The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God by Djanet Sears

  If you’ve ever found yourself thinking that church sermons don’t have enough whacky septuagenarian heists, Djanet Sears’ The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God may just scratch that itch. In the initial pages, a character reads from the Bible while a woman (whom we later learn is his ex) largely mimes a flashback. The opening sets a somber tone—this is a play that deals with child loss, the resultant grief, and the subsequent dissolution of relationships. We then switch to some comedic relief: a group of elderly conspirators whose mission is to “liberate” (i.e. steal) offensive depictions of Black people in their  community, Negro Creek. Meanwhile, the (White) powers that be are vying to rename Negro Creek to avoid present-day controversy; Michael, the pastor, is organizing a march to ensure that doesn’t happen—erasing the name is erasing their history.

As you can probably tell, there are a number of threads to follow-up on. The play balances humour and darkness, sorrow and joy. The darker elements of the book center around relationships. Rainy and Michael had previously been married and had a daughter together that passed away at age 5—Rainy was becoming a doctor and blames herself for not recognizing the symptoms of meningitis; her faith is shaken and she literally eats handfuls of dirt from Negro Creek. Three years after her daughter’s death, Rainy can’t bring herself to go to the grave, can’t bring herself to divide her child’s things with Michael, from whom she is awaiting divorce papers. Their moments together are painful; Sears is clear about the hopes and dreams they’ve lost, their infidelities to one another, their refusal to confront head-on the crisis of faith they’ve endured.

Meanwhile, Abendigo, Rainy’s father, is at the end of his life and has perpetually led on Ivy. Growing up, he had made promises to her and when he was traveling he had Rainy by a jazz singer, who died following their marriage. When he returned to town, it was to ask Ivy to help raise his daughter—while he married Ivy’s sister. It’s hard not to feel bad for poor Ivy, spending her life waiting for her fling to settle. Their dynamic is also pretty compelling, given that they are conspirators in the heists.

And the heists are a lot of fun. It’s a bunch of older people in dark shades who can’t keep their nicknames consistent making plans to “liberate,” primarily, lawn ornaments of Black figures—though other racist trinkets are also hoarded in the pantry. The farcical efforts to disguise their plot from Rainy is a fun addition and watching them break into the museum is a real highlight of the play for me. Sears navigates the comedy with a light touch and it gives the necessary reprieve from the sadder elements of the text—including Abendigo’s death.

Yes, Rainy’s father is on the verge of death and Rainy is desperately trying to get him the help he needs. She’s making plans and checking charts—but he is at peace. He instead requests Rainy to read a book about home deaths and funerals, and she is confronted with her denial and refusal to let go, bumping up against fulfilling her father’s wishes. The conflict resonates well—it forces the audience to confront our own discomfort with death when Abendigo is telling Rainy how he wants to be dressed when he’s buried in the coffin that he has ordered directly into his home.

I’d be really interested to see the production live, if for no other reason than the Chorus. The Chorus has some moments of (you guessed it) choral singing throughout the play, but what’s more interesting to me is that they also form the setting. At scene changes, the Chorus transforms to create hospital rooms, museums, the creek—I’d be really curious to see how they pull it off, especially in the final scene where some critical objects fall into the creek and are swept away. I just want to know how they’d block that scene for the actors and how they’d imitate the landscape.

In fact, that choice feels as significant as anything else in the play. Several characters reference the fact that Negro Creek has a two hundred year history and that their deceased relatives have become part of the landscape. Rainy says she wants to be a tree. Michael rails against removing “Negro” from the name of the creek because the Black community has been so critical to the place. Abendigo sees the creek itself as Heaven. It gets even more interesting when you consider how Black Canadians came to settle the land via the Underground Railroad and live alongside the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. The fact that actors in the play literally become the landscape of the play is a thoughtful formal choice to reinforce some of those key perspectives.

