Tag: novels set in new york

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘A Love Song for Ricki Wilde’ by Tia Williams

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams takes a supernatural direction when a florist falls for a man who is cursed to live forever. 

Ricki Wilde is the youngest daughter in a wealthy Atlanta family that takes their funeral business seriously. Except she loves floral design and uses that passion for the funerals and social media clout. Her sisters and her mother think it’s a crying shame that Ricki wants to play with flowers all day instead of taking leadership roles in the undertaking empire. She prepares a business plan for a flower shop, but it’s rejected. She wonders about her next move. One day, she comforts an elegantly dressed widow named Ms. Della. Upon hearing Ricki’s story, Ms. Della offers her the first story of her brownstone in Harlem. Since Ms. Della just lost her husband, she didn’t want to be entirely alone. The first story had been vacant for years, but it’s the perfect place for a flower shop.

In Harlem, Ricki opens her shop. She finds out that the brownstone was the site of a famous Harlem Renaissance nightclub. As she searches around the property, she sees a man her age who disappears mysteriously. She even notices the scent of night-blooming jasmine in February, which is unusual because it’s not the flower’s season. That’s also mysterious. While trying to unravel the mystery of the location, she needs to keep her business afloat. Via Instagram, she highlights different flowers at different locations throughout the neighborhood to boost business. Her heightened visibility leads her to find the mysterious man. 

Ezra Walker has been looking for Ricki forever. And Ricki feels a supernatural pull to Ezra. She has tea parties with Ms. Della upstairs and confides in her celebrity friend, Tuesday Rowe, about her newfound love interest. Ricki learns more about Ezra as she falls deeper in love with him. But he has a secret. He’s a perennial. Not the plant that returns every year, but a person who has been cursed with immortal life. Once upon a time, Ezra was an up-and-coming pianist during the Harlem Renaissance who escaped the segregated South after his family was killed by Jim Crow terrorism. He was cursed by a dancer at the nightclub that used to be housed in Ricki’s brownstone. The only woman who could break his curse is Ricki. Ezra had been writing a song for nearly a century that he could only play for Ricki. If they are still together by Leap Day, then Ricki will be cursed with immortal life as well.

The author loves to weave pop culture references into her stories, and this story doesn’t disappoint. It also seemed like she had been pressured by an industry that loves romantasy to inject that magic into a modern-day love story, and it works seamlessly. The fantasy sprinkled into the romance doesn’t overtake the story despite the plot leaning more toward fantasy. The groundedness in reality is still strong. The term “perennial” for an immortal person also seems to be up for debate as a flowerlike word choice by the author, instead of an official dictionary definition. 

Another aspect of the romantasy is the historical element of the Harlem Renaissance and its documented and undocumented culture. Stories still emerge about the 1920s era, where African American society flourished in New York City. The story is set in a brownstone that was a nightclub where sultry sin and artistic influence occurred inside and outside its walls. The setting remains a century-old dream for many people like Ricki and Ms. Della, who develop an intergenerational friendship that supports each other in their transitions, as Ricki finds love after leaving home and starting a business, and Ms. Della finds love after the death of her husband. Harlem feels like a magical place all on its own. 

Overall, the love story stretches over pages with positive energy, though the ending is likely predictable for readers who know to expect the happily ever after by dissecting every character’s relationship with each other. 

Categories
film reviews

‘The Perfect Find’ Amplifies the Heart of Tia Williams’ Romance Novel

Gabrielle Union and Keith Powers in "The Perfect Find."
Gabrielle Union and Keith Powers in "The Perfect Find." Image: Alyssa Longchamp/Netflix

⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Watch the film on Netflix.

Gabrielle Union, Keith Powers, and Gina Torres add star power to the fashion-centric romantic comedy The Perfect Find based on Tia Williams’ 2016 novel. Though the film follows the storyline on pages, there are still a few touches that brought the so-called unconventional love story to life onscreen. 

Jenna Jones, played by Gabrielle, is an out-of-work fashion editor still recovering from the unraveling of a 10-year relationship with millionaire entrepreneur Brian, played by the debonair D.B. Woodside. In the beginning of the story, we see Jenna floundering at her mother’s house, avoiding New York City like a plague. Her mother, played by Janet Hubert for too short of an appearance, tells Jenna she needs to go back to her life in the city. Her romantic downfall that led to her career derailment has to be on everyone’s mind since it’s still on hers.

In less than five minutes in the film, Jenna returns to her Brooklyn apartment with a chic bob and designer attire in tow. And now that she’s back at home, she needs a night out with the girls, played by Aisha Hinds and Alani “La La” Anthony. They head to a fancy party in Harlem looking for an innocent one-night stand. When Jenna feels like she ran out of luck, she falls tipsily into the arms of a younger man. They kiss, but the kiss is too much for Jenna, who finds the man’s youthful age too ridiculous to take seriously.

