In the essay “Face,” Atlanta author Soniah Kamal details her experience miscarrying a 16-week-old fetus with detached clarity and restrained emotion. And yet, the essay delivers an emotional wallop because of Kamal’s gift for mining small details to great effect: a pair of crimson baby socks, the delicate features of her fetus, an Islamic prayer shared with the hospital’s Christian chaplain.
But there is more to “Face” than one woman’s tragic loss. It’s also about what constitutes home. The Pakistani native, who grew up in London and Saudi Arabia and has lived in eight states, was new to Georgia at the time of her miscarriage. When the hospital interred the cremains in a cemetery in Stone Mountain, a place the “Unmarriageable” author associated with the Ku Klux Klan, laser shows and a cable car ride, she pondered the question: “Does a city turn into a home when it rests your dead?” It is a question that resonates long after the story is over.
“Face” is one of a collection of 21 essays by writers of color living in the South called “A Measure of Belonging.” Cinelle Barnes edited the collection, and it’s due to publish on Oct. 6. The work explores the experiences of African-American, Asian, Hispanic and indigenous American writers living in the region.
Some of the writers are native to the South; others are transplants. Many of the essays shine a spotlight on microaggressions — those casual, subtle comments that serve to remind someone they do not belong. “Duos” by former Atlantan Desi Laskar reflects on the challenges of growing up a typical suburban girl at school, but a traditional Bengali girl at home. In the essay, she expresses exasperation with the frequently asked question: “Where are you from? No, really. Where are you really from?” The fact she was born in North Carolina never satisfies her inquisitors.
In Barnes' introduction to the collection, the Filipino immigrant who grew up in New York City, recalls a welcome dinner her husband’s new employer hosted after they moved to North Carolina for his job. When queried for her opinion about the South by one of the wives, Barnes expressed things she liked about the region but added there were things she’d like to change. The wife’s response — at a welcome dinner, mind you — was, “Honey, nobody asked you to move here.”
Other essays convey despair over the prospect of harmony between the races. Kiese Laymon’s “That’s Not Actually True” is a thorny, unsparing examination of the multi-layered divide between blacks and whites and how lies supplant truths in the service of sustaining an uneasy coexistence.
“Nuisance: An Essay About Home,” by Latria Graham, an occasional contributor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ends with a slender ray of hope. The combination of climate change and an antiquated drainage system has rendered her family home a flood threat. With her father deceased and her mother incapacitated by back surgery, it is up to Graham to keep the rainwater at bay to prevent what the insurance company calls “nuisance flooding” — not significant enough to create structural damage but devastating enough to ruin her father’s vinyl record collection and the first draft of a story she was writing. In the end, Latria decides to create a little nuisance of her own in hopes of resolving the issue.
One of the things that makes this essay collection so powerful is its focus on the nuances of racism. We all know the KKK is racist, but what about that smiling white woman at the dinner party? In what ways does she undermine someone’s sense of belonging? What about microaggressions? That is the issue here.
“A Measure of Belonging” is another outstanding product of Hub City Press, a nonprofit book publisher based in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Specializing in literary fiction, nonfiction and poetry by emerging Southern writers, its catalog includes books by several Atlanta authors, including Jessica Handler, Julia Franks, Hannah Palmer and Mark Beaver.
Also new from Hub City is “You Want More,” a selection of short stories by South Carolina author George Singleton that spans his 20-year career.
The darkly comedic writer derives humor from ridiculing the inhabitants of the fictitious small towns of Forty-five and Gruel. His protagonists are often outsiders forced to reckon with clannish imbeciles or religious fanatics. Provincialism and religion are frequent targets for his characters' derision.
In “Fresh Meat on Wheels,” young Luke is on his way to a sleepover with his schoolmates when his mother warns him: “Do not bring up how we’re Democrats, Luke. … If anyone asks you if you’re a Christian, it’s best to go ahead and lie.”
Humor is often found in throwaway lines and inconsequential actions of peripheral characters. In “This Itches Y’all,” the protagonist reveals he would have gone to college in Canada except his high school guidance counselor told him “there was no university system up there.” Later, it’s mentioned in passing that the costumed town crier working at Historic Wilmington had a “master’s degree in anger management.”
There are multiple references in “You Want More” to dogs (dead and alive), bourbon, barbecue, face jugs and other hallmarks of a certain strain of Southern life. And some of the funniest opening lines in contemporary Southern literature can be found here. For example: “He’d never read a John Cheever story, so that couldn’t have been the reason he traveled, dead of a massive heart attack, across his neighbors' backyards aboard the Bolens seventeen-horsepower, forty-two-inch-cut riding lawn mower.”
Considering our current state of affairs, some levity is welcome. The timing of “You Want More” couldn’t be better.
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Svanatten@ajc.com
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