z-reads

[z-reads]

first base is murdering you. second base is ressurecting you from the grave. third base is murdering you a second time

[z-reads]

The Blue is Where God Lives, Sharon Sochil Washington

Or: The Author of this Book is an Anthropologist, and She Really Really Wants You to Notice

I picked this book up off the New Fiction shelf at my library because the inside cover hit one of my prime buzzwords: “Afro-magical realism ”. I was extremely excited about the supposed shapeshifters and time travel and other miscellaneous magic, and on those points, I will say this novel absolutely delivered. I only wish that was what the book was actually about, rather than sort of the circumstances that the book’s plot happens around.

The Blue is Where God Lives is a time bending, inter generational historical fiction novel, telling the story of Blue, a Black woman who has lived a hard life, and comes from a line of Black women who have lived hard lives, as she reels in the fallout of the unimaginable tragedy of losing her daughter in a gruesome murder. As she processes her trauma and tries to understand how she can possibly move on from it, she tells us (and a priest) the story of her life.

I actually found the storytelling quality of these little flashbacks to be the most enjoyable and interesting aspects of the book. Blue has had a difficult and painful life in a lot of ways, and the honest way she speaks about her relationship with her sense of self and her experience as a mother I think really echoes how easy it is for a lot of women, especially those fighting through poverty, to absolutely lose themselves in the strain of trying to provide for others. And I deeply respect that Washington doesn’t mince words about the messiness of those feelings.

Struggling under the burden of unwanted motherhood is a theme of both of the dual storylines in this novel, as Ismay Riguad, one of the other main characters, struggles with many of the same tensions in the year 1843. Interwoven with Blue’s story are snippets of the story of her great grandparents Amanda and Palmer, and Ismay, the white-passing French Royal they befriend. It’s in the past, in their storyline, that the magic really becomes relevant in this text. But it’s also here where Washington starts to self indulge just a touch too much, and lose me. Amanda and Palmer, both Black and light skinned, are abolitionist revolutionaries, using Amanda’s magic and Palmer’s financial privilege in conjunction with the lightened color of their skin to wield great socio-political power, and to outsmart / kill / escape from the vicious white people that try to enslave them and their friends, while liberating as many other enslaved people as they can along the way.

Now, did I enjoy every single scene of these Black people bringing the white slaveholders, murderers and rapists the type of violent, bloody, gruesome justice they deserved? Absolutely. In fact, I would’ve happily read a novel of just Amanda and Palmer doing that for 300 pages. As intense as some of those scenes were, it was sort of comforting to know that the Black people were the heroes of this story, and that despite the violence of the setting, they were going to live to the end.

But here’s where Sharon starts to enjoy herself a little too much: far too many moments of the 19th century plot line feel less like historical fiction and more like historical fanfiction. Just about every famous person who was alive during these time periods gets name dropped in this book, from Karl Marx to Bonnie and Clyde, and they’re always both close personal/influential friends of the main characters and not at all fleshed out as characters themselves. Not to mention, the author puts these characters in the most transparently manufactured settings possible, to provide them an opportunity to dialogue over some specifically anthropological debate. This leaves us with a six page spread of Frederick Douglass and Johann Kant supposedly debating why the enslaved Africans in America don’t just revolt the way they did in Haiti.

It just felt at times like the author was writing a response to a social studies class prompt: “tell a story where three of this unit’s important figures meet for dinner. Be sure to represent each figures point of view accurately, and use at least 5 key words from the word bank”. The arguments she’s making are certainly never wrong, and her primary sources are always used intelligently, but it felt a little aggressively like she needed us to remember her background in anthropology. And it often got in the way of me enjoying her extremely lyrical and poetry like narrative prose, and fantastic storytelling skills.

In the end I stuck it out to the finish for all of the great character work she does with Blue, and the cool magical action with Amanda and Palmer, and because I found the non linear storytelling to be challenging at first but extremely compelling once I got used to it. But it would’ve been less of a chore to get through if it wasn’t trying so hard to teach me something.

Other things…

Whoooollleee lotta sexual assault. Definitely a recurring theme. No graphic descriptions of the act, but almost every woman in the novel is assaulted or at least loses agency over her body at some point or another in her life. There’s also some non trivial mentions of suicide and gore. Good to keep in mind as triggers.

Super Christian, randomly. I mean I know it has God in the title, but for a novel that otherwise leans so heavily into non Western spirituality, bending of reality, and even numerology, it sticks to a pretty prescribed definition of a Christian God.

This author also loooves to repeat herself. Especially that damn simile about memory being like reattaching an arm. Like babes we got it the first three times.