Life is so funny. I was so looking forward to reclaiming my bookworm self in 2024, and life basically patted me on the head and said, "Aww, that's cute." After writing
my last book review in February, I finished reading a romance novel in March, with hopes to finish the anthology I planned to pair it with and write a new review that same month, or in April at the latest. But then I had an interestingly ridiculous side quest as a bobarista (don't ask), and also had to spend two separate weeks in Louisville trying to declutter
Grandpa's house. Which didn't leave me with the emotional capacity to read much other than fluff so I could still call myself reading
something. So although I did finish two books of early 2000s Black erotica in the meantime (more about those in my next book review), I didn't actually finish the anthology until mid-August, as in two weeks ago. But that's okay! What matters is I finally made my way back here, ready to give y'all what I've got. First up, a Black romance novel (is there any other kind?) about two grown but adorably awkward book nerds in NYC, who fall in love once via email and again as neighbors, and who reignite each other's publishing industry dreams. Then, an anthology of Black lesbian writing from 1995 that illuminates how much Black women's relationships to freedom and desire (and the freedom
to desire) have evolved, and how much the causes for their concern have largely stayed the same.
The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest
This was a Christmas 2023 present that I received from either my mom or my aunt; I sent them the same Amazon wishlist and at this point I can't recall who gave me what. I'm certain that I heard about
The Neighbor Favor on Instagram, but I can't recall if I discovered it via
Black Girl That Reads or if I discovered it on my own. Either way, I saw that it was about bookish Black people (my kind of people!) and that it would have a sex scene or two, so on the wishlist it went!
Lily, the youngest of three daughters from New Jersey, is a 25-year-old overworked and underpaid nonfiction editorial assistant who dreams of becoming a fully-fledged children's book editor. Her favorite book is an out-of-print fantasy novel about Black elves called The Elves of Ceradon, written by a mysterious, supposedly British author named "N.R. Strickland" who never wrote another book. On a sweltering day when Lily is stuck on a stopped MTA train, she googles Strickland as she's wont to do, happens to find his new website, and accidentally hits "send" on an email that she absentmindedly drafts to him before passing out due to the heat. Nick, an only child from North Carolina, is a 27-year-old recluse who got his first book published in college, but retreated into travel writing when that book (the aforementioned Black elf novel) flopped. He only entertains occasional flings wherever he happens to be on assignment, because a lifetime of witnessing his parents' toxic relationship has convinced him that he's unworthy of love, plus he's afraid of using and hurting people like his father did. (He created the "N.R. Strickland" alias and phony British backstory so his father can't track him down asking for money.)
Nick only has a new website because his best friend and new literary agent Marcus created one for him, and he's shocked to receive Lily's email but responds in kind anyway. Cue eight months of correspondence wherein Nick and Lily become smitten with each other, even as Nick never divulges his real name or origins. But just when they make plans to video chat so they can see each other's faces and potentially move the relationship forward, he ghosts her out of shame for lying to her. Months later, Lily is temporarily living in a swanky new Union Square apartment building with her celebrity stylist sister Violet until she can save up enough for her own solo apartment. She's become infatuated with her "Fine as Hell Neighbor," with whom she shares elevator small talk since they live on the same floor and frequently cross paths, but she doesn't realize this man (Nick) is the author who ghosted her. And Nick, who stopped travel writing and moved into this building after Marcus secured a lucrative new book deal for him, doesn't realize she's Lily. However, when an invitation to discuss N.K. Jemison's Broken Earth trilogy (!!!) turns into a make-out session in Lily's (Violet's) apartment, Nick panics upon recognizing her rare male calico named Tomcat and the lily tattoo on her foot that were mentioned in their emails, and he literally runs away from her.
Lily respects Nick's insistence that they remain platonic but also asks him to help her find a date for Violet's upcoming wedding, because she's tired of her family always trying to set her up, and she's witnessed Nick help two of their middle aged neighbors get together. Nick reluctantly agrees, and they go on outings that are meant to help Lily snag a man, but are really dates that they don't realize are dates: a trip to IKEA where Lily helps commitment-averse Nick pick out a bed frame, a '70s-themed birthday party at Marcus's apartment in Brooklyn where they almost kiss again, a visit to Strand Book Store where they bond over an appreciation for science fiction and fantasy, and an annual birthday cookout at Lily's family home in Jersey. The two get hot and heavy in Lily's childhood bedroom, but Nick's insecurity and self-loathing (plus another interference from Tomcat) get in the way again. These introverted overthinkers are in love with each other, and a real relationship between them is possible, but first they have their own respective priorities to sort out. Lily must push through her shyness and get used to standing up for herself, which includes putting her boss in check, pursuing her dream job, getting her well-meaning family off her back, and being forthright about the man she truly wants. And amidst a resurgence for The Elves of Ceradon and the chance to finally continue writing the series, Nick must overcome his fears enough to confront his parents, go public with his real identity, and make amends with Lily after telling her the truth about everything.
