Wednesday, March 9, 2022 — 5
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
IT IS INTEGRAL to seek out Black
voices at any point in the year, and
especially during Black History Month.
In hopes of highlighting voices that
are oftentimes wrongfully overlooked,
The Michigan Daily Book Review came
together to curate a list of some of our
favorite Black-authored novels. Read
ahead to find books to read for Black
History Month and beyond.
— Meera Kumar, Book Beat Editor
and Emilia Ferrante, Senior Arts Editor
“Memorial” by Bryan Washing-
ton
Called a “queer traumedy” by the
author, “Memorial” by Bryan Wash-
ington centers on the dysfunctional
relationship between two queer men
of color. The protagonists, Mike and
Benson, are in their 30s and lead
unglamorous lives, struggling with
weight and other insecurities. They
spend most of the novel apart. When
Mike finds out his estranged father
has been terminally diagnosed with
cancer, he jets out to Japan, leaving
his partner Benson behind to receive
and entertain Mike’s visiting mother.
What follows is the gradual bonding
of Mike’s traditional Japanese mother
with Benson, an HIV-positive daycare
teacher.
In Japan, Mike slowly acquaints
himself with his difficult father. The
novel is bursting with beautiful turns
of phrase and quiet character develop-
ment that builds to a satisfying climax.
Honest to god, the novel made me cry
— I didn’t know how much I needed
middle-aged, unsexy queer sex until
I got it. Washington, illustrating how
family can both anchor and damage us
well into adulthood, coaxes out tears
of love and sympathy.
Daily Arts Writer Elizabeth Yoon can
be reached at elizyoon@umich.edu.
“Pet” by Akwaeke Emezi
“Pet” by Akwaeke Emezi is a bone-
chilling YA fantasy that focuses on
Jam, a Black trans teen in Lucille (a
town that claims to be free of mon-
sters), as she accidentally conjures the
eponymous Pet, a “monster”-hunter
from another universe. Emezi wrote
the piece in response to the “mass
gaslighting” they feel occurs with the
intentional ignorance of many older
people when younger generations
worry about issues of injustice; at first
glance, the title appears oversimpli-
fied, but as you settle into the novel,
the metaphor takes on new meaning.
As Jam tries to investigate the pres-
ence of monsters, the adults in her life
do everything to get her to ignore the
surrounding evil — not because they
don’t respect Jam’s perceptions of the
world, but because they’re afraid of
what they’ll have to admit to them-
selves should they listen to Jam. As
we follow Jam’s interactions with Pet
and her best friend Redemption in the
208-page novel, the tale settles into a
rhythm that peaks in a graphic con-
frontation at the end — even though
the book is for young adults, any read-
er will be able to enjoy this slightly
terrifying work of speculative fiction.
Emezi’s body of work is dynamic,
ranging from literary fiction to auto-
biography to (upcoming) romance;
readers can consume more of Emezi’s
complex, illustrative writing (made
accessible for younger readers) in
“Pet.” The novel was overlooked when
it was released; for many reasons, it
should be reconsidered as a work of
YA genius that is sure to stay relevant
for decades.
Books Beat Editor Meera Kumar can
be reached at kmeera@umich.edu.
“My Sister, the Serial Killer” by
Oyinkan Braithwaite
“My Sister, the Serial Killer” by
Oyinkan Braithwaite was published
in 2018, and I haven’t stopped rec-
ommending it since. Set in Lagos,
Nigeria, the book revolves around
three central characters: Korede, a
nurse; Ayoola, her younger sister; and
their mother. Ayoola is known for
her beauty and is the preferred sister
of the two. Though she is beloved in
the community, Ayoola has impulsive
murderous tendencies, as is revealed
by the title. Korede is constantly
forced to clean up her sister’s messes,
both figuratively and literally. All of
Ayoola’s boyfriends end up dead, yet
she is continuously discounted as a
suspect. Though Korede has tried to
stop Ayoola from killing, it isn’t until
Ayoola starts to hang around Korede’s
coworker crush that Korede finally
intervenes.
