Book Review: Unfamiliar Fishes

 By Sarah Vowell

• Pub Date: 2011

• Where I bought this book: Last Exit Books, Kent, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I read a previous book by the same author and liked her writing style

*****

    It's the final decade of the 19th Century, and the United States is feeling mighty smug about itself.

    That whole Manifest Destiny thing is working out pretty well. The country covers the area between Canada and Mexico, from sea to shining sea, with just a few areas yet to be consolidated into several states. So it's time to look further out, build up its sea power with a big ole navy and widespread naval bases, and start becoming a world power.

    Look to the west. There's lots of oceans and countries to  acquire, starting with the Sandwich Islands. Indeed, it even has a foothold in those lands, called Hawaii by the natives, and it's sure the monarchy will enjoy being part of the Greatest Country on Earth. (r) If the islanders kick up a fuss, it can always remind Queen Liliuokalani what happened to King George III's forces back in 1781 at the Battle of Yorktown.

    And the United States had been muddling around in Hawaii since 1820, when a couple of New Englanders set out to Christianize the population and stuck around, so they and their descendants could change the natives' culture and overthrow their queen.

    It's quite an agenda, and when you read the history books, you realize that before the dawn of the 20th Century, the United States had invaded the Philippines in a war with Spain that started with a bombing (or maybe just an explosion?) in Cuba. It had taken colonies in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines. It was well on its way to becoming a world power.

    Vowell sees 1898 as the pivot-point of that domination, when all of the United States' meddling and wannabe imperialism came together. Looking back at the islands' history and culture, its geography and politics, she gives a broad oversight about what happened in the 70-odd years the United States nosed around and took control.

    With her trademark caustic wit and satirical asides, she tells about how the Pilgrims and Puritans bring what they see as their superior culture -- particularly their religion -- to a land of lost souls. It's timely reading now, and you can learn how the recent firestorms and deaths are tied to the changes they brought to Hawaii's traditional culture.

Just as the sugar plantations changed the islands' ethnic makeup, they also profoundly altered the physical landscape. We were talking about Maui's central plain before the advent of commercial agriculture. (Gaylord Kubota, director of the Sugar Museum on Maui) says, "Isabella Bird, a traveler in the 1870s, described central Maui as a veritable Sahara in miniature. There were these clouds of sand and dust. That's what central Maui looked like before. . . . (Kubota shows Vowell a photo and points out) a visible line where the irrigated land stops. There the greenery ends, and the desert, complete with cactus, begins.

    The dry climate of the island was covered over. It helped feed the fire of the past month.

Book Review: Stories From the Tenants Downstairs

 

•  Author: Sidik Fofana

• Where I bought this book: A Room of One's Own, Madison, Wisc. 

• Why I bought this book: A collection of tales about apartment living in Harlem seemed like a good bet.

*****

      

     This is not a book of happy, spunky tales.

    Rather, the stories in this collection are tales of life, of sorrow, of making do. Of struggling to get by, of cutting corners, of doing what you must to survive.

     If that means taking something that isn't yours, then it's what you do. If it means taking advantage of someone else -- who may or may not be in a better position than you -- then the choice is yours.

    These are tales of making questionable decisions,  choosing between nothing but bad choices, knowing that you can try to fix things later.

    It's not a book of making excuses, or justifying the actions. It's simple stories, explanations perhaps, laying out a life of poverty, indifference, and toil.

    These are tales from an apartment building in Harlem, not quite rundown yet, but not one that has people clamoring to get in. It's a building where the tenants care more than the unseen landlord, but they don't care about much more than how to pay their rent. It's a building on the edge of gentrification, not that that helps those who live there.

    There is Michelle, who tells her story of struggling to find the money to pay the rent on the first of the month or else be homeless. She tells of how she find the money, in different ways each day, and how much more she needs. It's not a tale of lament or woe. It's her life. 

    There are tales of students and teachers in school, putting up with the daily misery because that's what they do. There are tales of hanging out, looking for something to do, whether it's to avenge a perceived wrong or simply to bring a bit of joy into their lives.  

    There is the sad tale of najee, a 12-year-old boy, who writes why he is leaving a dancing activity called lite feet. Written in the vernacular of a young boy with learning disabilities and a literacy problem, it tells of his inability to adapt and fit in with the other boys. It's a struggle to read, mirroring the struggle of najee's life.

