Non-Fiction Review: Freedom Ride by Ann Curthoys

Recommended

While many Australians will recognise the famous image of Charlie Perkins and local Aboriginal children in the Moree baths on the cover of Ann Curthoys' Freedom Ride, I suppose I should probably explain something for the international audience: Australia had our own Freedom Ride, based on the more famous ones conducted in the American South, and it's this that Curthoys' title refers to. 

In one of her opening chapters, she draws out several distinctions between the American understanding of Freedom Rides and their Australian counterpart. For a start, in Australia, we usually use the singular, referring to only one Freedom Ride, although there were several subsequent trips. The American Rides had the specific aim of challenging segregation on interstate buses and terminals. While thirteen Freedom Riders (seven black, six white) set out, many more spontaneously converged on Jackson, Mississippi when racist violence was encountered (Curthoys, p. 30). 

In contrast, the Australian Freedom Ride was a bus trip planned, paid for and executed by a student organisation called Student Action for Aborigines, which was based at the University of Sydney. SAFA's aims with the Australian Freedom Rides were much broader: to raise awareness of and protest the racism, de facto segregation and poor conditions experienced by Aboriginal people living in or around rural New South Wales towns, while also conducting a survey on these experiences. The most famous Freedom Rider was Charles Perkins, an Arrernte man, who had been one of the first two Aboriginal students admitted to the University of Sydney. The other, Gary Williams, was also present for parts of the Ride, but the other 30-odd students were all non-Indigenous Australians. 

At school, I learnt about the Freedom Ride in a very uncritical manner, and I bought this book largely out of a desire to revisit this chapter of Australian history through a new lens, given that I now have a very different awareness of the implications of an organisation, made up largely of white Australians, advocating for Aboriginal rights. 

On the whole, Freedom Ride was far deeper and more nuanced than I was expecting. The subtitle or tagline a Freedom Rider remembers gives the impression that it's more or less a memoir, but this is somewhat misleading. Curthoys reconstructs many things based on her diary entries and memories from the time, but many other people are interviewed and many different sources used in the course of the project. Furthermore, the book includes a great deal of analysis, evaluation and historiography that covers not only the Freedom Ride, but the Indigenous Rights Movement and the political environment of the 1960s as well.  

Curthoys also regularly critiques the role, importance and impact of the Ride in the Indigenous Rights Movement. She raises questions surrounding Indigenous self-determination and the role of white and non-Indigenous Australians. Neither does she shy away from recognising the role of white saviour complex in SAFA's actions, although I don't think she ever uses that term. 

When they entered a town, SAFA would ascertain if there was support amongst the local Aboriginal population for a protest. In some towns, they already had contacts, in some they established links with local leaders on entering a town, and in others they found that there was less desire to cooperate with their aims, for a number of complex reasons. 

At the time, there was external criticism that SAFA was shooting into a town, protesting for a short time and then leaving the local Aboriginal population to pick up the pieces and deal with the hostilities. While much of this criticism came from people who thought there was 'no racial problem' and SAFA was just 'stirring up trouble', there were also some activists who thought a more softly-softly approach was needed. Interestingly, Curthoys reveals that the group were also conflicted about this. After their charged protest at Moree elicited a promise that the baths would be desegregated and Charlie Perkins and a group of local children were allowed in to bathe (see the photo on the cover of the book), the Riders left the town, agreeing that a white ally would test the sincerity of the desegregation by taking more kids to the baths the next day. They were refused entry, and when the Riders found out, they held a heated meeting to decided whether or not to double back and lend their support once again, or to continue on as scheduled. Ultimately - and I think to their credit - they did return to Moree.

The desegregation of the Moree baths - and the violence surrounding the protest there - is one of the common points of focus when discussing the Freedom Ride. Others include the protest of the RSL (Returned Servicemen's League) at Walgett and the incident that occurred afterwards, when the bus was followed and eventually rammed and run off the road by angry white locals. 

