resulting in protests, sit-ins, riots and the violent death of someone close to his family, the facts of life are very quickly called into question between this couple who cannot legally wed in the South and their son who finds himself banned from the “white” swimming pool and called n*gger for the first time.
One of the more effective devices used within these pages is satire. In fact, really, the entire premise of the novel is satirical, but I appreciated Hansen’s wielding of it here and found it to be far more useful and self-evident than Beatty displayed in The Sellout. Here, that humorous device had more meaning and thus resonated louder and longer for me. Case in point, Huey encounters the most ridiculous conversations with his parents as they both try to explain to him why he isn’t colored though his mother is black. They tell him he’s white with a tan – an ironic notion in and of itself in 1960s South Georgia:
Huey, listen to me. Your mother’s what’s known in the scientific community as a phenotypic anomaly. Okay? Someone of unknown morphology. A racial enigma—something so new they don’t have a name for it yet. You watch Wild Kingdom, right? Well, it’s like a newly discovered animal that they haven’t figured out where to put it in the classification system yet. Okay? So it’s pointless to even bother asking. Because—well—the truth is that if people can’t agree, we might never know... At the end of the day, you’re just going to have to accept that even if she is what you think she might be—which she isn’t—her being one wouldn’t make you one. Okay? You’re just going to have to accept that you’re different. That’s all there is to it.
(view spoiler)[They also lie to him about the tragic death of their family friend and field hand, whose family has worked for the Fairchilds for three generations, when he is violently beaten to death for his part in being a leading figure in the riots when the Freedom Riders come to town. His parents both insist that he simply fell from a ladder by accident though Huey questions this rendition of events several times. (hide spoiler)] Though the start of this book was far too similar in tone to The Sellout, which means it too almost got DNFd, I pushed through a bit further and found that Hansen showed real dexterity with the metaphors and analogies that abound in this narrative. The imagery of the South is realistic and comes off nearly as oppressive within these pages as it did in real life. One of the better metaphors comes when Huey tries to set his pet cat free after the violence in his town starts to come to a head; he makes a very clear parallel, though he himself does not know or understand it, between the release from the bondage of slavery just a few short generations before and his releasing of his pet into the wild:
Having surrendered Snowflake to the bitter wild, I decided that I wanted her back. I knew in my heart that she wasn’t ready to be set free but I’d done it anyway. I could see that she wasn’t sure what to do with all that freedom, that it was too much for her little brain to comprehend. All that freedom being dumped on her all at once like that. I should probably have tested it out by giving her teaspoon-sized doses of freedom first. Perhaps let her run free in the den to start. What had I been thinking?
Then, of course, there are the lovely and impactful nuggets of truth as Huey’s self-realization of his and his family’s status in the world around them continues snowballing – as he realizes that schools are segregated and that he is the “last person in town to discover the truth” about who he is. They come faster and harder in the second half of the novel as pretenses begin to be stripped away and the threshold for denial becomes shallower and shallower:
When I asked Mom who in his right mind would choose to be the descendant of a slave if given a choice, she gave me a contemptuous look. You don’t have a choice. Don’t be silly. Of course I do. We all have choices. Everything is a choice. She called me, of all things, a disgrace to my race. I asked what she was referring to, precisely. Only the week before, she was peddling the idea of the whole concept of race as a sham concocted by a few eighteenth-century white men with powdered hair to more conveniently consolidate power, and now here I was, not having even had time to shit out the food I’d been eating at the time, come to find out that I was betraying it.
While we’re on the topic of the second half of They Come in All Colors, now’s as good a time as any to say that the latter fourth or so of the novel offered too many holes in the narrative for me to forgive and inspired more questions for me than satisfying answers. AND while we’re on the topic of my pet peeves with this book, now’s also as good a time as any to point out the added GLARING problem that there were no quotation marks used in this novel whatsoever. Normally, this narrative tool wouldn’t be a problem, but combined with the ramblingly verbose chunks of dialogue and the use of long chapters and thick, hulking narrative blocks on every page, traditional formatting of dialogue would have been a welcome reprieve to break up the pages and make this novel seem like a faster read. By the time I got to the middle of They Come in All Colors I was honestly halfway exhausted from wading through the waters of prose and checking the page count to see how close I was to the end. (spoiler: To my dismay, I was nowhere close to it.)
