tongue-tied

This morning I woke up thinking about Lilith and Homer, the primary black female characters in Marlon James‘ novel, The Book of Night Women.  I’d heard some grumbling about this book and likely wouldn’t have picked it up on my own, but a former student from Jamaica sent it to me and I was craving a strong story in which I could lose myself.  I actually had three books on the go yesterday, which is highly unusual for me—I prefer to focus on one narrative at a time, but Book #1 was taking too long to get going, so I started Night Women, and then my copy of His Own Where arrived…I dove into it, of course, because I adore June Jordan and Neesha Meminger’s review assured me of what I already knew: I will love this book!  But then I got halfway through it and put it down…maybe it’s my mood, maybe it’s because my own novel’s stalled…maybe I just don’t have a poet’s soul.  One of the main complaints I’d heard about Night Women had to do with the language—some say it’s offensive, others rightly point out that it’s not accurate to the period.  I agree with the last point, but you know what?  This story’s got my complete attention.  I’ve never put it down because I’m bored or impatient.  His Own Where strikes me as an experimental novel; published in 1971, it’s the kind of book I’d expect from a great poet—and because it’s by June Jordan (brilliant activist/artist/intellectual who passed too soon), I’m inclined to think of it as a piece of gold pulled from a long-buried treasure chest.  It’s not ornate, but it’s also not for “everyday use,” if that makes any sense.  The concept is beautiful: a sensitive boy, devoted to his dying father, meets the daughter of a nurse while at the hospital and vows to rescue her from her abusive parents.  That’s the kind of original narrative we desperately need today, and I immediately thought of my favorite James Baldwin novel: If Beale Street Could Talk.  In that love story, Tish and Fonny grow up as friends in Harlem but then become lovers and try to build a world of their own in the Village; Fonny’s an artist, a sculptor, but he’s dragged into the criminal justice system when a woman falsely accuses him of rape.  Because it was published in 1974, Beale Street has moments that make you squirm—like how the family always drinks when there’s a problem to be solved, even young Tish (who’s pregnant!).  His Own Where features protagonists who are younger than Tish and Fonny; I believe Angela is fourteen, and after having sex with Buddy for the first time, she hopes she’ll wind up pregnant.  They, too, want to run away and create their own private world, and Buddy’s carpenter skills enable them to break into a shed near a public reservoir.  Beale Street is open-ended, and so is His Own Where, but Baldwin’s book has more flesh, and it coheres in a way that Jordan’s story does not.  Jordan mingles Black speech with poetic play, which lends a certain elegance to the narrative but doesn’t push the plot forward.  What I like best about this book is that it EXISTS.  In 1971, a publisher took a chance on a different kind of story—and it went on to become a finalist for the National Book Award!  And now, thanks to The Feminist Press, His Own Where exists again.  I’d love to know what teens think of this book, and hope it gets taught in a course on “The Poet as Novelist”…