Book Recommendations: February

Fiction

Small Island, Andrea Levy

This was a touching read centred around the Windrush Generation and the effects of WWII on both black and white British citizens. Each character was expertly and sensitively crafted, and developed greatly as the narrative went on.

Levy investigates the different forms of racism present in the white British population, from outright violence and appalling racial slurs, to the more veiled treatment of Hortense by Queenie. Queenie, overall, is a friend to the Black characters in the book. But her treatment of Hortense, assuming that she doesn’t understand anything about society or the English language, reveals that her actions are still intertwined within a system of white supremacy which brands Black people as ‘less civilised’ than whites. Levy, however, through chapters from Hortense's point of view, charmingly highlights that this is not the case.

Hortense: She struggled with a little giggle, ‘It’ll be like Gone With the Wind. You know the scene…’ before a contraction blurred the words into screeching. I knew the scene very well and I did not care for the comparison. What doubt was there that she was the prosperous white woman? So, come, did she think me that fool slave girl? … Cha! I am an educated woman.

The theme of small islands is explored throughout the narrative – and there are many of them, from the personal to the national. The title of the book allows for an exploration of Britain’s status as, just like Jamaica, a tiny body of land. The power, yet inconsistency, of empire is explored as Gilbert attempts to explain that he is a British citizen to white soldiers who cannot comprehend that a Black man could be categorised alongside them. Levy also explores the small islands created by the sanctuary and obligation of marriage, and does so with nuance, presenting the marriages in the book as both troubled and capable of providing comfort.

Gilbert: She laughed and I swear the sky, louring above our heads, opened on a sharp beam of sunlight.

Despite its thematic focus on both the violence of WWII and racism, Small Island is carried by its characters, whose quirks, strong-mindedness, and inconsistencies give the narrative a lighthearted aura overall. If you want to be entertained and at the same time learn about a significant part of British (and international) history, Small Island is a wonderful read.

Luster, Raven Leilani

This is an incredible debut novel which makes me very excited about the rising talents in contemporary literature. Luster is gorgeously written and witty; Leilani explores what it means to be a young Black woman with wit, presenting the precarity with which her protagonist Edie occupies her space in the world as she pursues a relationship with a married older white man. She really knows how to put a sentence together and I admire her ability to describe that which I thought could only be experienced first-hand.

I think about the way he looked on the bathroom floor, his open mouth and soft genitals and the veins underneath his pale Lutherian skin … I think of how keenly I’ve been wrong. I think of all the gods I have made out of feeble men.

It is what I would consider ‘life writing’ in its purest form: capturing the luminosity of life, but also the dirt and grease which gets trapped within the creases of everydayness. As Edie paints bodies on her canvas, Leilani paints life using words. I love the parallels that are made in this way between art and writing; both are acts of creation which can illuminate and translate someone’s subjective experience of the world.

Her writing has a sharp, clever edge to it which makes the sentences skate through the edges of your imagination. You can sense the layers of meaning under the print, just waiting to be uncovered. There is almost an eeriness and a sense of space to the prose. Your imagination unfurls and reaches out, desiring to fill in the gaps.

Sweet Sorrow, David Nicholls

This book is Nicholls doing what he does best – exploring relationships in all their realistic messiness and nuance. The narrative follows sixteen-year-old Charlie as he meets and pursues a relationship with Fran, a girl from the other school in his town. I loved the allusions and parallels to Shakespeare created as the pair embarked on an am-dram production of Romeo and Juliet.

Nicholls successfully captures the intensity and precarity of these young relationships that, for so many of us, shape our perception of relationships. He also explores the unconventional father-son relationship between Charlie and his father, a man consumed by mental illness and alcoholism. This relationship, presented through the eyes of a teenager, is explored sensitively and gives the novel some real weight. Some, but not many, chapters are also told from the perspective of present-day Charlie, who is now married to someone called Niamh.

The story’s driving force, then, is not only teenage romance, but a multi-layered reflection on life’s twists and turns, on friendship and parental love and ageing. Nicholls subverts the Romeo-and-Juliet expectations of true love or death and nothing in between, and shows that life is full of so many different types of love – some of which eventually turn into only memories.

This is a love story, though now that it’s over it occurs to me that it’s actually four or five, perhaps more: familial and paternal love; the slow-burning, reviving love of friends; the brief, blinding explosion of first love that can only be looked at directly once it has burnt out.

Non-Fiction

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power, Ijeoma Oluo

After reading Oluo’s first book, So You Want to Talk About Race?, last month, and loving it, I decided to buy her latest release in hardback. Despite its provocative title, this is a calm, thought-out, balanced read, which takes you through the history of white male violence and mediocrity (which often go hand in hand).

From how the US was ‘won’ from Native Americans by white colonisers, to the role of white men in social justice movements, and even the exploitation of black men in American football, Oluo has clearly done some serious research, and the result is a succinct yet comprehensive look at the vast range of factors that have led us to elect sex offenders as our leaders.