Yet, this novel did more good for me than it did harm. It called into question not only the lies we tell ourselves to cope but the lies adults tell children and parents tell their offspring to maintain their innocence. What good is the façade - what’s the point of holding onto a false innocence just a few weeks or months or short years longer - if the inevitable realization only hits harder and is more damaging than having understood it from the start? Because then a child must also cope with the fact that not only has their existence been a lie in some shape, form or fashion but that the adults around them are imperfect beings – who lie and cannot always be trusted to tell the truth. In Western civilization, we raise our kids with lies as a fundamental part of their upbringing – tooth fairies and Santa Clauses and excuses for the way the world is. I’ve never thought that was a productive or practical tool of parenting, and Hansen definitely manages to expose the detriment of shielding and coddling kids from what the real world holds. For that, I applauded him.
While the ending of the novel was too abrupt for me to find a ton of fulfillment in it, I did appreciate the nuggets of truth that Huey grows aware enough to impart on the reader -
I was being mocked and maligned on a daily basis for having the gall to use the color of my skin to gain advantage where it concerned getting into Claremont, and here people like Zuk pulled shit like that all the time and weren’t even aware of it, much less feeling pangs of guilt about it.
- and that his mother, Peola, finally finds the strength to impart on him after nearly a decade of insisting to him that he was white:
I’m going to tell you this once, sweetheart, and then I’m never going to tell it to you again. So listen well. Any person you know who has not had a family member enslaved is at a two-hundred-fifty-year advantage over you. Okay? Not the other way around. You must understand that one simple fact. You have ancestors—blood relatives, real people, connected to you by blood and history—who were enslaved, who had their families, language, labor, freedom, possessions, and identity taken from them by force and used to the advantage of everyone you see around you right here, right now. That is, everyone but us. So do not ever let anyone talk to you like you’re some goddamned drain on society. Ever! That would be like scorning the man who has built your house for not owning one himself. That’s just wrong. The only thing you oughta be worried about asking any of them is what the hell they have to show for the last two hundred fifty years of their advantage. And I don’t care if for those two hundred fifty years their ancestors were in Europe or Asia or Russia or on Mars or wherever, because I can guarantee you that they were not in chains.
For these dazzling moments of truth and forthrightness, I forgave many of the novel’s other sins. I recommend this novel to lovers of Paul Beatty’s work. You can think of Hansen as Paul Beatty lite....more
I’m relieved to have aged out of that sense that my primary obligation is to be pretty, relieved to work at a job that allows me to feel useful. Did II’m relieved to have aged out of that sense that my primary obligation is to be pretty, relieved to work at a job that allows me to feel useful. Did I used to think being pretty was my primary obligation because I was in some way delusional? Or was it that I’d absorbed the messages I was meant to absorb with the same diligence with which I’d studied?
Curtis Sittenfeld’s You Think It, I’ll Say It, is a collection for the grown woman, for the woman who still thinks back on her “youth” and college years with fondness but also with a sense of wonder – is that who I was? Is this who I have become?
This is a smart collection—one that explores the natural irony in our everyday lives. There’s a lot of wistful nostalgia and contemplation in this collection on the feat—the very fact and act—of being pretty: what it means to be “pretty” and how that affects us as adult women.
“I once heard that smart women want to be told they’re pretty and pretty women want to be told they’re smart. And the most depressing part is that I think I agree.”
An upper middle-class woman ponders the boredom and mundane quality of her routine life, only to seek out a thrill that may or may not have already been there from the start (“The World Has Many Butterflies”).
A college student at her dad’s Alma Mater who’s idolized the school for most of her life also starts to idolize one of her college friends—only to find that the friend is just an average, flawed individual like everybody else (“Vox Clamantis in Deserto”).
A young political intern with OCD snaps while volunteering at a shelter for poor urban families (“Volunteers Are Shining Stars”).