    Then there is Mr. Murray, an old veteran who hangs out on the corner with his chessboard, inviting others to play. A new restaurant orders him from his corner, and he moves down the block. But his fellow tenants take up his cause and demand he get to stay. Police are called. The newspapers come. Things happen.

    But this is Mr. Murray's story, and no one asked him. He doesn't care where he sits. He just wants to play chess.

    You up for a game? He'll be in his new spot.

Book Review: The Parting Glass

 

• Author: Gina Marie Guadagnino

• Where I bought this book: Barnes & Noble Bookstore, West Chester, Ohio

• Why I bought this book: It shares a title with a great old Irish song

******

    Mary Ballard, born Maire O'Farren, left her home and her job in the west of Ireland for reasons unknown -- but eventually explained -- sometime in the early 19th Century.

    Her ensuing life in New York City as an Irish immigrant, a lady's maid, and denizen near the old Five Points neighborhood tells a tale of love and loss, heartbreak, and high living among poverty and destitution.

    Guadagnino's debut novel is a wonderful read.

    It's chock full of Irish history, New York City history, and the history of the Irish in New York. It touches on subjects including LGBT love, the empowerment of women, immigration, and the life of the rich and the poor in the 19th Century. 

    O'Farren -- or Ballard -- caters to her mistress, Charlotte Walden, a wealthy young woman of leisure whose sole goal in life is to find a wealthy husband. Walden, however, would rather love the man who runs the stables at her estate, near Washington Park in old New York City. That man, unknown to the  Charlotte, is Ballard's twin brother, Seanin. Of course, the Waldens are unaware of Charlotte's love for a common man.

    One more thing: Ballard holds in her heart her own unrequited and unspoken love for Miss Walden.

    But that's not all.

    On her nights off, Ballard hits the bars that line the streets of New York's lower east side. She finds a home at the Hibernian, run by Dermot, the man who sponsored and stood for her in New York. There, she meets another lover, a black woman who works as a prostitute and dreams of running her own brothel.

    Meanwhile, Dermot has his own connections with the Tammany Hall Irish who run that part of New York City, along with some ties to the Irish rebels back home. Here's is where Seanin returns to the story.

    Eventually, they all come together in a surprising and intriguing climax. Guadagnino does an impressive jobs with her research, her historical knowledge, and her writing.

Book Review

 New York, My Village, by Uwem Akpan

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• Why I bought this book: It has a map

****

    My indelable memory of the Biafran War is the Catholic Charities "relief campaign" that used pictures of starving African children with bloated stomachs to raise money.

 

   That's it. I knew nothing about the reasons for the war, or even where in Africa Biafra was.

    So I was hoping this book would help me learn just a little bit about the war, and just as important, what happened and what is happening now. 

    It kinda did. But it also taught me the war has a long background, involves colonization and other crimes committed on the African peoples, and pretty much boils down to why any war is fought -- hatred, discrimination, jealously, and control.

    Briefly, and I hope I get this right: Biafra is a small province in the south of Nigeria. Northern Nigerian tribes, particularly the Hausa-Fulani, dominated. In 1967, representatives of the Igbo tribe in southern Nigeria, based in Biafra, claimed they controlled the south and proclaimed their independence.

    It did not go well. There's a reason you don't hear of Biafra anymore. It's no longer a country, and hasn't been since 1970.

    In this fictionalized account, Ekong Udousoro is a book editor, and he receives a fellowship to intern at a small publishing company in New York City. He is part of the Annang, who also lives in southern Nigeria, but have had little control to the dominant Igbo. Or as Ekong puts it, his group is a minority within a minoiry. 

    This book is an account of his months learning the book publishing industry, coupled with memories of the war -- which actually happened before he was born, but which has shaped his family, his village, and himself.

    But it's also about his family relationships -- which are confusing; his troubles and joys adapting to living in Hell's Kitchen -- ugh! far too much information on bedbugs and his problems with them; his relationships with his landlord, the man he is subletting his apartment from; the racism he confronts on the job and in book publishing; his difficulties getting along with his new neighbors, and much, much more.

