African-American – Page 2

Category: African-American (Page 2 of 3)

By Norris Rettiger. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 10)

Thrilling, terrifying, and true from the first page to the last, Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s debut novel We Cast a Shadow is a hallucinatory vision of a near-future American South.

Narrated by a black father frantically climbing the ladder at a prominent law firm to gain enough money to pay for his biracial son Nigel’s demelanization procedure, We Cast a Shadow is a Kafkaesque nightmare for our times, a fever dream of a novel that is painfully aware of how close America is to becoming a white ethnostate run by reptilian billionaires.

Ruffin thrusts the reader right into the drama of a household torn apart by doubt, anxiety, and fear. The narrator is convinced of one thing and one thing only—being black is a sin that society cannot and will not forgive. As such, he is focused on fixing his son.

To do that, he needs to make money, and in order to make money, he has to navigate an office culture that is as indifferent to human suffering as anything I’ve seen since American Psycho.

The narrator is trapped in a downward spiral of endless capitulation to a system that he knows, deep down, will never allow him to see success as a black man, no matter how much of his soul he sells.

But, it’s for Nigel’s future, and that is something worth fighting for. And so we watch as he buckles down and tries to save Nigel from the systemic racism and humiliation that people of color, the successful father included, face every day in the book.

In a way, the whole book is about a father finding safety in a place that seems to be specifically engineered to make him afraid for himself, for his job, for his life, and for his son’s life.

The twist is that in order for him to keep his son safe, he has to force his son to become something he was never meant to be. The words “it’s for the best” take on a darker tone as a well-intentioned father drives his son away with bleaching cream, baseball caps, and other ways to hide his true complexion.

Relations with his wife are also pushed to the breaking point, as she doesn’t and, according to the narrator, can’t ever understand why he’s so insistent that his son undergo this procedure that will so drastically affect his life.

Ignoring the pleas of his son and his wife, the narrator presses onward and upward, sure that even if he is destroyed by the risks, at least his family will see the reward.

There isn’t a book like We Cast a Shadow on the shelf right now in 2019. This is a very early contender for being the most incisive and timely book of the year, and it is absolutely worth checking out, especially if you’re interested in experiencing a rare perspective that feels so true to life, it must be some kind of great fiction.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin will be at Lemuria on Saturday, February 16, at 2:00 to sign We Cast a Shadow and in conversation with Kiese Laymon at 2:30 p.m.

Hip-Hop Encore: ‘On the Come Up’ by Angie Thomas

By Former Lemurians

On February 5, 2019

In African-American, OZ: Young Adult Fiction

by Andrew Hedglin

Jackson native and best-selling young adult phenomenon Angie Thomas returns with the publication of her second novel, On the Come Up, today. It comes with a lot of expectations after the acclaim, success, and movie adaptation of her debut, The Hate U Give. I imagine that a lot of fans are torn about what they want: more of what they liked about her first book, but not the EXACT same thing. It’s a classic dilemma.

On the Come Up returns to Garden Heights, the same neighborhood from The Hate U Give. This story is set on the the other side of the neighborhood, however. The effects of the climax of the last book are still being felt. Khalil’s death awakens political sensibilities, but these characters didn’t know him personally.

The hero of the story is Bri Jackson, an aspiring rapper guided by her gangta Aunt Pooh, who fosters her dreams and ambitions, but has worries of her own. While biding her time to making it big, Bri buses to a creative arts magnet school in the tony Midtown neighborhood with her best friends, Malik, a budding activist, and Sonny, an excellent student torn between focusing on ACT prep and pursuing a mysterious but intriguing online relationship. Bri carries the mantle of her father, underground rap legend Lawless, who was murdered when she was a child. She lives with her mother Jayda, a recovering drug addict, and brother Trey, a snarky, egghead going through a post-graduate slump to help support the family.

One of the things that Thomas is so great at, both here and in her last book, is how she populates her books with believable, unique characters which make her communities seem real. I haven’t mentioned all the characters here (including one of my favorites), but they all contribute to the world-building Thomas excels at.

