The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates

When I first heard that Ta-Nehisi Coates was going to write a novel, I was hopeful that his plot and storytelling could keep up with the beauty and fully alive quality of his narration. I wasn't disappointed. In The Water Dancer, Coates tells the story of Hiram Walker. A slave born on the Walker Plantation in Elm County, Virginia at the beginning of the end of prosperity for the county. Son of his owner, born of the rape of his mother, Hiram is intelligent and equipped with a photographic memory.

It is the hope of his father that he will help his half-brother, Maynard, who has become a symbol of the lazy corruption that has overtaken the white slave-owning class ("quality" in Coates language). Maynard is slovenly, lazy, and ignorant. And when both men are thrown into the river, Hiram's special ability to "conduct" or transport himself elsewhere brings him several miles inland to his home. This gift of conduction is known to be possessed by only one person, Moses, Harriet Tubman herself.

Bereft of his life, and knowing he must seek change, Hiram runs and is caught. And the brutality of his circumstances worsens, until he is plucked out and given a position on the Underground. The complexity of the Underground was fascinating and Hiram's discomfort with his own place in the world was a great exploration on the limits of our own autonomy. Hiram escapes slavery but becomes beholden to the Underground because the very color of his skin puts him in peril.

I felt that the end of the book came a little abruptly given the unhurried cadence of the entire story. What happened to Hiram after the closing pages is something I've been wondering about for days even after finishing the story. Because the narration is done past tense, we know that Hiram grows to be old and live a long life, but he only hints at specifics and it's largely unknown what that long life entails. But perhaps not wanting the story to end is not such a bad way to end it. 

4/5 Stars

Kindred - Octavia Butler

I like a good time travel novel. Outlander and Time Traveler's Wife are two of my favorites. So for Black History Month, what better than Octavia Butler's famous time travel entry, Kindred. I listened to this one on audio and the narration was... not great. The narration made weakness in some of the dialogue obvious. And the narrator used the same voice for Rufus from when he was a inquisitive six year old through when he was a ruthless 25 year old man.

Had the narration not been off, I may have lent my own imaginative gravitas to some of the dialogue where it was lacking. The premise of the book is that Dana, an black women living in 1970s Los Angeles gets sucked back in time to 1810 to help her generations ago relative and white Maryland plantation owner who keeps almost dying, requiring her help.

Dana is married to a white man, Kevin, and when she pops back into her own time after being confronted with the barrel of a gun by Rufus' father, they both seem alarmed but also very casual about the fact that Dana just traveled back in time. It's a moment that is shockingly devoid of feeling. Perhaps we just don't know Dana well enough yet. She proves over the course of the book to be alarmingly practical even in the face of startling cruelty.

I understand the premise of the book is how easy it is to slip into they rhythms and requirements of slavery, even for someone who is so outside the experience, but Dana's tone and approach to the whole thing came off a little mechanical and more geared toward furthering the point rather than developing her own character.

As the relationship between Dana and Rufus changes over time as Rufus grows into his expected role and Dana continues to insist on her own independence, things become increasingly tense and the stakes for Dana become increasingly high.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and premise but it wasn't quite as good as it could have been.

3/5 Stars.

Washington Black - Esi Edugyan

I'm just going to say it now. This is the best book I will read in 2019. The moment I woke up after reading all night, I sent a note to my mom and sister - "Just finished this last night. It's exquisite."

Exquisite. I'm not sure I can think of a better word than that to describe Esi Edugyan's Washington Black. First, the writing is exquisite. This is about as tight as a novel can be written but still say so much. Words aren't wasted. Ordinary words line up in a sentence and become transformative. Here's some examples:

"You were children," his father said. "You knew nothing of beauty."
"Children know everything about beauty," Titch countered softly. "It is adults who have forgotten."

"In any case, it was then I recognized that my own values - the tenets I hold dear as an Englishman - they are not the only, nor the best, values in existence. I understood there were many ways of being in the world, that to privilege one rigid set of beliefs over another was to lose something." 