I embarked on this reading in the hopes of infusing a Black Canadian woman into my grade 12 curriculum. I’m not sure how students would respond to this one; it’s got a lot to like—especially with the more comedic scenes—and there’s a lot to talk about historically and culturally. I’m not sure if the themes of child loss and waiting around your whole life for someone who won’t commit to you are really the best fit for them, but it might be worth a shot.

I often end reviews with the statement “Happy reading” or some such imperative. Djanet Sears, I think, fits the category. As sad as the play can be, I think there’s enough joy there to serve as an uplifting, bittersweet experience. One of Abendigo’s requests for his funeral is that songs of mourning are replaced with joyful ones; there’s a time for sadness, but there’s also time for acceptance and joy in the face of it all. So, happy reading.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

It’s hard to write about the books that are most finely wrought. I finished Han Kang’s We Do Not Part a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been letting it sit with me because there are so many elements that all play off of one another. It’s hard to explain the craftsmanship of the book in a way that is both succinct and that does justice to Kang’s vision.

We Do Not Part is a novel that teeters on the edge of documentary and dream sequence. Some portions are narrated like investigative journalism, focused on fact and unravelling the threads of a messy history. Other portions read more like a dream sequence in which ghosts appear, the past and present are seemingly not in cooperation, and the impossible presents itself as a matter of course. At times, it felt reminiscent of The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, where we are perpetually waiting for a resolution that is not, and never was, forthcoming (silly us for thinking so). The way Kang navigates these different registers is impressive and makes the book feel satisfying in more ways than one.

The timeline of the book might be a barrier for people’s immersion in the text. The novel jumps around into different times in Kyungha’s life, developing in particular her friendship with her colleague Inseon. Kyungha seems to imply that their relationship is not close, and yet there’s an intimacy between them that runs deep and, quite honestly, is beautiful in its quiet tenderness. Inseon is a filmmaker, and Kang’s accounts of her films are so vivid that it’s hard to imagine that they don’t exist. Years earlier, Kyungha shared an idea for a film, based on a recurring dream, with Inseon. The two have long planned to create the film, but, as in life, there are perpetual excuses not to start the project. The project is simple: place a bunch of cut-down trees upright again in the earth during a heavy snowfall and film as the snow piles up. It is, as Kyungha realizes, perhaps too late, an image of death.

At the start of the book, for reasons largely unexplained, Kyungha feels compelled to draft her will. She writes draft upon draft only to rip them up and realize she does not have anyone close enough to whom the will should be addressed. In the midst of the process, Inseon sends her a message asking her to come see her immediately. It turns out she is in the hospital having severed her fingers in an accident with her workshop—it turns out that she injured herself because she decided it was time to start their project and was cutting logs. It feels prophetic and poetic that she loses her fingers. Kyungha visits her in the hospital, where Inseon has to have her severed digits poked with a needle every three minutes or so to ensure her nerves don’t die before they can reattach her fingers.

As I mentioned, the friendship between them comes across beautifully. There’s a surreality to it that I really appreciate—and even just in terms of writing style alone, I would put We Do Not Part nearly on par with the author’s award-winning The Vegetarian. During Kyungha’s visit, Inseon asks her to go care for her bird. It’s been a few days and she’s worried that her pet will have run out of water and will pass away if Kyungha doesn’t go immediately. So, Kyungha makes a reluctant trip to Inseon’s remote village.

This is where the dream-like quality of the book really shines through. In the transitional, (dare I say) liminal space, we seem to shift to a dreamlike unreality. There’s an extended section, for example, where Kyungha is waiting for a bus that does not come. There’s an elderly woman waiting for the bus that seems to know the score, but it’s taking forever. And the snow just keeps coming down. It’s the kind of static, directionless, scene that might present as a dream. When Kyungha eventually disembarks from the bus and tries to trace a path to Inseon’s remote workshop, she falls in the dried up river and awakes ready to move forward—it’s unclear how long she was unconscious in the snow; in fact, it’s unclear whether she survived the fall at all.

