Book Review: Homegoing by Ya’a Gyasi (2018)

Review 2.14

How far back can you trace your ancestry? I can go back four generations on my mother’s side, to my great-grandmother whom I was lucky enough to know for twenty-five years before she passed. On my father’s side, I can go back only three generations to my grandfather, who fought on the side of the Allies during World War II and passed away when I was in high school. I imagine this is more or less normal. People can trace their ancestry back somewhere between three to five generations before the trail becomes difficult to follow. Of course you always have outliers, like the haughty New Englanders who can prove their ancestors came over on the Mayflower, but they are by far the exception rather than the rule.

How interesting would it be to know the full story? How did your family come to be your family? What strokes of luck and trials of fate determined their lives and hopes and happiness? At least I can say that my family came to the United States deliberately, in hopes of creating a better life for themselves and their families. This is part of my privilege.

Homegoing seeks to tell just one story among millions of people whose ancestors had had no say in their own futures, and were instead torn from their home countries and thrust into a life of labor on faraway shores. It also tells the story of those who stayed.

This debut novel by Ghanaian author Ya’a Gyasi will draw inevitable comparison to Alex Haley’s groundbreaking Roots. Both tell a generational story, one that stretches over four hundred years and the span of an ocean. Both highlight the injustices of slavery, and the constant backsliding struggle for former slaves to succeed under Jim Crow and segregation. The one huge difference is that while Roots focused solely on the lives of the slaves taken across the Atlantic,  Homegoing keeps half of its plot on the shores of Africa; and also tells the story of the changing political landscape of the region as it is torn apart and knitted back together again and again by war and colonization.

Gyasi does something else very striking with her novel. She acknowledges that the tribes of Africa were actively complicit in the slave trade. Warring tribes often kept captured rivals as slaves in their own villages, and they began selling these prisoners for a profit to the white slavers who came to the shores of the Gold Coast. Homegoing sugarcoats none of these unpleasant details, and presents its characters as flawed and fallible, and they are all the more memorable for their flaws and fallacies.

Every chapter of Homegoing is set from a different perspective in a different time period and setting, generally following the story of the previous character’s offspring. Gyasi shifts her narrative from one side of the Atlantic to the other, and tells the story of concurrent generations as they face the problems dealt either by being African or by being African-American. These stories are sometimes filled with sorrow, sometimes joy. Sometimes I would need a few pages to remember the characters from the previous “generation”, so that I could place myself in history.

If I read this novel again, I will begin by writing the two names of the supreme matriarchs of this generational tale, and draw a family tree as I explore the different members of this one very, very extended family.

My rating: 4.5/5

You can find Homegoing here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!

 

Book Review: Tangerine by Catherine Mangan (2018)

Book Review #42

1958: Tangier, Morocco. Twenty-year old Alice Shipley is trying and failing to adjust to life in Tangier with her new husband, John. Overwhelmed by the heat, dust, and foreign culture of the city, Alice hides herself away in their small apartment. At least until her old college roommate Lucy Mason turns up out of the blue. Alice is surprised and dismayed to see Lucy after an accident caused a rift in their friendship more than a year ago. However, Lucy is fearless and carefree in the face of Tangier, and Alice tries to convince herself that the company of an old friend is just what she needs to adjust to her new life.

This debut novel by author Christine Mangan contains some technical flaws that threatened to lose my interest in the opening few chapters. The use of foreshadowing is used as a blunt hammer with which to beat a reader over the head. The prose tends to be needlessly wordy, and the use of run-on sentences caused me to grit my teeth more than once. However, these are the small woes that plague English teachers. I found myself truly enjoying this novel once I settled into it.

The obsessive friendships between women seems to be a prevalent theme in modern literature. Shari Lapena’s A Stranger in the House, and Ruth Ware’s In a Dark Dark Wood are recent examples of novels that explore the labyrinths of female companionship, and how that connection can often lead into less desirable territory when one friend suspects that the other may not share her depth of feeling. I enjoyed Mangan’s novel far more than Lapena’s and about on par with Ware’s because Mangan employs a great flare for generating suspense and unease. The chapters switch back and forth between Alice’s perspective and Lucy’s, and due to a short but meaningful prologue we are aware that at least one of these narrators is unreliable. The fun is in trying to discover which one.

Mangan takes a different path from the aforementioned authors by putting her novel in a historical context. I confess to being only vaguely aware of the struggle of Morocco in the 1950’s to liberate itself from French occupation. Sadly, those wishing to learn more about this time in history may come away disappointed. I would love to have had more of the narrative to center around the political and social turmoil of Tangier during this period. The setting of Tangier is instead used as a two-dimensional backdrop for the central plot between Alice and Lucy. At no time did I ever feel the heat of the Moroccan sun, or hear the cries of the hawkers eager to take advantage of naive tourists coming on the ferry from Spain.

Overall, this was an admirable debut effort, and I look forward to the next novel by Christine Mangan.

My rating: 3/5

You can find Tangerine here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!

