BOOKS! (The Air Between Us + The Oath + The Offer)

Similar to my last review, I've essentially been planning to review these books together all year, so I'm thrilled to finally be executing that plan! A three-fer of Black romance novels, with plus size female main characters, being loved on by two or more men at the same time! A Black, plus size, poly extravaganza! Now. Based on how I define plus size (people who are unambiguously fat, not just "thick" or "curvy," etc.), I must acknowledge that "plus size" is a bit of a misnomer here. When I discovered these books online toward the end of 2024, I was so excited to find more plus size Black women represented in romance that I was reluctant to accept, once I started reading, that the label doesn't fully apply due to how the lead characters are depicted on the front covers and/or described on the pages.

 

The first novel is about a 30-something woman down on her luck, who unexpectedly reconnects with her rich gangster ex and his longtime boyfriend, and agrees to be their live-in girlfriend on a trial basis; this woman is glowingly described as "fat," which is wonderful. (The abstract cover design doesn't reflect that, but no matter.) The second novel is about a widowed professor whose husband arranged in advance for his three best friends to become her lovers in his absence; this woman is more midsize than anything else. (Imagine if Ms. Sara Bellum were a 40-something Black MILF.) And the third novel is about a 41-year-old hair salon owner who meets a Senate candidate and his retired athlete partner at a sex club, and then agrees to be their fake fiancée and live-in girlfriend in exchange for six figures; this woman is described as proudly "plush," and the cover illustration of her is the most unambiguous... but she's denoted in the book as a size 16. (Which, with the average woman in North America being a size 16 to 18, is far from plus with a capital P.) I say all of this to say that even though my enthusiasm seemed to outstrip what these three novels altogether offer in terms of plus size representation, I'm still elated to have read them all. And I already decided on the theme of this review months ago, so I'm sticking to it! (If you want to read about expressly fat women getting down, check out Viano Oniomoh or Rebekah Weatherspoon.) 

 

The Air Between Us by Shameka S. Erby

 

(Abbreviation note: NT means Nasima and Trevino. TB means Trevino and Bashir. NTB means Nasima, Trevino, and Bashir.)

 

At the beginning of this novella (151 pages containing six chapters and an epilogue), Nasima "Nas" Jones seems to have hit rock bottom. After previously working so hard to leave the unnamed place she grew up in and be financially secure, she's now back in her hometown, underemployed and living with her cousin who overcharges her for rent and expects her to cook for everybody in his house. Unfortunately for Nasima, "everybody" includes her ex-boyfriend, who happens to be her cousin's best friend and whose infidelity caused her to be evicted from her previous apartment in the first place. While walking to a diner for a breather and a sweet treat, she spots her first love canoodling out front with the current love of his life. That first love is a high-ranking gangster and drug dealer named Trevino (a.k.a. "Trev" or "Vino" or "Truck"), and Trevino's current love is a boxing gym owner named Bashir (a.k.a. "Bash" or "Butta"). Bashir has never met Nasima, but thinks highly of her and knows how much she still means to Trevino, based on all that Trevino has told him about NT's past relationship as young lovers helping each other survive their tumultuous youth. In fact, Trevino is the one who initially paid for Nasima to go to community college so she could study accounting and business and pursue a better life somewhere else.

 

After treating Nasima to lunch and hearing what she's been through, Trevino and Bashir invite her to their three-story Victorian home to get further reacquainted and offer a proposition. TB are polyamorous and have been looking for a third person to complete their triad, and Nasima needs a more peaceful space to rebuild her confidence and get her life back on track, so why doesn't she move in with them? Leading up to Valentine's Day, the men invite her to spend the next two weeks being pampered and learning how to be in a three-person dynamic with them, and provided she doesn't leave early, she can decide whether to take this dynamic further after spending V-Day with them. Cue a near-disastrous trip to retrieve some of Nasima's belongings from her cousin's house, a shopping spree, a dinner date, much boinking and spoiling and vulnerability... and suffice it to say Nasima never moves out. She remains Trevino and Bashir's "Lil Baby" for good. Toward the end of the novella, the engravings on the Valentine's gifts they exchange underscore NTB's respective contributions to the relationship: Trevino is "The Enforcer" for his protectiveness, Bashir is "The Foundation" for the stable home and sense of calm he provides, and Nasima is "The Breath," the titular air between TB who keeps them awed and inspired. 

 

Trevino is a little too controlling for my tastes, but I can see how his intensely worrisome insistence on taking care of Nasima and keeping her safe would appeal to certain readers. Readers who enjoy a man with rough edges. Readers who are used to doing too much and making too many decisions all by themselves, and thus yearn for the relief of relinquishing the reins to someone else. While he might not be my type, and I did identify more with Nasima as a character, Trevino is actually the one who impressed me the most. I admire that Shameka S. Erby went against type by writing Trevino as a bisexual gangster who not only is not closeted, but who also has been in a publicly committed relationship with a man for five years, and is prepared to stomp anyone who has anything snide to say to either of them about it. Furthermore, I respect Trevino's self-awareness as someone who tortures and kills people for a living. He knows that he does dirty work. And I don't have a heaven or hell to put him in for that, but he himself expresses being prepared for whatever punishment might await him in the hereafter, which explains his determination to protect and make the most of the time he has with Nasima and Bashir in the present. 

 

Although I regard The Oath as technically the best out of all three books in this review (more on that later), The Air Between Us is my favorite. There's no confusion about the female main character being fat, the intimate scenes are the most resonant, the man-on-man action feels the most real and the least obviously like gay-stuff-for-women's-gratification, and the efficiency of the storytelling is impeccable. On that last point, TABU reminds me of I Think I Might Love You by Christina C. Jones. Granted, I haven't read a ton of other Black romantic/erotic novellas, but the impression I have so far is that independent authors like Erby and Jones are experts at making every page count. It's as if they're communicating to us through their pacing, "Welcome, reader! Have a seat. Now keep up!" Nasima goes from being harassed by her roommate/ex-boyfriend and needing to budget for a small treat at the diner, to having all her material needs met and riding Bashir (whom she's just met) while Trevino gladly watches, all in the span of three days. And because Erby is skilled at what she does, it works! 

 

Favorite quotes:

 

"Butta is different from you, and I'm not expecting you to love me the way he does. I want your love; I don't want you to mimic his" (29). 

 

 "And now he'd given her a bonus—Bashir on the other side. Two men, at her feet, belonging to themselves, and to each other, and to her all at once. It was heady and scary, and Nasima couldn't believe she was free falling like this" (100). 

 

"Every piece Trev gives to you... I get back... from you. You're mine too, baby" (102). 

 

  

The Oath by T.M. Richardson

 

(Abbreviation note: DMC means Deacon, Miles, and Cassidy. TDMC means Tatum, Deacon, Miles, and Cassidy.) 

 

The is book 1 in the "Secrets" series, a series of three standalone erotic novels that are steamier and more risqué than the romances that Tati Richardson normally writes (hence the different pen name). In Atlanta, Dr. Tatum Simmons is a literature professor on sabbatical while she tends to Franklin, her lawyer husband of 22 years who is slowly dying from lung cancer in their home. They receive moral support from their college student son Morgan, Tatum's cousin Alisa, and Franklin's three best friends. Two of these friends went to the same HBCU as Franklin and are partners and co-founders of his law firm: a meticulous workaholic lawyer, divorcé, and neat freak named Miles, and a promiscuous pretty boy forensic auditor named Deacon. Cassidy, who joined the friend group later, is a mysterious jack-of-all-trades who turns out to be an astrophysicist with a hood streak and a short temper. One night, after Franklin expresses his concern for Tatum's sexual needs and encourages her to "get your back blown out" at Secrets (the sex club they used to frequent together), Tatum hesitantly goes to Secrets accompanied by Alisa. Before she can do anything with anyone, Cassidy intercepts Tatum and aggressively orders her to return home, which she does, just in time to have a brief final conversation with Franklin before he dies. After the funeral, Deacon, Miles, and Cassidy inform Tatum about the titular oath they swore to Franklin, that they would take care of her in any and every way she needs; she's in no way expected to have relations with them, but the trio are more than willing to handle that for her too. (It's later revealed that DMC each became infatuated with Tatum at first sight but have played it cool all this time out of respect for their friendship with Franklin. Franklin, Deacon, and Miles all spotted Tatum at the same event while in college, and Franklin just so happened to be the first one to approach her.)