From there, Kang develops a motif of death and rebirth. As one might predict, Kyungha arrives too late to save the bird. She takes the time to dig away the snow near the tree she thinks would be suitable for the bird’s gravesite and buries the bird with a great deal of care—only for it to return to life the next day. Later, Inseon arrives unexpectedly—after Kyungha attempts to contact her in the hospital and eventually a nurse answers the phone only to tell her to call back later. From there, it’s a Beloved-like surreality where it’s not clear if Inseon is a ghost or a spirit or living, breathing Inseon—if she’s a figment of Kyungha’s imagination, she seems to know far more than Kyungha possibly could.

The motifs in the text cycle and overlap in an intricate pattern. There is much about birds—Kyungha traces the shadows of birds on Inseon’s wall and the palimpsestic approach feels significant to the overall project of We Do Not Part. The book is infused with poetry throughout, but one moment in particular stands out where Inseon has encouraged Kyungha to feed the birds and she gives them some dry noodles: “Each time the birds bit off a piece of the noddle with their beaks, I felt the faint impact on my fingertips, like the lead of a mechanical pencil as it breaks” (102). There’s a fragility to the birds—to life—that carries on throughout the text.

Another motif, of course, is snow. This is one of the coldest books I can think of and, if you’re reading this on the 25th of January, it is entirely appropriate. The documentary angle of the book is giving a family history that intersects with the Jeju uprising. I’m no expert; my understanding is that the United States was influencing Korean elections and the Workers’ Party organized a general strike. The resistance of the ‘communists’ (including women and children) was violently put down by the Americans. The inhabitants of Jeju were summarily executed and hidden in mines. One of the most powerful moments, I thought, was when Inseon’s aunt and mother were away from the village while everyone else was rounded up, taken to an elementary schoolyard, and killed. Inseon’s mother and aunt then had to then go through the bodies, wiping the snow off their faces to find their relatives. There’s a ghostly parallel with snow accumulating on Kyungha’s face when she falls into the dried river. There’s a double-ghostly parallel when Kyungha and Inseon go lay down in the snow as it falls and they stare up at the sky, confusing stars and snow. The book is full of these stunning moments.

The book delights in its ambiguity. For instance, the opening of the book reveals that Kyungha has written a book about a massacre in South Korea and feels afflicted with a post-traumatic kind of response. It sounds like it could be autobiographical if you’re familiar with Han Kang’s Human Acts. There’s enough in We Do Not Part to separate it from reality, though. As I mentioned, there’s also ambiguity whether Inseon is a ghost or not. At the end of the book, it becomes unclear whether Kyungha is dead, Inseon is dead, neither, or both. Even the title, We Do Not Part, is given some commentary: Kyungha wonders whether it means that they do not separate or whether they never get the opportunity to ‘part’ and say goodbye as they should. The motif of not being able to say a proper goodbye is critical, given the political context and the Jeju massacre.

We Do Not Part offers a rich account of both political and personal experiences. It’s a stylistic masterpiece where everything is so densely packed into just a few hundred pages. It’s the kind of book that when I read the closing lines I thought, “Well, darn, I’ll never write anything that good.” It’s the kind of book that warrants, probably, endless rereading and interpretation. It requires you to sit inside its pages and watch the snow accumulate. Unfortunately, for now, I must trudge on to new territory.

Happy reading!

Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra

Despite being just under eighty pages, Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai is surprisingly hard to summarize. It’s a book essentially about two lives: Julio’s, which doesn’t end, and Emilia, whose does. The two young scholars develop a relationship while studying for exams and part of the book is about the blooming and withering of their romances. It’s a simple ‘slice of life’ but I felt the book to be funny, tender, creative, and grounded.

The young Julio has two meaningful relationships—one with Emilia and, later, one with Maria. At the time in his life when he meets Emilia, we are told that “Julio has avoided serious relationships, hiding not from women but from seriousness, since by that point he knew that seriousness was every bit as dangerous as women, if not more so” (5). I like that idea of trying to avoid seriousness, and I can’t help but feel like Zambra’s approach to writing is infused with a humour that puts theory into practice. For instance, there’s a funny part in which both Julio and Emilia have lied about reading Proust and have to act as though they’ve read In Search of Lost Time. In another part, Julio pretends that he has become a translator for a writer to impress Maria and that lie leads him into inventing a book and lying about its premise, only for him to be thwarted by the truth. There’s a real comic element in Bonsai that is hard to resist but also that elevates the darker threads of the text. 

