Entry 10: So Much to Overcome
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (2022)
“We’re going to call this a lapse in judgment,” the protagonist’s attorney decides, early in The School for Good Mothers. “You can’t call it a mistake anymore. You have to take responsibility.”
Frida loves her toddler daughter, Harriet — and yet. After a string of sleepless, grueling nights nursing her daughter through an ear infection, Frida, a single mother, leaves Harriet unattended in an ‘Excer-saucer.’ Frida’s a single mother because her husband, Gust, left her, while pregnant, for another woman — the younger, hotter, health-and-wellness acolyte, Susana. Frida only meant to dash to the office quickly to retrieve a file she forgot. But she stopped at a coffee shop for an iced latte. She enjoyed the drive. She answered emails, forgetting the time. Two hours passed, and a neighbor/snitch reported her. Now “the system” is involved — and, as in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, systems, relentless, and impersonal, exist to grind. “Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum,” baby — the bastards are coming for us all. Today’s newspapers report accounts of bystanders calling the cops on “free-range moms” — and heartbreaking accounts of kids who die, stranded in hot, locked cars because parents, for a host of reasons, forgot they were there (see “Forgetting a child in a car can happen to anyone…” by the Editorial Board, Washington Post, August 14, 2019 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/forgetting-a-child-in-a-car-can-happen-to-anyone-parents-and-companies-must-act-accordingly/2019/08/14/b1f75e9a-bd0f-11e9-a5c6-1e74f7ec4a93_story.html.)
The School teaches “bad” mothers that “A parent should be able to lift a car. Lift a fallen tree. Fend off a bear.” The pedagogy on hand is “a fear-based mothering practice designed to develop their safety reflexes and test their strength.” But why, these “bad mothers wonder, is it always the mother’s fault? Why do none of the staff feel as deeply as the robotic dolls the mothers lavish their attention on? The societal expectations for mothers is, in fact, nothing short of superhuman. “Your voice should be as light and lovely as a cloud,” an instructor suggests. “What does a cloud sound like?” one student innocently asks.
Mothering small children isn’t for the fainthearted. Those years are behind me now, but readers whose days revolve around the structure of naps, sippy cups, and playground visits will experience a thrill of recognition, seeing their daily experiences reflected here. ***Recommend.
2. The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris (2021)
I ordered The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972) from the library after reading The Other Black Girl, sensing overlap. The Stepford Wives was published when I was a child; having never read it, I’d developed a false impression. It’s far better than anticipated (I must have conflated it with the campy, cheesy, “Valley of the Dolls”); my assumption that it satirized housewives as bimbos was off the mark. It satirizes frail masculinity, mocking men who would prefer a sex doll for a mate, a compliant, selfless entity that caters to a man’s every need, domestic and sexual. (The Stepford Wives ****)
In The Other Black Girl, the experience of caring for Black hair — that marker of individuality and personality, expressiveness and style — is a constant theme. There’s something unsettling about Nella Rogers’s workplace, the publishing company, Wagner, but it’s hard to put a finger on what exactly seems amiss. “Lurking beneath many of the friendly seeming meetings was an environment of pettiness and power plays; cold shoulders and closed-door conversations” all tropes of coming-of-age/bad boss tales. Nella seems poised for success, having been raised to “speak up when something wasn’t right, and to never let anyone treat her like she was less than.” Still, her colleagues “didn’t really see her as a young Black woman, but as a young woman who just happened to be Black — as though her college degree had washed all of the melanin away…. Sometimes she saw this as a blessing. They never really bothered asking her for sensitivity reads, and they rarely asked her about ‘Black issues’ — either because they didn’t want to offend her by doing so, or because they simply didn’t care enough to ask.”
The ‘Other Black Girl” hired in the office is Hazel. Nella anticipates forming a close, warm friendship with her. But Hazel remains an enigma. Is she friend or frenemy, colleague or rival? I won’t give the ending away, because it’s delicious. It is, in fact, what brought me straight to The Stepford Wives.
