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.