I’ve left out the second half of the passage about Julio avoiding seriousness. The passage continues as follows: “Julio knew he was doomed to seriousness, and he tried, stubbornly, to thwart his serious fate, even as he stoically awaited that frightening and inevitable day when seriousness would come to settle in his life for good” (5). Zambra balances the light and the dark, the satire and the serious. The ending of the book, which I won’t spoil, concludes on a somber note and driving around in a 30, 000 peso cab ride. It’s touching and beautiful and ‘serious’—it is, in Zambra’s words elsewhere, “a light tale that becomes heavy” (13).

I think the real core of the book is the relationships between the characters, who are relatable and likable in all of their flaws. Zambra has a particular talent for capturing the spirit of young love. For instance, when Emilia and Julio start their relationship it “was a relationship riddled with truths, with personal disclosures that quickly built up a complicity they strove to see as unassailable” (13). That characterization rings true—there are those couples that come to orbit only one another and there’s a sort of metanarrative about the writing of their lives: “This is the story of two student enthusiasts of the truth, aficionados of deploying words that seem like truth, of smoking endless cigarettes, and of enclosing themselves within the violent complacency of those who believe themselves better and purer that others, than that immense and detestable group called everyone else” (13). The grandiose language serves to both elevate and belittle them at the same time. I liked that because it feels so much the way I ought to have been treated as a young lad.

In another scene of the young couple, Emilia’s friend does not like Julio and says that she has changed since being with him. Emilia defends her relationship, possibly not believing her own words: “Why would you want to be with someone if they didn’t change your life?” (18). Zambra’s description of the incident is that “She said that, and Julio was there when she said it: that life only made sense if you found someone who would change it, who would destroy your life as you knew it. Anita found the theory a little dubious, but she didn’t argue. She knew that when Emilia used that tone there was no point in contradicting her” (18). The grand pronouncements of lovers serve as the groundwork for the book and put Bonsai alongside the literary precedents it references (Madame Bovary, for instance). It feels connected; classic in its own way.

I also have to say, I really like the way the book we read has interjections and uncertainties from the narrator and comes to parallel the book that Julio improvises when “translating” from a successful author. There’s a haphazardness to the narrative that mimics Julio’s own unprompted inventions. Even the fact that the story is not strictly about Julio and Emilia but also jumps to Julio and Maria seems unplanned. The quick transition into new narratives and the short chapters places us in the middle of invention.

I don’t have a ton to say about this book, but I really liked it. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters and the voice of the writing and it’s always impressive when an author can navigate two distinct tones (somber and comic) and make me feel for the characters so deeply in fewer than a hundred pages. I commend Zambra’s Bonsai—looking forward to reading more of his work soon.

Happy reading!

Multiple Choice Alejandro Zambra

  I’m not quite sure what to make of Alejandro Zambra’s Multiple Choice. It’s a really unique project that turns a standardized test into an authentic literary enterprise. Zambra explores the possibility of a standard set of A-B-C-D-E options turning into something more profound and interesting, blending poetry, autobiography (maybe), and fiction.

The book is divided into five sections. The first requires readers to pick the term that doesn’t match the heading or the other terms. The second is about putting sentences into their correct sequence. The third is about completing the sentences (fill-in-the-blanks), while the fourth requires readers to eliminate a sentence or sentences within a short story. The final section is reading comprehension and offers some more substantial (though still only roughly 5 page) stories. 