White men battling other white men for land that was never theirs, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake. This pattern of entitlement and destruction would repeat itself in future generations all across the West…

Oluo confronts the key issue, which has long baffled me, of how men at the top can be so aggressively imperfect, they can grab women ‘by the pussy’ and think that global warming is a hoax or that women can’t get pregnant from rape, they can use racial slurs, defend white supremacy and assault reporters, and still be rewarded with power. Any attempts to rebalance this undeserved power and harmful hierarchy results in outrage and anger.

Women and ethnic minorities, on the other hand, are held up to unbelievably high standards, they have to fight to climb to the top, and are harassed in the process. As Oluo explores with the examples of women in congress such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, if women of colour represent anything except the interests of white men, they are branded as aggressive ‘far-lefters’ who threaten everything the US stands for.

But I think it’s more than just the climb. It’s the expectation that many white men have that they shouldn’t have to climb, shouldn’t have to struggle, as others do. It’s the idea not only that they think they have less than others, but that they were supposed to have so much more … White men who think they have been stolen from often take that anger out on others.

In her acknowledgements, Oluo admits how painful the research for this book was – reading about repeated instances of white male violence against her ancestors, against people who look like her today. I resent that black women like Oluo still have to do this work, the energy that it must take to do this work, and the lost time that could have been used to write for pleasure. But despite the pain evident in the stories that Oluo tells, the book ends on a hopeful note. It acknowledges that deconstructing white male power will not only help women, nonbinary people, and people of colour, but also white men. When you look at it critically, it is in everyone’s interest to dismantle a system which rewards a culture of bullying and violence.

We need to do more than just break free of the oppression of white men. We also have to imagine a white manhood that is not based in the oppression of others. We have to value the empathy, kindness, and cooperation that white men, as human beings, are capable of. We have to define strength and leadership in ways that don’t reinforce abusive patriarchy and white supremacy. We have to be honest about what white male supremacy has cost not only women, nonbinary people, and people of color—but also white men.

Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shatterly

This true story, made popular by its movie adaptation, felt often like it was written by a historian rather than a novelist (and perhaps this is a positive as it does represent an incredibly important, and largely overlooked, part of US history). It lost me at times with its (no doubt highly accurate) descriptions of scientific and aeronautical processes and conventions, but I’m glad I persevered; I can only admire Shatterly’s thorough research and attention to detail. I appreciate what must have been an absurd amount of hard work on Shatterly’s part to research this book, get it published, and therefore reveal to an ignorant world an overlooked part of history.

I can now admire the sheer significance of the events depicted as a piece of history, and the book’s place in the process of deconstructing a history dominated by white men (and for that matter white supremacy). I appreciate the irony that three white men are praised worldwide for a moon landing that quite literally wouldn't have happened without Black women. This is a story of some of these truly extraordinary women who achieved incredible things when the odds were so heavily stacked against them, and the book has its place as an incredibly important piece of literature, too. So, although the writing style wasn’t to my normal taste, it was nonetheless an extraordinary story which had clearly been expertly researched.

TV / Film / Podcasts

ALOK on Jameela Jamil's iWeigh

I am always looking for ways to better understand the trans, non-binary and gender non-comforming community; there is so much ignorance and fear in the world and, not being close to anyone in this community personally, I want to understand the issues they face so I can help to battle this ignorance in the spaces I occupy. This podcast episode is an incredible tool in this.

ALOK is a gender non-conforming activist and writer, and speaks so openly about their life, the prejudice they face (including from other members of the LGBTQIA community), how feminism has let trans and non-binary people down, and most importantly the joy of truly determining your own gender and your own family in the community. The episode is so interesting and I came away from it feeling like I knew and understood so much more. ALOK is immediately warm and likeable and they are clearly at ease in their conversation with Jamil. I would wholeheartedly recommend this if you want to understand how to truly become an ally to LGBTQIA communities.

It’s a Sin, written by Russell T. Davies

Before I watched this show, I didn’t realise it was possible for a single piece of media to be so full of joy and so devastating at the same time. This is a truly valuable 5-episode mini series about the AIDs crisis of the 1980s and early 90s, especially to someone like me who didn’t live through it (although I watched it with my parents and they learned a lot too).

But it is not only about this, Davies expertly reflects the bliss of finding a chosen family in friends, and celebrates the solidarity and comfort found in true allyship. I would recommend this for anyone who wants to learn, to be transported, and to have their heart broken and then put back together again (repeatedly!).

Late Night, written by Mindy Kaling

This was an easy Friday-night watch, but one that also made important points about the ongoing misogyny and racism in Hollywood. Kaling, who wrote the movie, stars as Molly, an amateur comic who gets a writing job in an all-male writing panel for the legendary Katherine Newbury’s late night talk show, played by Emma Thompson. Kaling deftly reveals the entitlement of men in these positions as one of her coworkers exclaims to her, ‘I wish I was a woman of colour so I could get a job with zero qualification!’.

Not only does Kaling critique male entitlement, but she also shows the innovation and joy that can occur when you introduce diversity to what I like to call the pale, male and stale establishment.