Women shed sociopolitical expectations and remake worlds in GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER by Barnardine Evaristo and ANNA AND THE AMERICAN PUZZLE by Jennifer Kasman
Autonomy becomes urgent necessity in a volume of interlocking stories and a novel, Heroines must shed socio political expectations and their conditioning to remake their worlds. GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER (Grove Atlantic) by Bernardine Evaristo, won the 2019 Booker Prize and I am glad I just got around to reading it. In our emergence from Covid, it seems more relevant than it might have in 2019. These intertwined stories are like a musical ronde, each a different aspect of the subject, Black women finding autonomy, despite daily lives that demand conformity. Their voices, unexpected and enjoyable, come from present day Britain, though they extend to intergenerational immigrant experiences in Guam, the Caribbean, Nigeria. Mothers, daughters, wives, fled wars and poverty, only to face new struggle and danger in public housing and menial jobs, no matter what education they brought. Their children, second generation, are caught in ambitions "to make it" and...