And a woman contemplates her near-hate-like jealousy for the reality lifestyle star who was her first lesbian experience way back when (“The Prairie Wife”).
Here would be a great place to say that “Plausible Deniability,” “Off the Record” and “A Regular Couple” were my other favorites. I wasn’t particularly fond of “Gender Studies,” in which a woman misplaces her license and ends up having a sexual encounter with the taxi driver she believes has found the license. I first read this one in The New Yorker in the fall of 2016. There were speculations and allusions from other bloggers that maybe Sittenfeld was offering political commentary on a nation’s identity lost! (I say in my dramatic voice) due to the (imminent) election of Trump, but I didn’t see it. I just took that story at face value and it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t a favorite either.
These are just a few of the narratives you’ll find here in this 10-story collection. There were so many times that a story would start and I’d fear it was going down the route of “Everyday Yuppie,” and I cringed. BUT, EVERY time, Sittenfeld pulled the story back from the brink with a twist of irony and humor. After the third or fourth story, I just relaxed into the read and went with it, knowing that the place I’d end up in the end wasn’t where I thought I was going in the beginning. I know I’m not alone when I say that I LOVE being able to trust an author, to trust a narrator, like that. It allows for a phenomenally smooth read and for the reader to have time to become one with the characters, no matter how short the stories are.
This collection ran a gamut of stories that wasn’t necessarily wide but did manage to convey a delightful spectrum of sentiments, emotions and lessons. “Bad Latch” was by far one of my favorite stories, hilariously Yuppie and otherworldly—these sheltered, middle-class moms who spend their days at infant swimming lessons and pregnancy yoga—then the story morphed into something so much more special and resonating:
“It wasn’t that I looked down on parents who put their kids in daycare, it wasn’t that I disapproved of them, or at least if I did disapprove, I knew enough to be embarrassed by my disapproval…Nevertheless, on Sadie’s first day at Green Valley Children’s Center, I didn’t even make it out the front door before I burst into tears. I hadn’t felt that bad about some of the things that women having babies when I did…were supposed to feel bad about—an epidural, formula—but the collapse of my carefully crafted childcare setup seemed like a failure of a different magnitude."
In You Think It, I’ll Say It, Curtis Sittenfeld’s distinctive writing style is in full form. It’s casual and conversational, witty and makes for an easy, entertaining read. I also gave her a strong 4 stars for her novel Eligible for this same reason. I blew through about 60% of this collection in one sitting, so well did it flow and move me along with the characters and their ironic contemplative situations. Not only that, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Sittenfeld is a true master of showing her reader rather than telling her reader. I got to know so much about her characters simply by watching them in their everyday lives, and she, as the writer, trusted her reader enough to let us figure out what she was trying to say. Each story is set in a different city (all either during or referencing the 1990s) which I thought was a FANTASTIC device, creating a kind of survey of American—well, upperish middle class white American—life. That survey aspect was a real gem, because each story in this collection set up a different dilemma rooted in the same basic question—the question of Who am I, how did I get here, and am I okay with it? None of these stories takes an overly grandiose view of life. No one is living in a sci fi fantasy world of improbable circumstances and star ships. These stories all happen right here on Earth, literally, of course, but more importantly, figuratively. And for me, that’s always a breath of fresh air. A strong 4 stars ****
See my EXCLUSIVE interview with the author, Sam Graham-Felsen here!
I will be surrounded by dudes like this for the rest of my life. White boys andSee my EXCLUSIVE interview with the author, Sam Graham-Felsen here!
I will be surrounded by dudes like this for the rest of my life. White boys and white girls who grew up behind whitewashed fences, who grew up with no idea, for the rest of my life. The force preordained it: Not only will I be surrounded by them, I will become one of them, the thing I hate and can’t escape. Not a white boy or a whitey or a white b*tch, but a white person.