Though the novel’s primary focus is
the relationship between Ayoola and
Korede and Ayoola’s ceaseless mur-
ders, Braithwaite includes another
storyline that focuses on their late
father. As the story progresses, flash-
backs about their father are revealed
that leave the reader pondering the
circumstances of his death and the
role both Ayoola and Korede might
have played in it.
Braithwaite’s expert pacing and
crafty divulgence of family secrets
make “My Sister, the Serial Killer”
a quick, exciting read. The plot is
gruesomely addicting, the characters
impressively
complex.
Braithwaite
tests each character and the reader by
extension, begging us to question who
we can trust and what information is
true.
Managing Arts Editor Lillian Pearce
can be reached at pearcel@umich.edu.
“They Were Her Property: White
Women as Slave Owners in the
American
South”
by
Stephanie
Jones-Rogers
“They Were Her Property” is an
illuminating look into the active role
that white women played in American
slavery. Oftentimes, narratives around
slavery focus solely on the harm of the
white male slave owners while only
giving
negligible
acknowledgment
that white women were also part of
the problem. Jones-Rogers pushes
back on the idea that white women
were bystanders and uses first-person
narratives and legal documents to
show that white women directly bene-
fited from and engaged in the practice
of slave labor.
Combining discussions of gender,
race and economics, “They Were Her
Property” revolutionized the way
I think of myself and other white
women. At the end of the book, Jones-
Rogers talks about the ways in which
white women’s personal investments
in slavery pushed them to uphold
systems of white supremacy and seg-
regation in the South post-Civil War.
By better understanding the ways
in which white women have histori-
cally benefitted from the subjuga-
tion of Black people, we can better
understand their role in other white
supremacist movements following the
Civil War and today.
Daily Arts Writer Isabella Kassa can
be reached at ikassa@umich.edu.
“Native Son” by Richard Wright
“Native Son” is a book I was required
to read in high school but has stayed
with me far past graduation. Written
in the 1940s, it follows a young Black
man, Bigger, living in poverty in Chi-
cago who gets a job working for a rich
white family. After an unfortunate
situation causes Bigger to commit a
major crime, he struggles to outsmart
and outrun authorities and is quickly
caught and thrown in jail. While in
jail, Bigger has a long conversation
with his lawyer where he grapples
with his identity as a Black man.
This book is good because of its
engaging plot, but great because it
forces readers to understand them-
selves in the unfairness of Bigger’s
situation and the system that is up
against him. Wright never makes Big-
ger’s crime okay, but rather helps the
reader realize that it was the forces
out of Bigger’s control that led him to
that point.
Daily Arts Writer Isabella Kassa can
be reached at ikassa@umich.edu.
6 Black-authored books to
read next
Design by Grace Filbin
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
BOOK REVIEW
Daily Arts Books Beat
CARMEN
MARIA
MACHADO and her work is
everything and everywhere
at once. On a chaotic, snowy
day on campus, I was grate-
ful to finally catch her in
UMMA’s Stern Auditorium.
Machado,
the
current
guest in the Zell Visiting
Writers Series, is known for
her work across nearly every
genre of writing: humor,
comic books, short fiction,
essay, memoir and journal-
ism. Her work is featured in
art exhibitions and album
covers (most recently, Phoe-
be Bridgers’s Punisher), and
celebrated globally, recently
awarded with the Lambda
Literary Award for LGBTQ
Nonfiction and The Ameri-
can Booksellers Association’s
Indies Choice Book Awards.
Machado’s most famous
work, a series of short sto-
ries titled “Her Body and
Other Parties,” unpacks the
lives of women through their
bodily experiences in stun-
ningly real science fiction. In
her memoir, “In the Dream
House,” she flips what we
think we know about mem-
oirs, depicting life and com-
plex relationships through
a surrealist lens. Her recent
comic series, “The Low Low
Woods,” addresses complex
social issues through night-
mare-ish comic strips. Her
unmistakable genre-bending
style is why The New York
Times named her a member
of The New Vanguard.
In this reading, Machado
does what she does best: give
readers a completely differ-
ent worldview, in this case,
literally. In her 2017 short
story, Blur, a woman loses her
glasses at a highway rest stop
on the way to meet her girl-
friend and blindly searches
for hope in an unfamiliar
world.