A secondary plot follows Kendra Rae, a Black author, Nella’s hero, who gained early success in the eighties before disappearing from the scene. There’s a mystery to unravel, which is half the fun. The rest of the fun derives from the intimate, breezy, tone, the coming-of-age-in-the-big-city theme with a twist, the glimpses of life as experienced by Black characters navigating an educated, successful, urban mileu, and the build up to the novel’s resolution. Kendra Rae’s publisher, back in the day, was, to the surprise of no one, Wagner. “Something rotten resided within Wagner’s walls, and [Nella]’d been tracking that rotten something around on her shoe since Day Damn One.”
Like the gum that adheres to your shoe and won’t let go, this novel trails you for awhile; it’s bright and snappy, sweet and sticky and utterly a delight. ****Highly recommend.
3. Tommy Orange’s There There (2018)
“We’ve been defined by everyone else and continue to be slandered,” Orange announces, running through low points in the history of Indigenous people since the settlers arrived, then introducing his cast of contemporary urban Indians in Oakland. His characters are savvy users of technology — not just the internet, but drones and 3D printers make an appearance. Orange takes us from “Cowboy vs. Indian” shootouts with the Colt revolvers of yore to the modern public mass shooting events of our current age, today’s wild, wild west. Cut loose from ancestral lands and history, his characters drift, alienated. There’s no “there” there.
Tony Loneman, age 21, anchors the story. Tony was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, which he calls the Drome. His eyes droop, his mouth hangs open, there’s too much space between the features of his face. His mom’s in jail. His grandma, Maxine, has been taking him to powwows since he was a kid, to instill in him some cultural pride. This year all the characters will converge there, it’s the main event: a powwow at the Coliseum. Powwow attendees dress in Indian regalia, they beat drums, sing and dance in competition, enjoy the art, food, and jewelry for sale. Before the powwow, some boys show Tony a white plastic gun they made with a 3D printer. They plan to rob the powwow with these “ghost guns.” Tony decides he’ll bring a gun, too. He’s tired of people gawping at the history written on his face. He’ll give them something else to look at.
We come to care about Orange’s cast of characters. Matriarchs who hold families together. Girls trying to figure out where they belong. Boys like desperados, targeting the powwow because they’ll blend in easily, no questions asked. There’s also:
Dene Oxendene, who passes for white. A writer, his role at the powwow is to interview the attendees and record their stories.
Edwin and Blue of the powwow committee, they’re in charge of the cash for the competition winners. Many of the dancers lack bank accounts so they compete for cash and gift cards. Edwin and Blue’s safe is a visible target.
Daniel, one of the boy’s cousins, plans to fly a drone over the Coliseum. He hopes the boys will get the money without having to use their guns.
The shooting starts, Orange zips in and out of different perspectives. Each section is rapid-fire; characters experience the event depending on where they’re situated. Drumming. Screaming. Bullets. A drone. In the chaos, Tony recollects how he used to play with Transformers figurines as a boy. He’d work out a story: first a battle, then a betrayal, then a sacrifice. The good guys end up winning, but one of them dies, trying to save someone else. This hints at his probable fate. Indians, of course, are as variable as anyone. To take the measure of a person, it’s choices and actions that count. Tony chooses how he’ll be defined in the end.
Orange’s urban Indians turn on their own community, which pierces the reader. Research backs this up, we’re likelier to target those we know rather than strangers. “If you see something, say something,” we’re told — but this community doesn’t trust the authorities. Who would they tell? Today’s showdowns happen anywhere — at the saloon, the mall, the schoolyard, the Coliseum. Scourges of modern life — substance abuse, generational poverty — leave us vulnerable. Ghost guns are untraceable. It’s not the stranger we should worry about, it’s our propensity to turn on one another. We’re all at risk. It turns out these Indian youth, caught between assimilation and cultural pride, are as American as anyone. ****Highly Recommend