 

At first, Tatum is overwhelmed and offended by the men closest to her making decisions about her future without her input. But as she spends time alone in her grief and returns to teaching summer classes, the loneliness creeps in. An impromptu FaceTime sex session with Miles (whom she's known the longest of the three) opens her up to accepting what DMC are offering. That is, on the conditions that she gets to know them better for herself (not merely as Franklin knew them), and that the arrangement only lasts for the summer so that Morgan doesn't find out when he returns from his internship in Washington, D.C. Gradually, one-one-one dates and intimate interactions between Tatum and her men build up to regular foursomes, and despite Tatum being the happiest she's ever been since Franklin's diagnosis, TDMC's arrangement is temporarily paused when Morgan returns home early and catches TDMC in the act. Some weeks after the resulting blow-up, Tatum is able to mend her relationship with her son, and reunite with DMC based on their shared desire to make a life together as a long-term polyamorous quad. 

 

There's so much to love about The Oath. I love that Tatum is a Sagittarius like me. I love that Tatum calls DMC out when they try to act like her saviors and solve her problems without consulting her. I love that N.K. Jemisin is mentioned twice; Cassidy and Tatum start reading Jemisin's work together after they bond over their favorite Black femme science fiction authors. I love that nipple clamps are not only mentioned, but also used. I love that Miles and Deacon are bisexual, that they have a history of fooling around with each other, and that being involved with Tatum inspires them to explore their connection more intentionally. And I love how unique Tatum's one-on-one trysts with DMC are. With Miles, Tatum calls him to comfort her during a thunderstorm, which makes her feel safe enough to get spicy with him over FaceTime (as previously mentioned). Later, they have a date at his house which consists of a lavender-scented bubble bath while listening to Samara Joy, heart-to-heart conversation, and Miles putting Tatum through his mattress before they fall asleep. With Deacon, Tatum lets him eat her out after he gifts her a massage appointment, a sultry nightgown, and a home-cooked meal at her house to help her recover from being harassed by a student. Later, after tempting each other at a golf course, they have a date at Deacon's secret photography studio where he photographs her nude before picking her up and railing her while standing up, as his camera snaps photos of them on a timer. And although Tatum is the least familiar with Cassidy, out of DMC her sexual tension is the strongest with him even before Franklin's death, so her letting Cassidy finger her during a planetarium visit is hardly a surprise. Their next date starts with looking through a gigantic telescope at an observatory, and ends with Cassidy domming Tatum as they do deliciously ungodly things to each other back at her house.

 

Speaking of deliciously ungodly, never have I ever encountered a book of smut opening with a textually-relevant Bible verse! The epigraph of The Oath is Deuteronomy 25:5, which establishes a historical and biblical precedent for a deceased man's brother stepping in to (marry and) copulate with the widow rather than letting her marry some unfamiliar, only in this novel Franklin has multiple "brothers." The inclusion of this verse tells me that Richardson has audacity if nothing else, she's prepared to make substantiated arguments for the smut she writes, she can make thematic connections between texts with brilliance, and most importantly, she doesn't suffer prudes! She's obviously aware of Black Americans' general prudishness (or at least public prudishness) about sex and non-conventional relationships, and she's also aware that this stems from Black Americans' cultural religiosity, and so she uses the verse to throw that religiosity back in Black readers' faces, challenging them to be open-minded and move beyond judgment. Using biblical precedent to guide people into a story about polyamory. (And not the kind of polyamory, which is really more akin to polygamy, that numerous Black male celebrities have been hopping onto as a trend to frame their desire to collect multiple women without fuss or consequence as enlightened when it's not. But that's a rant for another day.)

I only have two issues with The Oath. My first issue is the way Tatum handles explaining the situation to Morgan after he walks in on TDMC messing around in her kitchen. Before I'd finished the book I was discussing it with an online acquaintance who remarked that Tatum annoyed her, and once I reached the confrontation between Tatum and Morgan, I understood what she meant. So I followed up with this acquaintance, "Having finished the book, I see what you mean about Tatum being annoying. Because, 'I didn't judge you for being gay and dating my TA who's older than you, so don't judge me for you catching me in the kitchen of our family home getting fingered by your three quasi-uncles after your father recently died' is WILD to me! Those two things, while both non-conventional, aren't the same at all!" I feel like Richardson knows (or should have known) that that's not a sufficient argument on Tatum's part, especially since Tatum's a professor who grades essays and literally teaches students how to substantiate arguments for a living. So I can't account for Richardson's choice, I just know that I didn't like it. My second issue is a small gripe that has been needling me: Why spend time acknowledging the need for STI testing and condoms when Tatum discusses DMC's offer with her friends, and why have Tatum mention testing and condoms as requirements to DMC when she accepts their offer, if Tatum is just going to have raw, penetrative, ejaculatory intercourse with DMC every time anyway? If all that safe sex talk is mere lip service (no pun intended), then why bother including it at all? 

Gripes aside, the premise of The Oath makes even more sense when you consider sex as not only a salacious activity but as an expression of care, which I believe Richardson does. She demonstrates this idea more than she discusses it, but there's a phenomenon at play here that I think would make a fascinating graduate thesis for somebody (not me) to explore, and that thesis is about grieving through sex, or grieving as sex. DMC dating Tatum and getting carnal with her is how they help her mourn Franklin's loss, and how she helps them mourn in turn. Furthermore, while some readers (and Morgan) might find it disrespectful for TDMC to go wild in one of Secrets' private VIP dungeon suites on Tatum and Franklin's first wedding anniversary since his passing, that's actually TDMC's particular way of honoring Franklin's memory and his wishes for Tatum. It sounds twisted and obscene, but I'm picking up what Richardson's putting down and I think it merits further research. Overall, I applaud Richardson for pushing so many boundaries with The Oath. Plus, I'll always be grateful to her for being the bridge between me watching season 6 of 'Black Mirror' and me learning that Sweet Vengeance existed.

 

Favorite quotes:  

 

"Baby, I will not be here much longer. You and I know this. I am giving you permission to have a basic human need met" (6-7).

 

"Cassidy rubbed the bundle of nerves until Tatum shook. She stared up at the ceiling as shooting stars and comets zipped by. She felt herself getting close, as if she could join those heavenly bodies up in the sky" (120-21).  

 

"I think it's kind of brilliant... I mean, no man can be everything to you. No matter how much you love them. Shoot, sometimes I wish I had an extra husband who did the things I know Eddie wouldn't. And with you losing Franklin, there is no one that can truly take his place. But he knew the right men for the job" (221).

 

The Offer by T.M. Richardson

 

(Abbreviation note: CK means Christophe and Kadeem. ACK means Alisa, Christophe, and Kadeem.) 

 

This is book 2 in the aforementioned "Secrets" series, focusing on Tatum's cousin Alisa and once again set in Atlanta. Over a year ago, when she accompanied Tatum to Secrets in book 1 and Tatum abruptly left, Alisa stayed behind and got serviced by strangers in the pool area. This made her realize from then on that she needed at least two men at once to truly satisfy her. But while her business as a hairstylist and salon owner is staying afloat, her love life has tanked; she can't manage to find a singular man who doesn't bore her, much less two. Little does she know that Christophe (a suave lawyer/politician running for U.S. Senate) and his life partner Kadeem (a retired NFL player turned sports commentator) were in another part of the pool area that night, watching her. Christophe is pansexual, Kadeem is bisexual, and they've been together since they met as HBCU roommates 20 years ago, but have kept their relationship a secret from their families and the public. As a polyamorous couple they've been seeking a woman to complete their triad, and watching Alisa get her rocks off convinced CK that she was the one for them, but she disappeared before they could approach her that night. They've spent months returning to Secrets to search for her, to no avail. Until one March night when Alisa's urges lead her to visit Secrets for the second time, this time alone, and ACK gets busy in the sauna. CK give her a ride home and ask her to consider a more permanent arrangement, but it's too soon and they come on too strong, so Alisa bluntly and emphatically refuses. 

 

Later, when a leaked photo of ACK leaving Secrets together goes viral, and Christophe is advised by his campaign manager to take on a fake fiancée to assuage voter suspicion about his bachelor status, he convinces Alisa to agree to a two-fold arrangement. Publicly, she'll appear with Christophe at events as his fiancée until the election in November, while privately, she'll test-drive being Christophe and Kadeem's live-in girlfriend during that same duration. In exchange, she'll receive $800,000 to cover her debts and help her open a new franchise of wig and weave salons. (CK ultimately give her $1.5 million.) As the months progress, ACK find their groove and push through multiple obstacles, which include CK repeatedly trying to convince Alisa that their connection with her is more than a fling or a fantasy, plus CK coming out as queer and poly to their moms and introducing Alisa to them during a Mother's Day brunch. But as Christophe's campaign manager turns out to be his vilest enemy, more private information gets exposed, and election day goes awry, ACK must decide if staying together is worth putting their safety and respective careers at risk. 

