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Aug. 13th, 2013 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsZetta 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.
Then her boyfriend also ends up in the past, for reasons that are not really explained. I would probably be super into Judah and his righteous revolutionary rage as a character in his own right, but I feel like he is pretty terrible for Genna; they have a lot of conversations that go like this:
JUDAH: Why are you working for white people like a compromising coward? >:|
GENNA: Because . . . we have to survive . . .? And me working for white people saved your life, so . . .?
JUDAH: We could just EMIGRATE TO AFRICA.
GENNA: a.) Oh yes, life for two twentieth-century refugees is going to be SO much better in 19th-century Africa, b.) I don't know about you, but I would maybe like to wait at least A FEW MONTHS before giving up on ever seeing my family again . . .?
JUDAH: WELL Genna if you decide to be LESS OF A COMPROMISING COWARD you just let me know.
GENNA: . . . .
Genna, you can do better! Like, find someone who actually supports you as you are instead of trying to change you to be what he wants! I'M JUST SAYING. Like, I totally understand why Genna does not see it that way, because her self-esteem is pretty low and also he's a hot passionate intellectual who writes her haiku, but nonetheless.
And then riots happen and at the very end Genna accidentally goes forward into the future again and leaves Judah behind, OOPS, and it's . . . September 10th, 2001? And she thinks optimistically about how someday she'll see Judah again -- the how is unclear -- and in the meantime she's going to achieve her dreams and . . .?
AND I JUST CLOSED THE BOOK FEELING SO CONFUSED. Like, September 10th, 2001 is a pretty significant date! I feel like there must be some meaningful resonance there that I'm missing! Especially given how little in the rest of the story is actually resolved, including most of the family stuff from the first section! If anyone else has read this book, PLEASE HELP.
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.
Then her boyfriend also ends up in the past, for reasons that are not really explained. I would probably be super into Judah and his righteous revolutionary rage as a character in his own right, but I feel like he is pretty terrible for Genna; they have a lot of conversations that go like this:
JUDAH: Why are you working for white people like a compromising coward? >:|
GENNA: Because . . . we have to survive . . .? And me working for white people saved your life, so . . .?
JUDAH: We could just EMIGRATE TO AFRICA.
GENNA: a.) Oh yes, life for two twentieth-century refugees is going to be SO much better in 19th-century Africa, b.) I don't know about you, but I would maybe like to wait at least A FEW MONTHS before giving up on ever seeing my family again . . .?
JUDAH: WELL Genna if you decide to be LESS OF A COMPROMISING COWARD you just let me know.
GENNA: . . . .
Genna, you can do better! Like, find someone who actually supports you as you are instead of trying to change you to be what he wants! I'M JUST SAYING. Like, I totally understand why Genna does not see it that way, because her self-esteem is pretty low and also he's a hot passionate intellectual who writes her haiku, but nonetheless.
And then riots happen and at the very end Genna accidentally goes forward into the future again and leaves Judah behind, OOPS, and it's . . . September 10th, 2001? And she thinks optimistically about how someday she'll see Judah again -- the how is unclear -- and in the meantime she's going to achieve her dreams and . . .?
AND I JUST CLOSED THE BOOK FEELING SO CONFUSED. Like, September 10th, 2001 is a pretty significant date! I feel like there must be some meaningful resonance there that I'm missing! Especially given how little in the rest of the story is actually resolved, including most of the family stuff from the first section! If anyone else has read this book, PLEASE HELP.
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!
no subject
Date: 2013-08-13 07:28 pm (UTC)http://blogcritics.org/interview-with-zetta-elliott-author-of/
In other news, now because of your review I do want to read it! :)
no subject
Date: 2013-08-13 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-13 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-13 11:03 pm (UTC)I am waiting for the second half.
PATIENTLY.
THIS IS MY PATIENT FACE.
SEE?
PATIENT.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-14 03:00 am (UTC)