"Karens for Kamala": Read This Book!
Promise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths wasn't written for you. And that's a good thing.
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Have you ever started reading a book and realized immediately it’s not friendly to an aspect of your experience, how you perceive or are perceived in the world? Did you read it anyway?
There’s a pattern among Books I Did Not Finish. Often, they don’t pass the Bechdel-Wallace test within the first 50 pages. This means they don’t:
include two women characters
who talk to each other
about something other than a man
It’s not some kind of hard and fast rule. I’ve read and appreciated a lot of books that don’t meet those criteria. But if you’ve never thought about it, you might be surprised how many stories you’ve enjoyed don’t meet those three simple criteria. I’ve noticed that I’ll read books that don’t meet the test more slowly than ones that do— they just don’t pull me as deeply beneath the surface.
And if I give up on a book, I can almost always point to this lack of believable representation as a big contributor.
Promise: White Sisters Need Not Apply
Promise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths dramatizes an intersectional variant of this test for measuring representation in fiction. How rare is it to read a story of two or more Black women, who talk to each other about something other than a man OR white people and what they’re about to do, are doing, or have done?
Set primarily in the rural Maine village of Salt Point, Promise follows the story of 13-year-old Hyacinth “Cinthy” Kindred and her 15-year-old sister Ezra, during a year beginning in the summer of 1957. They and the Junkett family, with whom the Kindreds build close bonds, are the only Black people around. At first, their isolation allows the family to maintain an illusion of security. But during this year, the racial conflict and generational trauma the families had sought to escape by leaving their ancestral homes for the middle-of-nowhere catches up to them.
In the first chapter, a rift takes hold between Ezra and her former best friend, a white girl named Ruby. Ruby chafes against the gender expectations of the time, dreaming to be free to do as boys do. The conversation turns ugly as she insinuates to the sisters that she knows “their people” value freedom, too.
Their mother’s and Mrs. Junkett’s warnings that white girls cannot be trusted sinks in. “I know you want to make yourself believe that we’re chasing the same freedom, the same life,” says Ezra. “But we’re not… We’re not sisters. I have a sister.”
The story following that on-the-nose indictment of white feminism cuts through the delusion of sameness, as the kind of violence and terror specific to the Black American experience pursues the Kindred and Junkett families in their classrooms, their workplace, and-- in the form of weapons in the hands of police-- into their homes. On Christmas, no less.
Promise turns its back on any suggestion that white women can be true friends to Black women, or that there’s any point in taking the “manners, fantasies, or systems of white people into any serious account.” Instead, the sisters turn to each other’s love and the wisdom of the Black women who influence their lives. They’ll risk everything to belong to each other-- and ultimately to themselves.
Griffiths leaves the story arc of the white female characters at loose ends. An early chapter in which all three girls intersect with the intimate possessions of one of their teachers is given detailed attention but the potential storylines it might set up just… trail off. Ruby begins a bizarre relationship with another teacher who rivals Hogwart’s Professor Umbridge in her capacity for sheer evil, but what exactly is going on between them is explained only to the extent needed to fuel the Kindred girls’ story arc.
I felt myself getting frustrated by this. I like novels that pay off what they set up, and I like to know what will happen to the best and the worst characters in them.
But then Griffiths spelled out exactly what she was doing for me, in the words of Ezra to her sister: “We can be our own teachers. We can see our lives for ourselves. They don’t want us to be the heroes in their stories? We have our own land here. Our own story. Might be better this way.”
She had to hit me over the head with it. Of course, Griffiths knew exactly what she was doing: centering the Black characters and allowing the white characters to be known only as needed. And I ended up appreciating how these loose ends re-inforced the main theme of the book.
Promise and #BlackGirlMagic
Promise includes elements of magic--Cinthy, who narrates most chapters, intuits details of scenes she couldn’t have witnessed, in communion with the spirits of ancestors.
It’s historical fiction, but the period details never feel overdone. To me, it felt surprisingly contemporary, perhaps because lately we’ve all had some extra-public visibility into the nastiness and hostility Black women face.
The most ridiculous example I’ve seen? J.D. Vance, Yale law grad (G.I. bill = government check!), current Senator (government check!) cited his U.S. military service (government check!) as evidence of his loyalty to the country, then asks what the hell Harris, a Black woman who for the past four years has held the Vice President job he’s currently applying for (comes with a government check!) has done in the past 20 years, “except collect a government check?”
See also all comments about Kamala Harris’s identity, laugh, sanity, etc. And Coco Gauff.
And of course, the Sonya Massey tragedy.
More to read
In their book Black Girl Magic which takes it’s title from a hashtag created by social media influencer and author CaShawn Thompson, scholars Julia Jordan-Zachery and Duchess Harris describe “how Black girls a women maintain their humanity in the face of hostility by fostering community, countering invisbility and creating spaces for freedom.”
If you don’t have time or inclination for Promise or Black Girl Magic but you’d like to absorb more about how self-definition and telling their own stories has been critical to the many successes of Black women, consider giving a few minutes to Duchess Harris’s recent piece published Wednesday in The Conversation: Harris bring joy to the presidential campaign—and GOP mockery of ‘laughing Kamala’ is nothing new to Black women.
More Sibling Stories
I’m still working through The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne. Halfway through and so far Joan Didion and Dunne’s mother Lenny talked to each other about real estate, so I think it just barely passes the test. I’m planning to discuss it with a special guest on The Booktender this month, so stay tuned!
If you’ve been reading my posts awhile, you know I love a short book. I slipped in We the Animals by Justin Torres. No, this coming of age tale of three brothers does not meet the test, but the relationships, the specificity of the details and the nuanced perspective on masculinity and class left my heart aching.
How about you?
Read any other good sibling stories lately?
What makes you drop a book before you’ve finished it?
Whose your favorite literary character who invents themselves, despite what others might say or do?
In case you missed it
And this post from Sara Hildreth about how to appreciate elements you don’t love about a book seems related to this post today!
Thank you for this book-tip! Now Promise is on my list.
For other sibling books, have you read Jason Reynolds' Long Way Down yet? I adore it: a YA book of free verse poems about a younger brother deciding whether to avenge an older one. Tightly structured like classic drama, but voiced like now. With few words on each page, it reads like a small book.
I have a friend whoss raved about this book and I meant to read it this summer but alas. Maybe I can get to it before eoy! Thank you for highlighting it, I especially love that it focuses on sisters and has a more unique setting (can't recall any novel about Black people in Maine)