 

I want to get my singular complaint out of the way before I shift to the positives of The Offer, and that complaint is Christophe. Richardson wasn't lying when she included a trigger warning for "(slightly) dubious consent," because I couldn't stand Christophe's controlling and invasive behavior. From trying to finger Alisa into submission/agreement twice, to having her investigated to the point of accessing her financial records, to secretly swiping her phone while she's staying at CK's mansion to plug in contact info and sync all their calendars and sleuth through her apps, and other infractions I'm probably forgetting, Christophe feels entirely too entitled to have access to Alisa's body, her space, her information, and her obedience. Not only that, but he's so arrogant and unapologetic about crossing these boundaries, which Alisa has barely had time to set or articulate because Christophe insists on making things progress so quickly. She's similarly strong-willed and mostly finds their battle of wills arousing, but reading more of his shenanigans just bolstered my loathing for his character and how accustomed he is to getting his way. I'm aware that his aggressiveness is meant to be part of his appeal, and Richardson does briefly go through the motions of addressing the fact that a number of Christophe's early physical interactions with Alisa are technically assault... but these moments of acknowledgement are played off like a joke or funny banter. Eh, well. The only kudos I can genuinely give Christophe is that his habit of wearing mementos of his lovers for every public appearance (cufflinks from Kadeem, and a folded pair of Alisa's panties as a pocket square) is wholesome. 

 

Now for the positives. Overall I would rank The Offer in 3rd place after The Air Between Us and The Oath, not because there's anything fundamentally wrong with The Offer, but because I wasn't captivated by it as much as I'd hoped to be. However, I did appreciate how Richardson took Alisa's story in an unexpected direction. I'd assumed that Alisa's boyfriends in book 2 would be the strangers she played with during her initial visit to Secrets in book 1. That is, until I paid closer attention to the cover and realized that the dudes caressing Alisa didn't match the previous strangers' descriptions (a young Black man with locs and a young Blasian man). It's refreshing that Richardson chose not to go the obvious route and chose to expand this series' world instead, by introducing Christophe and Kadeem. 

 

I also appreciate the commonalities that The Offer shares with other romance novels I've reviewed. The Offer has a very similar premise to The Air Between Us, with a Black woman of size being invited to join a polyamorous relationship and live in a spacious house/mansion with two queer men, with one being a sweetheart and the other having anger and control issues. The Offer also takes a moment to summarize its characters' personalities in an adorable way just like TABU does; as Christophe's mother succinctly tells Alisa, Kadeem is sweet, Christophe is sour, and Alisa is the spice that pulls all of them together. Like its predecessor The Oath, The Offer is yet another smutfest that Richardson boldly opens with a Bible verse, confronting Black readers with their own religiosity again! (This time the verse is 1 Corinthians 7:9, which declares that people should get married if they can't control their urges, "For it is better to marry than to burn with passion." Fortunately for ACK, by the end of the novel they both get "married" and keep their passion burning!) The contract discussion and sex/kink negotiation scene between ACK, with its emphasis on consent and Alisa being able to veto the requests she's uncomfortable with or uninterested in, reminded me of a similar scene in Rebekah Weatherspoon's Harbor. Ironically, I remember there being more gay intercourse in The Oath than in its successor, presumably because CK are so dedicated to pleasuring Alisa and making her feel comfortable with them, that more of the focus is on her getting hers rather than on CK pleasuring each other. Nonetheless, The Offer still joins TABU and The Oath in not shying away from featuring man-on-man scenes. And of course, Alisa receives her happily ever after with multiple wealthy and well-endowed male life partners, despite never having been in a polyamorous relationship before, just like her cousin Tatum did in The Offer and like Nasima did in TABU.

Favorite quotes: 

"Alisa, you're too young to be acting so old. You're barely forty. You work hard as hell. You can still have a good time... don't let the juicy years go to waste. You are still fine" (8).

 

"Don't think because you pulled orgasms out of me like a gumball dispenser that you have my vote!" (38).

BOOKS! (One Day I Saw a Black King + Sisters of the Yam)

This is my first book review of 2025! And when I tell you I've been planning to review these two books together nearly all year? Believe it! The first book in this review is also the first book I finished in 2025, and I previously teased it in my review of Zane's Blackgentleman.com last November. The second book came as a digital copy that an acquaintance gave me in February. But because it was a digital copy, not only did I have to take separate notes in my personal journal (whereas normally I make notes in the margins of physical copies), but also this digital copy had to compete with all the distractions on my phone. Hence why I didn't finish reading the second book until May, and I'm just now writing this review in June. But what matters is that I'm here and excited to finally share my thoughts! First up, a novel about two Black, 30-something lovers with abandonment issues in the year 2000, who messily learn to trust people again and reconcile with their respective families after meeting in Denver. And then, a 1990s self-help book and treatise on Black women's healing, written by a now-deceased preeminent academic from Kentucky who was based in New York at the time. 

 

One Day I Saw a Black King by J. D. Mason

 

By the time John King and Connie Rodgers meet in Denver in their late 30s, they're both intimately familiar with being hardened by abandonment and rejection. 

 

John's mother Mattie was impregnated by rape and died giving birth to him at age 14, so his grandmother Agnes raised him dutifully but not lovingly; she was too overwhelmed by grief to see John as anything other than a bitter reminder of her dead daughter and her long-deceased husband (Mattie's father Abe). Growing up in the fictional northeast Texas town of Bueller, John had friends, cousins, and a good-natured great-aunt named Dot (a former wild child and Agnes's younger sister) he could turn to, but he constantly weathered Agnes's coldness at home and was desperate for her to love him back. Then one day, after witnessing the death of a woman named Roberta who always demonized him (more on her later), 15-year-old John fled home and walked in on Agnes mid-coitus with their married neighbor. The shock and embarrassment of the moment prompted her to lash out in anger, violently kicking John out of the house. For 20 years since then he's been wandering the South. Along the way he's acquired both an El Dorado that carries him wherever work and women are available to the tune of soul music, in addition to a cavalier disregard for attaching himself to any one locale or sexual partner for too long. Until he decides to try Denver on for size at age 37, and while at a soul food restaurant he locks eyes with a beautiful woman, going to town on a rib, who later turns out to live on the same floor of the same apartment building he's just moved to. This is Connie.

 

Connie, similarly, learned too early that she couldn't trust anyone. Born and raised in a historically Black neighborhood of Denver called Five Points, she acted as a substitute parent for herself and her younger sister Reesy when they were living with their mother Charlotte, who resented being their mother and often butted heads with Connie. Subsequent events further cemented the idea that it was Connie against the world: Charlotte abandoned the girls to move to Memphis with her new boyfriend when Connie was 12, Connie was separated from Reesy when a couple adopted Reesy but not her, she was placed in a home where she was molested and raped by her foster father, and after running away she survived on the streets as a sex worker for a year. It wasn't until a soul food restaurant owner named Edwina caught 14-year-old Connie digging food out of Edwina's trash cans, that Connie finally found a safe place to land and a safe person to believe in. Recognizing Connie's need for love and structure, Edwina gave Connie somewhere to stay in exchange for working at the restaurant and abiding by a nightly curfew, and set Connie up to be able to live independently by the time she sold the restaurant and moved to Las Vegas when Connie was 17. Now at 36 and still in touch with Edwina, Connie makes a living as an independent jewelry designer (whose work is sold in an African art store owned by her business partner/best friend Yolanda), she's uninterested in dating after her first love cheated on her and gave her herpes two years prior, and for sentimental reasons she's living solo in the same apartment building she grew up in with her mom and sister. Connie and her new neighbor John (whom she mentally refers to as "Mr. Good-looking") cross paths more than once, but she doesn't start paying attention to him until he lets her into his apartment to relieve herself after she misplaces her keys one day.