Bright and early the next day, she finds herself slightly humiliated in the office of her corporate archnemesis, Darcy Hill, played by Gina. Darcy laughs at the fact that Jenna has to grovel for a job when Jenna allegedly stole her jobs in the past. The competitive world of fashion journalism was a losing game for Darcy until she built her own namesake media empire at Darzine. Jenna earns the job with the expectation to produce multimedia pieces to increase digital subscriptions. Darcy assigns her twenty-something son and photographer Eric to work with Jenna to come up with these pieces. Except Eric happens to be the much-younger man Jenna was kissing the night before. 

Jenna tells Eric that they can’t develop a relationship despite their natural magnetism. They even bond over vintage Black Hollywood films, thanks to the poster of starlet Nina Mae McKinney displayed in Jenna’s office. Eric is Jenna’s boss’ son. The relationship is not only unprofessional but could make Jenna the laughingstock of Black New York again with another misstep in love. When the girls try to hook Jenna up with a blind date, Jenna decides to throw a dinner party to ease the nervousness. She even invites Eric and tells him to bring friends. The more the merrier. At the party, nerves are high as Jenna realizes the blind date is not a match. So, Eric becomes a match with his cuteness and conversation. And a secret relationship between coworkers blossom. 

Intimacy builds between the couple until Darcy warns Jenna to stay away from Eric romantically because she has her suspicions. Jenna disobeys that order while Eric is demanding to emerge as a public boyfriend, and not a private lover. But the volcano of secret love erupts when Darcy catches Jenna consorting inappropriately with her grown son on her cerise velvet sofa. The argument leads to Jenna being fired and Eric being upset about Jenna not telling him that his mother had an instinct about the romance. 

Months pass by. It’s Christmastime. Eric is working on the documentary he always wanted to do on his murdered father Otis. Jenna reaches out to Eric. They arrange to meet at a late-night diner. What Eric believes is a simple catch-up turns out to be a surprise from Jenna with a sonogram. She’s pregnant. Eric being in his early twenties and figuring out his path in cinema make him ask for space. Darcy soon pays a visit to Jenna. Not only did Jenna date Darcy’s son, but she got pregnant by him, too? It’s a lot, but Darcy recalls when she was a first-time mother and vows to support Jenna as a grandmother. 

After accepting paternity, Eric surprises Jenna at a doctor’s appointment. He confesses he still loves Jenna and invites her to the Darzine gala. The film ends with Jenna rubbing her pregnant belly alongside Eric on the red carpet. Their relationship is public, and the family Jenna always wanted is a dream come true. 

The décor and fashion alone are two reasons to put your feet up and sink into the sofa with a bowl of popcorn and a glass of wine. Designs meant to leave you awestruck include the first time Jenna meets Darcy at the office. Jenna wears a pink cape by Nina Ricci with Stella McCartney pink silk pants, while Darcy stuns in a multicolored Manish Arora coat. Even author Tia models in the photoshoot as a glam disco geisha queen and on the red carpet in a gold sequin dress. More fashionable cameos include Remy Ma, Winnie Harlow, and Dwyane Wade, Gabrielle’s real-life husband. Jenna’s office is supposed to be a cluttered dump, but in its original iteration we see leopard and zebra print wallpaper, racks full of silky frocks, and fully dressed mannequins sitting on file cabinets. This is just motivation to create a Pinterest board for the jaw-dropping home office. 

“I really wanted to see Gabrielle in a palette that I hadn’t seen her in very much in other films, a more pastel-toned palette,” said director Numa Perrier to Netflix’s blog Tudum. “When it came to Darcy — Gina Torres being such an iconic woman — we wanted to dress her to the nines. We wanted her to just be an absolute New York fashion woman who’s bold and unapologetic and takes up all the space in the room.”

One major plot adjustment is the unplanned pregnancy. In the book, Jenna and Eric don’t see each other until four years after the firing and the breakup. They spot each other at the park as Jenna watches her son Otis play and drinks a latte with Billie, the main character of Tia’s 2004 debut novel The Accidental Diva. Jenna reveals that Otis is Eric’s son and explains she kept her pregnancy a secret because she didn’t want to interfere with Eric’s budding film career. The screenplay written by Spelman College alumna Leigh Davenport, also the creator of Run the World on Starz, features the pregnancy as another plot twist at the end. With Gabrielle’s real-life fertility struggles, the moments feel more heartwarming. 