Both for my generation, who learnt it at school, and my parents' and grandparents' generations, who remember it, the tendency has always been to focus on those few flashpoints, or the Ride as a backdrop for Perkins as a personality or an example of university activism. So while much of the content will be familiar to an Australian audience, there was also great amount of new information for me, not to mention the analysis of it all. 

One aspect that features prominently, and which was a complete surprise to me, was the communist affiliation of many of the students; they joined SAFA from University communist societies such as the Eureka Youth League. In the middle of the Cold War, only three years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Perkins tried to keep this quiet and prevent the Communist organisations from being publicly associated with SAFA, because he knew that this had the potential to alienate the media and a lot of people who might otherwise support them, such as the churches. 

However, I don't think Freedom Ride should be restricted to an Australian audience. For international readers I think it would be very interesting to see how the toxic cocktail of racism, imperialism and economic interest, amongst other things, were - and are - applied in the Australian context. It's also interesting to note how SAFA, the Freedom Ride and wider public awareness about Aboriginal and TSI rights interconnect with the international happenings. SAFA was formed after student protests supporting the US Civil Rights Movement led to charges of hypocrisy; students were happy to be arrested protesting rights for people more than 15,000 kilometres away, but what where they doing for those being denied their rights in their own backyard? 

As many people will be aware, one of Charlie Perkins' daughters is today the well-known filmmaker Rachel Perkins. Her first film, entitled Blood Brothers, was a documentary about her father and the Freedom Ride. Some excerpts can be found on the Screen Australia site, and I found them eye-opening, particularly the contemporaneous film footage and Charlie's reminiscences. Just while I'm on the subject, Perkins also has another documentary which I would highly recommend. It's called Black Panther Woman and it's a poignant and sensitive portrait of activist Marlene Cummins, who was part of the Australian Black Panther Party. It is not only one of the best docos I've ever seen, but it also been one of the most profound and thought-provoking works on the intersection of race and gender I've ever seen or read or consumed in any way, and I think about it often with relation to white feminism vs. intersectional feminism and good allyship. So, I leave you, on a tangent, with the trailer for Black Panther Woman:

Non-Fiction Review: The Rescuer by Dara Horn

Recommended

Dora Horn's The Rescuer is a short non-fiction piece about the efforts of an American, Varian Fry, to save cultural and intellectual luminaries at risk from the Nazis, either because they were Jewish, dissidents, or both.

Churchill once said that "great and good are seldom the same man", and Horn illustrates his meaning almost perfectly. Varian Fry was a great man, and he worked within a system governed by great people, all the way up to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. The people he saved were also great people: Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Andre Breton and Claude Levi-Strauss, to name only a few. But Horn highlights that - no matter how history has recorded these people and their deeds - the term good is sometimes ill-fitting.

Unlike the more familiar story of Oskar Schindler, who, throughout the 1960s, was propped up financially by donations from the people he had saved, those rescued by Fry did not wish to maintain contact with him after the war. Nor did many demonstrate any gratefulness for the immense risk he had undertaken; several even put his operations in danger with their vanity and self-absorption.

And, even though Fry was doing good work and ultimately saved over 2000 people, he was a troubled man, so much so that one of his children still refuses to discuss him. Another ascribes his erratic behaviour to bipolar disorder. As Horn also points out, there is also a certain irony in his position as a Righteous Gentile. He helped people to escape the Nazis' brutal eugenics programmes, but, in order to do so, subjected these people to another form of eugenics; only people making the most important contributions to the "culture of Europe" would be considered. 

As for the statesmen of the American government, they tried to have Fry recalled when his work was no longer in line with their politics (i.e. when they realised they were actually going to have to take in all these people Fry was saving!). When Fry refused to cease and desist, the State Department tipped off the Vichy regime about Fry and his team, leading to their arrests. 