As John and Connie slowly get to know each other, become sexually involved (after Connie explains that her status requires condom usage), and cautiously explore whether true love is possible for them, they each have their own familial reconciliations to make. Ever since Reesy sought Connie out when they were adults, she's eagerly tried to rebuild their sisterly relationship while folding Connie into her family. But Connie's guardedness extends to her sister too; she resists fully sharing her thoughts and emotions when conversing with Reesy, she can barely feign friendliness with Reesy's adoptive parents, and tensions later flare when Reesy disapproves of John and refuses to consider a revised arrangement for Connie to spend more time with her young "niece" Jade. (Connie gave birth to Jade when she was 30, and the sisters agreed that Reesy would raise Jade because Connie was ill-equipped to be a mother back then.) John, meanwhile, has been haunted by dreams and visions of his dead mother immortalized as a young girl, which he's always interpreted as his sign or excuse to breeze off to his next destination. When he sporadically calls Dot, she asks him to visit because Agnes's health is worsening, but John is resolute in his choice to never return to Bueller. Until his visions get stranger and scarier and... clearer. He realizes that his visions have been calling him home this entire time; rather than continuing to run away from the hurt of being rejected by his grandmother, and the guilt of being a child of rape who "killed" his mother by being born, he must return to Texas. What follows is a brief and awkward reunion with Agnes that warms into her showing him the affection he'd always craved from her: apologizing for how she treated him, telling him she loves him, calling him a blessing, caressing his face, kissing his forehead, and promising to have mustard greens (his childhood favorite) ready for dinner the next day. After a couple more events that I don't wish to spoil, the novel ends with the future of John and Connie's relationship up in the air, aside from John calling her to say he's on his way back to Denver (and back to her).

ODISABK's chapters alternate between John and Connie's perspectives, with most of the action happening during their tween/teen years in the 1970s, and their late 30s in the year 2000. The novel starts with John, and what an opening chapter! His traumatic birth in 1963 reads like a movie scene: a terrible storm raging outside, Agnes desperately trying to calm her frightened daughter, Mattie screaming in pain and begging for relief before bleeding out, all amidst hysterical commentary from Roberta, the local midwife/abortion provider/religious zealot/"crazy" woman whose birthing room is the site of this tragedy. Roberta is convinced that John is a "demon" from birth and treats him as such until she dies, but we later learn that she was triggered by John's resemblance to his paternal grandfather. (Roberta was previously married to a man named Charles, who fathered two sons via an affair, and Mattie's rapist Adam is the second of those two sons.) 

 

Even with losing his mother and keeping his distance from Roberta, John grows up in a world comprised mostly of women. As such, the Texas chapters of ODISABK put on full display something that I'd already sensed in the story J.D. Mason contributed to BG.com. Her writing reminds me so much of what I loved about Bernice McFadden's Nowhere Is a Place, in that they're both so genuinely invested in the grand and minute details of Black women's lives. Their mundane moments, their subtle expressions, their yearning and loneliness, their grief, their pain that is sometimes also rage but is still mostly pain, their social gatherings, their mental illnesses and PTSD, the advice they ignore from their mothers, their hushed yet open secrets. The scenes and dialogue that these two authors write for Black women make me visualize Mason and McFadden sitting in a corner of a room, intensely observing these characters in action, listening to them, empathizing with them, and taking notes. Case in point: although it's traumatic for young John to walk in on, that scene of Agnes riding her married neighbor is HOT! Mason thoroughly conveys Agnes's yearning to be touched and feel desired after being a sexless widow for over two decades, and how finally yielding to her neighbor's years-long advances—scumbag though he may be, plotting on her since they were in elementary school and taking her money to only halfway fix things around her house as an excuse to keep coming around—gives her a profound sense of relief. As a 48-year-old religious Black grandmother in the rural South of the 1970s, Agnes isn't supposed to let go and revel in illicit sex, to be on top of it (literally), to feel set free by it. But she does. Despite how guilt and shame are mixed in with the immense pleasure she feels, and how her reaction to getting caught causes further estrangement between herself and her grandson, that moment is still so powerful. And Mason's ability to empathize with a woman like Agnes allows her to write that moment with so much care. 

 

As much as I do enjoy the Texas chapters, I fear that ODISABK suffers from the same issue as the 2020 Black romantic drama The Photograph, where the plot set in the past (decades prior, in the South) is more interesting than the present ups and downs of the film's lead couple. This novel starts off so strong and inventive, and then seems to cool off into something more typical and seen-before. In other words, everything set in Texas is so well-written that Connie and John's relationship feels trite and typical by comparison. John's past is more fascinating than John in the present, who became more unlikeable to me the more his relationship developed with Connie. (Even though they both have commitment issues, as a supposedly "decent" dude for that time John is still somewhat insufferable as a boyfriend. Acting too smart or too cool to try, to be vulnerable and take a chance on their relationship to the same degree as Connie, to verbally respond when she confesses her love to him, or to admit to Dot that he's in love with Connie after he's already asked Connie to officially be his girlfriend.) And Connie's story is so raw and vast, but it ultimately takes a backseat to John's because the book is primarily about him. In a conversation where we were swapping romance novel recommendations, I recall messaging a friend, "I'm currently LOVING a novel from the 2000s called One Day I Saw a Black King (J. D. Mason), which also may not be a straightforward romance but does a lot to explore how trauma and abandonment shape the two romantic leads, and I think the world-building and character development are just great." I wish ODISABK could've made that enthusiasm last.

 

Nonetheless, I still have a fondness for this book and for J.D. Mason's writing, and my mom's still not getting her copy of this book back. I've learned that this is actually the first in a four-part saga that also includes Don't Want No Sugar, You Gotta Sin to Get Saved, and Somebody Pick Up My Pieces. And while I'm not in a rush to read those, I would recommend One Day I Saw a Black King to anyone who remembers the Black Expressions subscription catalogue, who wants to read about wounded people finding love, or who's curious about how people rebound from being traumatized by mother figures. 

 

Favorite quotes:

"Agnes knew Dot had given up the streets for her. Most of the time she was glad she had, but sometimes she saw sadness in her sister's eyes. Not the kind of sadness that came from losing a lover, but it reminded Agnes of the kind of heartbreak that can only come from giving up. Dot had chased after something her whole life and never seemed to be able to catch up with it. Whenever Agnes asked her about it, she'd just shrug her shoulders and say she was tired. Eventually, Agnes guessed that maybe the chase was all Dot had ever been after, anyway" (18).

 

"Ain't no limits, less you make 'em, Little Bird. Trust me, this time. I know what I'm sayin'" (91).

 

"He sensed it almost immediately. Denver, Colorado, lacked seasoning, and he'd grown accustomed to places with flavor, like New Orleans. Hot and spicy food, women, and music. Southern to a fault, dripping in molasses and cayenne pepper, burning and sweetening the tip of his tongue, reminding him that he was alive. Or Atlanta, Southern-fried, pecan-pied, funky soul thick enough for him to curl his toes into. Even Texas had a flair for understated, unmentionable drama. The kind of drama people openly wallowed in but turned a blind eye to, feigning indifference. Denver had none of that from what he could see, so he knew he wouldn't be here long" (103). 

 

"Agnes stared into his eyes. Dark, handsome eyes... She'd done everything in the world to keep from looking into those eyes when he was a child. Lord! How many more blessings had she let get away from her?" (291).  

 

Sisters of the Yam: Black Women an Self-Recovery by bell hooks

 

Reading more bell hooks has been a desire of mine since reading Bone Black in 2020 (coincidentally not very long before her death in 2021), but it wasn't necessarily a priority until a friend gave me a digital copy of Sisters of the Yam. Then, reading this work of hooks' took precedent over nearly all the other books I've been juggling this year. Drawing on her own personal and academic findings as well as interviews conducted with various Black women, hooks describes Sisters of the Yam as her attempt at a self-help book (a genre which I was surprised to learn she enjoyed so much). SOTY is geared toward helping Black women in the 1990s heal from their various traumas and estrangements from self, based on the premise that Black people can better fight for Black liberation as a collective the more that each of us accesses the means and does the inner work to be whole as individuals. The goal is to be engaged in healing processes for ourselves and for our community, while mindfully engaged in both, abandoning neither. And we make this goal more feasible by changing the way we treat each other and ourselves, but also by asserting our own affirming images and understandings of reality to counter harmful narratives that have been perpetuated by media and white supremacist ideologies.  