Another noticeable difference is that Brian is Black in the film while he’s described as a “Jewish Adonis” in the book. And Darzine in the film is StyleZine in the book with that only being one of Darcy’s nine online women’s magazines. The must-see film is a soothing adaptation of a book that was first indie-published by Brown Girls Books and reprinted by Grand Central Publishing after the runaway success of Tia’s third adult novel Seven Days in June. 

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Juliet Takes a Breath’ by Gabby Rivera

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera is a coming-of-age novel that has been miscategorized in the young adult genre since it focuses on a college student on an unconventional ride to self-acceptance.

Juliet Palante is discovering herself. On summer break from college, she’s at home in the Bronx about to embark on a journey to Portland, Oregon, to serve as an assistant to a feminist writer. But before she leaves, Juliet notices her sorta girlfriend Lainie has doubts about their relationship while she’s deciding how to come out to her family. She tells her family that she’s a lesbian at the dinner before her flight to Portland. The aftermath makes her look forward to Portland, where she lives with her new boss, Harlowe Brisbane. Once she’s inside Harlowe’s home, she’s quickly learning about the preference of pronouns to the range of sexuality. Where does she belong? Especially as a Latina in the very White-centered world of Portland. Her race, ethnicity, and culture intertwine with her sexual orientation as she meets young women like herself who seem so sure of who they are. 

As far as we know, this book has been banned by at least one school district. First of all, the book is about a college student. That’s the “new adult” genre that the book publishing industry barely uses. The new adult genre is supposed to be for readers between the ages of 18 to 30, but many of these books are still classified as either young adult or adult. The issue is this book has been categorized as a young adult novel, meaning it’s for youth between the ages of 12 to 18, but the material, especially to a parent or a teacher, is definitely not for that age group when it comes to literature. And the age of eighteen is overlapping between the YA and NA genres, so when the protagonist is in that age group, it gets even murkier on how the book should be marketed. 

Right off the bat, the book’s inside flap calls Juliet a “self-proclaimed closeted Puerto Rican baby dyke.” The d-word is usually an offensive word, though it may be embraced by some lesbians like the author and the character. Harlowe writes about women’s bodies and is known around town as the “pussy book lady.” When Juliet wakes up on her first morning at Harlowe’s home, she comes face-to-face with a naked man. Harlowe reminds the naked man, her friend Phen, that he must ask Juliet if she’s OK with his nakedness. Confused, Juliet says yes. But the reader knows Juliet and any other young woman in that predicament would be uncomfortable to find a strange, naked man in the home of someone who’s supposed to be caring for them. The scene is small but can be confusing for the average maturing teenage girl who most likely was taught to stay away from naked men they do not know and depend on their supervising adult to prioritize their safety and comfort. The book has numerous parentless, college-girl adventures, which again can be viewed as inappropriate by high school administrators and parents, because that’s another life when you cross the eighteen-year age threshold and wander into the real world on your own. 

On the other end of the spectrum, there are girls, boys, and nonbinary teens who yearn to read a book like this to see how their worlds can open up after high school, either in college and/or in the real world off campus. Meeting characters like Juliet and Harlowe through the pages may inspire them to craft their own journeys like venturing off to an unknown place, exploring their identity and creativity, or looking for their communities of support that may not be visible where they are in their guardians’ home and at a high school where books featuring queer teens can be banned. 

Overall, the book is entertaining with showing the White cultural mecca Portland has become over the years and juxtaposing that setting with a queer Latina character’s Bronx-driven culture as she comes to terms with who she wants to be. 

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Detransition, Baby’ by Torrey Peters

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters explores the complexities of parenthood between two women and a man who unite in an effort to take care of a baby, but the closer they get, the more they convince themselves they’re making a mistake. 

Reese always wanted to be a mother. In fact, she acts as a mother figure in the New York City transgender community, taking in young trans women who remind her of herself when she first came to the city from the Midwest. Upon her arrival, she quickly became a go-to caretaker for children on the Upper East Side. She has the natural gift of taking care of others. One of the trans women she had taken under her wing was Amy, who returns in her life in a form she’s unfamiliar with. 

Ames is a marketing executive having a sultry fling with his recently divorced boss, Katrina. They soon realize they are expecting a baby. Katrina had a miscarriage during her marriage, so she’s nervous about the pregnancy. She’s also at the top of her game at work, and she’s unsure how a baby she’s having with a subordinate fits into her career plan post-divorce. Ames can’t believe he even impregnated a woman, but now that he has, he suggests bringing in an old friend to help parent the baby. 

When Reese sees Amy again, Amy is now known as Ames. Amy detransitioned from a trans woman back to a biological man. Ames explains how he thought years of taking hormones to live as a female would decrease his fertility. But now that a baby is coming, Ames wants to tap Reese to be a secondary mother and assist Katrina to raise the child. Reese always wanted to be a mother, and she feels her chances were dashed when she and Amy broke up. Now, who Reese still can’t believe is the Amy she used to love is offering the opportunity of motherhood.