Going in, I thought Fry's story would be presented in a self-congratulatory American-saves-the-world manner, but I couldn't have been more wrong. In fact, for Horn and other who have studied Fry, this is why is story has received so little attention, comparative to those like Oskar Schindler. It blurs the black-and-white binaries through which we see the Second World War. Whereas normally we have the good, heroic Americans (and other Allies) as the counterpoint to the evil Nazis, here the Americans do not come out smelling so fresh. Not only did they dob Fry in to the Nazis' puppet government in France, their actions make a mockery of our two core narratives when it comes to the Holocaust: that we didn't know a genocide was occurring, and, that, even if we had known, we would have been powerless to stop it. This second assumption rests on the fallacy that people would want to do anything, which then, as now, is not necessarily true. 

We like the story of the Righteous Gentile, but the truth is that most Gentiles were decidedly unrighteous, even when they had a level of awareness of what was happening to the Jews across Europe. And, make no mistake, Fry's experience demonstrates that the implementation of the Final Solution was an open secret.

In 1935, Fry witnessed a pogrom along the Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin, which, according to one of his co-rescuers, contributed to his decision to go to France years later. At the time though, Fry reported on the violence for The New York Times. In 1942, he wrote another piece, this time for The New Republic, in which he chronicled a 1935 meeting with Ernst Hanfstaengl, the Nazis' chief foreign press officer. Hanfstaengl told Fry, quite plainly, that he and the 'moderate' Nazis wanted to expel the Jews, while Hitler's 'radical' wing had their hearts set on mass murder. Neither was Fry was not the only person reporting these developments to the American newspapers. 

As for the American government, they agreed to Fry's presence in France, if only tacitly, because they knew that the alternative was losing these great brains to extermination camps. But, even so, they took almost few actions to offer refuge to other European Jews because both the government and the general population were scared of opening the door to 'floods' of Jewish refugees, as the case of the SS St. Louis shows. 

The great strength of Horn's writing lies in her ability to make the reader examine these things in a new light, and she does so by conveying her own conflicted feelings. In one instance, she writes: 

The inevitability of murder...is the premise of all narratives of Holocaust rescue - and part of what makes me so uncomfortable with them. The assumption in such stories is that the open maw of death for Europe's Jews and dissidents was something like a natural disaster. These stories, in some sense, force us - people removed from that time by generations - to ask the wrong questions, the kind of questions we might ask about a tsunami or an epidemic. Someone has to die, the thinking goes, and the only remaining dilemma is who will get the last seat on the lifeboat or the last vaccine. But these questions fall short by assuming that the perpetrators were irrelevant. As long as we are questioning the choices that are made, shouldn't we be considering the possibility of the Holocaust not happening at all? If someone was in the position to choose whether to save person A or person B, shouldn't whole societies have been in the position to reject the notion of genocide altogether? Why didn't everyone become Denmark? (Loc. 387-396)

I read The Rescuer in the first days of the new year, but Horn's rendering of Fry's story and the Holocaust in general have stuck with me these past months, invoked by things I come across in my everyday life. First of all, there are the people Fry saved, who have been popping up everywhere, even though Levi-Strauss was the only one I had any awareness of before starting this book.

But then, there is also something greater, something I sometimes wonder when I open the newspaper and read about Europe's current refugee crisis, Australia's despicable treatment of asylum seekers or Trump and the rise of the far right in the United States. If we tell ourselves these comforting fictions that we didn't know, that we were powerless, are we more likely to ignore the cries for help that are occurring now, or in the future? After all, as George Santayana said, "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.".  

Review: Under the Sugar Sun by Jennifer Hallock

4.5 stars

Shortly after arriving in the Philippines, the heroine of Under the Sugar Sun makes the observation that "the most dangerous part of colonialism was just how easy it was to get used to" (loc. 1279). Truer words were never spoken, and that's exactly why we need more romance novels like Under the Sugar Sun: because we are used to the ongoing symbolic violence that stems from colonialism. In our literary worlds, whiteness and Western settings are normal, and these things are not challenged as much as they could - or should - be.