It’s good writing, period, but especially heartening for one of Thomas’s missions: for young black and people of color readers, it helps them see themselves reflected in media, and for white readers, it helps them see the very human side of a world they may only be familiar with from the news.

But Thomas can do more than just characters, she can set up a plot as well. Here, Bri recognizes the power of her prodigious hip-hop abilities, but the problem is, she isn’t sure what she wants with it. She wants to express herself and her world, but she is also chasing commercial success, because her family is facing real financial distress, the kind where the fridge is empty and the lights go off. When events keep casting her image as something different than what she is, she struggles to decide whether to lean in to it, or whether to break free.

There’s more to talk about, but I don’t think I need to go with the hard-sell here. Some people might like The Hate U Give more, but plenty of readers will find On the Come Up even better. If you liked the first book, you’ll like this one, too. I encourage you to experience On the Come Up for yourself.

Signed copies of On the Come Up are available from Lemuria online or in-store right now. Angie Thomas will be in Jackson on Thursday, February 28, at Belhaven University’s Center for the Arts for a ticketed event. Call Lemuria at 601-366-7619 or visit in store for details.

Kiese Laymon’s new book has some ‘Heavy’ truths

By Jamie

On October 16, 2018

In African-American, Culture

One reason we read is to escape from ourselves and see others, particularly others who aren’t like us. And simultaneously, one reason we read is to find ourselves, to be seen by someone else. For me, Kiese Laymon’s Heavy: An American Memoir occupies both of these spaces effortlessly.

Although, effortless is a bit misleading. In interviews, conversations, and in the very content of the book, Laymon admits that Heavy was difficult to write. It was necessary. This duality persists throughout the layers of the memoir. The relationship Laymon describes with his mother is at times toxic, but is also nurturing, sincere, and life-giving. The relationship Laymon has with his own body and food moves between destructive and healthy. Growing up as a brilliant black child in Mississippi is both “burden and blessing,” to borrow Laymon’s own words. In the face of one-dimensional, monolithic, unimaginative stereotypes, Laymon spits nuance and grace and honesty—honesty that is gritty and soothing, that captures the “contrary states of the human soul,” as William Blake says.

Personally, my relationship with Heavy is equally divergent. I’ve never been on the harsh end of a culture that devalues the lives of black Americans. Yeah, one of the only fistfights I’ve been in was defending a black friend from a racist prick in 8th grade, but I’ve never been part of a group systematically and culturally denied access by a majority. Laymon’s book shows me what it’s like. My family has had its share of trauma, but not the type of trauma Laymon’s has. His book helps me understand a type resilience I’ve never needed.

But I’m a big fella. I’ve done my share of emotional eating. I’ve had horrible conversations with myself about how to make my body smaller and, at times, questioned whether taking care of my body was worth the effort. Yes, men do have vastly lower and fewer expectations for how we should look, but we aren’t without some pressure to fit into molds. How to fit into a mold when I barely fit into some t-shirts? Laymon’s book reminds me that I’m not alone in this. I am seen and valid and broken and beautiful. Heavy can mean “excessive,” or “burdensome,” but it can also be “important.” I’m glad to have the weight of this memoir, where it touches me and where it leaves me.

Kiese Laymon will be at Millsaps at the Gertrude C. Ford Academic Center on Wednesday, October 17, at 5:00 to sign and read from Heavy.

‘A Spy in Canaan’ is a deep slice of civil rights era surveillance

By Guest Author

On August 28, 2018

In African-American, Civil Rights

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (August 26)

If you know of someone who still harbors any doubt that the FBI spied on leaders of the civil rights movement, just hand over a copy of investigative reporter Marc Perrusquia’s book A Spy in Canaan.

As a reporter for The Commercial Appeal, Perrusquia caught wind of a tantalizing story: that one of Memphis’ most well-known and respected Beale Street residents who had rubbed shoulders with the highest leaders of the movement was for nearly 20 years an FBI informant.

In Spy, subtitled “How The FBI Used a Famous Photographer to Infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement,” Perrusquia offers exhaustive research, including the FBI’s own secret informant files, to detail the government’s surveillance.