Skeptical of the idea of becoming a mother by playing a third parent in raising another woman’s baby, Reese starts hanging out with Ames and Katrina to see if she can get onboard with the proposal. Katrina has questions and misconceptions of how Reese lives as a trans woman and how Ames lived as a trans woman. The clashes melt away once Reese and Katrina realize they are simply women who want to be mothers. It takes a village to raise a child. But when Katrina realizes why Reese and Amy broke up, she starts to rethink the concept of letting Reese play a mother and herself become a mother.

This is an eye-opening novel exploring a part of the New York City trans community rarely seen in mainstream media. Reports say that this book is one of the firsts written by a trans author to be distributed by a “big five” publisher. It’s refreshing to learn about how these fictional trans women feel they are competing with biological women to demonstrate their femaleness, including their capability and desire to become mothers. The author, who is a trans woman, spent time in the community to nail down the intricacies of the characters, their backgrounds, and their desires. 

The spectrum of characters represent different people who interact in the community. There is the trans person, the former trans person, and the cisgender, heterosexual person fighting their biases to accept someone they actually meet in real life who is trans. For Reese, her sex life is complicated with having committed lovers and secret lovers. The emotional struggle of identifying as female in a world that deidentifies her as not female makes her feel like she could never commit to a monogamous relationship long enough to raise a child with someone. For Ames, he detransitions soon after ending his relationship with Reese but still struggles on pinpointing what made him want to live as male again, especially when Reese pushes for answers. For Katrina, she is wrapping her brain around the fact she is having a baby with someone she didn’t know had lived as a woman for years, but her open-mindedness forces her to shake the anger and accept the perceived affection she’s receiving from Ames and now Reese. 

Overall, this novel again shows a community rarely magnified in the literary world. Pushing the boundaries that women who have penises also have desires to be mothers, and though it could be difficult to produce that child biologically depending on the partner, they will make a way to be mothers. Humankind, regardless of identities and circumstances, wants love, and this story shows the road for these characters finding that love unexpectedly with each other, though their inner demons try to destroy what they have. By the way, a TV series adaptation is in the works.

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Dominicana’ by Angie Cruz

Dominicana by Angie Cruz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Read more book reviews like this on my blog shelit.com

Dominicana by Angie Cruz is a coming-of-age literary fiction novel about a Dominican girl in the 1960s who’s forced into a marriage to get her chance to live in the United States, but the American dream comes with more sacrifices than she expected.

Ana Canción is growing into her own. She loves her family composed of her parents, three siblings, and two cousins, and helps them on their dying farm in the Los Guayacanes area of the Dominican Republic. Except her family needs to sell some land to the entrepreneurial Ruiz brothers, who mostly live in New York City. Ana’s mother convinces Ana to marry middle brother Juan to seal the business deal and have an opportunity to live in the U.S. As the obedient daughter who witnessed her older sister Teresa suffer the downfall of having a child with a no-good man, Ana says yes to a marriage proposal that’s been on the table since she was eleven years old, even though she’s falling for Gabriel, her first crush:

One kiss and suddenly I’m una mujer. Not a niña or jovencita but a woman. I touch the mirror to understand how it happened without warning, but with the hot-pink dress on, the girl who had never been kissed is gone. I am Ana, about to be married and to travel to America. Juan Ruiz is expected before noon.

On the way to New York, Juan buys Ana a ceramic doll at the airport she calls Dominicana. By the time they get to their apartment in Manhattan on 168th Street and Broadway, Ana realizes that the doll is the only constant. Juan works most of the day in the garment business and comes home smelling like another woman’s perfume. He becomes violent when Ana isn’t the perfect homemaker, always cooking, cleaning, helping with Juan’s side hustle, and staying home as an undocumented immigrant who doesn’t know English. Juan’s side hustle is selling men’s suits out of their apartment. Ana figures out a way to overcharge and keep some of the profits for herself, hidden in Dominicana. But upon expanding her world, she loses her money and feels desperate about starting over again.

To make matters worse, Ana discovers she’s pregnant. She needs her own money. Juan’s younger brother César comes to her rescue. While Juan sorts out business affairs in the Dominican Republic, César, who also works all day and comes home smelling like another woman’s perfume, takes it upon himself to be the husband he knows Ana doesn’t have. They form a bond that seems indestructible until Juan returns home.

Every detail of a regular life juts out in a way that’s still interesting in this historical fiction novel reflecting the journeys of Dominican women coming to the United States in the 1960s when the island was on the brink of civil war. Seeing the world unfold from her window, Ana even witnesses Malcolm X’s assassination at the Audubon Ballroom next to her building.