Machado takes us through
this unfamiliar and unset-
tling experience as if we
were experiencing it first
hand.
Her
low
whisper
shakes the audience as we
see reality through the nar-
rator’s troubled eyes. The
rich imagery (mostly audi-
tory) snaps us back and forth
between the harsh, and at
times, funny, reality of the
rest stop, and the narrator’s
racing thoughts as she fears
the fallout with her abusive
girlfriend.
The darkness and disori-
entation pick up as Machado
delves into a confusing bed-
lam of sounds, colors and
feelings. Machado takes the
audience out of their near
trance-like
states
as
she
switches voices. Machado
turns into key characters
with no names: the rude
mother who promises her
children did not steal the
glasses, the girlfriend who
hypothetically screams at the
narrator, begging to know
“who she is fucking” at the
rest stop, the woman in the
bathroom who prays and the
almost surreal “man in the
blue suit.”
Machado slows her read-
ing as the man in the blue
suit hands the narrator a
candy bar, the “sweetest
thing I’ve tasted in years,”
and later speeds up as they
walk the distance to Indi-
ana together. The narrator’s
mind races with fear of the
future and reflections on
past moments. Her tone sud-
denly changes as if reading us
a ghost story. The man in the
blue suit narrates the story of
a woman who could not see
and devoted her life and love
to a horrible monster. The
clear parallels between the
monster and the girlfriend
make Machado’s narrative as
a whole all the more haunt-
ing. As the narrator and the
man in the blue suit continue
their highway journey, the
audience is left in painful
suspense.
As Machado transitions to
the Question & Answer por-
tion of the night, her haunt-
ing tone suddenly switches
to a jovial one. She sits for a
talk with MFA student Anna
Majeski that feels like an
enriching dinner party con-
versation that the audience is
allowed to watch. Machado
discusses her love of others’
work, ranging from “Law &
Order: Special Victims Unit”
to Shirley Jackson’s short
stories, her struggles with
anxiety and her dreams and
nightmares that inspire all of
her work.
Machado’s work famously
deals with sickness, which
she says is a “way into her
own fear,” the “best space”
for her to write. She laughs as
she describes COVID-19 as
something out of a story she
wrote. She is honest, funny
and nothing like the dark
and horrifying scenes she
creates for millions of read-
ers around the world. She
explains that these stories
come directly from her fears,
like her recent comic series,
straight
from
her
worst
nightmare of leaving a movie
theater with amnesia. Her
stories also come from the
frightening realities of life,
especially the female expe-
rience. She calls the repeat-
ed themes of her work the
things she “just can’t shake.”
Her constant anecdotes
are reminiscent of her writ-
ing, in which a single page
carries infinite stories. Yet,
just like with her writing,
every word she speaks has a
purpose.
As the Q&A opens to the
auditorium and Zoom audi-
ences, everyone is starstruck.
Nearly everyone who comes
to the microphone calls her
an inspiration. Yet she main-
tains her humility, laughing
as she teaches the audience
lessons on forming plots by
“throwing things at the wall
and seeing if they stick” and
building upon character per-
spectives.
As the night ends, readers
line up to chat with Macha-
do and get her works auto-
graphed. The event goes over
by nearly 30 minutes, and
the audience hopes to follow
Machado into whatever real-
ity she creates next.
Daily Arts Writer Kaya
Ginsky can be reached at
kginsky@umich.edu.
Carmen Maria Machado creates surreal
realities as a Zell Visiting Writer
KAYA GINSKY
Daily Arts Writer
THE COLD FEBRUARY
rain didn’t stop dodie fans
from arriving early to the
Royal Oak Music Theater
for the fifth night of her
“Build A Problem” Tour.
Bundled up in winter coats
and umbrellas in hand, a
long line of fans wrapped
around the timeless the-
ater in eager anticipation
for the UK-based singer-
songwriter’s performance.
For many (myself includ-
ed), this show was the first
concert since the COVID-
19 pandemic began, and
dodie surely didn’t dis-
appoint with her warm
welcome back to a live
performance. Taking the
stage with her five band
members,
dodie
kicked
off the night with “Air So
Sweet” off of her May 2021
album, Build A Problem.