    It's really too much. He covers too many issues, confusing us on many occassions, and spends far too much time on the damn bedbugs. (And even when you think he is done with that, they come back! I was ready to toss the book across the room at this point.)

    Still, at its heart, the book's theme is about how we complicate our lives by dividing ourselves in too many groups -- by color, ethnicity, religion, jobs, community, and so much more. In short, perhaps we are all minorities of a minority.    

Book Review: The Nickel Boys

 The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead

    This book is grim, depressing, and infuriating. It's also extraordinary piece of writing depicting a horrific experience that seems all too common in the BIPOC community. 

    Although it's a fictional tale, the story is based in fact. Indeed it is based on facts showing that throughout the United States, Canada, and large parts of Europe, the dominant class structure always has mistreated, abused, and tortured others -- mostly women and people of color -- simply because it can, and it wants to. 

  

    Elwood Curtis is the narrator of his tale. As the book begins, he is an older Black man living in New York City who owns and runs a cleaning company. Then he see reports exposing the defunct Nickel Academy's history of  abuse and neglect, along with the discovery of dozens of bodies buried on its property.

    The story then shifts to Curtis's years as a young Black boy living in the wrong side of the tracks in Tallahassee, Florida, in the 1960s. Of course, because of discrimination and segregation, all Black people lived on the wrong side of the tracks in Tallahassee, Florida, in the 1960s.

    Curtis is a smart kid, and his mother encourages him to educate himself and enrich his mind. He becomes enamored of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his words and actions, and strives to rise above the racism and bigotry surrounding him. But while hitch-hiking to his first day of college classes, he is picked up by a man driving a stolen car. Police stop them, and Curtis is charged with being a juvenile delinquent. He is sent to the Nickel Academy, a so-called reform school in small town Florida.

    Of course, the "academy," based on the Dozier School of Boys, is anything but a reform school. The boys are segregated by race -- with the exception of one Mexican boy, who is sent to either the Black side or white side, based on the whims of the "teachers." Both sides are horribly abused, subjected to random corporal punishment, having their meals withheld, and being sent out to work for local politicians or businessmen, with a small fee for the "headmaster." Some of them are sent for extra punishment, from which they seldom return.

    Whitehead explores the relationships Curtis forms with other boys in the home, along with his experiences with the headmasters. Curtis tries to accept his lot, while maintaining his dignity and fighting back against the cruel abuse the boys are subjected to. He also steps in when some of the other  boys turn on each other.

    The more he learns about the Academy and its "students," called the Nickel Boys, the angrier he becomes.

    The book reaches a high point when Curtis and Jack Turner, his cynical friend and roommate, decide to take action against the crimes of the adults. It's a scary yet compelling narrative that keeps you reading long into the night.

    The novel earned Whitehead his second Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The first was in 2017 for Underground Railroad. "It burns with outrageous truth,"Josephine Livingston said in The New Republic. about The Nickel Boys. The Guardian newspaper said Whitehead showed "how racism in American has long operated as a codified and sactioned activity."

Book Review: Buck O'Neil's America

The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America, by Joe Posnanski

    Buck O'Neil is a story teller.

    Joe Posnanski is a listener.

    Together, they created a book that is many things -- a pleasant read, a learning experience, an emotional tour through the United States from the eyes of a Black man who experienced the best of the country and the worst of its racism.

    In the end, it's an uplifting story, one of hope and happiness migled with meloncholy. It shows the heights Black men reached while leaving the tantalizing potential of what could have been.

    One scene, which occurred in 2005, has O'Neil and Willie Mays taking a tour through the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. They are talking about Oscar Charleston, who from 1915 through the 1940s was a center fielder and manager in the Negro Leagues, and who many consider the greatest player ever.

"How good was Oscar Charleston, Buck?" Mays asked the old man standing next to him.

"He was you before you," Buck O'Neil said. 

Mays nodded as if he had heard that before, and he looked again through the chicken wire at the bronze statues of mostly forgotten men who had played baseball in the Negro Leagues. They had played at a time when Black men were banned from the Major Leagues. Segregation was an unwritten rule and mostly unspoken.

    Throughout the 1990s and until his death in 2006, O'Neil was the living, breathing embodiment of Negro Leagues baseball.

