![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Aug. 13th, 2013 12:56 pmZetta Elliot's A Wish After Midnight is a book that I'm very glad that I read, but that also CONFUSED ME DEEPLY.
Okay, so A Wish After Midnight follows Genna, a black teenager who lives with her mother and siblings in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Stuff with her family gets worse and worse, and then eventually she accidentally time-travels through a fountain in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and ends up in Brooklyn of the 1860s.
A relevant fact: this is a book deeply embedded in Brooklyn, and I know Brooklyn really well. I know Crown Heights. A Wish After Midnight is set about eight years before I first moved in, and those eight years are super relevant -- Franklin Avenue was a high crime spot then, and now it's a super-trendy street with lots of trendy coffeehouses -- but I remember when that wasn't the case. Genna dreams of moving her family into one of the half-decent brownstones on Carroll Street as a way of getting them out of their one-bedroom apartment; I've lived in one of those half-decent Carroll Street brownstones.
That's not to say I've lived in Genna's neighborhood or as part of her community, because I really haven't. I've lived alongside it, which is not at all the same thing, and is in many ways a problematic thing -- I moved to Crown Heights because it was cheap and I could afford it, but like it or not, I'm part of gentrification -- and the book is therefore relevant to me for reasons that are different to the reasons it would be relevant to someone else.
Anyway. So Genna ends up in the past, and sets herself to the business of survival, including making it through the anti-black draft riots of 1863. All of which is incredibly fascinating, especially through Genna's POV, although not really a plot, per se. Like, it's very much a story that carries Genna along and that she observes, not that she is really directing; her goal is to get home, but she can't really do much about that, and her other goal is to become a psychiatrist when she gets home, but she can't really do much about that. But she does make small changes, and helps people in small ways, and stands up for her dignity as best she can.
( Here is where things get spoilery and confusing! )
Anyway. In conclusion: other people should read this, because first of all there should be more time travel stories about people who are not white and their experiences, but also so that they can come explain to me WHAT THE HECK is going on with the end!
Okay, so A Wish After Midnight follows Genna, a black teenager who lives with her mother and siblings in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Stuff with her family gets worse and worse, and then eventually she accidentally time-travels through a fountain in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and ends up in Brooklyn of the 1860s.
A relevant fact: this is a book deeply embedded in Brooklyn, and I know Brooklyn really well. I know Crown Heights. A Wish After Midnight is set about eight years before I first moved in, and those eight years are super relevant -- Franklin Avenue was a high crime spot then, and now it's a super-trendy street with lots of trendy coffeehouses -- but I remember when that wasn't the case. Genna dreams of moving her family into one of the half-decent brownstones on Carroll Street as a way of getting them out of their one-bedroom apartment; I've lived in one of those half-decent Carroll Street brownstones.
That's not to say I've lived in Genna's neighborhood or as part of her community, because I really haven't. I've lived alongside it, which is not at all the same thing, and is in many ways a problematic thing -- I moved to Crown Heights because it was cheap and I could afford it, but like it or not, I'm part of gentrification -- and the book is therefore relevant to me for reasons that are different to the reasons it would be relevant to someone else.
Anyway. So Genna ends up in the past, and sets herself to the business of survival, including making it through the anti-black draft riots of 1863. All of which is incredibly fascinating, especially through Genna's POV, although not really a plot, per se. Like, it's very much a story that carries Genna along and that she observes, not that she is really directing; her goal is to get home, but she can't really do much about that, and her other goal is to become a psychiatrist when she gets home, but she can't really do much about that. But she does make small changes, and helps people in small ways, and stands up for her dignity as best she can.
( Here is where things get spoilery and confusing! )Anyway. In conclusion: other people should read this, because first of all there should be more time travel stories about people who are not white and their experiences, but also so that they can come explain to me WHAT THE HECK is going on with the end!