As Perrusquia chronicles, to most Beale Street residents, Ernest Withers was the local photographer who took photos of wedding engagements, family portraits, school and military achievements.

To leaders of the civil rights movement, Withers was equally embedded. Carrying press credentials for prominent black-oriented newspapers and magazines, he was a fixture who was there in the very beginning.

He sneaked a photo in the courtroom during the trial of Emmett Till. He covered integration riots in Little Rock and Ole Miss. He covered the assassination of Medgar Evers, whom he considered a friend. He was such a fixture that he counted among his photos candid scenes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—and was so well regarded, he was allowed into the autopsy room to take death photos after King’s assassination.

Although little heralded in his life, Withers could arguably be called one of the great photographers of the 20th century, Perrusquia reports. He shot as many as one million photos over 60 years documenting black life in the South.

Yet, as Perrusquia conclusively details, Withers also led a double life, working for the FBI for cash, funneling photos of civil rights leaders and suspected “agitators” from 1958 to 1976. He passed on tips, car tag numbers, juicy gossip, funneling a flood of rumors, facts and falsehoods that could (and did) ruin people’s lives.

Perrusquia chronicles Withers’ activities in painstaking, deep detail, revealing a disturbing portrait of a quintessential mole in the movement.

Spy is a monumental work of investigative journalism, drawing not only from his newspaper reporting, but also with fresh facts that add a troubling perspective to the headlines of today, raising questions about the depth, longevity and resilience of the government’s focus on watching its citizens.

Not only does Perrusquia describe the FBI surveillance of the period, but examines the federal and local police programs in place that operated beyond the law, including:

COINTELPRO — A federal domestic spying program that surveilled citizens and often employed dirty tricks and misinformation to discredit citizens the FBI deemed suspect.
DETCOM — The nation’s secret program to identify and round up dissidents or people identified with suspected organizations in the event of an emergency.

It’s frightening that even with the enormous amount of data the FBI obtained just from Withers and those working with him at the time, that’s only a slice of the surveillance of U.S. citizens then and, most certainly with digital methods, now.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.

Marc Perrusquia will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “Photography and Culture” panel at 2:45 p.m. at the Galloway Foundery.

‘An American Marriage’ powerfully illuminates nature of human will

By Former Lemurians

On February 26, 2018

In African-American, Fiction, Southern Fiction

By Kelly Pickerill. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 25)

Tayari Jones’ fourth novel, An American Marriage (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill), quickly reaches its inciting incident. 9781616201340-2T Newlyweds Celestial and Roy drive from their home in Atlanta to visit Roy’s parents in Eloe, Louisiana. Tension between Celestial and her mother-in-law makes the young couple decide to rent a hotel room rather than stay at the house. At the hotel, an argument between the couple sends Roy out of their room for less than an hour, an hour that will determine the course of both of their lives.

That night, a woman at the hotel is raped, and she accuses Roy, with whom she had a brief encounter earlier in the evening at the ice machine. Despite a lack of physical evidence, Roy is convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison. After Roy serves five years of his sentence, a lawyer hired by Celestial’s family succeeds in getting Roy’s conviction overthrown.

The novel then explores the consequences those five years have on Celestial and Roy’s marriage. As the novel progresses, Jones manages to avoid many tempting paths. An American Marriage does not become an agenda-driven indictment of the failings of America’s criminal justice system, particularly involving black men.

Jones also frees her characters from the pitfalls stereotypically associated with black incarceration: drug abuse, undereducation, and poverty (Roy comes from a boostrap family, but he attended college and is on his way to becoming a moderately successful executive; Celestial, on the other hand, comes from new money, hasn’t wanted for anything, was given the resources and encouragement to embrace her creativity, and is beginning to break out as an artist who makes unique, high-end dolls).

When Celestial takes comfort in her neighbor and childhood friend Andre several years into Roy’s incarceration, and they eventually become engaged, the novel doesn’t become a character study or a bereft or cuckolded husband.

Instead, moving forward and backward through time, Celestial, Roy, and Andre in turn tell their stories. They each tell the story of what they want now that Roy has been freed, and what happened in the past that brought them to this point.