     He wasn't the greatest to ever have played the game, but he was pretty damn good. He was a first baseman and manager, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. He was known as a fast runner and a decent hitter, who twice led the Negro American League in batting. In his later years, he became the representative of a group of men who were finally getting their recognition as players equal to those in the Major Leagues. O'Neil played a major role in establishing the Negro Leagues museum.

   But mostly, O'Neil was chosen because, as he told Posnanski at the time, "I'm alive."

    In 2005, O'Neil, at the age of 94, planned to tour the country as the Major Leagues began to promote the history of the Negro Leagues in an effort to right some wrongs. Posnanski, then a columnist at the Kansas City Star, asked to tag along. O'Neil's response was, "Don't be late."

    This book is the result. It's a road trip story, the tale of a youger white man and an older Black man traveling the country, talking baseball and life and jazz, another of O'Neil's passions. Mostly, O'Neil talked. Posnanski listened. and took notes.

    One of the stories told has O'Neil talking with Monte Irvin, perhaps the only man to be a star in both the Negro Leagues and later in the Major Leagues. They sound just like what they were at the time -- two old men talking, kinda lamenting how things had been.

"I'm not complaining," Irvin said. "I mean, I lived a good life. Better than most guys in the Negro Leagues. I got to play in the Major Leagues. I got to play in the World Series. I'm not complaining. It's just that people used to tell me how good I was, and I would tell them, 'You should have seen me when I could really play.'"

"I saw you, Monte," Buck said.

"And?"

"You could really play."

"That's all I was saying," Monte said, and he smiled too.

    The book is not a biography, but there is a lot in there that tells you about the man Buck was -- and also makes you want to search out more about him and his life. While on the tour, and right up to his death in 2006, O'Neil still felt he had a lot of work to do, and he wanted to do it.    

    So O'Neil told the stories of the Black men who played the game, and the lives they lived. He was proud of his playing days. He knew he and his teammates could have played alongside the white guys on any Major League team. He rejected the notion that the players were a ragged-ass bunch of clowns playing pickup ball. He knew they were professionals who worked hard and played hard, and who were as good as -- often better than -- any of their white contemporaries.

Book Review: Here Comes the Sun

 Here Comes the Sun, by Nicole Dennis-Benn

    Poverty and despair, combined wth judgmental Christianity, do not bode well for a society.

    Especially when it is comprised of people of color whose ancestors were enslaved by the European colonizers who already had killed off the indigenous population. After a few hundred years of this treatment, they live on a Caribbean island where catering to weathy tourists is their major source of income.

    Thus, we see a society -- at least the one portrayed in this novel, written by a Jamaican woman -- where the exploitation of others seems to be the norm. Striving to be something other than what you are runs a close second.

    It's not a happy novel about reggae music and lolling in the sun smoking weed. Instead, it depicts people struggling against themselves, their families, and their heritage, to achieve what they have been taught they need -- and discovering they have to exploit and betray not ony their loved ones, but their very souls.

    This is Dennis-Benn's first novel, written in 2016, and it's a good one. The writing is superb, rich in language and history. Many characters speak in Jamaican Patois -- except when they need to impress someone richer or whiter than they are -- and while it's sometimes difficult for a reader to disentangle, it adds a sense of realism.

    The main character, Margot, uses power and sex to climb up the corporate ladder of the hotel where she works. She controls the future of her sister, Thandi, by wielding promises to pay for her education. Thandi wants to be an artist, but Margot persuades her she wants to be a doctor. Thandi also participates in her own exploitation by literally trying to be whiter than she is -- using lightening creams provided by a respected elder, Miss Ruby, and wrapping herself in plastic, despite the hot sun -- to erase her blackness.

"Remembah to stay outta the sun like ah tell yuh," Miss Ruby says. "'Cause you and I both know, God nuh like ugly."

    Others in the book routinely manipulate those around them. Miss Ruby encourages the uses of creams to make them paler. Margot's and Thandi's mother, Delores, sells them to older men. Those men rape and assault the woman around them.

    It comes to a head as a new hotel arises on the banks of their small community, the fruition of Margot's dream. But Thandi revolts to an extent, and as their futures play out, we learn the trauma and abuses of their pasts, partly explaining their actions.