So, even though it shouldn't be exciting to find a romance like Under the Sugar Sun, it is. The paternalism, casual racism and focus on the horrible realities of colonialism make it a difficult read at times and I do have mixed feelings about some aspects of their presentation, but I also feel like that's partly the point. And, quite apart from all this theoretical stuff, Under the Sugar Sun was also just a great romance, the kind that makes you feel squiffy in the stomach when you remember it at odd moments during the day.

It's 1902, and Georgina Potter has arrived in The Philippines, nominally to join her fiance in a teaching position on the island of Negros. However, she also has another agenda: finding out what happened to her brother, a US soldier missing, presumed dead, after the Balangiga massacre. While in Manila, she meets Javier Altajeros, a mestizo sugar baron and landowner from the village where she will be teaching. They rub each other up the wrong way; Javier thinks Georgina is an imperialist interloper, while Georgie thinks he's little more than a feudal lord, standing in the way of progress.

Once on Negros, the dynamic between them starts to change. Quite apart from having to deal with a conceited fiance and the prospect of being unable to find her brother, Georgina is adrift in a world she doesn't understand. But it's Javier's world, and helping her come to terms with it is a welcome relief for a man struggling with family responsibility, debt and a very uncertain future.

This historical background of the American-occupied Philippines was one of the most intriguing things about Under the Sugar Sun. Some readers felt that the level of historical detail detracted from the story at times, but I disagree; Georgie and Javier's story was so bound up in these circumstances that to lessen their prominence would have lessened the impact of the romance itself.

I also feel like the inclusion of violent and horrific acts on the behalf of the Americans - one in which a general orders all males over the age of 10 killed to stop insurgency, and another where the colonial authorities simply raze settlements to stop the spread of cholera - are important because they disabuse us of one of our central fictions about colonialism. We like to think that, after the initial dispossession or subjection, colonial overlords were mostly benevolent tyrants. We skim over any subsequent injustices so we can have a clear distinction between the racist then, and the patently not-racist now: Ah, yes we took their land away and poisoned their waterholes *mumble mumble* Stolen Generation *mumble mumble*...but look, it's all so far in the past now, or Oh, sure, we pillaged India and her people *mumble mumble* Jallainwala Bagh massacre *mumble mumble*...but wasn't that Ghandi guy really an inspiration to us all??

But such atrocities were still common occurrences in my great-grandparents' and grandparents' lifetimes, and they probably would have supported the 'pacification' measures described in the novel. The white characters in Under a Sugar Sun certainly do, and, while the reader is able to project most of her disgust and hatred onto Georgie's erstwhile fiance Archie, Georgie herself is not immune. It's conflicting at times, but kudos must go out to Hallock for not creating a sanitised heroine who somehow magically avoided any and all racist socialisation.

For most of the story, Georgie succeeds at walking a fine line between being a realistic woman of her time and being aware of the Americans' adverse impact. Her understanding and compassion towards her students and their families was my favourite aspect of her character, and I enjoyed watching her shed her prejudices and begin to challenge the status quo. I was disappointed that this character growth didn't continue through to the conclusion; in the last quarter of the book, Georgie became pig-headed and blind to the consequences of her actions. Javier saves the day, of course, but I was left feeling that he deserved better, or should have at least held out for some grovelling.

But Georgie never really grovelled, or apologised very much at all, and this brings me to the heart of my beef with her: as a white woman and American coloniser, the balance of power was always in her favour. Javier essentially just had to wait until she deigned to be with him, but she never really acknowledged this disparity, or attempted to redress it in any way. Instead, she was perfectly happy to reap the benefits of this situation. As realistic as that may have been, it made me angry.

It's the reason I abandoned my original 5 star rating, but I also acknowledge that I am probably being harsher than I would in other incidences where the characters and setting were more run-of-the-mill. Given the harsh social and economic realities the characters were living with, a level of self-absorption that I would normally find acceptable became much more difficult to forgive.