But Zambra is tricky. While there might be a bubblesheet to fill in at the back of the book, there is no answer key, nor could there be. The questions put readers into challenging positions and the stakes feel even bigger than actual standardized test questions. Consider, for example, the excluded term question for “Teach.” Readers are expected to pick one of the following that does not fit: A) preach, B) control, C) educate, D) initiate, E) screech. Now, I’d like to think that as a teacher I don’t “screech” but if I take that out it leaves “preach” and “control” still in the mix; there’s no good option. Similarly, some of the options double-up. Like for “Promise” the options read from A-E as complete / silence / promise / complete silence. Conversely, Zambra includes questions where all of the options seem good. For instance, the word “Letter” has the options for A) uppercase, B) lowercase, C) cursive, D) dead, and E) silent. Likewise, “Cut” allows for erase / annul / blot / expunge / wound. All of them are viable choices, and so it forces you to reflect on what your personal biases are. What seems most poetic to you?

Zambra is able to make use of structures to allow for multiple options, a choose-your-own-perspective with carefully crafted options. For instance, in one of the fill-in-the-blank questions, he provides the statement, “And if they have any ________ left, that’s what _____________ for.” The options offer very different possibilities for engaged readers. The options range for innocuous and innocent to politically charged to deeply depressing. Here’s what the options say if filled in:

And if they have any energy left, that’s what sports are for.

And if they have any hope left, that’s what reality is for.

And if they have any illusions left, that’s what the void is for.

And if they have any dissent left, that’s what the cops are for.

And if they have any neurons left, that’s what crack cocaine is for.

The cynicism and nihilistic mindset allows readers to choose their fate, but almost none of them are good ones. Each adds dimension in an interesting way.

When asked to sequence statements into a cohesive narrative, there are similar disruptions to our thinking. Some resequencing questions are standard and legitimate, but they all seem just a little bit off from what you might want to conclusively decide. For instance, in the piece “The second” you’re given the following sequence:

1. You try to remember your first Communion.

2. You try to remember your first masturbation.

3. You try to remember the first time you had sex.

4. You try to remember the first death in your life.

5. And the second.

The answers put you in a position where you have to “try” to remember something “and the second.” It feels a little bit off because if you’re remembering the second, then surely you’d remember the first, no? It also places you in a position that implies that you have to forget the others. For your reference, and to decide what selective forgetting you’ll engage in today, the available answers are as follows:

1. 1-5-2-3-4

2. 1-2-5-3-4

3. 1-2-3-5-4

4. 4-5-1-2-3

5. 4-3-2-1-5

The sequencing questions really help to emphasize how the order of presentation can impact our perception of a narrative. Several of the pieces are essentially flash fictions, but flash fictions that offer multiple paths at once. For example, there’s a piece called “Two hundred twenty-three.” It reads as follows:

1. You remember the freckles on her breasts, on her legs, on her belly, on her ass. The exact number: two hundred twenty-three. One thousand two hundred and seven days ago there were two hundred twenty-three.

2. You reread the messages she used to send you: They are beautiful, funny. Long paragraphs, vivid, complex sentences. Warm words. She writes better than you do.

3. You remember the time you drove five hours just to see her for ten minutes. It wasn’t ten minutes, it was the whole afternoon, but you like to think it was only ten minutes.

4. You remember the waves, the rocks. Her sandals, a wound on her foot. You remember your eyes daring from her thighs to her eyelashes.

5. You never got used to being with her. You never got used to being without her. You remember when she said, in a whisper, as if to herself: Everything is OK.

Option D is to go 2-3-4-5-1. Reading it in that mode seems to create a greater sense of loss, an intimation of time passing, and the degeneration of a relationship. Reading it start to finish (option E) feels, in some ways, like a more complete story—although I feel like section 2 should be closer to the end. It’s difficult to make a choice. 

In other sections, Zambra maintains a playfulness that makes this poetry test impossible to grade. In a piece called “A kick in the balls”, the statements are presented as follows:

1. You think of all the people, living or dead, near or far, men or women, from your country or abroad, who have reason to kick you in the balls.