It’s a snapshot of immigrant life in American history that’s rarely told in American literature. The story follows a pattern from other novels such as Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, which takes place in London with a woman from Bangladesh brought there by a much older husband, of the teen bride-turned-housewife dedicated to serving the husband who works all day while she doesn’t get the love she deserves until she finds it elsewhere. But the story also features domestic violence and rape as Ana is fifteen and Juan thirty-two, more than double her age. Ana feels stuck in a new country and in a promise to financially support her family. The weight is heavy of being the chosen daughter of a poor family from a poor country where she has the chance to make life easier for everyone by sacrificing herself for the cause.

Overall, the reader sees Ana’s growth from shy teenage girl to determined mother-to-be looking for ways to escape her marriage without causing harm to her family. Throughout the book, Ana thinks about her family as tragedy strikes amid her home country sinking into war. Her dedication to her family is strong as she depends on one Ruiz brother to save her from another.

View all my reviews

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Clap When You Land’ by Elizabeth Acevedo

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo explores how a father’s dual life impacts two daughters with two different identities who have to unify as one to move forward past tragedy.

Camino Rios and Yahaira Rios are half-sisters, but they don’t know about each other until their father dies in an airplane crash flying to the Dominican Republic like he always does for the summer.

Camino, who lives on the island, is devastated, especially since she had lost her mother years before to illness. Her best friend, Carline, is occupied with her boyfriend and their impending baby. Camino’s aunt, Tia Solana, takes care of her and the community as a healer. With hopeless New York City university dreams, Camino throws herself into training to become a healer, so she can follow in her aunt’s footsteps and assist her friend.

Yahaira lives on an island, too. Born and raised in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, she was a promising chess player until she found out her father’s secret. As the secret eats her alive, she faces her father’s untimely death and leans on her girlfriend, Dre.

The closer it gets to burying their father, the more secrets Camino and Yahaira’s extended family reveal, including about each other. Chatting via social media, they try to accept each other in their grief and unite to make sure their father receives the proper burial.

This is so far one of the top young adult novels in verse. Another competitor is Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi, who is also Dominican, and Dr. Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five. Novels in verse are becoming more popular in YA literature, but it’s difficult to deepen characters and storylines when writing long poems in the form of chapters. But Elizabeth Acevedo―an awardee for her previous two YA novels, The Poet X, and With the Fire on High, does an excellent job of navigating two separate lives handling unexpected grief. She says she was inspired by the real-life crash of American Airlines Flight 587, where most of the passengers had ties to the Dominican Republic and traveled back and forth from New York. Since it occurred weeks after 9/11 and had no ties to terrorism, the tragedy lost steam in American media as the Dominican community stateside continued to grieve. The loss of a parent hits the two characters but so do the lies that their father kept. The trauma and betrayal are spelled out in the pages as we get to know Camino and Yahaira more, especially when they are roaming through their own labyrinths of confusion.

Overall, the portrayal of two sisters interpreting their father’s fate miles apart from each other without knowing each other elevates the emotions in this novel. The gravity of the situation also feels authentic as the main characters try to figure out what’s next for them at a time when they are preparing to enter the real world.




View all my reviews

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Seven Days in June’ by Tia Williams

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Seven Days in June by Tia Williams follows two best-selling authors who reunite on the New York literati circuit years after a high school fling that left them scarred. It’s a sophisticated romance still accompanied by a happily ever after.

Manhattanite single mom Eva Mercy is a former best-selling novelist whose Black vampire romance series à la Twilight still excites fans via the interwebs. By chance, an author drops out of a panel event, and Eva gets the last-minute invitation to fill the spot. That’s where she sees fellow, still-successful best-selling novelist Shane Hall, a mysterious intellectual who makes women and men alike swoon. Eva tries not to swoon because it turns out she and Shane went to high school once in D.C. and spent a week of debauchery in a mansion during their senior year. They meet up for a day in New York where the deep-rooted chemistry overtakes them. The day blends into another one and another where they start catching up about what went wrong when they were teenagers. Eva thinks Shane, who was a foster child and drug dealer at the time, abandoned her at her lowest point, but she learns that another force divided them. As they try to rekindle what they had as adults, Eva and Shane must combat their demons to accept the love that was severed so many years ago.

This is Tia Williams’ most complex work yet. Known for centering her novels on Black women in New York working in media, the author adds more layers to Eva’s character and Shane’s character not common in a lot of women’s fiction and romance novels. In adolescence, the main characters are dealing with substance abuse, self-harm, unstable homes, and missing parents. In adulthood, the age-old traumas return with them realizing how reflective their behaviors are when they interact with each other and the kids in their lives like Eva’s Gen Z daughter Audre and Shane’s mentee Ty. The character and storyline complexity blends well with the ubiquitous pop culture references the author loves to add to her novels.

