My New Friend, "FEVER 1793" by Laurie Halse Anderson

 

Me and my new friend, Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

Hello. My name is Bobby Keniston, and my only friends are books. 

My new friend is Fever, 1793 by the brilliant Laurie Halse Anderson. 

This piece of late middle-grade/YA historical fiction by Laurie Halse Anderson is told in an honest voice, is well-researched, and makes history relatable for both the young reader and older reader (like me) alike. 

"Fever 1793" is set in Philadelphia during a vicious outbreak of the yellow fever in the late summer of 1793. Our narrator is Mattie Cook, who lives with her Mother and Grandfather (her father died years ago), and works at the Coffeehouse her mother runs. Life, though not without its annoyances, like a strict Mother who is already worried about who she will court and marry, Mattie lives a happy existence in the coffeehouse, listening to her Grandfather's old stories about his soldiering life in the Revolutionary War, and talking to Eliza, the cook at the coffeehouse, a free black woman who is part of the Free African Society. 

But then suddenly the yellow fever epidemic hits. Bells toll with each death. People who can afford to flee the city. The market disperses, people leave their infected loved ones out to die, and mass burials and death carts are not uncommon on the streets. 

Though Mattie's mother falls ill and sends her daughter away to the country to avoid the pestilence, a mishap occurs and Mattie and her Grandfather are abandoned. It is here that Mattie's journey of learning how to take care of herself and find inner strength and determination she didn't know she had really takes off. 

Laurie Halse Anderson is perhaps best known for the brilliant and essential "Speak," and is a writer who excels at first-person narrative. Readers will want to keep turning pages and learn Mattie's story. 

And now, in our current times, the story of a mass illness feels all the more relevant and chilling. 

One way in which Anderson excels is in giving us a sense of the grave, communal sense of loss in the wake of this epidemic. How the loss impacts an entire society. 

I only wish I could feel that this same sense of respectful loss were with us now. 

My New (Old) Friend, "VENUS" by Suzan Lori-Parks

 

Me with my friend Venus, a brilliant, Obie-award-winning play by Suzan Lori-Parks.  I first read the play in college and it felt like new reading it again. My edition also looks like new, safely packed away in a box for years now.

Hi. I'm Bobby Keniston, and my only friends are books. Don't worry about it. I've made it this far. 

I've made it far enough to reconnect with an old friend and have it feel like making a new friend all over again. This friend is Venus by Suzan-Lori Parks, the first play I have covered on talked about on this particular blog, but by no means will be the last. Some of my favorite books are plays, after all, and I couldn't be happier that I am discussing a play by Suzan-Lori Parks, who is one of my favorite living playwrights. Back in the early 2010s, I would tell people that if I were on the Board in Sweden, my two top picks for a Nobel Prize in Literature would be Kazuo Ishiguro and Suzan-Lori Parks. In 2017, Mr. Ishiguro did indeed win. Now I am waiting for Parks to get that recognition. For one thing, the Nobel doesn't honor enough playwrights in my opinion. For another, she simply deserves it. 

Not that she is short on prizes. She has won many, many over the years, including an Obie for Venus, as well as a Pulitzer Prize for her incredible Topdog/Underdog, and her most recent play, 2019's White Noise won an Outer Critics Circle Award. Along the way, she also received a MacArthur "Genius" Grant. 

Because she is a genius. 

With an incredible work ethic. She undertook the challenge of writing 365 plays in 365 days. And she did it. The result, 365 Plays/365 Days has been produced in theaters all over the world. 

ABOUT MY NEW (OLD) FRIEND, VENUS

Venus tells the real-life story of Khoekhoe woman Saartjie Baartman, also known as Sarah Baartman, and who would come to be known as the "Hottentot Venus". Baartman, when she is "The Girl", is living her life in South Africa in the early 1800s when she is asked by a bearded opportunist if she would like to go to London where "the streets are paved with gold" to be a dancer. He assures her in two years, she could make a fortune and come back home wealthy. She agrees to go on these terms, that everything will be split 50/50. Once in London, he pushes her into a sexual relationship before selling her to "The Mother-Showman" and her freak show, and then disappearing. 

This is not easy subject matter. Baartman is put on display because of her backside, and spends years being objectified, pawed at, touched, sexual assault (alluded to in a few lines). This plays is about not only colonization, but about the objectification, racialization, and fetishizing and historical sexualization of back women. It is uncomfortable. Just the cover of my edition is uncomfortable in its dehumanizing, racist imagery. 

And being uncomfortable is the point. 

Eventually, a character called the Baron Docteur (based on Georges Cuvier--- more on him later), buys Baartman from the Mother-Showman. He takes her to Paris where he begins an affair with her, but also puts her on display as a scientific specimen. In this way, she is still being gawked at and pawed over and ultimately dehumanized. 

The Baron Docteur is married, and receives pressure from "An Old School Chum" to stop the affair, and get to the dissection, which, really, should be the only purpose for his interest in this "Hottentot Venus", right?

There is also a "play-within-the-play" called For the Love of the Venus, performed by the Chorus. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THE PLAY

What I love about the play is its power and its energy. Suzan-Lori Parks, instead of telling a standard, linear tale here, uses terrific theatricality, theatre of the absurd flourishes, lively language, and a Chorus ensemble to heighten the themes and characters. She uses history as a jumping off point, but is truly interested, as she herself said, in the "questioning the history of history". 

I also love that Parks is not afraid to make us feel uncomfortable. She does not shy away from the nastiness of how Baartman is used, how she is objectified and sexualized. She shows the lust head-on and in your face. And at the same time, she makes Baartman such a complete character, making it all the more upsetting to see her as either an object of lust or a scientific specimen. 