An American Marriage powerfully illluminates the nature of human will–how it adapts, but sometimes breaks, how it can transform, or be denied or asserted, and what makes it stronger. There are consequences to every one of our choices, large and small, that we make every day. And those choices affect who we are fundamentally. Though what happens to us can often be out of our own control, who we are is, ultimately, made up of our choices–of what we decide to do with the cards we’ve been dealt.

Tayari Jones will be at Lemuria on Monday, February 26, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from An American Marriage. An American Marriage is the February 2018 selection for Lemuria’s First Editions Club for Fiction.

‘An American Marriage’ weds the personal, the political, and the poetic

By Former Lemurians

On February 22, 2018

In African-American, Fiction, Southern Fiction

by Trianne Harabedian

Every so often, I get to be the first person at Lemuria to read a book that I know is going to be wonderful. 9781616201340-2T I jumped on our advanced reader copy of An American Marriage by Tayari Jones because I had seen it advertised everywhere. The story looked intriguing, the blue and golden cover is gorgeous, and I was excited. Then the news came out that Oprah had picked it for her book club, so the attention on this novel and Tayari Jones skyrocketed. And as someone who read the book *before it was cool*, I’m here to tell you that it is absolutely worth the hype.

Told from all three perspectives, the story of Celestial, Roy, and Andre is complicated. Celestial and Roy are still in the honeymoon phase of their marriage when Roy is arrested and sent to prison. Everyone knows he didn’t commit the crime. But as a black man in a legal system overrun with stereotypes, he is sentenced to twelve years even without solid evidence. As Roy mourns the loss of his whole life, Celestial turns her pain into artistic, handcrafted dolls. Letters keep the couple close at first, but life moves on quickly. And whenever Celestial needs support, her childhood friend, Andre, is there.

Celestial, Roy, Andre, and their stories captured my heart. But the storytelling stole my breath. Tayari Jones’s writing moves like a river, hurrying readers along with little effort on their part. It feels simplistic and uncomplicated, yet the undercurrents of the story are incredibly complex and the writing itself holds the reader afloat with invisible strength. I loved the way the novel focuses on the characters themselves, on their inner thoughts and feelings and turmoil. The plot progresses gently, so I wanted to know what would happen but was more caught up in emotions.

It would have been easy for Tayari Jones to turn this novel into political propaganda in hopes of making a point or benefiting from the current political climate. Instead, this is a story about people. While their backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses are important, they are simply part of the larger tale. And instead of focusing on the developing love triangle, this is a story about families and the ripple effects of injustice and tragedy.

This novel went beyond my expectations. Complex characters, beautiful writing, and a story with just enough ebb and flow, Tayari Jones and An American Marriage certainly deserve all of the publicity and praise.

‘We Were Eight Years in Power’ is a vital addition to nation’s racial conversation

By Guest Author

On October 12, 2017

In African-American, Culture, Essays, Politics

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (October 1)

8 years in power In Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book of essays We Were Eight Years in Power (One World), he recalls that he felt at odds with himself when penning the first one for The Atlantic in 2007.

Barack Obama was running for president but, as a black man, was hardly thought then to be a full-on contender. Coates’ feeling of being adrift was shared with young black men and women across the country. They were “lost in a Bermuda triangle of the mind or stranded in the doldrums of America.”

Obama’s election changed that, he writes. But it also changed the nation’s dialogue on race, one that continues with an urgency underscored by the headlines of the day.

The book is composed of the eight essays he wrote for The Atlantic during each of the eight years of the nation’s first black presidency, along with current commentary. But it is Reconstruction in the South that the title of the book refers to, quoting W.E.B. DuBois, that: “If there was one thing… (whites) feared more than bad Negro government, it was good Negro government.”

With the rise of Donald Trump after a period of “good Negro government,” it can be argued we are witnessing from Washington and much of the country that frame of mind today. It’s manifested in displays by sports figures taking a knee in solidarity against police brutality against blacks, racial profiling, social inequality, disparities in education and opportunity, fueled by a president who finds no qualm in siding with Nazi protesters while calling those who demonstrate against it “sons of bitches.”