Also, this is the first novel the author makes her main character an author as well when her previous novels’ main characters are beauty and fashion editors like her former day job life. Switching up the career choice also shows more depth with Eva translating her healing process through her books and Shane doing the same with his. Another element of the novel is Eva living with her invisible disability of suffering from debilitating migraines that worsen with barometric pressure. This also reflects the author’s life. She has given this trait to her first novel’s main character from The Accidental Diva, but this time around in Seven Days in June she makes Eva feel the everyday pain and impact and gives Audre the fear of seeing her mother chronically ill. The migraines also contribute to Eva’s writer’s block and how she’s struggling to deliver the 15th book of her famous series that is getting the film treatment with some hiccups along the way.

Overall, this novel is an excellent summer beach read that’s definitely a page-turner the deeper you get into the book. Tia Williams’ last novel from 2016, The Perfect Find, is in production with Gabrielle Union for Netflix. This novel also has silver-screen potential, especially with the book-to-film subplot that brings up diversity and inclusion in Hollywood projects.



View all my reviews

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Caul Baby’ by Morgan Jerkins

Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins explores the relationships between women in two families intertwined by a broken promise that haunts a community over the alleged power of the caul.

Set in Harlem, the novel introduces us first to Laila, a Black woman who seems to have it all in her perfect brownstone where she lives with her perfect husband. But she can’t carry a baby to term, her miscarriages becoming the talk of the town. Then one day, she’s pregnant again but constantly worries about losing the baby. A man at her church named Landon approaches her about the opportunity to make sure her baby will be born alive and full term. Landon, who happens to be Laila’s niece Amara’s godfather, seems to be someone who can be trusted. He offers Laila a piece of caul, a rare layer of skin purported to have protecting powers. Laila ponders about buying the caul for her unborn child when she meets Josephine, a clerk at the convenience store. She sees Josephine get a paper cut and instantly heal with the caul she tries to hide. This magnetizes Laila to Josephine Melancon, who also says she’s had a history of miscarriages. Once Laila decides to buy the caul, Landon says the deal is off. This drives Laila to insanity as she loses her baby.

Laila ends up losing her husband and her home and lives with her sister Denise. Denise’s daughter, Columbia University student Amara, sees her aunt Laila unable to recover from the breakdown. The attention on Laila saves Amara, who is keeping her own pregnancy a secret. When she meets her godfather Landon at the church, Amara falls but rebounds. Landon notices this power and the pregnancy and offers Amara a place to hide out. Amara stays with Landon and his family until she gives birth to a girl named Hallow. Born with a caul, Hallow is raised by Landon and his mistress Josephine and is groomed to continue the profitable Melancon family business of selling caul to wealthy White people and denying caul to the Black people in their community.

Years later, Amara is preparing for a run as district attorney, but what the Melancons did to her family still gnaws at her. Laila’s tragedy becomes her driving force to be a successful lawyer, and she feels she finally found the legal solution with shutting down the Melancons’ caul-selling empire. In the back of her mind, she’s also thinking of the daughter she gave up and wondering what happened to her.

The novel is centered on the folklore of caul and how it would be sold through centuries to people who sought protection from danger. It also blends in family, fertility, race, class, and gentrification, spanning over 20 years in an evolving Harlem. Female-centered families anchor the story with most of the focus on the Melancons with matriarch Maman, oldest daughter Josephine, and youngest daughter Iris, who also lost her mind from having to be cut for her caul to protect anyone who pays for it. Iris’ daughter Helena had an accident as a child making her unfit to donate caul, which makes her an unruly companion to Hallow, who’s considered the perfect caulbearer. Josephine also feels stuck in the business but sees her affair with Landon as a way out. As the Black residents of Harlem see a mysterious family in the brownstone, the Melancons inside are in constant conflict about the business they refuse to share with the community because the community cannot afford the caul services. If one has the remedy, then why not share it with your community? That’s the question that plagues the outside where residents like Laila and Amara have a vendetta against the Melancons.

Overall, the first novel from journalist and nonfiction author Morgan Jerkins is a smooth literary fiction read that takes an element of magical realism and mixes it with the changing times around race and gentrification.




View all my reviews

Categories
what's lit

‘The Vanishing Half’ Highlights Racial Passing Along with Previous Well-Known Novels

Perched on The New York Times Best Sellers list for the past four weeks with an HBO miniseries in the works, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is the anti-racism novel we need right now as the country grips with another tide of facing race relations.