Book Review: Concrete Rose

 Concrete Rose, by Angie Thomas

    We already know Maverick Carter is good man. Now we know why he is a good man.

    Angie Thomas' third novel is a prequel of sorts, set 17 years before the time of her debut novel, The Hate U Give. It's a welcome, well-written dive into the backstories of her characters, particularly the father of Starr Carter. This new book shows his growing up amidst the poverty of Garden Heights. 

    It's intriguing to see Thomas focus on the lives of young Black men, such as Maverick Carter. Her previous novels have centered on Black girls and their trials of growing up, and while that's important, it's good to hear her voice focusing on the problems of boys.

    Her story centers on Maverick when he is a senior in high school, a part of his community, and tied up in the King Lords gang. He reluctantly slings drugs -- sometimes behind the backs of the gang leaders -- while his father, a former gang leader, sits in a state prison for life.

    This is Carter's story. He is the protagonist and narrator, and we are privileged to hear his thoughts and feel his frustrations, his fears, and his joys, as he goes about his teen-age life.  

    He's basically a happy kid. He wants to hang out with his friends and cousins and make a little money to help out his hard-working but poor mother. Thomas shows how he navigates the complicated lifestyle in the 'hood. While he is faulted for some of his choices, we see how some in the community recognize his potential and help and encourage him to get there.

    We already know his future, but it is nice to see it evolve.

     The novel is a fine introduction to a part of the Black community. Thomas, a Black woman from Mississippi, is a great tour guide, weaving us through the hard times, the feelings of being trapped, but also the joys and heartbreaks of home, family, and friends.

    

    

Book Review: Queenie

Queenie, by Candice Carty-Williams

Much like its protagonist, this novel is bi-polar. Some of it -- especially the final couple of chapters -- is extraordinary. 

But too much of it is mundane or head-scratching. It's meant to portray a woman going through a tough period in her life, but sometimes you want to be like her grandmother and figuratively smack her upside the head and tell her to get her act together.

OK, perhaps that is cruel thought when discussing a book about a potential mental illness, an issue the book handles quite well. But you often see where Queenie is headed, and want to beg her to avoid the poor choices you know she is going to make. It's going to turn out badly -- you know it, she knows it; hell, all of England knows it -- yet she's going to play it through.

And yes, I recognize I am a man critiquing a woman's perspective, with all the limitations that entails. 

Queenie Jenkins is a young black woman of Jamacian heritage growing up in south London. A lot is changing in her life -- she's starting a new job, her white boyfriend is on the edge of dumping her -- taking a break, he calls it -- and her traditional Caribbean neighborhood of Brixton is undergoing gentrification. So she tries to muddle through by overreacting, underreacting, and looking to fill her loneliness with sex.

Queenie also tries to be a politcal activist. She expresses both sadness and anger at the number of black men and women in the United States and the United Kingdom who are being harassed and attacked by police. She tries, without success, to get her editor to give her assigments on the issue. She is an avid supporter of Black Lives Matter.

The book includes some decent arguments on these issue. But not near enough, and when they occur, they seem like afterthoughts.  They are few and far between, being overtaken by her chatter with her girlfriends, her poor decisions about men, her roommates, and her family problems. 

Perhaps I wanted and expected a more political book about dealing with what it's like to grow up as a black woman in London. Because I did get some of that. But I got more pesonal matters -- if you enjoy reading about those, go ahead and grab this book. It does have its strong points.

Overall, it just isn't -- to overuse a British phrase -- my cup of tea.

Book Review: Red at the Bone

Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson packs a lot of story into fewer than 200 pages.

The opening that describes a coming-out party for Melody, a 16-year-old black girl -- wearing the same dress that her grandmother Sabe, then 16, also wore, but that her mother Iris, then 16 and pregnant, could not -- sets the stage for a tale of family in the black community.

But it's much more than a family tale -- it's story about ancestors and descendants, about friendships, and about class and race. It's a story about love and marriage and sexual orientation. It's a story about connections and feelings of isolation, It's a story about hopes and fears, about bigotry and hate, about the past and the future.

We learn that the family survived the 1921 Massacre in Tulsa and began a new history in Brooklyn, but never forgot the past.