But, when I think back on the majority of the book, I remember that I did truly love Javier and Georgie as a couple. Their interactions were replete with humour and a sense of comfort gained from the others' presence, both of which carried over well to the bedroom.

Overall, Under the Sugar Sun was a exemplary reminder of all that I love in romance, and all I wish there were more of. It's grand in scope in the same way old-school romances were, but with a very modern presentation of race, class and gender. Between Javier and Georige's romance, the setting and the writing, it's a deeply affecting book and one that I'd recommend almost universally, no matter my gripes.

Having said all that, I do still have one burning question: If Javier's brother Andres didn't take a vow of poverty, did he take a vow of chastity?? Because that man needs his own romance, like, ahora.

EDIT: I've discovered that Andres will have his day!  Huzzah!

Opinion: Race, Gender and the Cologne New Year's Eve Attacks

When I decided to take a white-saviour volunteer position as a boarding mistress and teacher in an Indian school at the grand old age of eighteen, I experienced a variety of reactions from family, friends and complete strangers. However, two months before I left, when the Delhi gang rape and subsequent protests hit headlines across the world, that all changed. The nigh universal response became: “Have you really thought this through? Do you really want to be a single woman on your own in India?” The company that had facilitated my placement even sent a carefully-worded email essentially offering me the chance to renege. The collective anxiety was contagious, and I started to wonder if they were right.

The internet, however, was quick reassure me: the stats that were being quoted were not indicative of the ‘rape crisis’ the media were reporting, but of more women (and men) feeling they were able to report sexual assault. In fact, the widespread sense of outrage made it seem like it might be safer to go to India now than in any time in recent history. People’s blindfolds had come off, and they weren’t willing to be passive about the problem any longer.

Today, we are seeing a similar sense of outrage over the mass sexual assaults that occurred on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, but whereas Indian society stared into its soul and came away with conclusions about the way it treats women, Germany is coming to conclusions about race and immigration. It’s hardly surprising that the attacks – with their North African and Arab suspects – have become a flashpoint for these issues, given that their multi-kulti policies and openness towards asylum-seekers have been causing spiralling angst and concern about retaining German culture (Heimatkultur) in the face of unprecedented immigration.

However, the focus on race detaches the Cologne attacks from what they actually were: sexual assault against women. Instead of recognising that we still have problems with the way women are treated in supposedly egalitarian Western countries, it becomes a matter of us and them: they treat women like this, but we do not. It’s a national exercise in cognitive dissonance that prevents any awareness of institutionalised sexism and violence against women, and reduces blame to individuals of other races.

But, if it’s them and not us, then why is does my office building have codes on the doors to the women’s bathrooms, but not the men’s? Why do my male friends have to step in to deter unwelcome advances after my own refusals are ignored? Why is it standard practice for women text each other after a night out to confirm they’ve all got home safely and without incident?

If it can’t possibly be us, then why were the police so vastly unhelpful and dismissive that night, apparently telling one woman who had been stripped of her clothes and underwear to “keep a good grip on your champagne bottle to use as a weapon”? Why did an initial report filed by the police in Cologne record a “mostly peaceful New Year’s Eve” that was “relaxed” in atmosphere?

The answer to all those questions is that, as Western countries, we are still far from perfect at ensuring that women are treated as worthy of respect, and violence against them – whether sexual or otherwise – is taken as seriously as other crimes. At the end of the day, whether the attacks in Cologne were perpetrated by them is irrelevant, because they’re definitely a result of us and the way we see women. 

Opinion: The Goodes Saga and Anti-Indigenous Racism in Australia

In the past few years, much ink and many more bytes of data have been spent discussing Adam Goodes. For those outside Australia or those who can't quite remember how exactly we got to where we are today, Goodes is an Indigenous Australian player of Aussie Rules football. While playing a game in 2013, a young girl - only 12 or 13 years old - yelled out "ape" at Goodes as he ran past. It was not the first time such a slur had been directed at Goodes on the field, but that day he alerted security, and the girl was ejected from the game.