The Vanishing Half, a novel in the 350-page range in the hardcover format, follows light-skinned Black twin sisters as they run away from their unique Louisiana town with only people of their complexions to New Orleans in the 1950s. As they adjust to their new lives, one twin disappears without a trace to pass as White to marry her White boss while the other one returns home after her abusive marriage to a dark-skinned Black man.

The colorism conversation when it comes to “passing”—when someone decides to disguise themselves in another race or ethnicity for a better quality of life—has been seen in previous books from decades prior when the act was practiced more often.

Passing was more common in the early 20th century amid the Great Migration and European immigration defining the big cities. Mostly when passing is mentioned, it’s in reference to Blacks with complexions light enough to pass as White, but European immigrants also practiced this with some considered to have darker skin like Italians passing for Jews, Jews passing for Gentiles, Poles passing for Germans, and Whites passing for Blacks, according to Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature by Werner Sollors.

At the end of The Vanishing Half, Brit says she was inspired by Imitation of Life, more the 1959 film rather than the 1933 novel it was based on by White Jewish author Fannie Hurst, who came under fire at the time for stereotypical presentations of the Black mother character as a Mammy figure and her light-skinned daughter as a tragic mulatta passing as White. Culturally, it’s become a cinematic classic with Black mothers using the film as a cautionary tale for their Black daughters to not neglect their matriarchs under any circumstances, especially for White privilege.

During the Harlem Renaissance, Fannie also was a secretary for now-celebrated author Zora Neale Hurston while famed poet Langston Hughes created a satire play of Imitation of Life that reversed the roles with a Black family and a White maid. For insight on the tumultuous friendship of Zora and Langston mainly due to their relationships with others in the movement and their disagreements about their plays, check out Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal by Yuval Taylor.

The practice of passing has left holes in Black families since the end of slavery, and it’s a topic that’s still relevant today as people may or may not defend their ethnicities based on their looks. Nella Larsen, a biracial author from the Harlem Renaissance wrote a 1929 novel called Passing, a tale about two Black childhood friends in 1920s New York who are both light-skinned enough to pass as White. One woman does pass while the other stays in the Black community, similar to The Vanishing Half. Starring actresses Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, Passing will be a film set for release this year, according to IMDb.

Nella, a daughter of a Danish woman and a Danish West Indian man, was considered a rising star in the Harlem Renaissance with Passing and her only other novel Quicksand. After becoming the first Black woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship that she used for an artistic journey through Europe, she returned to New York and her nursing career, shedding her novelist life. With growing up in an all-White family after her father died and her mother remarried, her novels are considered semi-autobiographical.

The Passing film’s directors, Deborah Riley Draper and Jennifer Galvin, are also developing a TV series on the book described as “Downton Abbey meets Get Out.” And with The Vanishing Half also being turned into a miniseries for TV, stories on the history of racial passing, particularly for Black women, may gain more attention.

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo’ by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn HugoThe Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“This is not low-stakes for Evelyn. Evelyn can speak casually about things of great importance. But right now, in this moment, when she is taking so much time to make such specific points, I’m realizing this is real. This is happening. She really intends to tell me her life story―a story that no doubt includes the gritty truths behind her career and her marriages and her image. That’s an incredibly vulnerable position she’s putting herself in. It’s a lot of power she’s giving me. I don’t know why she’s giving it to me.”

“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” by Taylor Jenkins Reid follows the life of a fictional Hollywood siren and the trials and tribulations she experiences in the spotlight during each of her seven marriages. It’s a fascinating page-turner, luring the reader through all the secrets Evelyn holds.

Evelyn Hugo, now almost in her 80s, paints her life without the rose-colored glasses, admitting how hungry she was for the fame and how the fame informed the decisions that will follow her for the rest of her life. This is what struggling journalist Monique learns as she’s chosen by Evelyn to tell her life story, not the article she thought she would be writing for her magazine. As Monique tries to figure out why she’s documenting Evelyn’s life inside the actress’ Upper East Side home, she begins interlacing the stories from Evelyn into her own life, taking her thoughts off her impending divorce. Once they reach the end, Monique learns why Evelyn picked her and the revelation sets her in a tailspin of emotion.

Evelyn jumps into every marriage to seek higher fame or to hide behind her true feelings. She peels back each marriage like an onion. It’s one of the best books to read because the author uses the classic story development technique with building up tension where you want to read the next chapter. One example is the titles of the parts about each husband, including “Brilliant, Kindhearted, Tortured Harry Cameron” and “Goddamn Don Adler.” The reader is intrigued by the titles to learn why each husband gets that particular description up-front. Also, the reason Evelyn requests Monique to be her biographer pops up continuously as we learn more about the many moments of her many successes and comebacks in the entertainment industry while donning her signature emerald green.