"Every day since she was a baby I've told Iris the story," Sabe tells us. "How they came with intention. How the only thing they wanted was to see us gone. Our money gone. Our shops and schools and libraries -- everything -- just good and gone. And even though it happened twenty years before I was even a thought, I carry it. I carry the goneness. Iris carries the goneness. And watching her walk down those stairs, I know my grandbaby carries the goneness too.

Woodson tells these stories through various voices weaving their way through time. Characters come alive as their stories mesh and reveal family history and secrets. Their relationships defy time and space. They come together and sometimes feel left behind.

She uses tight, yet emotional and compelling language. She ties the generations together, allowing each to share with the long ago, but to develop their uniqueness in the now.

Book Review: On the Come Up

On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas

This is not my world. It's Bri's world, and she's letting me visit. Bri is a champion tour guide. She tells me things. Things I didn't know. Things I need to know.

Things like how woefully ignorant I am about popular culture, particularly black popular culture. For instance, I had no idea black nerds existed, and that superheroes and comic books are a thing among young African-Americans. I also learned about daps, snapbacks, and timbs.

Look, I am an old white guy living in the suburbs, Bri, Angie Thomas's smart, hip, talented, and ambitious protagonist, is a 16-year-old black girl living in the ghetto with her mother and brother. Her father, a popular rapper, was killed in a drive-by shooting when she was a child.

Bri wants to emulate him, but she also wants to be her own person -- in many ways, that's a common enough struggle for any teen-ager. But Bri's life is more complicated.

For one thing, members of the gang who shot her father are contemptuous of and try to thwart any success she might achieve. Her mother, a recovering heroin addict, is trying to raise her two children and find a decent job. Her brother -- who returned home after college to help out the family but can only find a job making pizzas -- likes to analyze everyone with his degree in psychology. Her aunt, who is also her mentor,  is a drug dealer. Her paternal grandparents like to throw shade on her mother. Her best friends are growing up with their own crises.

And Bri finds out that people -- even perfect strangers -- judge her through lenses tinged with bias, pre-judgment, and outright bigotry. Her teachers condemn her as "aggressive" when she speaks her mind. White parents blame her rap lyrics for any violence that occurs. Even those with good intentions see her as a ghetto hoodrat, and want her to become one -- or at least play the role.

How she handles that is shown through Thomas' masterful story-telling and crisp, descriptive writing. Thomas knows her characters and their lives. She bring them into ours with dignity, compassion, and respect.

Book Review: Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders

This is a strange, but ultimately compelling and readable novel. It won the Man Booker literary prize in 2017, so you know it's good.

It's only peripherally about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his 11-year-old son, Willie, in 1862. Lincoln took the death hard, and for several days, visited his son's crypt. From this snippet of history, Saunders leaps off into the realm of fantasy, hope, longing, grief, and despair.

The bardo of the title is a Tibetan word for the transitional state between life and death. It can last days, weeks, even years. The being in such a state is unsure about his existence, and throughout the book refers to the coffin as a "sickbox." It's a way that Saunders can explain how a person reviews the life, and can sometimes see images of a past that did not exist and a potential future that never came.

The novel takes the form of citations from books written and imagined, and discussions by various spirits. Those spirits watch as Lincoln visits his son; they try to influence Lincoln's actions, and they attempt to encourage Willie to move on. A young boy in such a state is unusual, the spirits allow.

They seem drawn to Lincoln's sadness, and use it to examine their own lives -- full of lost loves, missed opportunities, squandered time, and prejudices and bigotry that continue to plague them in the bardo.

It's a difficult book to get into. But once you read through a couple of chapters, the book comes into focus, and the characters grow and develop as we learn about their lives. 

Review: Washington Black

Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan

If this book has proven one thing, it is to appreciate the Man Booker Prize for selecting some of the finest contemporary fiction available. Whether a novel is on the longlist, shortlist, or is the actual winner -- Washington Black was shortlisted for the 2018 prize -- rest assured it's going to be good.

But Edugyan has shown much more with the powerful and explosive writing in her extraordinary work. Through the title character, Edugyan has shown some of the true horrors of slavery, not just in the routine dehumanization of people of color, but in the lifelong impact it has on its victims. She has shown the depravity of its systemic brutality. She has shown how it allows white people to decry its savagery while simultaneously benefiting from it.