 

Consisting of 13 chapters, a 10th anniversary retrospective interview from 2004, and altogether less than 200 pages, the 2015 edition of Sisters of the Yam isn't too lengthy of a read. (pay no mind to the fact that it took me three months to finish), and I'm not very attuned to writing about nonfiction, even less so about self-help. So rather than attempting to break the book down as a whole, let me just touch on what I enjoyed most before explaining what I take issue with. First of all, while not a surprise given the Black American literary canon she's enshrined it, each time bell hooks quoted or referenced a Black woman writer's work to substantiate her point was especially delightful to me. Toni Morrison and Alice Walker were extremely familiar to me, but hooks' frequent name-dropping of her peers reminded me that there are so many greats whose work I still have yet to throughout dive into for myself. These include Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, Ntozake Shange, and Paule Marshall. In fact, the title Sisters of the Yam derives from "Sisters of the Yam," a support group that hooks started for her Black female students in conjunction with teaching them Bambara's work (specifically the novel The Salt Eaters, which originates the phrase "daughters of the yam").

 

Naturally, I do have a few favorite chapters. I love that hooks acknowledges how doing work you hate makes emotional well-being nearly impossible in chapter 3 ("Work Makes Life Sweet"). I personally wasn't expecting a Black woman from Kentucky, born into poverty in the 1950s, who seems to idealize country life and acknowledges the inevitability of Black women having to work (because historically Black women have always worked), to also write so sympathetically about Black women having their spirits broken in workplaces that both exploit and stifle their talent. But that she does! She further advocates for a concept called "right livelihood"; rather than simply feeling luck to have any old job, people should feel empowered and deserving enough to consciously choose work that they feel called to and that they find meaningful. Relatedly, in chapter 4 ("Knowing Peace: An End to Stress") hooks encourages Black women to be and act more entitled to living well, and to redefine what makes them valuable instead of overworking themselves as the mules or "little worker bees" that society expects them to be. (And as someone who has work-related PTSD and who previously thought she'd be content being a good little worker bee, that part spoke to my soul!) Additonally, while I am among the contingent of people for whom positive thinking feels naive and scary, I can agree with hooks that worry, cynicism, and imagining the worst don't give us control or ward off disappointment like we believe they do. 

 

I related to chapter 7 ("Facing and Feeling Loss") for obvious reasons, but I was also surprised to derive a sense of pride from hooks' description of Black people being culturally predisposed to having a healthier approach to death than mainstream society. Historically, Black people haven't had the luxury of keeping tragedy and death at a distance, and our traditions instill in us an imperative to respect, care for, sit with, show love for, and surrender to our grief for the dead even after a person's body has passed. She regards mourning as a "growth experience" that reminds us how to live. I relate to chapter 8 ("Moved by Passion: Eros and Responsibility") for reasons that are nobody's business, but I will say that in addition to sex and sexuality (and eradicating homophobia!), hooks connects eroticism and healing pleasure to the ability to explore the world with all of our available senses. Feeling discouraged or disempowered from exploring in that way causes people to be touch-starved, and uncomfortable with expressing their their need for physical contact and care. And that feeds right into chapter 9 ("Living to Love"), where hooks argues that love is neither a waste of time, nor a luxury limited to the contexts of religion or romance, nor a distraction from our material survival. She also gently drags people like me (and admittedly herself) who are chronically critical and unloving toward their own image, and urges Black women to nurture our inner lives and get more comfortable with asking for help as "a loving practice of surrender." 

 

Now. To a certain extent I feel compelled to give bell hooks the benefit of the doubt, not because her work is precious to me—because it's not (yet); this is only the second book of hers that I've read, and unlike many millennials and Gen Z-ers I have neither read nor am I an evangelist for All About Love—but because she's from Kentucky like my folks are. And for the most part I greatly appreciate the reverence she has for "traditional southern black folk life," the ways that Southern Black people found to build community, sustain themselves, express themselves, heal each other, love each other, be spiritually empowered, care for the earth, and stay rooted in their Blackness amidst all the forms of lack that they were forced into (especially before the 1960s). Such reverence reminds me of In Love & Trouble, where Alice Walker similarly emphasizes the significance of various Black American traditions and survival methods (rootwork, home remedies, handicrafts, country ways of living, etc.). With that being said, bell hooks is clearly homesick in Sisters of the Yam (she repeatedly mentions feeling stressed by and dissatisfied with facets of her career as a professor in New York City), and I believe that her homesickness prompts her to write too idyllically about life in the South. This is most evident in chapter 12 ("Touching the Earth") where she asserts that The Great Migration wounded the Black psyche and caused us to partially lose our sense of identity. This assertion is more successful when she ties our disconnection from nature to our disconnection from our own bodies, and the waning ability (or the shear lack of time) for us to be still and behold our own beauty. She includes a stunning poem by William Waring Cuney ("No Images") to illustrate this point in a way that's incredibly resonant and effective. 

 

But then hooks claims that industrial urban life in the North turned us into tools or machines, consumed by work and reduced to our productivity... to which I'd rebut, is that really so different from people in the South who were relegated to working as sharecroppers, maids, wet nurses, and other subservient roles for white people during this same period? There were trade-offs for those who stayed and for those who migrated, and according to hooks, Black people in the South had more downtime "for silence and contemplation" outdoors and a stronger sense of community. But were they altogether better off than those who left? Thanks to watching Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s PBS docuseries 'Great Migrations: A People on the Move' earlier this year, I'm aware that many Black people did indeed conclude that the sacrifices they'd made to relocate north or west weren't worth it in the long run, and during the 1980s and 1990s there was a wave of us moving back to the South seeking career viability and ancestral/familial/cultural reconnection. So bell hooks' pining for "down home" life is timely. But the vision of "down home" she pines for seems so steeped in nostalgia that it almost downplays the severity of white racist terrorism and lack of economic opportunity that pushed Black people northward in the first place.

 

Speaking of downplayed severities, while I can make allowances for bell hooks' nostalgia for the South, I cannot abide by her argument that Black people's reconciliation with ourselves must include forgiveness for white people in chapter 11 ("The Joys of Reconciliation"). That rather than being consumed by bitterness at those who've wronged us and supposedly allowing our self-reconciliation to be incomplete (by not also reconciling with others), we must include white people in that reconciliation and extend compassion toward them. I was so confused, aghast, and disgusted by what I read that I literally had to take a break and say out loud, "This is the author y'all have been hyping up all this time?! This is y'all's revolutionary theorist?!" 

 

I understand that bell hooks was aware of what white people have put us through historically; whatever rose-colored glasses she may have had for the South, she writes copiously in other SOTY chapters about the insidious and enduring tendrils of white supremacy, and how Black people must be "educated for critical consciousness" so we can fight against it. I also understand that as someone raised Christian who's embracing Buddhism, and who's also looking to the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War-era multiracial coalitions as a compass, in the '90s hooks regards blanket animosity toward white people as an extension of the nihilism and despair growing among young Black people that she wants to course correct. However, I would argue that Black people (especially Black women) not only have a right to whatever bitterness, rage, grudges, or resentment they may have, however "poisonous" those emotions may be, but that they also have a right to not let any of that go. It's one thing for Black people to choose, on an individual basis, to have cordial or friendly or loving relations with the literal/figurative/historical/financial/spiritual descendants of our oppressors (a.k.a. white people). That's an option each of us has. But it's downright irresponsible and insulting to invoke Martin Luther King, Jr. and 1 John 4 ("He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love...") in order to browbeat Black readers, and imply that forgiving or uniting with white people is a requirement for Black people en masse to be fully whole and compassionate. In a book focused on Black women's healing and liberation? Seriously, how dare you?!

 

Having laid out my frustrations with it, and although it has caused me to side-eye bell hooks a bit (I side-eye Alice Walker sometimes too, it's okay), I would still recommend for any Black woman to read Sisters of the Yam once. Just do what my therapist advises me to do when taking in others' ideas, especially of the therapeutic or self-help variety: keep the meat, leave the bones. 

Favorite quotes:

"And I thought we should call our support group 'Sisters of the Yam' to honor Bambara’s work and the wisdom she offered to us. I also felt the 'yam' was a life-sustaining symbol of black kinship and community. Everywhere black women live in the world, we eat yam. It is a symbol of our diasporic connections. Yams provide nourishment for the body as food yet they are also used medicinally—to heal the body" (6).

"In a space before time and words, the world was covered in a thick blanket of darkness. It was a warm and loving covering. Since it was hard for the spirits who inhabited this space to see one another they learned to live by and through touch. So if you were running around lost you knew you were found when arms reached out in that loving darkness to hold you. And those arms that held the spirits in that beautiful dark space before time are holding us still... I made up this story because I wanted this little brown girl to grow up dreaming the dark and its powerful blackness as a magic space she need never fear or dread... I held her hand,  just like my father’s father, Daddy Jerry, a man who worked the land, who knew the earth was his witness, had once held my hand in the darkest of summer nights and taught me that the blanket of night I was scared of was really longing to be my friend, to tell me all its secrets. And I reminded her, as he reminded me way back then, that those arms that first held us in that dark space before words and time hold us still" (59-60).