Goff gave a flustered grunt, shoving some boiled potatoes into his mouth, but I could see he was interested. "Such a thing is not possible." 
I peered quietly at him. "Nothing is possible, sir, until it is made so."

Point number two: The nuance is exquisite. These characters, they're complex without being unnecessarily so. There are strong positions on slavery and race, but it's not surface stuff. There is so much nuance - so much examination of the subtle violence of slavery and racism that accompany the obvious violence. 

Point number three: The timelessness of the story is exquisite. Yes, clearly this novel is set in the 1830s. It boldly displays that at the start of each section. And yet. And yet. I would sometimes completely forget that this was happening in a setting close on 200 years ago. All of a sudden a carriage would make its way through a city and I would be shocked to remember that this was all happening a long time ago. This shouldn't be possible when one of the characters is a former slave, and slavery is still a very much real part of the plot, but it just somehow was. George Washington Black, "Wash", was timeless in his character. Somehow. And that is just a very real mark of the artistry put in by Edugyan. 

So I could say many things about the plot. How 11 year old Wash is selected by Christopher Wilde to become his assistant while he toils around his brother's plantation. How Christopher, "Titch", is repulsed but also complacent in his brother's mistreatment of slaves on the land. How the brutality of slavery seeps into every page of the first part of the novel and beyond. How Wash has an opportunity to escape that life without truly understanding what this meant to be forever one part out and one part in. How a daring escape led to a discovery of what it fully means to be your own person. 

But this is really not a novel that can be described but has to be experienced. Because my heart still feels full of it and that's a rare gift.

5/5 Stars. 

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” - Zora Neale Hurston

This is a really hard book to review. Barracoon was initially written by Hurston in the 1930s based on interviews she conducted with Kossulo (renamed Cudjo Lewis following his freedom), abducted and forced onto the Clotilda, the last ship to carry enslaved people to the United States.

Hurston insisted on maintaining Kossulo's original dialect and vernacular, one of the reasons the piece was originally rejected for publication. In the afterward, many pages are devoted to analyzing a plagiarizing issue with Hurston's earlier articles about Kossulo, mainly that she lifted entire background passages from an un-cited work. Although not mentioned, this could also be problematic in getting this later work published. 

Kossulo's story is a sad and cruel one. A teenager in Africa, his tribe is attacked by another and he is sold into slavery in 1859, at a time when the international slave trade is supposed to be outlawed. The importing of enslaved peoples to America has been prohibited but three brothers and a ship captain have decided they will run the risk. Of course, they have no qualms about accepting enslaved peoples, but when they get to America, the market has become a little dry and the brothers and ship captain end up retaining most of their "cargo." 

Not much is said by Kossulo about the time he spent enslaved aside from the loading and unloading of river ships. He does recount the day he is told he is free. And it's a stark moment because there is no where to go and he's not quite sure what he should do. But he and some other men manage to work and save and buy some land together to make their own town. He eventually marries and has six children. 

And then, tragically, his six children are killed one by one. He also loses his wife and is left bereft and lonely in Africa Town, waiting, it seems, for someone to come and listen to his story and show an interest in the life he has led. And it is interesting, and devastating. There is little redemption in the story except to say that Kossulo persisted and tried to make a life for himself, but even a life after slavery was filled with hardship and loss. 

The story of Kossulo itself garners 4 stars. The forward pieces and afterward were long on words, but somehow short on information. What became of Kossulo? What else can be said about his family or Africa Town (Plateau, AL)? I think the style of non-fiction written by journalists has developed so much over the last almost 100 years, that this story is almost unrecognizable in its current format and it left me wanting so much more. 

So this story is so important because there are so few first hand narratives of actual enslaved people. And the Clotilda represents such a dark and reprehensible period of our country's history. But I wish there was more. I wish someone had advanced Hurston the capital and independence necessary to really get the whole of Kossulo's story.

4/5 Stars

Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi

I know! A two-fer day! I actually finished these on the same day but was super lazy about writing the reviews.

