Women shed sociopolitical expectations and remake worlds in GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER by Barnardine Evaristo and ANNA AND THE AMERICAN PUZZLE by Jennifer Kasman

Autonomy becomes urgent necessity in a volume of interlocking stories and a novel, Heroines must shed socio political expectations  and  their conditioning to remake their worlds. 

GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER (Grove Atlantic) by Bernardine Evaristo, won the 2019 Booker Prize and I am glad I just got around to reading it.  In our emergence from Covid, it seems more relevant than it might have in 2019. These intertwined stories are like a musical ronde, each a different aspect of the subject, Black women finding autonomy, despite daily lives that demand conformity. Their voices, unexpected and enjoyable, come from present day Britain, though they extend to intergenerational immigrant experiences in Guam, the Caribbean, Nigeria. 

Mothers, daughters, wives, fled wars and poverty, only to face new struggle and danger in public housing and menial jobs, no matter what education they brought. Their children, second generation, are caught in ambitions “to make it” and to remain true to a culture they never knew. Whether, straight, gay, bisexual, trans or fluid; establishing identity, racial and sexual, is a challenge. 

These incredibly resourceful women seek what’s of value in their lives,though they have been traumatized, ostracized, wounded or simply trapped by circumstance.  At stake is remaking their worlds so they or their children can have a home.  In a Britain of class and racial hierarchies, their lives come together, unravel, and intersect with poignancy and surprise. 

The diversity of situations shows there’s no monolith of Black experience. A once antiestablishment theater director, now famous, faces the climax of her life at The National Theater. In a relationship with a beautiful American actess, she must also contend with her outrageous truth-seeking daughter. When a young girl is traumatized in the rough housing project she calls home, she struggles to harness her academic abilty.  A woman raised in a privileged White family is shocked, when she learns she is not her parents’ child.  An elderly woman farmer appreciates her granddaughter, a white trans man. 

Evaristo has great humor and compassion for her women, as they become stuck or unstuck in their lives and move forward in time and insight . READ this wise book to be surprised. 

ANNA & THE AMERICAN PUZZLE is a dystopia that has an uncanny urgency for the U,S. at this time. As the new Democratic president faces a congressional logjam of conservative Republicans, the future viability of our system has become a question.  Kasman’s novel is set in an America ruled by an autocracy of the religious far right. How might this play out for most Americans?  Her novel, in the form of a young girl’s diary, is a devastating look into this alternative world. 

It begins in 2024, when Anna is 14, becoming aware of the neo-Puritan propaganda, how it differs from the reality of her life and ways it’s used to manage people, such as her mother. Slogans abound about “bootstrapping.” Hard sustained work and faith in divine laws will be rewarded in this world and the next. And if a person or family is not succeeding, it is because they are lax. The truth in Anna’s world is that only a small elite, whose families are part of the ruling class or traditionally serve them, has money.  Since government manages information technology, media, higher education, good paying jobs, like higher education, are only available to those born into the religious-political elite.

Everyone else is poor, many without food security like Anna’s family. Her exhausted mother, a widow with six children, struggles with multiple jobs and never meets the party’s goals for her. Anna, the eldest, must do housework, care for siblings, manage school and scavenge meals and shoes.Then, like its her fault, her mother constantly exhorts her not to flaunt her looks. Ann’s natural charisma, beauty and intelligence attracts unwanted attention and eventually she’s expelled from school. When her mother seeks help from a local political leader, Anna is sent to a reform facility for girls “like her.” 

Yet, Anna’s looks and on camera talent, make her an asset for the government.  Eventually, she enters the ranks of the privileged and becomes a media celebrity, a national icon. Though she appreciates how rare it is for someone with her background to reach such  status, it comes with a price.  She is forced to cede her private life to government management, including her choice of husband and child-rearing.  When she learns her image is being used in torturous ways, Anna flees to the underground to fight for the real America.

ANNA AND THE AMERICAN PUZZLE imagines the results of a far right coup on our way of life. It is a not unfamiliar scenario in the wake of the recent occupation of the White House. Worth the read to consider the fallout for regular people.  This novel is both a cautionary tale for adults and a great read for YA audiences.

I don’t often review self published books but this dystopia caught my imagination. I do think this novel deserves to be republished, perhaps as a New Edition put out by a real publisher. Such publishers hire professionals to edit, copyedit, proofread and traffic copies to make sure changes have been made before having a book printed. 

The changes to ANNA were finally updated months after pub date.  ANNA is available in paper, hardcover and ebook at Barnes and Noble, Walmart, books-a-million and the ubiquitous Amazon.

S.W.