“We’re going to delve into
feelings,” the 26-year-old
singer announced before
transitioning into “Cool
Girl,” also off of her latest
album.
After kicking off the
night with newer music,
dodie announced that she
would be revisiting some
of her older songs. Sitting
at her rustic piano, she
laughed into the micro-
phone, admitting that she
was “on the right side of
drunk” after taking a shot
with her bandmates before
the show. Besides a few
faulty chords, one could
never tell that dodie was
feeling a bit tipsy — her
vocal delivery was flawless
and possessed the pensive,
nostalgic energy that had
audience members swoon-
ing and wiping away tears.
dodie is an extremely
talented
and
versatile
performer, and she kept
the
audience
on
their
toes from start to finish.
Between
her
spontane-
ous interpretive dancing
and clarinet and drum
solos, dodie’s performance
remained
true
to
the
authentic,
quirky
musi-
cianship that launched her
career nearly six years ago.
What’s most remarkable
about dodie, however, is
the way she connects with
her fans. When she’s on
stage, she’s constantly on
the move, dancing along-
side her band members and
offering witty responses
to fans when they’d shout
messages of love. At one
point an audience mem-
ber even hurled their bra
on stage, to which dodie
asked, “Alright whose bra
is that?” while suppressing
a fitful of laughter.
Just how dear fans hold
dodie was most clear when
she
performed
“Rain-
bow.”
Before
perform-
ing the song off of Build
A Problem, dodie asked
the crowd, “Who here is
gay?” to which the crowd
erupted into a clamor of
applause and shouts. dodie,
who is bisexual and a
champion for the LGBTQ-
IA+ community, beamed
and explained how “Rain-
bow” is a song she wrote to
overcome the stigmas she
has witnessed and expe-
rienced as a queer person
who grew up in a conser-
vative town that was cold
toward
the
LGBTQIA+
community. With rainbow
lights accompanying dodie
and her band, there were
cheers and tears shed as
the Royal Oak Music The-
ater celebrated love in all
of its forms.
Perhaps the most mov-
ing part of the night was
when dodie performed her
2019 hit “She.” After play-
ing the song on the piano
to a chorus of fans sing-
ing along, dodie explained
how she tries to find new
meaning in her older songs
when she performs them
live. On that cold Febru-
ary night, dodie expressed
how “She” has become a
metaphor for her past self
who felt trapped in her
hometown,
a
reminder
of how far she has come
since the days when she
felt ashamed of her queer
identity. The auditorium
was still as she described
how she’s so happy to see
more acceptance of the
LGBTQIA+
community
and how much she wished
that her younger self could
have had the support she
has now.
dodie’s
U.S.
tour
includes
opener
Lizzy
McAlpine, a singer-song-
writer from Philadelphia.
As the lights dimmed in
the theater, fans chanted
“Lizzy” until the 22-year-
old singer-songwriter took
the stage for an acoustic
set. Performing songs off
of her upcoming album five
seconds flat, the packed
theater was filled with a
chorus of voices reciting
every word to McAlpine’s
songs. The only thing that
could have rivaled McAl-
pine’s set were her retro
jeans, as several shouts of
“I like your pants!” were
heard
from
across
the
auditorium.
During
her
set, McAlpine even com-
mented on how the audi-
ence “sounded so good”
while singing along to her
songs.
For
both
McAlpine
and dodie’s performanc-
es, nearly every person
around me knew all of
the words to their songs
and was singing along the
entire time. Some fans
knew the music so well
that they were even har-
monizing with the band,
creating
a
mesmerizing
sea of voices. This phe-
nomenon alone is a true
testament to the energy
both dodie and McAlpine
brought to Royal Oak, and
it was beautiful to witness
two powerful songwriters
pour love into their art and
share that love with their
fans.
Daily Arts Writer Kai-
tlyn Fox can be reached at
kjfox@umich.edu.
dodie enchants Royal Oak Music Theater with music
and love on night five of her ‘Build A Problem’ tour
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
KAITLYN FOX
Daily Arts Writer
TESS CROWLEY/Daily
dodie performs at the Royal Oak Theatre in Detroit Wednesday night.