Black American Refugee

September 1, 2021

Journalist Cheung relates growing up in Hong Kong-- The Impossible City--after its 1917 reunification with China, traversing its rich identities while exploring her education at various English-speaking international schools, the city's literary and indie music scenes, and the protests against restricted freedoms. One of America's top pianists, MacArthur fellow Denk recounts his upbringing and training, clarifying the complexities of the artistic life and the student-teacher relationship in Every Good Boy Does Fine. As Drayton relates in Black American Refugee, she left Trinidad and Tobago as a youngster to join her mother in the United States but was angered by the contrast in how white and Black people were treated and by age 20 returned to Tobago, where she could enjoy being Black without fear. What My Bones Know reveals Emmy Award-winning radio producer Foo's relentless panic attacks until she was finally diagnosed with Complex PTSD, a condition resulting from ongoing trauma--in her case the years she spent abused by her parents before they abandoned her. Growing up fourth-generation Japanese American in Los Angeles directly after World War II, Pulitzer finalist poet Hongo recounts spending his life hunting for The Perfect Sound, from his father's inspired record-player setup and the music his Black friends enjoyed to Bach, Coltrane, ukulele, and the best possible vacuum tubes. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism and a National Book Critics Circle Award for Negroland, Jefferson offers what she calls a temperamental autobiography with Constructing a Nervous System, woven of fragments like the sound of a 1950s jazz LP and a ballerina's movements spliced with those of an Olympic runner to explore the possibilities of the female body. In Home/Land, New Yorker staffer Mead captures the excitement, dread, and questions of identity that surfaced after she relocated from New York to her birth city, London, with her family in 2018. Vasquez-Lavado now lives In the Shadow of the Mountain, but once she was a Silicon Valley star wrestling with deep-seated personal problems (e.g., childhood abuse, having to deny her sexuality to her family) when she decided to turn around her life through mountain climbing; eventually, she took a team of young women survivors up Mount Everest (150,000-copy first printing).

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November 22, 2021
Journalist Drayton (Coping with Gun Violence) mixes memoir with contemporary psychology to explore in this blistering if uneven work the “idyllic illusion” of the American dream. Raised by an immigrant mother who “exhaust her body and her dignity fulfilling the whims of white families,” Drayton charts how she grew conscious early on of the depths of American racism—from receiving hateful AIM messages as a girl in the early 2000s to absorbing lessons about meritocracy in an attempt to escape “the conditions of Blackness” in her early adulthood. From here, she draws striking comparisons between the experiences of Black Americans and the abusive relationship she survived with the father of her children, with each chapter addressing a different tactic used by narcissistic partners. Drayton eventually left her partner and her country for refuge in her homeland of Trinidad, where, with her children, she hoped to “move on from the hurt and pain of the past and work toward a brighter future.” While the combination of vignette and pop psychology can feel unbalanced, Drayton’s rich storytelling reveals the complex roles “victims” and “abusers” play in “American racial stratification” and offers a path toward healing for both. Those seeking to better understand the long-term effects of racism should pick this up.

December 1, 2021
A memoir interrogating the ways in which living while Black in America is akin to being in an abusive relationship with a narcissist. Drayton returned to her homeland of Tobago after becoming exhausted by the constant abuse she endured as a Black woman in the "United States of White America." In this expansion of a New York Times article, the author describes a life rich in both experience and trauma, insightfully creating a conceit that runs throughout: America is a narcissist, and living in America as a Black person is to be in an abusive relationship. Several chapters open by explaining a stage in the cycle of abuse, relating them to Drayton's experiences in the U.S. "The science of psychology," she writes, "calls the early phase of a narcissistic relationship 'love-bombing.' In these early, idyllic moments, hopeful, fated, and foundational memories are made that keep us coming back to what becomes the cycle of abuse." Drayton demonstrates this idea via memories of her New Jersey girlhood, when the gleam of the American dream was still present. Those early experiences eventually gave way to devaluation, discard, moments of calm, gaslighting, and, finally, the possibility of reconciliation. Drayton arrives at her insight through distance, explaining that "from an ocean away, I had fuller access to my heartbreak and rage in a way I never could when those powerful feelings had to coexist with my drive to survive within the system." What is unclear is how she identifies as a refugee; in the book, she omits a line that appears in the article: "The United Nations defines refugees as people who flee their homes because of war, persecution or violence." It's not difficult to infer how she fits this criterion, but while refugee is in the title, it is almost nowhere in the memoir. Despite this lack of clarity, the book is a welcome addition to the literature on race in America. Drayton has a powerful story and the voice to do it justice.

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