 

"Where is the love when a black woman looks at herself and says: 'I see inside me somebody who is ugly, too dark, too fat, too afraid—somebody nobody would love, ’cause I don’t even like what I see;' or maybe: 'I see inside me somebody who is so hurt, who is just like a ball of pain and I don’t want to look at her ’cause I can’t do nothing about that pain.' The love is absent. To make it present, the individual has to first choose to see herself, to just look at that inner self without blame or censure." (108).

The J-Drama Drop #35

Believe it or not, I had so many book and J-drama reviews planned for the first half of 2025, and yet here I am in May, just now publishing something new on this blog for the very first time this year. Charge it to my hormones, not my heart. (Backstory: I started a new medication in January. It's serving the purpose it was prescribed for, but it's hard to write about the stuff you read and watch when you're not finishing anything, and it's hard to finish things when your brain is foggy and your concentration is sometimey.) Anyway, I think I've finally adjusted enough to get back into writing again, so here's my review of a scandalous infidelity-themed J-drama that I watched in the second half of 2024, a heart-wrenching yet adorable father-daughter J-drama that I finished this February, and an honorable mention K-drama that I finished last month.

夫の家庭を壊すまで (Otto no Katei wo Kowasu Made/Until I Destroy My Husband's Family/Until I Destroy My Husband's Household) - TV Tokyo, 2024

• 
  Minori is a Waseda University-educated mother and housewife, and Yudai works in sales. Minori believes that they've been happy together for the past 17 years, until she sees a text on her husband's phone from a mysterious contact named "W.M." Suspicious, she follows her husband around one night and discovers that he has a whole second family. This family includes a hairdresser/salon owner named Riko who was one of their high school classmates, and her 18-year-old son Wataru (the "W.M" who's been texting Yudai). Back in high school, Yudai knew Riko first before getting close to Minori. Sometime after marrying Minori, Yudai rekindled his relationship with Riko (after she had a baby by a different married man), and has been spending time with Riko and Wataru on the side for about a decade.
• Minori's female lawyer friend strategizes a divorce plan for her, but thousands in alimony isn't enough. Minori wants to punish Yudai for his "crime" of adultery, and destroy his second family too. She begins by getting herself hired part-time as one of Wataru's juku (cram school) tutors, so she can gain intel via proximity and manipulate Wataru via the crush he develops on her. Which is how she learns that Riko is pregnant with Yudai's child. More sleuthing reveals that not only does her mother-in-law prefer Yudai's side family, but mother and son have been plotting on Minori since high school! Minori is the secret love child of a former employee of the Tsukishiro jewelry company and the company's current chariman, and Yudai's mother knows this because she used to housekeep for the Tsukishiros. Yudai was coached by his struggling single mother to date and marry Minori, so they could eventually manipulate Minori out of an inheritance that she didn't even know she had. (Minori's mother died when she was a child, and her maternal grandfather raised her without informing her of her heiress status.)
• Armed with the full knowledge of her husband and mother-in-law's scheme, her grandfather's deathbed confession about her parentage, her father's resources, and Wataru's misplaced loyalty, Minori enacts her revenge. She gets her mother-in-law fired, gets Yudai exposed at work and demoted, rubs their deceit and imminent poverty in both of their faces, causes Yudai to abandon Riko, demands that Yudai sign divorce papers, and leaves town with her and Yudai's young son Tsubasa. Seven years later, Minori (now 40) is running a kid-friendly cafe in the countryside, and by pure coincidence Wataru (now 25) shows up as a new teacher at Tsubasa's school. He makes clear that he still desires her and that he's not a kid anymore, which she repeatedly rebuffs at first. Meanwhile, Yudai is a pitiful shell of his former self hoping Minori will give him a second chance, and having learned nothing from their comeuppance, both his mother and Riko devise ways to get back at Minori. 

Meh: The hair technology is still not technology-ing! Just like in 'Tokyo Girl' and 'Fukushuu no Miboujin', we have yet another female lead sporting yet another egregiously terrible bob-with-extensions combo that isn't blended well! The color match is perfect but the overall cut and shape are not, which is especially obvious in episodes 2 and 3. Minori goes to Riko's salon to get her hair cut by (and spook the life out of) Riko in episode 4, so obviously the "new" bob is the hairstyle the actress has had all along (which looks fantastic on her!), and she only needed extensions to give her character the illusion of long tresses for the beginning of the series. But come on! Y'all gotta at least pretend to care about pulling off a hairstyle that's convincing! 

 

Better: I was unprepared for the level of empathy displayed between Minori and Wataru. Minori does use the boy to hurt his mom, but she also recognizes that he's not at fault for her husband's affair. And when Minori reveals to Wataru who she really is in episode 4, he doesn't expose her identity or her plan to Riko and Yudai. Because of their shared experience as children of affairs, he empathizes with how much Minori has suffered due to Riko and Yudai's selfishness, and shockingly, he promises to help her with whatever she needs for her revenge plot so that he and his mom can be forgiven. Minori is cognizant of the fact that she doesn't deserve Wataru's empathy given the power imbalance between them, and she's steadfast about keeping her distance from him in the flash forward (episodes 9 through 12), but he insists on offering it anyway. Now grown, having tried to approach Minori multiple times, Wataru gets caught in the rain with her in episode 10 and they take shelter in a construction site. During this scene he explains to Minori that although she used him, he credits her for setting him on the path to becoming a Wasei-educated teacher and an overall more caring person. They make out (initiated by him) after he moves her to tears by identifying the sense of guilt he sees in her for making bad people suffer even though they deserved it, because he feels the same guilt, and he believes they can overcome it and move on together as a couple. Their kiss is interrupted by a phone call from her son, and Minori once again rejects Wataru (not wanting to hurt her son, Wataru, or Wataru's little sister/Riko and Yudai's lovechild), but the pair do make their own unique commitment to each other by the end of the series. I'm not saying their relationship is right or appropriate, I'm just saying their ability to empathize with each other and eventually fall in love on less imbalanced terms makes narrative sense in context.

Speaking of Wataru, I appreciate how much 'Otto no Katei' is willing to lean into giving us someone to hate (in addition to Yudai and his mother), that someone being Wataru's mother. Riko is such a bird! Sure, she's been desperate for love her whole life and has never been anyone's first choice. But the show never lets the audience forget how much of a bird she is, and the audience is allowed to keep judging her for it, especially since Yudai is getting his just desserts too. We can look down on them both! Which is so much fun! (For those who don't know, a "bird" is what Black people have been calling women who forsake their dignity in order to get, keep, or align with men for decades, long before "pick-me" became the more recent popular slang term for that same phenomenon.) You are a MOTHER! Why does your SON have to run away, then agree to move back in on the condition that you leave your married boyfriend alone, in order for you to finally stop messing with said married boyfriend? I know I just waxed on and on about empathy, and I know Nichole Perkins said side chicks are deserving of empathy too. But some (fictional) side chicks deserve to be told about themselves, some of them deserve to lose something, and shows like this and the K-drama 'Doctor Cha' understand that in a way that satisfies the petty subsection of my soul. Nonami Maho truly did her job playing this character, because literally the only thing I liked about Riko was the fact that she resembled the singer Che'Nelle.

Best: The way Matsumoto Marika plays Minori as a woman who's losing her mind (actively unraveling at home and in meetings with her lawyer friend), but who's also still shrewd enough to keep saying targeted things to her husband and gauging his reactions (repeatedly toeing the line of almost revealing what she knows before the time is right)? The serial killer energy of her performance reminded me so much of Dominique Fishback's performance in 'Swarm.' Especially Matsumoto's ability to deftly switch between emotional levels, facial expressions, and tone of voice. One minute she's the dutiful housewife with the cutesy high-pitched voice who pretends to be oblivious to her husband's exploits, the next she's a gravelly-voiced woman scorned who's ready to stab and/or scare him to death. Just magnificent.

 

Also, the opening theme song, "down under" by zakinosuke (now known as YUSII)? It GOES! I dare you not to body roll to it!  