It was a small thing in of itself, but it acted as a massive catalyst. The next year, Goodes was recognised as Australian of the Year for his "elite place in AFL history" and for being a "great role model and advocate for the fight against racism" (NADC 2014). He was featured in a prominent awareness campaign run by the Australian Human Rights Commission, including the below video:

Throughout the 2014 and 2015 AFL seasons, Goodes was booed loudly when he ran onto the field, or whenever he had the ball. This precipitated a massive national debate about whether or not the booing was racially motivated. Many people, the booers amongst them, said that it was just because Goodes was playing for the opposite team, and that really, in a way, it was a compliment. They booed because he was such a good player. Others admitted that - in a roundabout way - they booed Goodes because of his race: by speaking out against racism, he was being divisive, and there was no place for people who tried to stir trouble. There were messages of support as well of course, but they were drowned out amidst the vitriol. Goodes took leave from playing, and later announced his retirement from professional football.

But this week, he was thrust into the spotlight - and the national debate - again, when department store David Jones announced Goodes as one of their brand ambassadors. Their Facebook page was quickly overrun by racist posts and declarations from people saying they'd never step in David Jones again. Once more, there were messages of support, and through counter-mobilisation and Facebook's curation systems, these ended up being the more dominant of the two.

But the question remains, what exactly is Australia's problem with Adam Goodes? We call it racism - and it is racist - but it's not that quite simple. From 2011 onward, Indigenous model Samantha Harris was a David Jones ambassador, and no-one said a peep. But Adam Goodes has become a flashpoint, a litmus test of Australian society's pretensions and self-delusions, our ideas of what we are, and what we are not.

In this massive, bubbling pot of ill-will aimed toward Goodes, racism is only one ingredient. It's mixed in with ethnocentrism, nationalism and Tall Poppy Syndrome. An inherent part of the Australian psyche, Tall Poppy Syndrome is where those who have succeeded in their field or "get big heads" are forcibly humbled or 'cut down' by a begrudging public. Another analogy that is used is the crab mentality, based on the observation that, if one crab attempts to climb the wall of the bucket in which it is confined, its compatriots will drag it back down. However, all crabs are not dragged back down with equal force. There's an undeniable aspect of "knowing your place" that makes attacks against non-white Australians - particularly Indigenous Australians - extra vicious.

So, it's not necessarily Goodes' indigeneity that offends people, it's that he's Indigenous and proud; Indigenous and taking a stand against racism; Indigenous and, ultimately, not playing by society's tacit rule of turning the other cheek. Because it's mostly okay to be an Indigenous tall poppy. So long as you are apolitical and don't make a point of being Indigenous, everything is hunky dory. Australia at large will only acknowledge your ethnicity on its terms, when it wants to hold you up as an example for feel-good moments like this year's rugby league grand final. You'll used by the Patriot brigade to show that look, they are not racist, they don't have anything against Jonathan Thurston, Deborah Mailman or whomever.

But as soon as you become a poppy that is swaying independently of the winds of society, the status quo is upset and everything changes. Society's blindfold is ripped away, and we are forced to look at our own ugly reflection in the mirror. We don't provide a fair go for all, and we are not a shining beacon of multicultural success. And that's when the claws come out, when people's perception of themselves, and the world they live in, is threatened. That's why we have this segue so common it's almost a cliche: "I'm not racist, but...". People are reaffirming their identity, their place in the world, before they launch into an attack on those who threaten it. And no-one is more threatening than Adam Goodes, who reminds Australia that he is not just Australian by miming an Indigenous war dance or refusing to take racist taunts lying down.

We saw the same phenomenon last week, when Indigenous actress Miranda Tapsell, stated on television that, because of the racism she has endured, she "did not identify as Australian". The online response was a textbook case of what I have been describing, with many comments in the vein of this one:

What a divisive, inflammatory show and a hateful, one-sided woman. Address the venom that comes out of "her people's" mouths....Cry me a river...not listening to sooks with thin skin...Broken record, victim, victim.

