![]() ![]() Some may be taken aback by McLarin’s forceful frankness, as she contemplates suicide in “Eshu Finds Work,” or concocts the ideal retribution for one of the many wrongs she’s suffered in “A Case for the Selective, Targeted, Nonviolent Act of Revenge.” But black women’s truth, in chorus or solo, is best vocalized without restraint. Essays like “Fire All the Time” and “Better Than the Alternative” (meditations on anger and aging, respectively) draw to a close just as McLarin’s prose is beginning its ascent, leaving readers wondering what heights it could have reached. Other voices ring out, too: in “Becky and Me,” the voices of her girlfriends who find it nearly impossible to trust white women in “Maurice’s Blues,” her sister’s voice as she grapples with her son’s prison sentence and, in “The Upside to Loving a Sociopath,” the disembodied perspective of the D.S.M.-5 shedding light on a dysfunctional relationship. ![]() ![]() In “Womanish,” McLarin incorporates these black female voices into her writing, itself blisteringly honest, funny and vulnerable. When black women gather, unrehearsed refrains are often heard, surrounded by voices of encouragement or disbelief. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |