a tangled web
By the time I was about ten pages into Tyrell, I wanted to put it down. I forced myself to finish it, however, and now I have to try to make sense of my unfortunate reading experience. I should start by saying that Coe Booth has achieved something remarkable with Tyrell; he’s a genuine character with what sounds like an authentic voice, and it’s no small feat to sustain that voice for three hundred pages. Unfortunately for me, most of what Tyrell has to say sounds to me like pathological patriarchal masculinity. And *maybe*, just *maybe* that was what Coe Booth intended. Trouble is, I’m not so sure teen readers will be able to detect such a subtle critique of an amazingly dysfunctional family. Tyrell doesn’t like the direction his life has taken, and much of it is not his fault: his DJ/pimp/drug dealer father violated parole and is in jail–again–and the rest of the family got evicted by their landlord. Tyrell, his mother, and his younger brother Troy are in a roach-infested motel, waiting for government assistance (which is slow to come b/c his mother was previously convicted of welfare fraud). I hate to say it, but this novel made me think of a problematic term from the 1965 Moynihan Report, in which the “matriarchal” black family was blamed for creating a “tangle of pathology” in black communities. Moynihan concluded that institutional racism and joblessness weren’t to blame for so many impoverished, female-headed households; it was the fault of domineering black women who went against the “natural” order of things and emasculated their men, driving them out of the home and into the streets. Right. Now, I’m not trying to say that Tyrell’s mother isn’t based on reality; certainly, there are some black mothers out there who don’t put their kids first, don’t want to work to support themselves, and only care about what others can do for them. Tyrell’s completely justified in expressing only contempt for his mother as he struggles to “be a man” and fill his father’s shoes. Tyrell’s also conflicted about his father, and realizes that perhaps he shouldn’t have looked up to a man who left them in this predicament–again–and beat his mother into submission when necessary. Tyrell’s father, not surprisingly, gave his son pretty awful advice, including: “Don’t date smart girls because they won’t need you for anything.” Tyrell doesn’t follow that advice–his two love interests are both committed to staying in school and going to college–but he has dropped out of school himself and is hustling in an effort to make enough money to move his family out of the shelter system. His mother wants him to sell drugs to support the family, b/c apparently she can’t stand the idea of getting a job and doesn’t care if he goes to jail. Instead, Tyrell decides to follow in his father’s footsteps (?!?) and host a dance party in a bus depot secured for him by the neighborhood pimp. Are you getting the sense of what this book is like? Everything takes place over the span of one week, but like I said–within those first ten pages I saw enough to turn me off: he gets a blow job from his 14-year old girlfriend, Novisha, then meets Jasmine, a Puerto Rican “hottie,” at the shelter and immediately sleeps with her after she gives him a hand job. By page 200, Jasmine tricks Tyrell into meeting with her alternative high school’s guidance counsellor, and at the end of the book, it looks like Tyrell’s going to go back to school. But his brother Troy is in foster care, his mother’s screwing her husband’s friend, and Tyrell’s planning to crash with his boy, Cal, who (at 15) just became a father and helps run a drug operation out of his family’s apartment in the projects. I kept thinking of Percival Everett’s brilliant novel, Erasure, as I was reading (“I hates my mama/I loves my mama”); Everett satirizes Richard Wright’s Native Son and the current popularity of “street lit,” which is flying off the shelves at many major bookstores. Doret over at The Happy Nappy Bookseller left this link at another site, and reading it was equally demoralizing; smut sells, and so mainstream publishers aren’t even looking for “literary fiction” anymore…
Reading Tyrell made me think of an exchange I’d had recently with RhapsodyinBooks: it’s ok to air your (community’s) dirty laundry in a book, so long as you provide BALANCE. And this novel was so committed to realism that it didn’t bother with narrative possibility–POSITIVE possibility. Aside from the fact that Tyrell *might* go back to school, I didn’t really have any hope that he would evolve into a self-aware young man. And I had no hope because NO ONE in his life is modeling positive behavior for him. NO ONE. Obama’s been criticized for “harping” on and on about personal responsibility, but MY problem isn’t WHAT he’s saying–it’s WHERE. Anyone attending the 100th anniversary of the NAACP probably doesn’t need a lecture on proper parenting. Stop preaching to the choir and go find the folks who aren’t IN church, or at the political rally. If Tyrell can’t break away from the people in that novel, he’s doomed. They say 50% of the black men in NYC don’t have a job–well, that’s the world Tyrell occupies. He needs money, and EVERY single man he turns to for help is hustling–pimping, dealing, selling bootleg DVDs. Not once does it occur to him that getting a part-time job might be one way of making things better. He needs a “big score” in order to be “the man,” and to get that kind of cash, he’s gotta get down in the gutter. Ugh. This book was really demoralizing, especially since I watched Billy Elliott on Saturday night, which is one of the most glorious films ever made and perhaps the BEST representation of redeemed masculinity I’ve seen. I could go on, but I think I’ve said enough. I don’t think holding a mirror up to a gritty, ugly reality is what an artist is supposed to do. Our job is to represent not only what IS, but also what’s possible…
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