I couldn't help but from altering spelling and grammatical errors as I came across them, but you still get the picture. The insult of "sook" - meaning a cry-baby or weak, overly emotional person - is a favoured tool to pull Indigenous non-conformers back down the bucket walls and into the mire. The idea is that all the wrongs done to Indigenous Australians are in the past, and "they" should "get over it". As a concept, it is entirely based on the national self-delusion of equal treatment and equal opportunity I have discussed above. It's ironic, given Australia still commemorates the myth of the brave and egalitarian ANZACs one hundred years later. For one, it's "lest we forget", and for the other, it's "you sook, why are you flogging a dead horse?".

By retiring and stepping mainly out of the public limelight, Goodes has refused to be the escapee crab. He's tried to remove himself from the bucket that is the Australian public sphere. Unfortunately, it's followed him to a position at David Jones that has hitherto been so unremarkable it barely receives an inch or two in the business or fashion sections of the newspaper.

The break up between Goodes and the Australian public has been as acrimonious as the rest of their relationship. But, hopefully, one day, Australia will be grown up enough to say "It's not you, it's me", and Goodes will be able to rescind the metaphorical AVO he's taken out on us all. In the meantime, there's always another crab. Australia will turn to ripping them down, and Goodes will be all but forgotten.

Review: The Sleeping Night by Barbara Samuel

5 stars

Most of the time, I choose what I read with the care of someone choosing the paint colour for their house. Instead of holding swatches up again and again before buying sample pots and testing it on some small areas, I read the synopsis and the reviews, and, if it sounds like there's possibility it's a heartbreaker, I sometimes even skim-read the last chapter. Heresy, I know, but if I wanted inexplicable angst and sadness, I'd read the newspaper. And there is that I hate more than when something with a high sadness ratio slips past my vetting system and surprises me, even if there is an ultimate HEA. But this doesn't mean I don't understand the appeal of a emotion-laden book. Once in a blue moon - usually after a run of books that have left me completely apathetic - I pick out a book I know is going to make me feel. 

The Sleeping Night by Barbara Samuel was such a book. Given that it's an interracial romance set in segregated Texas immediately after World War Two, it was never going to be an easy read. At one point, I had to put it down to wash the dishes, and I spent the whole time fretting, because I honestly couldn't see how it was all going to be okay. My angst that there wouldn't be a HEA grew when I visited the author's site, and she had listed it with her 'women's fiction' novels and not her 'romance' ones. But it ultimately did turn out all right, and, in the end, my emotional involvement made The Sleeping Night one of the most moving books I have ever read, half romance and half treatise on violence and discrimination.

As children, Isaiah High and Angel Corey were best friends, despite their different races. But as they grow to adulthood, their parents realise things cannot go on as they are, and Isaiah is forced to 'learn his place'. Worried he'll end up on the wrong side of a mob one too many times, Angel's father convinces Isaiah to join the army, while Angel marries another, 'more suitable' childhood friend.  But when Angel's husband dies in the navy, Isaiah sends his condolences from the frontline in Europe and they start to correspond. The war ends, and Isaiah returns home, and it's here that our story begins. Angel has been ostracised for continuing to run her deceased father's grocery shop, which primarily serves the black community, and for resisting the advances of one of the town's foremost citizens. For Isaiah, Jim Crow is chafing like never before after the freedoms of Europe and he can't make Angel understand that any improperity between them - imagined or real - could mean the end of both of their lives.

The frustration that Isaiah and Angel had at being constrained by race and gender, respectively, was palpable. Isaiah was a tantalizing combination of standoffishness and endearing characteristics like humour, sensitivity and a desire for knowledge. With her baking, love for children and belief in a benevolent God despite the ugliness of the world around her, Angel had the potential to be a Mary Sue. However, Samuel side-stepped this neatly by giving her very human doubts. Given the setting, it would have been unrealistic for Angel not to have been affected by the stereotype of the hypersexualised black male. Several times, she starts to question whether she is safe with Isaiah, before reminding herself that he's Isaiah, her best friend. And they were, first and foremost, friends. I really loved that, and, ultimately, it was their transition from being friends to friends-and-lovers that puts this book on the re-reader shelf.