Before Obama, the idea of a black president lived as “a kind of cosmic joke,” Coates writes. “White folks, whatever their talk of freedom and liberty, would not allow a black president.” Witness, Emmett Till’s audacity to look at a white woman, the fact that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “turned the other cheek, and they blew it off.”

Lincoln was killed for emancipation, Freedom Riders were beaten for advocating for voting rights, Medgar Evers was shot down in his driveway “like a dog.”

“That a country that once took whiteness as the foundation for citizenship would elect a black president,” Coates writes, “is a victory. But to view this victory as racism’s defeat is to forget the precise terms on which it was secured.”

It encapsulates a paradox: America couldn’t elect “a black man,” but it could elect a qualified man who was black–as long as he didn’t evince blackness.

Coates’ outstanding previous book, Between the World and Me, was as much a plea for understanding race consciousness as a denouncement of racism in America.

The question it raised in 2015: Is this plea heard? By whom? And are the intractable problems of race solvable by a society founded on centuries of racial and economic inequality?

In Power, the pleas are gone. Instead, with its contextualizing commentary, it’s a questioning odyssey throughout the Obama years and now of the fact of racial polarization and misunderstanding that colors all attempts at recognizing progress or reversal. It’s an indictment of a nation where even black citizens who hold conservative, mainstream values are turned away from the party that espouses them because of its open appeals to people who hate them.

Power is an exploration in many ways to explain how a society based on Enlightenment values could ignore its essential white supremacy, that the foundational crimes of this crimes of this country are to somehow be considered mostly irrelevant to its existence, as well as those excluded and pillaged in order to bring those values into practice.

Through troubling to read, the aggregate is a journey of wonder, even when topics are troubling, for the deep mental explorations they offer, often without road map or easy conclusions.

Power is an exemplary, perhaps even vital, addition to the national dialogue on race in America.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at The Clarion-Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.

Read, Lead, and Succeed: ‘The Talented Ribkins’ by Ladee Hubbard

By Former Lemurians

On August 8, 2017

In African-American, Fiction, Southern Fiction

by Andrew Hedglin

The Talented Ribkins by Ladee Hubbard is an amazing book to read, and yet the meaning can be evasive until the main character, Johnny Ribkins, can be fully understood. Johnny is a 72 year-old member of an extraordinary African-American family: the Ribkins, descendants of the Rib King™ (“said to have invented the best barbecue sauce recipe in the entire southeast”). Each member has an extraordinary talent, or power, whose value can be initially dubious, and, in isolation, maybe useless. Johnny can make maps of places he has never been nor seen, his brother Franklin can climb anything (even flat walls), his cousin Bertrand can spit fire, and his niece Eloise can catch anything that is thrown at her.

Initially, during the Civil Rights movement, Johnny organized his family (and some similarly-gifted friends) to form the Justice Committee, dedicated to helping Civil Rights heroes through their Freedom of Movement Movement, allowing them to move safely about the country. But when the Justice Committee falls apart due to interpersonal conflict, money issues, and Johnny’s escalating paranoia and flights of fancy, Johnny feels lost. Later, after he discovers the existence of his half-brother Franklin, and his wall-climbing capability, he turns to a life of crime as thieves-for-hire.

His partnership with Franklin eventually sours, too, leaving him freelancing his maps for slick gangster Melvin Meeks, from whom Johnny has been embezzling money for years. Now, Johnny has one week to pay off his $100,000 debt to Meeks. His plan is to raid his squirrel-holes from his past all up and down Florida, having burying money like a paranoid pirate, in places that are almost designed to bring back memories. It should be a relatively easy job, what with the amount of money he has stashed away. But he keeps running into people who need a hand-up, and ends up paying for two mortgages. Also, he finds the nature of his mission radically altered: his discovers, for the first time, his deceased brother Franklin’s 13 year-old daughter, Eloise (of catching ability). Soon, he finds her escorting her all over Florida, introducing her to her people, the talented Ribkins, and what it means to live life when you’re just a little bit…different.