Overall, the book reads like a True Hollywood Story with going behind the scenes of the tabloid fodder―inserts in between chapters―making the book delicious and heartwarming.

View all my reviews

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Red at the Bone’ by Jacqueline Woodson

…she had to take slow breaths to calm herself. She felt red at the bone―like there was something inside of her undone and bleeding.

“Red at the Bone” by Jacqueline Woodson tells the story of three generations of two families united by an unexpected pregnancy. The poetic flow distracts the reader from the disorganization of each characters’ stories, but it’s an effortless read that creates a memorable world between the characters and their situations.

The story opens up to Melody, on her sixteenth birthday, wearing her mother’s dress at her party. Her mother, Iris, never wore it because, at that tender age, she and her boyfriend Aubrey discover they will be having baby Melody. The pages go through the growing pains of their parents—Iris’ Spelhouse-coupled mother and father and Aubrey’s single mother—stretching beyond their limits to accept the baby. Then we see how Iris and Aubrey grow apart with Aubrey raising Melody and Iris heading off to college to start over. Iris and Aubrey have to decide on how they want to live their lives after having Melody and maturing into adulthood.

The author does a great job of chopping up the story in digestible pieces with short chapters and very short paragraphs but simultaneously making the character’s mark known without starting with his/her name. The story grows yet it picks up in various places with Iris, for example, in college then the next succeeding chapter can be her back in time dealing with her pregnancy or even before Melody.

It’s a nice and succinct read that incorporates black culture like Iris’ parents graduating from Spelman College and Morehouse College and history with her great-grandmother surviving the Tulsa race massacre. The story takes place in the not-so-distant past in 2001 New York City. Overall, the book covers a lot of ground chronicling a family that comes together for a child.

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Farm’ by Joanne Ramos

The Farm by Joanne Ramos
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“The Farm” by Joanne Ramos is a suspenseful novel around surrogates impregnated by embryos belonging to the uber-rich confined to a farm in upstate New York. But the main character feels she’s being deceived by the farm’s staff and comes to the conclusion her presence there may mean something more sinister.

Jane is a young mother who’s living in a dormitory in New York mostly with other Filipina women, including her cousin Ate. They both take care of 6-month-old Amalia to the best of their abilities with their surroundings. But Ate is a well-known baby nurse constantly recommended for her newborn sleeping method. She’s able to connect Jane with a job with a family, but Jane ruins that opportunity with her motherly instincts. So Ate suggests Jane should be a surrogate mother at this resort called Golden Oaks, where she will receive a bonus for delivering a healthy baby for a very rich family. Jane leaves Amalia in Ate’s care as she embarks to the resort for 9 months. At Golden Oaks, ambitious Mae is running the resort as it’s still in its trial run with the investment of an aging Chinese billionaire, so she’s gentle with Jane, which makes Jane question if she’s carrying the billionaire’s baby. But Mae’s forced kindness is part of the system, Jane learns from her newfound friends, Lisa, who’s in her third surrogate pregnancy at Golden Oaks, and Reagan, also a first-timer who comes from money but wants her own independence for her art career. As Jane confides in her new friends, she finds herself getting in trouble and risking her future paycheck. She tries to lay low until she senses something is wrong with Amalia. Then she is desperate to leave the premises and see her daughter.

This novel does an excellent job with mild suspense as in it plays on motherly instincts and how they can be tested and what a mother would do if she gets a read on a situation.

It also shows the plight of many immigrant women who find work in baby nursing, cleaning, and other jobs as servants of rich families. This story focuses on the Filipina community in New York. Jane arrived in the U.S. when she was a teenager only to live with her mother in California who let relationships with men run her life. When Jane later leaves her husband Billy with Amalia in tow, the only person she can rely on is her older cousin, Ate aka Evelyn, who despite experiencing success in the Manhattan baby circuit still lives in a dormitory with other Filipinas struggling to find steady work since she sends her money to her four grown children in the Philippines, including a disabled son.

Class is another issue. While Jane and Ate work for rich families, Reagan comes from a rich family. Yet she doesn’t know what she truly wants with all the opportunities she has received. She seems to be spiteful about her friend, Macy, who’s black and considered at the top of her game in investment banking though she had a rough upbringing. They both went to Duke, but Macy is in another stratosphere compared to Reagan. As Mae runs Golden Oaks, she’s constantly feeling pity for Jane because of her circumstances as a low-income single mother yet knows she has the power to hold things over Jane’s head with the paycheck for the baby.

The book appears long, but the story is engaging with the situations inside the farm and outside the farm along with backstories of the characters, so this piece of literary fiction is well-conceived.

View all my reviews