Ask Again, Yes - Mary Beth Keane

Generational trauma is a heavy lift. Emotionally, the tendrils of the trauma wrap around each participant and create outcomes as different as the individuals effected. In Ask Again, Yes, Keane delves into the ripple effects of such trauma with themes of abuse, addiction, abandonment, and violence. 

Beginning with Frances and Bryan, who are trainees together for the NYPD and partners at their very first assignment. Frances, serious and cautious approaches his job with a professional air and thoughtful contemplation. Bryan appears more rash. Talks of the pregnant girlfriend he must marry and searches out ways to stop for a pint of beer while walking the beat. 

Fast forward to their children. Frances' youngest, Kate and Bryan's only, Peter grow up the best of friends. Living next door to each other, they never grow close because something is certainly off about Peter's mother. She's distant and abrasive. And it's clear to the reader that she has some elements of mental health crisis probably not helped by her clearly absentee or alcoholic husband. 

Bryan is only interested in an easy fix for his wife and his issues. So once a disturbing incident happens at the grocery store involving Anne, his wife, he's reassured she's on medication and it's business as usual. But of course it's not.

And everyone being willing to let these things slide in the acceptable and neighborly silence has bad consequences, of course. Violence erupts and both Kate and Peter's families are never the same. But their affection for each other, which was just beginning to blossom into young romance is left interrupted and unfulfilled. As they find their way to each other, they are willing to take whatever broken parts of themselves are left. 

I liked the way that Peter and Kate's relationship serves as a central hub in the book. I liked how smart and independent Kate was, and how unwilling she was to let anyone else dictate the course of her life's events. Maybe the book felt a little overlong, but otherwise it was a good read. 

3.75/5 Stars. 

A Woman is No Man - Etaf Rum

This book.

Cycles and cycles of cultural violence. Generational violence.

From Fareeda, to Isra, to Deya. What does it take to break a cycle? What does it mean to break a cycle?

And so many things are broken in this novel. Hearts and bodies and minds.

Etaf Rum absolutely slays in A Woman is No Man. She gives voice to the stifling and suffocating effect of generational and cultural expectations.

Told through varying points of view first from Isra, then her daughter Deya and finally from Deya's paternal grandmother Fareeda, we see how an original violence experienced by Fareeda, expelled from her home and homeland in Palestine, learns to live under the harshest of conditions. Tragedy leads her to dig into the cultural belief that daughters are a burden and sons are to be celebrated.

In devaluing the worth of daughters and women, Fareeda sets the conditions for her son Adam to be brutally cruel to his new wife, Isra. When Isra and Adam are dead, Deya must grow up under Fareeda's rule, constantly being reminded that as a girl, she has little worth.

This book is about Deya finding her voice and reclaiming her worth. The cost is heavy to break the cycle of violence in her family. But if not Deya, then who? Deya's struggle comes from someone within the culture (not from a whiteness-centered point of view), straining against the restraints of expectation. Underneath is an abiding love which causes her to consider all the ramifications of seeking her own path.

A Woman is No Man leaves a lot of questions unanswered - gives characters grace they may not deserve, but is up to the reader to decide to what extent it is given. It is perfectly drawn and perfectly imprecise. A real heartbreaker of a book.

4/5 Stars.

Queenie - Candice Carty-Williams

You have to admit this amazing cover art catches your eye and makes you wonder what might be inside. And the inside is just as beautiful. Queenie Jenkins is on the cusp of something good. She has a steady boyfriend, Tom, who has suggested marriage, and she's landed a job at a magazine. So what if Tom's family is racist and he doesn't seem to care. So what if the job is managing listings and not writing about issues that really matter to Queenie. She's ALMOST there.

And then. She isn't. Tom wants a break. A clean break. And this begins a spiral for Queenie who must confront some of the things that have made her adult life difficult. Painful, heartbreaking episodes from her childhood are hinted, and then drawn out fully as we grieve and learn with Queenie.

At times completely hilarious and then equally heartbreaking, this book really does do it all. Queenie's friends are dismayed and helpless to halt her downward spiral and I felt these same feelings along with them. I felt like Queenie's friend. I was rooting for her. I wanted her to figure out these things she was doing to herself and allowing to happen to herself. The book brings up uncomfortable questions of self acceptance and worth and race. And it does it all in the most excellent writing. 

I was so thrilled to find this book in my mail box courtesy of Scout Press Books. I can't wait to share this book with everyone.

5/5 Stars. 

I'll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison - Ed. Wally Lamb

I picked this Kindle version up when I saw something with Wally Lamb's name on it was only $1.99. I've loved Wally Lamb ever since reading I Know This Much is True in college. Given my surprise when I began reading and discovered it was not a book written by him, but a collection of stories from women incarcerated in York Prison in Connecticut, I was pleased to find I actually enjoyed much of the content of this collection. 

Lamb gives an excellent introduction for I'll Fly Away, delving into why the writing workshops performed in the prison were important and ultimately successful for many of the inmates. It was sad, but not ultimately surprising, to learn that the State of Connecticut sought to recoup money from the women who had made modest profits from having their work published. 

While the stories are deeply personal tales from the women themselves, all non-fiction reflections of their lives in and out of prison, the whole collection invokes broader themes of domestic abuse and violence, and the punitive v. rehabilitative aims of mass incarceration in America. Do we want those convicted to be punished for their crime, or do we as a society, benefit more from individuals being rehabilitated and unlikely to offend again? (Did I tip my hand with the way I asked that question?). There is something grossly dehumanizing about numbering and locking people away that I think does damage to both captive and jailer. That's not to say that some people are too violent and damaged in a way that means they should not ever be allowed in society again, but the way in which we house and incarcerate large swaths of our population should be examined. 

Hearing first hand accounts from these women help to keep them from being mere names and numbers in a sea of inmates, and hopefully helps show their human sides, our shared humanity after all, is a great equalizer.

3/5 Stars.