A review by serendipitysbooks
Pew by Catherine Lacey

challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced

4.5

 
Pew was a short but special read that cleverly threw doubt at the practise of Christian kindness. It also looked at constructs like race, gender, nationality and sexuality and how they can be used to divide, as an excuse to treat some people as less worthy than others.

When a family arrives at church one Sunday they find a stranger asleep in their pew. The person seems unwilling or unable to speak and their race, age and gender are all unclear. The family “kindly” takes the stranger in and give them the moniker Pew. Despite assurances that Pew is welcome it becomes clear they aren’t. The family and the church community at large are simply unable to cope with not knowing whether Pew is male or female, how old they are, what race they are or where they come from. They claim they need to know for reasons of safety but the links between that information and safety is never really made clear. Additionally the church folk believe that accepting their charity obliged Pew to conform to their wishes. Racial divides in the town are evident and after being locked in a room (to keep others safe) and refusing to cooperate with a medical exam, Pew is sent to stay with a Black family on the other side of town where it is claimed Pew will be more comfortable.

The story ends with a very creepy Forgiveness Festival, which seems to be a way for residents to feel forgiven for all their wrongdoings without actually having to apologise or do anything in the way of redress.
I really liked the writing style all. The fragmentary sentences effectively conveyed snippets of overheard conversation.

Pew could have been an immigrant, a refugee, transgender, male, female, Black, White, Asian, Latinx...In the construct of this story it didn’t really matter. Pew was a person, a person in need of help and hospitality. And yet this white church community could not be genuinely welcoming and hospitable because they could not be sure who Pew was. Pew’s humanity was not enough to warrant more than a facade of kindness.

Moral of this story is don’t be like the residents of this church community.
 
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