Another major idea explored here is the very notion of agency over ones own life and body, which, of course, is all the more relevant even today with our SCOTUS. 

IN REAL LIFE

Georges Cuvier, in real life, was a French zoologist, sometimes called "the founding father of paleontology". Like other "founding fathers", he was also an entitled white man and a racist, who was one of the founders of scientific racism, the psuedo-scientific bullshit that suggests that other races are inferior to whites. He subjected the real-life Sarah Baartman to examinations while she was being held captive and neglected. After her death (she was only 26), he performed an autopsy, and compared her physical features to those of monkeys. 

Suzan-Lori Parks has these "findings" described by the Baron Docteur in her play. It is, obviously, stomach turning. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

Venus and the real-life Sarah Baartman deserve dissertations and far more conversation than what I can accomplish here on my stupid little blog. But what I can say is how fortunate I feel we all are to have this play. We need to remember. We need to take stock and accountability of the fact that white people have systemically stripped people of color of their agency and humanity for their own benefit, desires, and discoveries for... well, forever. We should be uncomfortable by this fact. We shouldn't look away. 

Please check out the work of Suzan-Lori Parks. I look forward to reading and re-reading more of her work, including her novel Getting Mother's Body. 

Let me know your thoughts in the comments. 

My New Friend, "THE WOMAN IN THE PURPLE SKIRT," by Natsuko Imamura, translated from the Japanese by Lucy North

 

Me with my new friend, The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura, translated from the Japanese by Lucy North

Hello. My name is Bobby Keniston, and books are my only friends. Before you start feeling bad for me about this, keep in mind that there are more books in the world than any of us could need in a lifetime, so... that makes me popular? Right? Right???

Or maybe I'm as invisible as I sometimes fear. Which leads me to today's new friend, The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura, translated from the Japanese by Lucy North. The Woman in the Purple Skirt is all about feeling invisible, and turning that invisibility into obsession toward one who is far more visible than you--- like a woman in the neighborhood who wears a purple skirt and seems to fascinate everyone she meets. She certainly fascinates our narrator, the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan. 

HOW I MET MY NEW FRIEND

Like most people, I like to learn about other parts of the world. I realized I hadn't nearly enough books from all over the globe. I have been particularly interested in reading more Japanese literature. So went on YouTube and found a BookTuber with a channel called Books and Bao, who had a wonderful video recommending  "30 Must-Read Japanese Books in Translation," which you can watch yourself by CLICKING HERE.  The Woman in the Purple Skirt was on the list, and, much to my delight, was carried by hometown library, the Thompson Free. 

Libraries are a great place to find new friends, wouldn't you agree?

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

Okay, so this is where things get a little difficult. The joy in reading this book is from the Imamura's brilliant creation of our narrator. This is not a plot-heavy book, but the things that do happen in the last third or so, are really big, and I would never dream of spoiling them. I can describe my new friend a little bit, but don't be surprised if I don't do it justice, because it might seem simple. But I assure you that it is anything but simple. 

The Woman in the Yellow Cardigan (which is how she likes to think of herself, though she does have a name we learn later on) watches the Woman in the Purple Skirt (who also has a name). Watches her go to the bakery and pick up a pastry, watches her go to the park and sit on HER BENCH, watches her eat the pastry. Watches her read the want ads in the paper. Watches her go home. Watches her go from job to job. Watches as the kids in the park, who seem just as fascinated by the Woman in the Purple Skirt as our narrator is, play games to decide who has to run up and tap her. 

Our narrator does all this watching, and is invisible. No one seems to ever see The Woman in the Yellow Cardigan. 

The major thrust of the book comes when our narrator, through a few little tricks, gets the Woman in the Purple Skirt to apply for  job cleaning a hotel, the same hotel where our narrator works. The Woman in the Purple Skirt gets the job, becomes very popular, all while our narrator watches, unable even now to introduce herself. 

This is about as comfortable as I am giving away plot points. Too much of the joy comes in discovering what happens next. But I can say that this is a stark portrait of obsession and loneliness. 

MY FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

I love the language. The simple, understated nature of how our narrator tells the story. What one realizes after awhile is that what makes the book so readable yet unsettling as well, is the ability Imamura has to make the narrator both relatable but completely unrelatable, too. We follow her as she follows The Woman in the Purple Skirt. And quickly learn that our narrator sees nothing at all unusual about her obsession. Nothing at all unusual about her stalking behavior. After all, how bad can it be if she, herself, is invisible to everyone?

Imamura's writing is addictive, and this is a short novel that could most likely be read in one sitting. Big credit to Lucy North's translation, as well, for capturing the spirit here. 

FAVORITE SCENES

It's hard to choose, but here are few:

There is a moment after the kids in the park have been playing with The Woman in the Purple Skirt, and they all share an apple. Once they are gone, our narrator goes to the bench, where an orange has been left behind, and bites into it viciously, through the peel, and continues to bite and bite. 

There is another moment, which made me laugh out loud, when our narrator, the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, steals a pair of sunglasses. I will not describe the scenario any further. But it was terrific. 

FINAL TAKEAWAY

I had a blast reading this book, and it has stuck in my mind, too. One can't help but think of the chorus of "Eleanor Rigby", or a movie like One Hour Photo, other media that explores loneliness. But The Woman in the Purple Skirt feels special, perhaps because of Imamura's light, skillful touch. 

It definitely got in my head. 

Thanks for checking out my thoughts on my new friend, The Woman in the Purple Skirt. I definitely recommend you all making friends with her, too. 

See you next time, as soon as I make a new friend.