The name of this novel and its themes are inspired by W.E.B. DuBois’s concept of the Talented Tenth. Basically, DuBois argued that a well-educated aristocracy of African-Americans would, if educated and equipped, rise up and lead the race of their race into prosperity and success. While this idea might sound elitist, context is critical. He was countering Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta compromise“: that the races could be separate as the fingers, but work together as one hand economically. While Washington accomplished much and was interested in black advancement, his ideas appealed to pragmatic white supremacists, who wanted to keep black people not only humble but subservient. DuBois’s arguments were for black dignity, and full personhood, although not every black person would benefit initially.

The Ribkins are literally talented, standing in (in many ways) for the Talented Tenth. Eloise is talented and smart, but young and the product of a single-parent home. Can the examples of the elder Ribkins be emulated? Should they be? Do all the Ribkins(and Flash and the Hammer, the friends from the Justice Committee) use their talents the same way, and for the same purpose? This is important background information for a novel that is neither parable nor allegory, but definitely infused with important ideas.

But this isn’t a book with just ideas, it is filled with artistry and craft. The setting and history is immersive, and the characters are unique and memorable. Johnny himself is a cipher whose nature seems to shift through the paradigm of whatever old acquaintance he is interacting with. He is an interesting foil for Eloise, who is in the youthful process of discovering herself and her potential. The journey they make is an odd odyssey, filled with hosts with their own complicated motivations. Personally, one of my very parts is the “pie scene,” filled with some of the most delicious dramatic tension I have ever read.

Ultimately, though, you can’t fully appreciate the book until you finish it, when the story comes back home to Leigh Acres, when you find out what Johnny really is (and, for that matter, the true nature of Eloise is capable of). It is then that you see the way forward, and you will understand what DuBois says later when looking back at his Talented Tenth idea:

My own panacea of earlier days was flight of class from mass through the development of a TalentedTenth; but the power of this aristocracy of talent was to lie in its knowledge and character and not in its wealth.

Ladee Hubbard will serve as a panelist on the “First Fiction: The Discovery of the Debut” discussion at the Mississippi Book Festival on Saturday, August 19 at 4 p.m. at the State Capitol in Room 113.

ms book fest

Showing some love for ‘The Hate U Give’ by Angie Thomas

By Former Lemurians

On February 24, 2017

In African-American, OZ: Young Adult Fiction

by Andrew Hedglin

Cards on the table: Angie Thomas is an acquaintance of mine from college–one of those right here in Jackson. I followed her nascent writing career on social media, and as things started to take off for her, I was rooting for her success, even before I saw any of her writing. The hype train for her first book, The Hate U Give, suddenly began to roll, in a big way. But when I finally got an advance copy in my hands, I started to worry: what if I didn’t like it?

hate u give w/border Well, I am happy to report that I liked it–a lot. Writing a novel about a topical political issue seems ambitious, especially for a first novel. But that is a strength of what Thomas does here with The Hate U Give: she takes the political and makes it personal.

The Hate U Give is the story of 16 year-old Starr Carter, who is hitching a ride home with her childhood friend, Khalil, after a party, when they are pulled over by a police officer. Starr’s family has taught her to be cautious in this situation, but Khalil acts casually–which causes him to become a casualty.

When we hear about a police officer shooting a black person–often male, often young–we may recognize it as a shame for the names I hope we remember, but this tells the story of the ones left behind–of Starr, as the witness to Khalil’s killing, but also of their whole community of Garden Heights.

tupac thug life The title of the book is a take on an acronym, or a backronym, of a tattoo that Tupac Shakur had: THUG LIFE–The Hate U Give Little Infants F***s Everybody. The racism that white people give to black people hurts black people, of course, but it’s also bad for everybody, including those who give it. This hate is poison. The acronym takes a term of derision, thug, and turns it around as a warning against this hate.

Ironically, though, if Starr, as a black person, is hurt by this hatred from other people, she also derives her strength from other people, as well. Her father gives her his principles, her friend Kenya reminds here where she’s from, her Uncle Carlos gives her strength, and her (white) boyfriend Chris supports and adores her. And that’s just a sample; part of what’s so great about this YA novel is its depiction of black family and community. One of the most well-defined characters is her father, Maverick Carter, a former gangbanger who is now a proud business owner of a store in the Heights.