I already decided that I would love
The Neighbor Favor forever when I clocked four brief but significant
Broken Earth trilogy mentions. Four! And yes I counted, because that trilogy changed my life! (If you haven't yet read my very lengthy reviews of all three books, which are partially reviews and partially reader's guides that I wrote for myself because I was in too deep, then do yourself a favor and read them here:
The Fifth Season,
The Obelisk Gate,
The Stone Sky.) Kristina Forest name drops a plethora of authors and book titles, but it's a desire to discuss the work of
my queen,
the N.K. Jemisin, that makes Lily and Nick's first kiss possible.
Lily notices Nick carrying a copy of
The Fifth Season around, she works up the courage to tell him that it's one of her favorite books (I literally wrote in the margins for this moment, "Jemisin making love and courage possible"), he works up the courage to invite her to talk about the entire trilogy sometime (my margin notes continued, "I WOULD MARRY THIS MAN! TODAY!"), and boom. Lips locking. You want to talk about impact? Jemisin's pen is so powerful that a fellow author made her work a key plot point in the romantic development between two fictional people. She's influencing authors in genres that she doesn't even primarily write in! That's impact! Anyway, as I was saying, the
Broken Earth mentions made me ridiculously happy, I appreciate Kristina Forest for including them, and as a fellow Jemisin fan I will love
The Neighbor Favor forever.
After the reading slump I've been in since the beginning of 2023 (bookending the year with your mom in the hospital and then your grandpa leaving this world will do that to you, I realize in hindsight), reading this novel was such a breeze.
The Neighbor Favor reminded me just how warm and unencumbered reading can be; I felt like I was
gliding through this one. The story is light and has relatively low stakes, but isn't shallow or hollow. If romance novels were desserts designated by drama and "spice" levels, and if Oniomoh's
Just for the Cameras were the super rich banana pudding ice cream that I made for the July 4th spread last month, then
The Neighbor Favor would be the yogurt parfait I occasionally make for myself when I need "a little something sweet." (That's plain yogurt, honey, granola, and blackberries, for whoever's curious.) Easily digestible, pleasurable but not too decadent, a bit of conflict to add texture, a little tartness to refresh the palate, and just sweet enough. Read
The Neighbor Favor if you need something that's just sweet enough! Also if you love books, are estranged from and/or afraid of your father, need a vision of a male partner who actually reads (and especially reads fiction), have aspirations to be published or work in the publishing industry, or are perplexed by people pushing you to date more.
Favorite quotes:
"Throughout the entire day he'd been asked if he were her boyfriend and he wished that were the case. He wished he'd grown up as a normal person with a normal family, without any stresses or fears. He wished he didn't have to hold Lily at bay, when all he wanted was to pull her closer. He wanted nothing more than to be worthy of her" (221).
"Lily couldn't believe that she was listening to one of her favorite authors read from one of her favorite books. She'd read the Dragons of Blood series when she was a shy, friendless teenager who wanted nothing more than to escape and have a real adventure of her own. She looked over at Nick... Bringing Lily here tonight was the nicest, most thoughtful thing anyone had ever done for her.
She was going to climb him like a tree later" (327).
Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing edited by Catherine E. McKinley and L. Joyce DeLaney
The Neighbor Favor put me in a literary mood, so I reached for one of my more literary TBRs to read next. This is the third from a handful of books I bought at a paperback-focused indie bookstore called Carol's last year (along with
Will to Love and
Adèle). Having never heard of this anthology before, I mostly bought it because I was so surprised to see it there, in one of the back rooms of a store manned by an elderly white lady, in a run-down strip mall, in a very white, pretty conservative, suburb. Purchasing
Afrekete in that situation felt so rebellious that I almost didn't care about whether or not I'd resonate with its contents. Fortunately for me, resonate I do! Also fortunately for me, as I progressed through the book this year I found the original receipt still tucked between its latter pages! Published in 1995, my copy of
Afrekete was originally purchased in June of that same year, at the Dearborn location of a now-nonexistent bookstore franchise called B. Dalton Bookseller, for $14.00 (equivalent to about $29.00 today). I don't think I paid any more than $5.00 for it at Carol's.
