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A carregar... The Sleeping Car Porter (2022)por Suzette Mayr
![]() Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. ![]() ![]() My Name's Not George* Review of the Coach House Books paperback (September 27, 2022) with reference to the Kindle eBook. I missed reading The Sleeping Car Porter when it won the 2022 Giller Prize in Canada, but finally caught up to it through the Amnesty International Canada Book Club which featured it as its January/February 2024 selection, along with an author interview discussion. The entire history of the luxury Pullman coaches on long distance trains in the USA and Canada and their intentional hiring of Black Americans and Canadians as porters to simulate the slavery / working class of the antebellum Southern USA was a shocking revelation about a subject of which I had previously known nothing. The amount of research done by Suzette Mayr was quite staggering and she has described it at length in her interviews about the book and in the reference material listed in its appendices. Her story of Baxter, a Black Canadian porter serving on a Canadian cross-country rail journey brings all of this history to light as the man struggles with unruly demanding passengers, uncooperative fellow train employees, and his own closeted sexual urges. Baxter hopes to earn enough money to go to dentistry school and as he gets closer to his financial goal he is also beset by a more ominous target whereby his railroad employee demerits are nearing the point of employment dismissal. The dueling goal and target play out suspensefully throughout this compelling novel. Footnote I took the idea for the lede from the book title of My name's not George: The story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters : personal reminiscences of Stanley G. Grizzle (1998). Passengers would regularly use the generic name "George" (taken from the first name of the inventor of Pullman railroad cars) to address porters in order to avoid having to learn their actual names. Trivia and Link The online Giller Book Club featured an interview discussion with the author and you can watch the recorded zoom meeting here. The Sleeping Car Porter was also featured as part of the 2024 Amnesty International Canada Book Club and you can read further about that and download a discussion guide here. The zoom meeting does not appear to have been recorded for archival viewing. You can view a short documentary about the history of Pullman car porters on YouTube here. I wanted to like this book more than I did. It is a Giller Prize winner and highly recommended by and reviewed by Richard. The topic was interesting , that of a black, gay man who worked as sleeping car porter in Canada in the 1920's. He hopes to become a dentist , and is fascinated by the teeth of his passengers. Baxter is called " George' or even " Boy' by the passengers. He is chronically exhausted , and often maltreated by both the passengers and staff alike. It does detail the racism, classism and homophobia of the time. I felt that there was not much of plot , and what there was , was very repetitive. I was disappointed in the lack of character development of Baxter. He wants to become a dentist, his parents disliked his effeminate manner, and he is a hard worker, but I felt I knew little of his personality. Tomorrow I will attend a library book club to discuss this book and perhaps my appreciation of this novel will increase.
At a moment when so many gaps are being filled with the stories of the less powerful, the less famous, straight, male, and white people who’ve dominated the narratives of history, The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr uses a the eyes of a gay, Black, male, Canadian sleeping car porter to give a fascinating glimpse into a past that’s still relevant....Three things are central to Baxter’s thoughts and therefore the story: teeth, homosexuality, and the train he works on. While these might seem unrelated, in Baxter’s mind they’re enmeshed....Mayr has picked a fascinating character through which to peer at a moment in history when the status quo was shifting. The prose is clear and distinct, and the two hundred pages fly past like a train along a track. artfully constructed story that moves, beguiles, and satisfies...Generally, historiography hasn’t been all that attentive to the serving classes. Regents, wars and revolutions, yes; scullery maids and chimney sweeps, not so much....As for a Black train porter in Canada circa 1929 who was also homosexual and an immigrant from the Caribbean? Inventive to the core and peerless as a storyteller, Calgary’s Suzette Mayr enchants with a lovely (as well as touching and ever-so-slightly fevered) account of one such émigr . PrémiosNotable Lists
"The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a gay man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that you'll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment. Baxter's name isn't George. But it's 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but he'll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with "George." On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days; their secrets start to leak out and blur with the sleep-deprivation hallucinations Baxter is having. When he finds a naughty postcard of two gay men, Baxter's memories and longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can't part with the postcard or his thoughts of Edwin Drew, Porter Instructor."-- Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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![]() GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:![]()
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