show some love…

Please take a moment to show some love to “Miss Attitude,” over at her new blog Young, Black, a Reader.  She’s committed to reading and reviewing books by black authors (APPLAUSE), and offers a black female teen’s perspective, which is sorely needed in the blogosphere.

I never wrote my report on M. Sindy Felin’s novel, Touching Snow, so I’ll do a quick write-up now.  This novel was definitely original, and daring in an “air your dirty laundry” sort of way; by that I mean that members of minority groups are often pressured *not* to discuss aspects of life within the group that might cause those *outside* the group to look down their noses.  I must say, it took me a while to get into the novel and actually *care* about the main character; Karina is an oddball at school, and a low-achiever despite earning above average results on her standardized tests.  When her teacher threatens to place her in the special ed class, Karina has one of her unexplained “fits” whereby she faints (often taking down whoever happens to be standing nearby).  Eventually we discover that Karina comes from a highly dysfunctional family; her Haitian immigrant mother has married a brutal, abusive man (“the Daddy”) who regularly dispenses “beat-ups” to his three stepdaughters.  He never touches his own two infant sons, of course, and the girls’ mother never calls the police for fear of having her family torn apart.  When Enid, the eldest daughter, is beaten almost to the point of death, her family responds with panic, prayer, and an excrutiating salt bath (Enid was beaten with a belt and scalded with hot food off the stove).  The beating solidifies Enid’s determination to break the ties that bind (she curses out the priest AND her mother) and escape via her white boyfriend; but when an uncle anonymously calls the police, Karina is forced by her mother to falsely confess in court that SHE beat her own sister.  The Daddy is sent to weekly parenting classes, and Karina finds her own “out” by falling in love with the teenage daughter of the white lawyer who helped “the Daddy” escape the jail sentence he deserved.  Rachel and Karina’s budding romance was a total surprise, but also somewhat of a disappointment.  I was bothered by Karina’s obvious preference for white girls; there were no functional Haitians or other people of color in the book, however, so I suppose Karina had no choice but to turn to the “normal” white family for support.  In the end, Karina saves herself and her siblings from “the Daddy,” and agrees to get tested so her fainting spells can be medically managed.  She returns to school, doesn’t wind up in the special ed class, and stands up to the bully who has administered his own “beat-up” nearly every day.  Karina’s “quirkiness” is never directly attributed to the trauma she experiences at home, but she does become a more sympathetic character as the novel progresses.  I told two of my Haitian friends about this novel, and I’d really like to know what they think of it; when I told one friend I was planning on introducing a Haitian character in my latest novel, she frowned and definitely wanted her culture to be off limits to an outsider.  But what about when an “insider” breaks the rules, breaks the silence and reveals a side of Haitian culture that’s not just unflattering, but appalling?  I’m going ahead with my Haitian character, but I will be careful…