Set in the 19th Century, the book follows George Washington Black, who begins life as a field slave on a plantation in Barbados. It's a cruel, grueling life, and Wash is confused and alarmed when he finds he is assigned to be a manservert to the master's younger brother. He fears he will be assaulted and abused, with no way out, because he is always forced to go along. Even when he finds that Titch -- which his new master insists that Wash call him -- is not the vicious master he feared, he cannot rest easy.

"I thought of my existence ... the brutal hours in the field under the crushing sun, the screams, the casual finality edging every slave's life, as though each day could easily be the last. And that, it seemed to me clearly, was the more obvious anguish -- that life had never belonged to any of us, even when we sought to reclaim it by ending it."

Titch discovers Wash has natural artistic skills, and he encourages his talents. But he does so because he sees a benefit to his own scientific endeavours.

When a tragedy occurs on the plantation, Titch and Wash flee, leading to their adventures through America, Canada, and England. The tale is told in brilliant, colorful, descriptive language.

For instance, later in the book, Wash recalls his experience in the Canadian Arctic.

"I had been warned ... that snow was white, and cold. But it was not white; it held all the colours of the spectrum. It was blue and green and yellow and teal; there were delicate pink tintings in some of the cliffs as we passed. As the light shifted in the sky, so did the snow around us deepen, find new hues, the way an ocean is never blue but some constantly changing colour. Nor was the cold simply cold -- it was the devouring of heat, a complete sucking of warmth from the blood until what remained was the absence of heat." 

It's that writing, showing the melancholy, the bitterness, and the haunted, hunted existence that follows Wash throughout his life, that makes this book worth buying and saving, so one can read it again and again.

Book Review: Mad and Furious City

In Our Mad and Furious City, by Guy Gunaratne

Gunaratne's debut novel is both sad and angry, full of hope and full of despair. It is beautifully written in the voices of the old and the young, those who revolt in violence and those who see courage in running from the gathering storm. It displays the voices of those united in their poverty, who have lived its hatreds, its futility, and its destructive impulses.

This is London at its inner core, with the story of the dispossessed, growing up in the shadow of massive towers built for the unwanted. It's the story directly told by those involved -- the children and the parents who know the violence and the heartbreak of being outside the mainstream.

The story is told in five voices: There are Selvon and Ardan, who are both looking for a way out. Yusuf is torn between the comfort of and the growing oppression of his religion, and the influence it is having on his older brother, Irfan. Nelson and Caroline are the remnants of an older generations who have seen it all before.

At the start, the style is a bit confusing: the characters take some time to become individually known and recognized. Their occasional use of British slang muddles the issue; here Google was my friend, as I looked up the words and learned something. Those terms quickly became well-known, innit?

The voices soon become familiar and reassuring, and their temperament becomes soothing as the story increasingly grows edgy. Here comes the aftermath of a soldier being killed and his body hanged. An angry white mob wants revenge, and descends upon the council estate (public housing) of mostly immigrants of color from Southwest Asia. Those residents, who simply want to move on with their lives, either stay and battle or avoid the fight. Complicating the issue is the new leadership of the local mosque, which wants its membership to become more insular and conservative.

The writing complements the book's rhythm and flow. As the struggle nears its climax, the chapters get shorter, the writing tighter, and the action more intense. You feel yourself in the midst of everything, as you are hearing from all the characters' perspectives. It's a strong ending for the story, by a brilliant writer.

The book's blurbs are filled with comments about how we will hear a lot from this young writer. I agree. This novel was on the longlist for the 2018 Man Booker prize. He is off to a fine start.

This week in Books 6th Ed.

TBR's Stephen King
bookcase

So, I finally persuaded my daughter to give Stephen King a shot. She doesn't like horror. I kept telling her King is much more than a horror writer

We have shared books since she was in her late teens. When she comes home now, we often go straight to my library, where I offer some suggestions, and she can browse for more. At times, she'll recommend a book for me. It works for us.

She's a runner (a good one, I might add; a Boston qualifier). So I gave her Elevation, telling her it had a running story arc that was well done. It's one of King's shorter works, so it's a quick read. Here is my review.

She liked, it. No, she loved it. I am happy, although not surprised. It is a good read.