Although Afrekete contains 20 pieces of Black lesbian writing in the form of short stories, poems, and essays, editors McKinley and DeLaney acknowledge in the introduction that while "lesbian" is an umbrella term they deeply respect, it doesn't necessarily carry the same meaning or relevance for all of the featured authors. Some entries regard lesbianism and feminism as intertwined, and proudly wield the term "lesbian" as an act of political and personal self-determination. Some feature characters who have never openly claimed the label, despite having had numerous female lovers, because of the times they grew up in. Some don't mention the word "lesbian" at all because the woman-loving depicted makes the lesbianism obvious, or because other words are used to describe the same orientation. Conversely, some don't seem to be, at least not too obviously, about queerness at all. Nonetheless, every entry is written by a queer Black woman who falls under that lesbian umbrella in some way, enough to merit being included in this collection. In that regard, I respect McKinley and DeLaney's judgment, and I especially respect the reverence they show for Audre Lorde. As further explained in the introduction, the book's title is the name of the last female lover mentioned in Zami, Lorde's "biomythography" that was an influential form of representation for Black lesbians in the 1980s and '90s. Fittingly, the first story included in this anthology is "Tar Beach", the chapter from Zami that relays Lorde's summer fling in Harlem with that same Afrekete ("Kitty"), amidst the Black lesbian club and house party scenes of the 1950s. And fittingly, the anthology closes with another work of Lorde's, a mournful yet exuberant poem titled
"Today Is Not the Day" from April 1992 (seven months before Lorde's passing) when Lorde was knowingly
dying from cancer and thinking about the children and life partner she'd leave behind, not "today", but inevitably.
Most of the entries are set in New York City, but Boston, Oakland, London, Gary, rural Texas, and even outer space are represented as well. Although there are a couple entries that I have no interest in reading again, I do believe that every single one of them deserves to at least be read once. It was difficult for me to narrow them down, and I'm leaving out quite a few favorites here, but I've decided to use the rest of this review to highlight the entries that have left the most lasting impact on me thus far.
"Tar Beach" (Audre Lorde) is such a strong opening for this anthology, and considering that I didn't even know that such a robust lesbian scene even existed in the 1950s, I appreciate how much Lorde's descriptions helped situate me within that time period. Imagine my shock and amusement to read mention of party platters of
roast beef folded to resemble vulvas, and lovers in bed engaging in food play (the sexual kind) with plantains,
bananas, and avocados. I truly had no idea women were getting down like
that back then! But I digress. After previously dancing with Afrekete/Kitty at a house party in 1955, Lorde is
mourning a break-up when she meets Kitty again at a club in 1957, and
their summer fling commences that night. In addition to being a ravishingly beautiful and fashionable dark-skinned woman, Kitty is also a precursor to multiple women (both real and fictional) mentioned elsewhere in this anthology, who leave their hometowns behind in search of broader options for work and for living, dating, and expressing themselves as lesbians.
Having never done sex work, I did not expect to relate to Jocelyn Maria Taylor's "Testimony of a Naked Woman" as much as I do. In it, she discusses finding a balance between living out her radical politics as a Black lesbian feminist while also stripping to survive, since working as a stripper provides faster cash and more freedom over her time than a regular job. As a DC native and media activist who moved to New York in 1989, she describes stripping as an "exercise in detachment," leaving her politics at the door so she can focus on getting the money she needs to afford the activities and projects that mean the most to her. Despite the need to detach, Taylor also finds herself coming into her own sexual agency and erotic self through performing as a stripper. So even though the liberation to be gained from working in such a sexist environment is limited, the job becomes a jumping-off point for her to explore exhibitionism as a form of self-love and activism. This essay gave me so much perspective on my own survival job as a bobarista (again, don't ask), where I similarly had to turn my brain off and disassociate to help the time go by, but was also able to find those pockets of the job that fed my personal interests. (These included interacting with people more, making things with my hands, tasting and experimenting with new flavors, and even discovering new music via the Spotify playlists that my co-workers would put on.) I still think about this essay and feel greatly encouraged, and I wish I could find more about Taylor other than
this bio,
this video, and
this blurb, because I would love to be able to write her and say, "Thank you."
