(Yes I'm late on the reviews but will complete at least 15. This I vow!)
White Nights, Black Paradise by Sikivu Hutchinson
I sort of
had mixed feelings coming into this novel because Jim Jones is not the most
likeable figure in American history. He's a cult leader who not only killed his
flock but much of that flock was black and poor. So imagine my surprise when I
came away from the novel kind of liking the dude minus the slaughtering drug
fueled paranoia that ended in Jonestown, of course. It's also a frankly
brilliant debut fiction effort by Sikivu Hutchinson, who, for my money, is
probably the most talented African American atheist/Humanist writer on the
scene and has done something that the white Four Horsemen have never done:
write a really good novel. She's also seriously good looking which probably
isn't fair. But I digress.
The novel
is a constant explosion of ideas and you could write a critical book just
discussing all of them. My copy of her novel is just riddled with notes and
yellow highlighter. Here are the notes just from the first 13 pages or Chapter
One: There's a woman who's thankful that she got an abortion and found it a
relief. The Jim Jones church was an extremely progressive church that actually
helped black people, or at least, if the novel reflects reality, wanted to help
black people. (Jim Jones adopted a black male, which is going the distance. I
also found myself checking Wikipedia just to see which parts are true. Yes that
black adopted son exists even though he has disavowed the church, again of
course...) There's a black character who openly espouses her atheist viewpoint
where she says, in part: "...I don't believe in God. You know I don't have
any tolerance for magical shit." And as a black atheist person who reads
and watches tv and movies I don't think I've ever heard a black person openly
espousing their atheism. And the whole book is like that. You're just reading
things and perspectives that you've never seen before uttered by black
characters. It's almost the Anti Oprah in terms of its intellectual approach to
the world. (Side note: There's an attempt to turn this into a tv series and boy
if a black director wanted to make his or her mark doing some completely
shocking television this would be the book you could turn into your HBO/AMC
produced 10 to 12 episode version of "The
Wire". )
That's
just scratching the surface of all the great ideas. At my own blog I might go
into some of the other issues about how the novel sort of describes a dying
black press (I say that as an ex Pittsburgh Courier reporter who was fired for
attempting to unionize...) or this perplexing question: if you're a progressive
atheist and really want to help black people are you better off just lying
about religion like Jim Jones, who in the novel used the Bible as simply a tool
to teach about class struggle, or do you tell people the truth about that
"magical shit"? The novel strongly suggests that if you want to reach
black people lying your ass off might be the way to go. For a higher good of
course...
Bottom
line, really a fount work put forth by Hutchinson
Philip
Shropshire
www.threeriversonline.com
http://worldtv.com/the_acid_jazz_channel/
http://writersofcolor.blogspot.com/
PS: Here is the excellent promo piece that was done for the novel on Youtube.