Because they could interact so little, they they did the old 'love-you-from-afar' thing. It's hard not to pine right along with Angel and Isaiah when each interaction was laden with so much unsaid, and this is why the intermittent inclusion of the letters they sent to each other during the war - along with the more honest versions they discarded - are so touching.

The spectre of the war hovers over the whole book. It obviously transformed Isaiah's life, but there was also a secondary character called Gudrun, whom Isaiah found after she was released from Auschwitz and brought to her aunt in his and Angel's hometown. Watching Gudrun come out of her shell and form a tentative friendship with the lonely Angel was very sweet. I had also never considered that the US Army was segregated, and blacks and whites were given different jobs.

Despite the joy I took in reading The Sleeping Night, I took a while to warm up to it. The Southern speech patterns and language were quite jarring until I got used to them, and while I enjoyed Isaiah and Angel's letters from the war so much, I disliked the prologue and epilogue that had an elderly Angel publishing them. I suppose it provided closure in that it allowed them to come back to the South and put the ghosts of the past to rest, but the 'all is forgiven and forgotten and society has rectified its wrongs' subtext of it just didn't work for me. Also, as nice as it was to see Angel and Isaiah as a devoted old couple, the part of me that hates heartbreak didn't want to deal with the fact that one of them would shuffle off this mortal coil soon enough, and leave the other behind. I'm too much of a realist to imagine a Notebook-style scenario.

Nonetheless, for its emotiveness and beautifully constructed romance, as well as its thought-provokingness, The Sleeping Night well and truly deserved its 5 stars.  

Review: Agnes Moor's Wild Knight by Alyssa Cole

3.5 stars

EDIT: I originally rated this 3 stars, but I've thought on it and it's being upped to 3.5 stars.

I've come to the conclusion that novellas are an intricate balancing act. Within a very short space, the author must achieve characters and plot comparable to much longer pieces of work.  Even if they succeed at this, the reader will often complain that a novella was 'rushed' or 'ended too soon'.  Though it irks me when other reviewers judge a novella as though it were a full-length novel, I'm going to do the same for Agnes Moor's Wild Knight by Alyssa Cole.  

The premise of Agnes Moor's Wild Knight is a fascinating one with so much damn potential, and therein is the reason I'm judging it pretty harshly.  Agnes is an African woman who is one of the 'Exotics' at the court of Scottish monarch James IV and his queen, Margaret Tudor (sister to the infamous Henry VIII). She is a novelty for the hedonistic courtiers, and James stages a tournament where a kiss from 'the Black Lady' is the prize. A mysterious knight who has hidden his identity dominates the jousting, and seems to want more from Agnes than a simple kiss.  

Cole does an excellent job of bringing a footnote in history to life, embellishing the real Tournaments of the Black Lady that happened at James' court in 1507 and 1508. For those interested in learning more about this historical basis, an interesting perspective on historical whitewashing and POC in James IV's Scotland can be found at the Secret Histories Project, while the British National Archives lists many different references to 'Moors' in the Treasurer's accounts from James' reign.

Unfortunately, the wonderful historical set-up comes at the expense of the story itself. With most of the first half devoted to Agnes position as an exotic outsider and the way she feels about this, the second half is rushed. There was little to no development of the characters as people after the knight's identity was revealed and he began to court Agnes. Without this I found myself uninvested in the relationship between the two.

So, as much as I hate to be one of those reviewers, my essential problem with Agnes Moor's Wild Knight was that it was a novella.  I would have loved to see it be a bit longer, allowing for more forward movement in the character's relationship, and more development of the male lead in general. Nonetheless, I'm eternally grateful to Cole that she wrote about such an interesting historical event that has been sidelined our larger historical metanarratives, even if I found the result less than superb.