If you’re looking for a way to start your new year out right, Green is absolutely the way to go. Prepare yourself to be transported by a distinctive voice and a story line that screams with authenticity. More than authentic—it was one that mirrored what middle school was like for me in the 90s: the same cliques, the same typecasts, the same social rules. This novel transported me back to those days, back to those vibrations in the air, to that slang on our tongues, to those priorities in our pre-teen minds and to those questions that plagued our thoughts night and day about the world around us and our place in it.
Picture it (in my Estelle Getty voice): Boston, 1992.
David Greenfeld is one of the only white sixth graders at Martin Luther King Middle School—the “ghetto” school—with no friends, no cool points, and no chance at getting a girl. His Harvard-educated, politically correct, granola parents don’t understand his pleas to be removed from the school, and there seems to be no end to the social torture in sight. Until. He meets Marlon Wellings, an ultra-smart, Boston Celtics-obsessed, black kid from the projects across the street whose street smarts start to rub off on Dave and who’s life in the hood and drive to get out of it spark questions in Dave’s mind he’s never contemplated before.
In Green, Sam Graham-Felsen gives us a fresh look at the merging of two cultures, literally painting it is a physical intersection of neighborhoods as well as of cultural mores and rules. I couldn’t help but remember another book I’ve reviewed recently that was also a coming-of-age story with a jumping off point from the ’92 L.A. riots—and all the while, I marveled at how much better this story was told, at how much more the voice and experiences rang true. Graham-Felsen brought these characters to life on the page. He gave them hopes and made them my hopes. He made them fall, and I felt the blow myself. And he made them fail, as we all do in life sometimes. It is in those moments that this novel’s heart is most evident and that its impact slammed into me the hardest.
Through Dave and Marlon, Graham-Felsen explores the color line through the eyes of adolescents still finding themselves amidst the chaos of race relations. What really set this novel apart for me is that he gave us the perspective of the white side of the fence, while still being true to both stories, to both cultures.
In school the next day, Ms. Ansley shows us another installment of this long, made-for-TV movie we’ve been watching called Roots. When she introduced it, she said we needed to know our history, especially after what happened in L.A…I hear people shifting in their chairs. The violence is one thing: We all know the wounds are just makeup, the whip’s just a prop, the loud crack’s only a sound effect. But the n-word is different. Even if it’s just acting, it’s still the real n-word. I’ve heard it ten thousand times…but always with the soft ending. Hearing it with the hard er …makes my face muscles clench up even thinking about it. All that evil, all that power, packed into two tiny syllables.
Then, we have ‘the force.’
As their school year progresses and confrontations are had, as Dave’s belief in religion is explored and his cross into cultures and upbringings other than his own changes his outlook on his surroundings, he begins to ponder the idea of ‘the force,’ his interpretation of race relations around him. He sees it everywhere. It peppers his every interaction with the world around him, and jolts him out of adolescence and into a more adult mindset:
It seemed like the smoke of those riots spread all across the continent, all the way to Boston, like they were looking for their own Reginald Denny, because as far as I could tell they stepped for no other reason than the fact that I was white. But as I ran away…I began to wonder if maybe I was looking at them the wrong way, the same way I must have stared at the TV screen when those dudes bundled Denny—a shook and boggled look that said, You are predators—and maybe that made them want to treat me like prey. All summer, I tried to deny the force, but I felt it every time I got checked on my way past the Shaw Homes...And I felt ashamed of that…and yeah, I’ve been feeling ashamed that the force has been with me, pretty much nonstop…
Green was an entertaining read and one that provoked thought. There were moments when I laughed out loud and, yes, even a moment when I cried. There’s something for everyone within these pages, because we all know at least one of these characters, from the granola do-gooders to that kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Here’s your chance now to get glimpse into their world. I wouldn’t be saying enough to say that I highly recommend this book for readers of all sizes, colors and creeds who are ready to open their minds and their outlooks. I even recommend it for all ages, because the cultural boundaries explored within Green are real and not to be ignored. The tragedies of everyday life surrounding us are real and not to be downplayed. And the line between the haves and the have nots, the clueless and the culturally aware, the predators and the prey is real and should never, ever be doubted. 4.5 stars. *****
*I received a copy of this novel from the publisher, Random House, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
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