Five Novels by Black Authors

 

The February Tea and Books meeting was fun, especially because I had read/am reading several recent novels relevant to Black History Month. I thought to share brief summaries and thoughts on this blog.

Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi is an engaging first novel. relatively easy to read. Themes include Nigeria, immigrant life, lesbianism, family, food, myth, identity. The mythical slant is subtle but central to the book. Born in Nigeria, Ekwuyasi currently lives in Halifax.

I’m in the throes of reading The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gurnah, the recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. This book is even more intersectional: immigration, race, family, identity, gender, social class, mental and physical health and aging. Not an easy read, but not one to put down either. Originally from Zanzibar, Gurnah now lives in England.

Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise Is a bleak treatment of migrancy that nonetheless provides insight and some hope about young people and human nature. This brief novel won the Giller prize, deservedly. El Akkad was born and grew up in Egypt, spent some time in Canada, and now lives in Portland.

A novel perhaps less familiar to Montreal readers is the short story collection Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta. This is a delightful first publication: identity, Caribbean culture, immigration, family, gender, age, and food. Reid-Benta grew up in Toronto and is a second-generation Caribbean-Canadian. I heard her speak a few years ago at the Heliconian Club Literary Series in Toronto. At the time she was in her mid-twenties and somewhat nervous speaking to a room of 200 or more!

It's interesting that all four books mentioned so far share an emphasis on place, culture, immigration, gender, family. A fifth book shares many of these themes but not displacement or. migration. The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocum is a mystery novel. The author is a celebrated music teacher and professional violinist who was born of American parents, raised and educated in the US, and continues to live there. The mystery plot concerns the theft of a violin that was a family heirloom inherited from his formerly enslaved great-grandfather, gift of the slave owner. An underlying theme of the book is racism as it is experienced in everyday life and especially in classical music, clearly autobiographical. This too is a first novel, sometimes a bit heavy handed. It’s a troubling but fun tale—can’t wait to see how it ends!