Ooh, the drama and tragedy of "Water Call" by Helen Elaine Lee! A disabled older woman named Ouida remembers the sound of rushing water calling to her from the afterlife, as she almost died decades ago from blood loss on the ride home from a back-alley abortion. Described as still loving men while also being in a committed relationship with a woman, young Ouida cheated on her girlfriend Zella with two different men. After confessing to Zella and asking for help handling the resultant pregnancy, Zella got the money and information needed to arrange the only option they had, since young Ouida didn't want to disrupt the life she'd built, and abortion wasn't legal yet. Post-procedure, as Zella frantically drove around trying to find a doctor who wasn't too scared to help them for fear of legal penalty, young Ouida lost consciousness. In her mind, she came upon the entrance to the afterlife (described as a naturalistic, secret, blooming place" with water spilling over rocks), which she could behold but was barred from entering just yet, because it wasn't her time to die. This was a vision of one's (would-be) final moments that I latched onto, given how much sorrow and curiosity I still have about what my unconscious grandpa's final moments were like as he died last November. Where did he go in his mind? Could he see the other side before entering it? Did he truly have to navigate that all by himself without a presence to comfort and guide him? I don't know the answers to these questions, but the vision Lee offers is still of immense comfort to me.
Michelle Parkerson's "Odds and Ends (A New Lesbian Fable)" is a short, tragic, post-apocalyptic love story set in outer space in the year 2068, when white people cease to exist organically but continue warring for dominance and invading galaxies as clones. Amidst these clones prowling
everywhere, secret girlfriends Loz (a lieutenant) and
Sephra (a demolitions expert) are women warriors from rival Black factions,
hailing from different sectors of the
universe. Literal star-crossed lovers, who've just made love and then parted to serve their separate causes, already longing for their next rendezvous... not knowing
that their last embrace was truly their last. When I made notes about this story on my phone, I enthusiastically declared, "This story needs to be on screen! Give me a short film at least!" But Parkerson's paragraph in the "Biographies" section of
Afrekete has since informed me that she did in fact release a 28-minute sci-fi short film titled
Odds and Ends (a New-Age Amazon Fable) in 1993. As far as I can tell right now, the film is only accessible online through
The Criterion Channel.
In the essay "Wink of an Eye" Jewelle Gomez explains how despite having a shared history of oppression and a shared awareness of "The Movement" for Black liberation, those commonalities were not enough to sustain healthy platonic relationships with the straight Black men she would've liked to build solidarity with in the '90s. She describes witnessing how straight Black men had grown more bitter, more self-interested (read: misogynist), and more capitalistic since her father's time, and how she instead found the solidarity and community she was looking for with gay Black men. These men, her friends, saw her as an artist and a person rather than an afterthought or a lesser being to be dominated. Reading this essay made me uncomfortable because the notion of straight Black men becoming impossible to deal with sounds way too familiar in 2024, where social media has exacerbated inane "gender wars" arguments, emboldened Black incels, and given a platform to self-described "high value men" who make their living from constantly scrutinizing, demonizing, and demeaning Black women. Gomez's essay is a sobering reminder of how much progress we haven't yet made over the past 30 years.
"Kaleidoscope" (Jamika Ajalon) is a short story in which letters and journal entries reveal how a lesbian couple's insecurities about not being Black enough for their New York hotep artist community cause seemingly insurmountable conflict within their relationship. One woman is American, dark-skinned, and unambiguously Black, but is discounted for being gay and not adhering to expectations of how a "sista" should be. The other woman is British, biracial, moneyed, and light-skinned, but her gayness is overlooked in favor of her proximity to whiteness, which the male members of their community fetishize her for. Also included in this story are time-traveling dreams ignited by a supposedly magical stone, with appearances by dream versions of Black literary heroes like Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin. I most appreciate this story for its more direct framing of Nella Larsen's
Passing as the lesbian saga that it already is.
I cannot understate how vital Linda Villarosa's "Revelations" still is, even today, because religion-based homophobia within the Black community is still a problem, and Black LGBTQ people are still having to rebut the same tired arguments and the same misused Bible verses! Villarosa (a former executive editor of ESSENCE Magazine) uses this essay to lay out her trajectory from co-authoring two 1991 ESSENCE articles with her mom about coming out as a lesbian and the political implications of Black homophobia, to being thrust into the spotlight and booked for countless speaking engagements, to being verbally attacked by religious people (most painfully Black religious people) both in writing and in person. All of this led her to investigate the Bible verses most frequently being thrown at her, and contemplate her own spirituality to figure out where she stood on the issue of faith and queerness. She recounts eventually finding community at a gay Black church in New York, and also building up the muscle to gracefully shut down bigots who would use the Q&A portions of her public appearances to condemn her to hell in front of her audiences.