海のはじまり (Umi no Hajimari/Umi's Beginning/The Beginning of the Sea/Where Does the Sea Begin) - Fuji TV/2024

• 
  Eight years after the last time he saw Mizuki (his ex-girlfriend from college), Natsu gets word that Mizuki has died from cervical caner. At the funeral, he meets Mizuki's 7-year-old daughter, whom Mizuki's mother Akane (the child's grandmother) reveals is his daughter too. Natsu impregnated Mizuki in college, but didn't learn this until she had him sign an abortion consent form. She couldn't go through with the abortion but also didn't want to limit Natsu's future prospects (knowing that he'd drop everything to father his child if he knew she kept it). So she let him believe that she underwent the abortion, then dropped out of school without telling him, and then broke up with him over the phone, lying that she fell in love with someone else. She proceeded to raise the baby (the titular Umi) as a single mother, with increasingly more help from her friendzoned library co-worker Tsuno and her parents as her cancer was diagnosed and worsened. 
• At the funeral, Akane tearfully asks Natsu to consider raising Umi, but doesn't give him a chance to process and respond before walking away and taking Umi with her. On the other hand, Umi becomes so obsessed with forging a connection with Natsu that the next day, while Akane is out running errands, Umi sneaks out and visits Natsu at his apartment all by herself. (She knows the way because Mizuki had previously walked her there and told her that this is where her father "Natsu-kun" lives.) This leads to a loose visitation arrangement, where Umi and Natsu alternately spend time at each other's homes and on outings, Natsu learns more about how Mizuki was living before she died, and Mizuki's parents patiently advise Natsu while waiting for him to decide if he wants to assume his parental rights to Umi or not.
• Natsu comes from an unconventional family himself (a blended family consisting of his once-divorced mom, his stepdad, and his younger step-brother), and so seeks their input on the Umi situation. This is in addition to the input of his supervisor at work, and that of his girlfriend Yayoi, who often participates in his visitations with Umi despite her own complicated relationship with the notion of motherhood. Even as Umi is ready to love Natsu and Natsu gradually embraces the changes he must make to be the father she needs, hiccups abound that they both learn to bounce back from. And while Natsu must decide whether to legally acknowledge his daughter, Umi must decide who she wants to live with, and if she's willing to change schools and leave her grandparents to live with Natsu. All of this, while everyone continues grieving Mizuki in their own respective ways.

Meh: I don't like how the script has Yayoi tell Natsu that she "murdered" the baby she previously aborted (more on that later). But given that the scene is her opportunity to be more honest with Natsu and admit how her over-eagerness to fill the role of Umi's new mom was motivated more by a desire to assuage her own guilt than by genuine affection for Umi (more on that later too), I can let it slide.

 

Better:  The writing of 'Umi no Hajimari' offers an abundance of  vulnerability, and so many difficult but necessary conversations. The last time I recall witnessing J-drama dialogue this consistently nuanced and mature was in 'Prism.' And maybe 'Rikon Shiyou Yo' too.

 

Also, it's common for Japanese names to be nature-themed, but that theme seems particularly pronounced through this show's character names. Natsu (meaning in summer, plus his last name Tsukioka partially refers to the moon, "tsuki"). Umi (meaning sea, Mizuki's favorite place that she and Natsu used to frequent together). Mizuki (the "mizu" refers to water, plus her and Umi's last name is Nagumo, meaning southern cloud). Yet another commonality I noticed between this J-drama and 'Silent', in addition to both shows featuring Meguro Ren as a lead character who has trouble communicating verbally. (In 'Silent' his character stops talking once he loses his hearing, whereas in 'Umi no Hajimari' his character is simply not very talkative or outspoken.) And as I write this I'm discovering that these commonalities aren't merely coincidental, since both shows share the same screenwriter (Ubukata Miku) and directors (Kazama Hiroki and Takano Mai)! 

 

Best: This little big-eyed 7-year-old girl is so precious! As Umi, Izutani Rana is one of the most impressive child actresses I've seen in a very long time. The baby can act! And apparently she's been in the industry since she was 2.

 

As integral figures in the Natsu/Mizuki/Umi saga, the side characters are what give this show extra heart. Even from just the first two episodes, I was astounded by Otake Shinobu's ability to portray all the nuances of pressure that Akane is under: having to balance her own grief with the responsibility of raising her granddaughter, holding the floor open for Natsu to step up as a father, but also having patience for the fact that he's going to be ready right away, thus masking her own disappointment and managing Umi's expectations, while not crushing the child's hope of having a relationship with Natsu or making Umi think that his hesitancy is the child's fault. The show does not work without Akane fostering opportunities for Natsu and Umi to bond despite her own trepidation and pain, and Otake Shinobu gets every bit of that across.

 

Tsuno's character is important representation for people outside of a deceased person's family who get left out of the grieving process, despite having been a mainstay in that person's life while they were living. Akane belatedly calls Tsuno and acknowledges as much to him, thanking him for taking care of Umi when Mizuki was too stubborn to accept her parents' help (before she got sick and moved back into her parents' house with Umi). In that same phone call Akane apologizes to Tsuno and invites him to Mizuki's 49th day burial ceremony, and you can read on his usually stoic or sour face how much hearing that acknowledgement means to him. He basically set his (mostly) unrequited feelings for Mizuki aside and spent years of his life helping to raise Umi out of the goodness of his heart, picking the girl up from daycare and babysitting her at his place as Mizuki needed. He encouraged Mizuki to tell Umi's birth father about her existence, looked after Mizuki in the hospital as her cancer worsened, everything. Only to feel cast aside and cut off from Umi after Mizuki's funeral. He'd tried to help sort through Mizuki and Umi's belongings at Mizuki's apartment, but Akane refused his assistance, saying "the family" would take care of it. With Akane rectifying that by acknowledging Tsuno as family, Tsuno received the validation he deserved.

 

The other side character who makes an indelible difference in this show is Yayoi (Arimura Kasumi from 'Call Me Chihiro' and Hanataba Mitai na Koi wo Shita). Learning about Mizuki and Umi from Natsu is triggering for her because, as it turns out, she had an abortion in a prior relationship. Just like Mizuki did with Natsu, Yayoi presented the abortion consent form to her then-boyfriend and he signed it, but unlike Mizuki she followed through with the procedure. Years later, Yayoi still keeps that fetus's sonogram in an envelope, tucked inside an old diary in one of her drawers. She even maintains a memorial locker and tablet for the fetus at a separate location from her apartment. THAT backstory made me realize why an actress of Arimura's caliber took on this non-leading role. And the honesty in her character's trajectory is so rich! Yayoi goes from gleefully trying to be Umi's replacement mom, to pulling away from both Natsu and Umi (starting to resent that all her time with her boyfriend tends to now include Umi too), to fully accepting that she actually doesn't want to be slotted in as Umi's mom after all now that she's no longer motivated by her abortion guilt like she was when she first met Umi. She loves Natsu and Umi, and enjoyed being a trio at first, but ultimately doesn't want to be Umi's mom. Especially not with the spectre and mention of Mizuki looming over everything, when Yayoi never met and didn't know the woman; this "family" of three she thought she wanted doesn't feel like it belongs to her, and it makes her jealous, which she hates being. So she declines becoming Umi's mom in any official sense and tearfully breaks up with Natsu in epsiode 9, admitting that what she truly wants (a relationship with just her and Natsu) is not possible. And it's so painful for them both, and they don't fault each other at all, because in order to be happy Yayoi HAS to choose herself, and Natsu HAS to choose Umi. So much meat to chew on as an actor, so much for Arimura to do, and she does it superbly.

 

And apparently, Yayoi unknowingly contributed to Umi being born in the first place. It's only revealed to the audience that at the last minute, what changed Mizuki's mind about having an abortion was the entry Yayoi had written in the clinic's "thoughts and feelings book" (coincidentally they visited the same women's health clinic for their procedures). Yayoi's entry expresses her guilt about having an abortion and her frustration at not having the support from her then-boyfriend and her mom that would've enabled her to make a different choice. She knows it's the best decision for her situation at that time, but she doesn't want other women to follow what others say and ignore what they really want like she did. Women should decide for themselves, and make the choice that will make them happiest. Reading this made Mizuki realize that what would make her happiest was keeping her child, even if it meant letting Natsu go. 

Honorable Mention: What Comes After Love - Coupang Play, 2024

Based on a 2005 novel of the same name co-written by Gong Ji-Young and Tsuji Hitonari, 'What Comes After Love' is technically a K-drama, but since it's another bilingual show set between Tokyo and Seoul about a Japanese person and a Korean person falling for each other (similar to 'Eye Love You'), I decided to include it here. I've also never forgotten the impression Sakaguchi Kentaro left on me in 'Soshite, Ikiru' and was eager to watch him work again. Contrary to the pairing in 'Eye Love You,' this time the people falling in love are a Korean woman and a Japanese man.

