Out Of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez
(Format used for this read: Print–paperback)
“This is East Texas, and there’s lines. Lines you cross, lines you don’t cross. That clear?” New London, TX. 1937. Naomi Vargas is Mexican American. Wash Fuller is Black. These teens know the town’s divisive racism better than anyone. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive.
Naomi and Wash dare to defy the rules, and the New London school explosion serves as a ticking time bomb in the background. Can their love survive both prejudice and tragedy?
Race, romance, and family converge in this riveting novel that transplants Romeo and Juliet to a bitterly segregated Texas town. Includes a fascinating author’s note detailing the process of research and writing about voices that have largely been excluded from historical accounts.
To say this book was GUT WRENCHING is a complete understatement.
From the very first page of the very first chapter, your stomach and heart are clinched in a vice of emotional stress, just knowing there are awful things to come.
Even when you read small moments of joy or calm, the vice does not lessen, because you know those moments will be short lived and something terrible awaits just around the corner.
I want to be sure to give you trigger warnings….this book contains descriptions of childhood sexual abuse and also horrific racial violence. Please be aware of this before you start reading, in case these are things that will effect your personal emotions and/or mental health.
This book addresses MANY important and heavy issues….racism, classism, poverty, abuse, societal inequities, trauma, even religious hypocrisies….while at the same time examining things such as first loves, coming of age, family bonds, and friendships.
The story is told from various points of view, switching back and forth between various characters as narrators for each chapter.
I always enjoy this narrative tactic while reading fiction, and in a book like this, it gives the reader such interesting and at times difficult perspectives.
You hear from the point of view of the white man abuser right after hearing from his Latina step daughter.
You hear from the point of view of the Black teenage boy right after hearing from the racist schoolmates.
It can be jarring….and completely infuriating too…but it is supposed to be. I can see what the author is trying to do, showing all angles and insights.
While this is a fictional story, it is based on real life events and history. The author wrote this story to shed the light on untold and often ignored perspectives in our nation’s history.
While I fully support stories such as these that tell REAL history from the point of view of the oppressed, I admit I take a slight issue with a WHITE author writing them, which Ms Perez happens to be.
Her husband and children are Latinx which I am sure impacts her understanding and worldview…BUT she is NOT her husband or her children. She cannot absorb their lived experience, she can only witness it alongside them.
Here is a statement she made on her website on why she began writing:
“When I taught English at César E. Chávez High School on the southeast side of Houston, many of my students were convinced that they hated to read and write. My goal was to help them connect to books that would change their minds. Those conversations were the first reason that I—as a white woman—became passionate about stories that center Latinx lives. Learning with them and many other amazing readers, including my sons Liam Miguel and Ethan Andrés, continues to shape my vision of what it means for Latinx readers find themselves—and their community—represented responsibly in the pages of the books they read.
All readers deserve to encounter stories that speak to their lived experience and to their imagination. I believe in writing that reckons with the uniqueness and diversity of lives lived in any given community, whatever the background of the author.”
Again, I support what she is saying….MOSTLY.
But to me, it seems that if you want to see Latinx readers represented in the pages they read, then you would support having LATINX AUTHORS being the ones to tell the stories.
It feels weird to me to be like “Yes, we need to hear MORE about your community. Let me, this white women, write stories FOR YOU to help make that happen. And make money off of them too.”
That doesn’t elevate their voices. It elevates HER INTERPRETATION of their voices.
This doesn’t solve the problem of having true cultural representation AT ALL. In fact, it just furthers the issue of having white people controlling the narrative on other people’s stories.
I think a more authentic approach would be to work WITH a Latinx author to create the stories she is speaking of, writing a book TOGETHER.
Or better yet, just fully supporting and elevating the voices of Latinx authors ON THEIR OWN…passing the mic TO THEM to narrate their OWN stories instead of stealing the mic FROM THEM to tell them yourself.
I know I have talked about this type of thing PLENTY in other book reviews so yall know I feel pretty strongly about it.
It is the whole “oppressor writing for the oppressed” thing that just GETS TO ME. 😡
So while I did think this was an extremely powerful, heart grabbing, gut wrenching novel that sheds light on very important historical (and current) events, that whole thing kinda clouds my opinion on it.
This was a monthly pick for my book club, and they are meeting today to discuss.
Man, I wish I was gonna be there to bring up THIS VERY ISSUE and chat with them about it…but the dang Covid hit our house for the THIRD FRIGGIN’ TIME and I have a couple more days before I can be unmasked around peeps.
Sigh.
This was another selection in our group from books that have been banned.
That is always an interesting discussion to have as well….why is the book banned in some areas and do we agree/disagree about it?
Something else I will miss out on this go round.
Although…they may be quite glad I am NOT there to talk about all of this, as I tend to get quite passionate and fired up about it all….might be a much tamer convo without me in the mix! 😝
Speaking of banned books, I found this interesting NPR article written by Ashley Hope Perez about them, specifically this book, that I thought was quite good.
I got issues with her, no doubt….. but I admit I agree with her on quite a bit:
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/14/1142428557/ashley-hope-perez-on-out-of-darkness-book-ban