Jason Mott

"I'm not sure Black people can be happy in this world. There's just too much of a backstory of sadness that's always clawing at their heels. And no matter how hard you try to outrun it, life always comes through with those reminders letting you know that, more than anything, you're just a part of an exploited people and a denied destiny and all you can do is hate your past and, by proxy, hate yourself." p. 245
This is a book that requires a great deal of afterthought. Because it is a story that is fast-paced, written with humor and compassion, the tendency is to speed through it, which I did- reading it in 3 days. That can lead to missing so much meaning.
It is filled with "magic realism", creatively told from the point of view of the contemporary protagonist, "The Author", as well as in the past from the point of view of "Soot". So much is left to the reader's interpretation. Are any of the passages narrated by "The Author" real? How can we know? He never fit in as a child, growing up in his small town, and only got out because he "snuck away under cover of darkness and something akin to invisibility." His love of storytelling and a vivid imagination. or as he calls it "persistent daydreaming" have finally paid off. He is a successful writer.
Now on his book tour, and in the wake of a brutal shooting of a young Black boy, he seems to be having a crisis of conscience, resulting in hallucinations and bouts of alcoholic blackouts. Why? He is hiding his true self from the world. He has written a very personal book about... well it's a Hell of a Book, but he can't remember what it is about. And although it is a personal book, his readers are surprised to find out that he is Black.
" 'You're Black?'
'I am."
Proof in memory, that I've been Black this entire time apparently.
'You didn't tell me he was Black,' Jack says to Sharon.
'I wanted to see if you could tell from his writing.'
'I couldn't'.
'Good.'" p. 89
His Media trainer and his agent think this is a good thing. He goes along with the image they make for him. They plan to train him to become himself... the best version of himself that he has ever seen. He won't even recognize himself. It will be a metamorphosis. (" Like Kafka?' I ask. 'Is that a rapper?' p. 95 ) He does have a fear of this new visibility. What will it mean? (Therefore, I contend that the nude hallway scene is not real but a nightmare that he will be exposed to respectable people as a fraud, but I digress. It is very funny though.)
His new visibility means that he now must say something about recent events, and he laments "Why can't I just write and how away?" The hallucinations are reminders he has always been trying to outrun.
Eventually, he must decide how to talk about the condition of our country. Maybe he can make a difference.
" 'I don't know what to do with what happened to you, with what happened to all the other kids like you, with what happened to me. To all the kids like you who got shot and maybe even lived through it and grew up to be people like me: Black and broken and trying to remember that they are beautiful.'"

So as an aside, the only thing I did not like about the book was the use of too much vomit. This is a personal pet peeve that I have. There has got to be a better way to demonstrate that a character is upset, drunk, or dizzy. More than one scene with vomit is too much for me. The author is throwing up out of cars, in restaurants, and in fancy houses. Enough already.
I usually take off a full star for a vomit alert. In this case, only a half-star because the overall quality of the story and writing was so outstanding. 4.5 stars rounded to 5… (mais)