hanreadsstuff's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
sterlingreads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
blackoxford's review against another edition
5.0
You Can Take the Boy Out of the Country...
The context of this novel is a captivating factual history: In the early 20th century a group of several hundred black residents of the new American state of Oklahoma emigrated en masse to northern Alberta in order to escape legalised racism. After a short period of panic by Canada Firsters and the provincial government that this event was the start of mass black emigration from the USA, the community settled into a quiet existence and dispersed gradually into the rest of Canada.
The population of this real-life community of Amber Valley (the fictional Aster) shifted from black to white in the years after WWII. Edugyan’s fiction starts in the mid-1960’s when few of the original settlers remain but are joined by a cosmopolitan Ghanaian family. The result is a complex racial and cultural clash which she presents with impressive skill and subtlety.
Edugyan drip feeds a few literary versions of sociological ‘laws’ throughout her narrative. The first perhaps is that the émigré is never at home until he can condescend to the next émigré. Until then he is culturally vulnerable and uncertain how to act and speak. He can only mimic right up to the moment he can mock. This is the point of authentic naturalisation which is quite distinct from either duration of residence or legal status. One becomes a citizen when others can be seen as less than that.
The second ‘law’ is that there are two strategies that the émigré has for dealing with the interim between arriving and arrival: Either aspire to the norms of the new society; or reject them entirely as inferior. Cultural syncretism - keeping the best of both worlds - is not a sustainable option. The first involves a conscious attempt to suppress one’s origins. The second demands social alienation. Both produce an inevitable digression from one’s homeland through absence.
No matter which of the feasible alternatives are chosen, therefore, the psychic trauma - for individuals, marriages, children - is intense. Add race to the mix and it is clear why the motives to emigrate have to be extreme in order to overcome the inevitable pain, especially for someone like Samuel, the protagonist, who “might have been the only man in the world to claim vulnerability as his greatest asset.”
What is revealed to the émigré is power and its artificiality. Both the aspiration and the alienation of the émigré are symptoms of the exercise of power. The sort of power applied is very specific: “Men do anything to keep other men mediocre, they find any reason. God’s inequalities … this is how they’re overcome.” Jacob, Samuel’s sage uncle and benefactor, has tried to prepare him. “No man can truly rule another... Not even slavery could do it. Remember that,” He admonishes. But without success.
But such advice can barely be remembered amidst the daily flow of trivial slights, self-doubts, and disconcerting social customs. In the city these trials are at least impersonal; one can learn the new culture unobserved to a large extent since mis-steps are mostly with transient strangers. In a small town in the middle of the endless vacant plains of Alberta, however, everything is intimately personal. Nothing can be ignored. Mistakes, small errors in judgment, are cumulative. This is an acutely difficult situation for Samuel because “This was how Samuel dealt with things—by ignoring them.”
So Edugyan’s dominant theme is displacement. The interesting question she explores however is who is displacing whom in a land historically populated by incomers, refugees, and miscellaneous drifters. The more that extreme conditions - war, poverty, famine, economic collapse - provoke the extreme decision to abandon one’s culture, one’s language, and one’s identity, the more urgently needed is Edugyan’s kind of fiction.
There is one final thing to say about the book: Be prepated to weep.
The context of this novel is a captivating factual history: In the early 20th century a group of several hundred black residents of the new American state of Oklahoma emigrated en masse to northern Alberta in order to escape legalised racism. After a short period of panic by Canada Firsters and the provincial government that this event was the start of mass black emigration from the USA, the community settled into a quiet existence and dispersed gradually into the rest of Canada.
The population of this real-life community of Amber Valley (the fictional Aster) shifted from black to white in the years after WWII. Edugyan’s fiction starts in the mid-1960’s when few of the original settlers remain but are joined by a cosmopolitan Ghanaian family. The result is a complex racial and cultural clash which she presents with impressive skill and subtlety.
Edugyan drip feeds a few literary versions of sociological ‘laws’ throughout her narrative. The first perhaps is that the émigré is never at home until he can condescend to the next émigré. Until then he is culturally vulnerable and uncertain how to act and speak. He can only mimic right up to the moment he can mock. This is the point of authentic naturalisation which is quite distinct from either duration of residence or legal status. One becomes a citizen when others can be seen as less than that.
The second ‘law’ is that there are two strategies that the émigré has for dealing with the interim between arriving and arrival: Either aspire to the norms of the new society; or reject them entirely as inferior. Cultural syncretism - keeping the best of both worlds - is not a sustainable option. The first involves a conscious attempt to suppress one’s origins. The second demands social alienation. Both produce an inevitable digression from one’s homeland through absence.
No matter which of the feasible alternatives are chosen, therefore, the psychic trauma - for individuals, marriages, children - is intense. Add race to the mix and it is clear why the motives to emigrate have to be extreme in order to overcome the inevitable pain, especially for someone like Samuel, the protagonist, who “might have been the only man in the world to claim vulnerability as his greatest asset.”
What is revealed to the émigré is power and its artificiality. Both the aspiration and the alienation of the émigré are symptoms of the exercise of power. The sort of power applied is very specific: “Men do anything to keep other men mediocre, they find any reason. God’s inequalities … this is how they’re overcome.” Jacob, Samuel’s sage uncle and benefactor, has tried to prepare him. “No man can truly rule another... Not even slavery could do it. Remember that,” He admonishes. But without success.
But such advice can barely be remembered amidst the daily flow of trivial slights, self-doubts, and disconcerting social customs. In the city these trials are at least impersonal; one can learn the new culture unobserved to a large extent since mis-steps are mostly with transient strangers. In a small town in the middle of the endless vacant plains of Alberta, however, everything is intimately personal. Nothing can be ignored. Mistakes, small errors in judgment, are cumulative. This is an acutely difficult situation for Samuel because “This was how Samuel dealt with things—by ignoring them.”
So Edugyan’s dominant theme is displacement. The interesting question she explores however is who is displacing whom in a land historically populated by incomers, refugees, and miscellaneous drifters. The more that extreme conditions - war, poverty, famine, economic collapse - provoke the extreme decision to abandon one’s culture, one’s language, and one’s identity, the more urgently needed is Edugyan’s kind of fiction.
There is one final thing to say about the book: Be prepated to weep.
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