In the spring of 2019, an aimless but optimistic college grad and musician named Hong (Lee Se-young) moves from South Korea to Japan to try living on her own for the first time, taking her fellow Korean friend up on her offer to split the rent. Upon arrival at her new home station near Inokashira Park, she runs into Jungo (Sakaguchi Kentaro), who helps her get her luggage unstuck from an exit ticket gate, takes a picture of Hong and her friend together per their request, and bids them goodbye. Hong and Jungo meet again while both vying for a job at a ramen shop, and the two see each other every day due to Jungo working at a nearby food truck and them both volunteering for their neighborhood business association's clean-up crew. Aside from their mutual attraction, they bond over a shared love of literature: as the eldest daughter of a renowned Korean-Japanese interpreter/translator Hong has enrolled in Japanese classes at a local university with plans to pursue a graduate degree in literature, while Jungo is already a literature graduate student who dreams of publishing his own novel one day. After they start dating Hong moves in with Jungo, and the lovers give each other cognate nicknames in their respective languages; Jungo calls Hong "Beni" and Hong calls Jungo "Yun-o." 

Unfortunately, as Jungo becomes increasingly absent due to his multiple jobs, the isolation of being emotionally neglected in a foreign country while her family faces financial and health struggles back home becomes too much for Hong (plus, her best friend had already moved back to Korea). So she leaves a parting letter for Jungo before moving back to Seoul in the middle of the night. By 2024 (the present), Hong has thrown herself into her career as a director at her father's publishing/translation company and is unenthusiastically engaged to a doctor and longtime friend. Of course, when she's required to assist one of her subordinates in picking up a Japanese author client named "Sasae Hikari" from the airport to promote his new book in Korea, "Sasae Hikari" turns out to be none other than Jungo. (The novel he's promoting has the same title as this K-drama. It's a fictionalized version of their relationship, with reflections on where he went wrong, written in hopes that she'd read it and understand why he so regrettably fumbled their relationship the way he did.) Jungo tries multiple times to speak with Hong privately, and Hong avoids him like the plague. Meanwhile, Hong drags her feet on wedding planning and Dr. Rebound notices. Meanwhile, Jungo's literary agent Kanna (my girl Nakamura Anne from 'Kikazaru Koi' and so many other things) unexpectedly joins him on this promotional trip; Kanna and Jungo dated before he met Hong, and Kanna wants that old thang back. 

Thematically, this K-drama is very reminiscent of Hanataba Mitai na Koi wo Shita, one of the JFF+ (now JFF Theater) online film festival selections I watched last year. Both productions feature a passionate relationship between two university students going sour, when the boyfriend gets so engrossed with working to provide for himself and his girlfriend that he doesn't have time to be present or attentive anymore. Both productions also philosophize about what love is and what it means. When Hong breaks up with Jungo, she laments that no love stays the same or lasts forever, and in the present she still assumes that Jungo's love for her lessened (that he stopped caring about her), because how else did he not notice how lonely she was? But Jungo insists that his love for her never changed. Answering the titular question "What comes after love?" during one of his book events in Korea, Jungo muses that one only truly understands what love means after the love (the relationship) has ended. So in a way, regret is inevitable for people who love; the deeper the love, the deeper the regret when it's over, and he feels so much regret now precisely because he loved and still loves Hong so much, not because his love waned. The final episode further emphasizes that no love is meaningless, that love is a blessing no matter what kind it is or how long it lasts. Hong and Jungo even have a moment to finally sit down and talk the night before he's set to leave Seoul, where he apologizes to her for not taking her loneliness seriously, and she (having finally read his book for herself) thanks him for loving her during that time and writing a book about what they had. This seems to be the end of their relationship, with both prepared to leave each other alone after having made peace with one another (a similar fate to that of the Hanabata Mitai couple). That is, until Jungo demonstrates one last time that he's unwilling to give up on them. I won't spoil how they get back together, but I respect this show for preparing the audience to accept either conclusion. I doubly respect this show for its stunningly tender and yearning end credit song, "Closer than the stars" by Fromm. Even as someone who's never known romantic love, the song almost (only almost!) made me cry. 

 

Getting back to the J-dramas, if I had to choose my favorite between 'Otto no Katei' and 'Umi no Hajimari', I'd have to admit that while the latter is better written, the former is my favorite because of all the mess, the scandal, and how willing the show is to take it there, you know? Off I go to find more Japanese film and television to review, and hopefully it won't take me another nine months to publish my next edition of The J-Drama Drop!

BOOKS! (Jesus Wept)

Today is Thanksgiving, and since Thanksgiving is November 28th this year, coincidentally today is also the one-year anniversary of my grandpa's funeral. To honor today, I visited Grandpa's grave this afternoon, and now I'm writing a short review of a book that used to belong to him. 

 

Jesus Wept: Trusting the Good Shepherd When You Lose a Loved One by Leroy Brownlow

By virtue of helping to declutter Grandpa's house this spring and summer, I am now in possession of his copy of Jesus Wept, a 47-page Christian gift book about grief that he received from a friend when his mother (my great-grandmother) passed away. This is one of those moments where life feels like one big circle, because this book meant to comfort Grandpa is now comforting me amidst Grandpa's passing, and because I'm pondering how similar my 2023 was to Grandpa's 1992 in terms of that juxtaposition between new life and death, or recovery and the lack thereof. Grandpa lost his mother in May 1992 and gained his first grandchild/only granddaughter (me) in December, whereas I watched my mom spend the first half of 2023 healing from a spate of hospitalizations and then watched Grandpa succumb to his own hospitalization in the second half.

It took me almost the entirety of the past year to finally read this little book; I tried and simply couldn't bring myself to do it before, but I finally managed it earlier this month. And although I did initially expect Jesus Wept to be fluff, I was surprised to derive a genuine sense of consolation from it. I thoroughly appreciate all the inclusions of poetry as well as Brownlow's frequent assertion that crying is beautiful and natural and not only appropriate, but necessary. These aspects are unexpectedly soft and evolved for a white man from the South writing Christian books in the 1960s. (Jesus Wept is a 1988 republishing of Brownlow's 1969 release titled With the Good Shepherd.)

 

What I find most compelling about Jesus Wept are its multiple analogies about life going on after certain phases end. Moving from one home to another doesn't mean a tenant's life is over, but that it will continue on in a new home. A ship sailing out of sight doesn't mean it's lost, but that it's all the more closer to arriving somewhere else. And my favorite, given Grandpa's career as an educator and a principal for over 30 years: a school year ending doesn't mean a student's life is over, but that they now get to rest and enjoy what they've learned. Grandpa gets to rest and enjoy what he's learned.

For someone like me who is both a believer and a critically thinking person, the last chapter of Jesus Wept is certainly an eyebrow raiser. The way it uses seeds as a metaphor to emphasize how death liberates us from this world and is a blessing from God, and how humans can't realize their full potential until after they die (entering the realm of limitless possibilities that is the afterlife), I couldn't help but consider how easy it's been for people to argue that Christianity is a death cult. At the same time, I couldn't deny how strongly this metaphor resonated with me, even though I'd heard it before. Reading it in this context reminded me of an animated short film I watched this summer called Ninety-Five Senses, which similarly suggests that death opens up an entire host of new possibilities (95 additional senses, for example) that we simply cannot fathom or access during our temporal lives here on Earth. And who wouldn't want to be able to imagine their loved ones experiencing and enjoying more on the other side than what life allowed them the first go-round? I know that kind of imagining has done wonders for me and my grieving process.

Obviously religiosity and flowery language won't be helpful to everybody dealing with loss, but if you were raised in church or simply have an interest in religious writings, then give this book a try. Once I stopped dragging my feet I finished Jesus Wept in two days, and it only took me that long because I was intentionally spacing the book out to help its ideas marinate in my mind.  

Favorite quotes:

"But he knows beyond the hills there is a valley where life is pleasant" (15). 

"For school to be out merely closes the classes—not the life of the student. It rather gives him a chance to rest from his studies and to enjoy his learning. So goes life in a world designed to be a preparatory school. In it we learn from many sources. And after the learner has finished his course, it is only natural for him to go home" (25-26).

"He considers the welfare of the dying as well as the living; and His calling one home is not to hurt us who remain, but to help him who departs" (32).