And then there's "Ruby" by Cynthia Bond. Lord have mercy. This story tore me up. After spending her adult life in New York City, and increasingly fearing that her unspecified mental illness will jeopardize her girlfriend's safety, the titular Ruby Belle moves back to what's left of her grandfather's land in rural Texas. Her mental state rapidly declines in the six years that follow, because the losses she has suffered are too great. Most of her grandfather's acres were sold off prior to her arrival, his house that she now lives in alone is dilapidated, she left her love and her artistry back in New York, her bodily autonomy has been violated by countless men since infancy, and she's miscarried multiple pregnancies as a result of local men repeatedly coming to her home and raping her since she returned to Texas. Ruby disassociates to the point of abandoning most social connections and bodily functions, spending her time in nature absorbing the earth's "knowing," and sensing herself transform into the rain, mud puddles, sugar cane, stones, red dirt roads, lakes, and trees that surround her. Ruby's psychosis reminded me so vividly of Han Kang's
The Vegetarian, in which a South Korean woman stops eating meat, then eventually stops eating altogether and envisions herself turning into a tree, because she can no longer bear the cruelty of the world and the ways people (especially men) use and consume other living beings. And how could I not think about Toni Morrison's
Beloved, Bernice McFadden's
Nowhere Is a Place, and N.K. Jemisin's
The Fifth Season when reading the passage about a newly fallen 400-year-old tree near Ruby's land that contains the secret memories of brutalized and enslaved women and girls, including memories of infanticide that women committed to protect their babies from slavery. Upon googling Cynthia Bond, I realized that "Ruby" was the precursor to a novel of the same name published in 2014. I'd seen the cover countless times but never took paid attention to it until now. And I certainly had no idea that Bond had been working on the novel for 20 years.
Go on ahead and read Afrekete now. I'm not going to make any specifications for who you might be and what kind of material you might be looking for this time, just read it. It's the most important book I've read this year, and you need to read it as well.
Favorite quotes:
"Dancing with her this time, I felt who I was and where my body was going, and that feeling was more important to me than any lead or follow." (from "Tar Beach" by Audre Lorde, p. 7)
"Audre, I am learning not to sacrifice
belief, not to murder hope."
(from "What Has Yet to be Sung" by Malkia Cyril, p. 98)
"I'm used to regretting you now, it's a part of my peace now to wish I had loved you. [...] I love you Natalie, I love you now, I love you as I love the sea and as I love the great maker of the great accident. 'I do love,' said the old lady, the old black lady [...] 'Or at least I want..., at least I try..., at least I walk toward love in the way that I can.'" (from "The Old Lady" by Carolivia Herron, p. 123-24)
"The sharp ear of the grandmother catches missed notes, passages played too fast, articulation, passion lost sliding across the keys. The grandmother speaks to her of passion, of the right kind. 'Hastiness, carelessness, will never lead you to any real feeling, or,' she pauses, 'any lasting accomplishment. You have to go deep inside yourself—to the best part.'" (from "Screen Memory" by Michelle Cliff, p. 198)
"For Ruby knew many things. She knew the youth of the world that passed each day before her dim window. She knew the innocence of the trees, still naive enough to lace their branches toward the sun. She knew the hope of the path that wound by her door, still red and dusty and calling for firm feet to track its length. She knew the generosity of the cane fields, the dreams of the stones that lined her worn yard [...] Ruby had felt it then. The audacious hope of rooted things. The innocent anticipation of the shooting stalks, the quivering stillness of the watching trees." (from "Ruby" by Cynthia Bond, p. 236 and 238)
"He laughed quite a bit, Mr. Belle did. He laughed at things that no one else found funny. He laughed at funerals. He laughed at hurricanes and floods. He didn't laugh at the loss or misery, but at the way the hand of nature spun the world about like a woman at a square dance. He laughed at the foolishness of folks who kept getting huffy and indignant at the way they were getting spun." (from "Ruby" by Cynthia Bond, p. 244)
"Then I had to go. I had to get a table and think about the boys and Gabriel and their escapades. I wanted to be left alone to fantasize about the constant, abundant, orgiastic anonymous sex among men; and then to speculate on the sheer exhaustion of sex without love among men. How would it alter the state if women were to carry on that way, away from the 'bad girls' back rooms where so much was staged? Loving a nameless, faceless body full with lust? Instant intimacy without endless pity? Feeding the body the sin it deserves?" (from "Take Care" by Sharee Nash, p. 279)
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