Book Review: Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala (2018)

Book Review #41

On the surface, Niru’s life seems to be one of privilege and advantage. The son of wealthy Nigerian immigrants, at eighteen he is a track star who has already been pre-approved to go to Harvard. However, Niru is ashamed to be hiding a deep secret from his parents. Only his best friend, Meredith, knows what he is keeping from the rest of the world. Niru is gay.

What follows is one of the worst “coming out” moments that could possibly happen to a young man. After his extremely conservative father sees a Grindr notification on his phone, all hell breaks loose. He beats Niru, and then forces him to travel to Nigeria in order to undergo a religious ceremony that will supposedly cleanse him of the demons that are causing these “unnatural” urges.

This novel by author Uzodinma Iweala is a short and brutal look into the fears and anxieties that continue to plague homosexual teens. Mainstream acceptance of gay rights have grown by leaps and bounds in the past ten years, and yet there are still thousands of children who cower in fear at the thought of their family or church community discovering that they are different from the “norm” in any way. Niru, the protagonist in Speak No Evil, has his fears compounded by the fact that he is African-American and a child of Nigerian parents, a country where homosexuality is still punishable by up to fourteen years in prison in the southern states and death by stoning in the north.

Iweala’s prose manages to be simultaneously poignant and gut-wrenching. I found myself rooting so strongly for poor Niru, and was disappointed and disturbed when it seemed that his chances for happiness were thwarted again and again by his family and his confusion towards his own sexual orientation. The chapters that are narrated by Meredith, are no less heartbreaking as she watches her dear friend spiral into depression and her own life ambitions begin to crumble.

“Sometimes I stare at the family that owns me and I wish I were a different person, with white skin and the ability to tell my mother and father, especially my father, to fuck off without consequence, and sometimes I stare at the white cards of Bible verses Reverend Olumide has gifted me and think that there is still a chance to change my ways.”

The only reason I cannot rate this novel higher is that I found Iweala’s writing style to be quite frustrating. He doesn’t use capital letters or quotation marks to indicate when a character is speaking. Because the novel is written almost as a stream-of-consciousness, this makes sense but I found myself confused and annoyed in turns when I could not figure out what words were being spoken aloud and which were taking place in Niru or Meredith’s mind. I must point out that the lack of quotation marks is a personal pet peeve of mine, one which will not necessarily detract from the anyone else’s enjoyment as they read this novel.

I would absolutely recommend this novel. Speak No Evil presents an unblinking look into racial and gender politics which left me haunted for days after finishing it.

My rating: 4/5

You can find Speak No Evil here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!

Book Review: Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor (2010)

Review #29

 

In post-apocalyptic Africa, there is an ongoing struggle between the light-skinned Nuru tribe and the darker-skinned Okeke tribe. The Nuru have taken many Okeke as slaves, and systematically go into the desert to rape Okeke women in the hopes of impregnating them. These children of rape are known as Ewu, and are despised as outcasts by both groups of people. One of these children is Onyesonwu, whose name means “Who Fears Death”. Early in life, Onyesonwu realizes that she is special. She has the powers of the Eshu, or the shapeshifter. With this knowledge, she seeks the training needed to hone her magic in the hopes of one day hunting down the man who raped her mother.

All of this sounds like the making of a pretty good magic realism novel. With this description, together with the amazing cover art, I was really looking forward to reading this book. But for some reason, Who Fears Death failed to capture my imagination. Part of it may be because I felt as though I were coming into a movie midway through. We are given next to no backstory about why modern systems of government have fallen. What began the conflict between the Nurus and the Okeke? There are constant references to the “Great Book” but more details are needed to understand the connection between this religious book and the current upheaval.

Another reason why I had difficulty maintaining my interest in the novel may have been that the main character has what I like to think of as “Superman syndrome”. Superman is the most boring superhero in existence because he is just too perfect, and his weaknesses are too easily overcome. I felt that same way about Onyesonwu. When the heroine can transform into animals, heal wounds, travel outside of her body, heat rocks without fire, and strike her enemies blind with a thought, there isn’t a lot of suspense. Do we ever truly doubt that Onyesonwu will fulfill her goal? She’s set up as a Jesus-like martyr from the beginning, but the reader is cheated of even that by the muddled ending.

Early in Okorafor’s novel, there is a graphic depiction of female circumcision. All of the female children in the village undergo this procedure without anesthesia at the age of eleven. They are expected to do this willingly or risk social ostracism. One thing that I will praise about Who Fears Death is its handling of this delicate subject matter. Upon discovery of her powers, one of Onyesonwu’s first act as a healer is to restore her own sexual pleasure. This reclaiming of her own sexuality is a powerful act, and its effects create ripples that echo throughout the rest of the novel.

Overall, I was disappointed by this novel. It seemed to be a fantastic premise that relied too much on having an all-powerful protagonist. And although there were aspects that I did enjoy, ultimately I kept finding myself checking to see how many pages were left until the end.

My rating: 2.5/5

You can find Who Fears Death here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!