2. You wonder if you deserve a kick in the balls.

3. You wonder if you deserve to be hated. You wonder if anyone really hates you.

4. You wonder if you hate anyone. You wonder if you hate the people who hate you.

5. Insomnia wounds and accompanies you.

Each of the answers, though, is mutually exclusive. You either get to choose 1-1-1-1-1 or 2-2-2-2-2 or 3-3-3-3-3 or 4-4-4-4-4 or 5-5-5-5-5. Despite there seeing to be a connection between the items, you’re only able to put yourself into a repetitive rumination. In “Rhyme”, the answers present uneven outcomes. The options are A) 5-1-2-3-4, B) 5-4-3-2-1, C) 1-2-3-4-5, D) 1-5-2-3-4, or E) 1-2-3-4. That’s a tricky one because it prevents you from selecting the statement that “you are not crazy”. If you’d like the statements for rhyme to try to the poem at home, here they are:

1. You search for words that rhyme with your first name.

2. You search for words that rhyme with your last name.

3. Your first and last names do not rhyme, but you search for words that rhyme with both your first and last names.

4. You search for words that don’t rhyme with either your first name or your last name, or with anything else.

5. You are not crazy.

Additionally, at least one poem in the sequencing section gives the same sequence for every option—and yet you might feel the resistance popping up in you that you want to revise, you want to create an option that isn’t there. The book is tricky in how it invites your contribution and then, when it doesn’t, you realize you’ve been trained the principles of rebellion: find the path you want, even if it isn’t there. In the poem “Scars,” the only option you’re provided is to read it sequentially, which goes like this:

1. You think about how the shortest distance between two points is the length of a scar.

2. You think: the introduction is the father, the climax is the son, and the resolution is the holy spirit.

3. You read books that are much stranger than the books you would write if you wrote.

4. You think, as if it were a discovery, that the last point in the line of time is the present.

5. You try to go from the general to the specific, even if the general is General Pinochet.

6. You try to go from the abstract to the concrete.

7. The abstract is the pain of others.

8. The concrete is the pain of others colliding with your body until you are completely invaded.

9. The concrete is something that can only grow.

10. Something like a tumor, or the opposite of a tumor: a child.

11. In your case, it’s a tumor.

The fatalism of the piece matches the fatalism of the options. You can only go so far, and yet…

At times, Zambra plays off this interactivity in a meta way. In one of the sections where you have select one for deletion, there’s a discussion of being a reader, a writer, a censor, all at once. Again, it’s a tricky one because the option is to delete none of the options. Every option after that refers to the previous option, meaning that no matter what you pick, you don’t get the power to delete any of these items:

1. I didn’t want to talk about you, but it’s inevitable.

2. I’m talking about you right now. And you’re reading this, and you know it’s about you.

3. Now I am words that you read and wish did not exist.

4. I hate you. 

5. You would like to have the power of a censor.

6. So no one else would ever read these words.

7. I hate you.

8. You ruined my life.

9. Now I am words you cannot erase.

There’s another section that is about the relationship between writing and truth and whether we have the power to remove portions of the narrative. It’s a complex and playful interplay of the details.

In one of the short stories in the reading comprehension section, there is a whole section about Chilean students learning to cheat that feels relevant. Zambra writes, “Even if we did nothing but study, we knew there would always be two or three impossible questions. We didn’t complain. We got the message: Cheating was just part of the deal” (66). What is really compelling here is a critique (or reflection, at least) of the education system that demands compliance with correct answers. The reflection continues, though, into a meditation on individualism: “I think that, thanks to our cheating, we were able to let go of some of our individualism and become a community. It’s sad to put it this way, but cheating gave us a sense of solidarity. Every once in a while we suffered from guilt, from the feeling that we were frauds—especially when we looked ahead to the future—but in the end our indolence and defiance prevailed” (66). I think this book could really help us to connect to those feelings of individualism and community. On the one hand, we are all creating individual answers (there’s no answer key, so no standard) but at the same time we are in dialogue with an extant discourse over which we have no control. 

Now that we have reached the end of the review, what would be the best way to summarize this text?

1. Which text? The review or the book?

2. Multiple Choice is a poetic experience that demands

3. Readers to engage with writers.

4. Writers to plan multiple avenues at once.

5. Happy reading for the audience of this review.