The best description of King is that he puts regular people in abnormal situations. I think King's strength as as writer is simple: He writes well, has great characters, and tells a helluva story. What more could you want? Despite his reputation, he's not solely a writer of horror, which I've always seen as bloody, slasher stuff. Instead, he's a writer of the supernatural -- the paranormal, if you will.

Anyway, now I have to decide what King work to suggest next. Perhaps one of his earlier works -- perhaps Dead Zone, which could be appropriate in the current political climate? Or perhaps a later work, Sleeping Beauties, which he co-wrote with his son, Owen King? It hits the high points of a King book, and I credit Owen King with taking out some of King's flaws, particularly his weakness in crafting a credible ending.

As for the TBR stack: It's getting bigger after a trip to a local bookstore this past week. I found three books that weren't even on the horizon:

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek tells the fictionalized tale of the first travelling library in Kentucky (my home), and how one of the (real-to-life) blue people of Kentucky was its librarian. They Said it Couldn't be Done is about a time I remember well from growing up in New York City in the summer and fall of '69, when man landed on the moon and the Mets won the World Series. Fifty years later, I cannot read enough about the latter. And Washington Black continues my excursion into books by and about people of color. This one tells the story of an 11-year-old field slave who becomes his master's brother's servant, and their ever-changing relationship. It was nominated in 2018 for the Man Booker prize, always a great place to find a good read.

This Week in Books, 2nd Ed.

It's been a busy week at the TBR blog. I've finished a couple of books, bought a few more, and just returned from St. Louis, where I attended a book signing.

< One book read-and-reviewed came from a friend (it was a good book, though, so no conflicts), and the second > came after seeing and reading a play.

Still, the TBR Stack expanded, after I strolled into a local used bookstore -- in the case, Half Price Books -- and found three books I had to have. Two of the three already were on the TBR list, so that did not expand too much.

The finds included Mr. Fox, by Helen Oyeyemi. Her latest, Gingerbread, which is recommended reading for Black History Month, was not available, but her first novel was. Also put in the stack was The Woman Who Died a Lot, the (as of now) final book in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. The Bees, by Lline Paull, has long been on the TBR list. It is literally about in-fighting in a colony of bees.

Now we get to the high point of the week: A visit to St. Louis to hear Fforde speak about his newest novel, Early Riser, and have him sign a copy. Fforde talked about developing and writing his stories, starting with a "narrative dare." This time around, it was to "write a thriller in world where humans have always hibernated." So that's what he did.

"Fantasy is the sandbox of fiction"

The author and me

Book Review: The White Boy Shuffle

The White Boy Shuffle, by Paul Beatty

I felt uncomfortable when I started reading this book.

I bought it because I had read Beatty's award-winning novel, The Sellout, which in 2015 won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award. The White Boy Shuffle is his first book, written in 1996.

It concerns Gunner Kaufman, the blackest white surfer dude in Santa Monica. Kaufman is a novelty in his hometown, being the only person of color in his neighborhood and on the beaches. He regales his friends and classmates with his blisteringly funny stories about his ancestors.

But it's the telling of those stories that make me uneasy. Yes, Beatty is black, and he has the right to write about African-Americans, their history, and their culture in whatever way he pleases. And he does, using racist epithets, tropes, and colorful language. It was hysterical. And I laughed. But I felt horrible doing so. As a white man, I cannot simply and easily share his use of such racial terms, and I probably should not admit I laughed out loud more than once at his doing so. But at least I looked around to make sure no one saw me chuckling.

Anyway, Kaufman's mother thinks he is losing touch with his blackness, and to remedy it, she decides to move the fatherless family to a black neighborhood in Los Angeles. A poor, crime-ridden, ghetto neighborhood in South-Central L.A. There, his first visitors are two police officers, who demand to know which gang he's in. When he claims none, the cops reply that because he's a free agent, they'll be watching him.

Also watching him are the gangs in the 'hood, who promptly beat him up for talking to the cops.

Eventually, he settles in, trading his surfing skills for the basketball court, and honing his poetry. He becomes widely popular, and when asked to speak at a demonstration, reluctantly does, turning himself into a self-described Negro demagogue.

Widely funny, sometimes somber, often outrageous, White Boy Shuffle is an intense novel addressing questions of race, class, and identity that are as relevant today as they were 24 years ago.