Rich characterization is found everywhere from both Starr’s black world (the Heights) to her white one (where she goes to school at predominantly white Williamson Prep, and where her police officer Uncle Carlos lives). Starr explores her identity as a black person, but also as a female, and as a teenager. And as a teenager, she grows throughout the course of the book, from fear to courage, from passivity to action.

The Hate U Give is a well-told, engaging, often fun, sometimes harrowing young adult novel about black community, and the effects of police violence against black lives. It shows accessible humanity on the side of the story not often seen. It is a tremendous first novel that is enjoyable for both teenagers and adults, and I implore you to give The Hate U Give a chance.

Humanity and history in ‘Homegoing’ by Yaa Gyasi

By Former Lemurians

On June 24, 2016

In African-American, Fiction

by Andrew Hedglin

To be totally honest with you, historical fiction was not really on my radar this time last year when I started working at Lemuria. However, some of the best books I’ve read over the past year—A Free State by Tom Piazza and Free Men by Katy Simpson Smith—have totally turned my attitude around on the genre. And then came Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, a book I’d call a masterpiece.

Homegoing tells the story of two family lines descended from the same woman, Maame: Effia is her daughter born when she was slave in a Fante household; Esi is her daughter by the union with her Asante husband. Effia ends up as the wife of a white English slave trader, whereas Esi ends up herself as a slave, shipped across the Atlantic. The novel follows the descendents of both Effia and Esi each for seven generations, through war and slavery and discrimination.

What’s really fascinating, I think, is that although the characters face experiences emblematic of whole peoples, they never seem less than real people. My heart breaks for Kojo, a shipbuilder in Baltimore who spends almost all his life free, with a large, happy family, yet is isolated in his family lineage on both ends through slavery, not really ever knowing his mother Ness or son H. Or Akua, whose abuse at the hands of a missionary drives her to destructive insanity, only to end as one of the wisest, strongest, and oldest characters in the entire book. Almost every character retains his or her individuality or humanity.

And yet history matters so much. Characters have the free will to make their own choices and shape their own characters, but they are often denied the chance to make a difference in their descendants due to the historical narrative. Personal morality only makes so much of an impact, and often characters have to reach back two generations for strength.

This makes the American line of descendants, starting with Esi, so particularly heart-wrenching. The psychic pain of detachment from home and family can be the most affecting of all the traumas. Although the novel is definitely a book about what it is to be human, it is both distinctly African and African-American, thematically probing how those things are forever connected and disconnected.

There are some words I remember from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me that kept echoing in my head as I read this book. He’s exhorting his son, Samori, not to confuse his ancestors in slavery with links in a chain. Coates says: “I have raised you to respect every human being as singular, and you must extend that same respect into the past….You must struggle to remember this past in all its nuance, error, and humanity….The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history.” The novel ends on a somewhat hopeful note that the the title perhaps promises, but there are several chapters in the book where, if ended there, could be construed as hopeful. History does not work in a straight line, trending neither strictly upward nor downward. One of the most powerful lessons of Homegoing is not the promise of hope, but the study of humanity, with beauty still present all the same.

Category: African-American (Page 2 of 3)

Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s ‘We Cast a Shadow’ brings rare perspective

Hip-Hop Encore: ‘On the Come Up’ by Angie Thomas

Kiese Laymon’s new book has some ‘Heavy’ truths

‘A Spy in Canaan’ is a deep slice of civil rights era surveillance

‘An American Marriage’ powerfully illuminates nature of human will

‘An American Marriage’ weds the personal, the political, and the poetic

‘We Were Eight Years in Power’ is a vital addition to nation’s racial conversation

Read, Lead, and Succeed: ‘The Talented Ribkins’ by Ladee Hubbard

Showing some love for ‘The Hate U Give’ by Angie Thomas

Humanity and history in ‘Homegoing’ by Yaa Gyasi

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