Homegoing was a gut-wrenching story of love and loss over generations. Effie and Essie are half-sisters, born several years and hundreds of miles apart in Ghana. Effie, the beautiful daughter of a powerful Fanti village man is married off to a British white slave trader after her step-mother cuts off her opportunity to marry the village chief. Essie, is equally beautiful and lives in an Ashanti village and after she takes pity on the slave girl working in her home - delivering a message to the girl's father - the village is raided and Essie is sold into slavery, right under the very feet of her sister.

We then follow the varying lines of their decedents. Effie to Quay to James to Abena to Akua to Yaw to Marjorie in Ghana. Essie to Ness to Kojo to H to Willie to Sonny to Marcus in America. These varying generations have their own struggles and heartbreaks. The American line of descendants is perhaps the hardest to bear because their struggles are not their own as slavery dominates the early generations and cripples the later.

The story explores what is possibly passed down from our ancestors and how do our lineages inform and lead us to who we will be.

Incredibly well written and extremely powerful, I am so glad to have read this book.

4/5 Stars.

The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead

Breathe. Just breathe and you may be able to get through some of the more difficult passages in Colson Whitehead's new novel, The Underground Railroad. I listened to the audio version of this book and closing my eyes to block out the words was not as effective as it can be with a written page. 

Whitehead's tale starts in Africa and arrives in America with Ajari (sorry, I listened so I have no idea how names are spelled). Ajari is the mother of Mabel, who is the mother of Cora, our central character. Cora, born into slavery on the Randall plantation in Georgia, is abandoned by Mabel when Cora is 10 years old. An outcast, she goes to live in a slave cabin with other outcasts - the lowest of the low of slave society. 

After a particularly brutal encounter, and trust me, the entire description of slave life on Randall is brutal even if it's just a hum in the background it's always present - she is approached by Caesar, a new slave on the Randall plantation. Caesar wants Cora to join him in running away, as her mother did. Cora agrees. And so we are finally introduced to The Underground Railroad. Not a metaphor in this book, an actual collection of railways and engines under the soil and ready to take Cora and Caesar north. 

The two fugitives head to South Carolina, which the railroad operator tells us has a more enlightened view towards colored advancement. In South Carolina, all the African Americans are owned by the government. They are given job placements and go to separate schools. In essence we have arrived in Jim Crowe times, where separate, but certainly not equal is the norm. Blacks are made to submit to recurring doctors visits where the medical staff offer sterilization to some, and mandate it to others. The medical staff also watches as a certain segment of the male black population descends further into syphilitic delirium. Is it better? Cora comes to understand that all of these efforts are just another form of slavery.

Cora is being chased by slave catcher Arnold Ridgeway, a blacksmith's son who found more power and status as a slave catcher than an honest trade. He makes it his mission to find Cora and return her to the Randall plantation and the particular cruelty of Terrence Randall. When Ridgeway appears in South Carolina, Cora goes on the move again, back to the tracks and on to North Carolina where the norm there is simply to eliminate all blacks from the state and any sympathetic whites. It's desolate and bleak and heartbreaking. 

It seems like this journey will never end for Cora, that each stop offers a different set of indignities. I've read a few reviews that felt like Cora was never fully developed. I don't agree. Cora is the center of the story. The looking glass through which we see America to its fullest potential for evil. She takes us with her to each new degradation and somehow allows us to continue to hope that each next stop will be better even through the very end. 

This book feels timely to me, as our national conversation for the past year has included such weighty topics as the Confederate flag, the building of the White House, and of course the all too frequent killing of unarmed black men and women by police. We can't afford to lose sight of where our country has come from if we really aim to move forward. A false narrative does nobody any good.

As important as the material is, I'd be remiss not to say that the prose itself is well written and engaging. I know some people took issue with the backstory chapters interspersed throughout the book, but I actually appreciated them, as they usually came just after the death of a minor character we never really got to know. Learning about their motivations after they disappear from the narrative rather than before had an interesting affect on the story. 

I can see why Oprah chose this book for her book club and I think it deserves all the accolades and success that are sure to follow.

5/5 Stars.