Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Racism

A SEASON in LIGHTS: A Novel in Three Acts by Gregory Erich Phillips – Contemporary Literature

Gregory Erich Phillips’ A Season in Lights is a well-crafted, engaging exploration of creatives, each following their heart and trying to reach their dream.

Against backdrops of the 1980s AIDS crisis and the more recent COVID-19 pandemic, the story entwines the lives of a 30-something dancer and an older musician as they strive to make their artistic mark in the cultural capital of New York City.

Here in a two-fold unveiling, the story comes to life from the first-person perspective of Cammie, a starry-eyed aspiring dancer from Lancaster, PA, and the third-person reveal of Tom, a more seasoned black pianist. He longs for a classical career but is too often labeled a jazz musician. Cammie first encounters Tom in a studio dance class where he’s taken a job as the musical accompanist. Befriended by the gay dance instructor, Tom heeds the worldly advice offered about surviving in the Big Apple. “All you’ve got to do is convince people that you belong. You’ve got to tell them who you are before they tell you.”

Phillips’ masterful narrative is layered with a backstory for each character, with details revealing multi-dimensional individuals.

Small town Cammie is close to her ailing father; she has a troubled yet artistically talented sister; and a mother who seems to carry everyone’s burdens. Cammie harbors guilt for leaving behind family obligations to follow her own path. Tom has tried to leave behind his own familial ties. Unfortunately, with an absent father who landed in prison for dealing drugs, and an older brother who seems headed in a similar direction, Tom is hesitant about the consequential outcome of such connections. Within their May/December style romance, these primary characters find solace and understanding with relatable family concerns and the need to venture beyond expectations and comfort zones.

As a dancer and musician himself, Phillips clearly draws on his own knowledge and experience to render authentic, believable characters in his writing. Here, personal experience from the NY stage easily translates to the page. Capturing the lighted spectrum of Broadway, the back alley theaters, and side-street clubs, the city becomes a character unto itself. The city seems alive as a place for second chances with its vibrant electric pulse.

In a nod to Broadway, Phillips presents his novel in three acts.

While the overall narrative effortlessly alternates between earlier times and the present day, the trio of segments maintains an appropriate momentum to propel events forward. Whether considering the classic themes of sibling rivalry, racism, and interracial romance, or the more contemporary struggles of theatrical LGBT community prejudice, drug addiction, or the new need for social distancing, the topics are well incorporated throughout the story line.

From the worry and fear showcased in HIV testing and AIDS-related complications ignited in the ’80s to the stress and anxiety of shutdowns, casualties, and the unknowns of the more recent COVID19 virus, Phillips highlights the extraordinary opportunities for friendship and healing. Even though the city and its inhabitants are scarred, the hope remains that New York will rebound. A surprise twist in the book’s final moments sheds a brighter light on the central characters, the NYC community, and the world at large in recognizing that we’re all in this together.

A Season in Lights is a modern-day tale featuring artists, dancers, and musicians and their efforts to honor the famous NY song adage, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” Through passion, grit, and determination against the odds, the final reveal is a lesson about making the most of the moment. Phillips has done an outstanding job with this creative, literary presentation that will indeed have readers looking for an encore.

A Season in Lights: A Novel in Three Acts by Gregory Erich Phillips won Grand Prize in the CIBA 2020 Somerset Book Awards for Contemporary Literature – and is a novel that comes with high recommendations.

March 7, 2022
REDLINED: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago by Linda Gartz – Memoir, Racial Segregation, Sexual Liberation

Author Linda Gartz tells of her childhood and early adulthood amidst social upheaval in the city of Chicago in her memoir, Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago.

Gartz grew up the second child of second-generation immigrants to the US. Her father’s father boldly made the trip to the land of opportunity at age 21. She spent much of her childhood in cramped quarters with her parents and her older brother, living alongside strangers. They paid this price for the “dream” – the couple bought a house in a decent neighborhood; keeping roomers, even living in the same flat with them, helped pay expenses.

Gartz’s grandmother, a talented dressmaker, helped out with childcare and other chores while her mother worked to manage all the finances, tenants, and repairs in their rooming house; she had to do this alone half the year while Gartz’s dad traveled for his job. But Grandma K suffered mental illness and abused Gartz’s mother and father, sometimes violently. Gartz’s father felt oppressed by her presence, which caused ongoing, if mostly unspoken, conflict in the home.

Chicago’s social and economic upheaval served as a microcosm for national change, and as backdrop for the Gartz family drama.

African Americans fled the dangerous and economically dead-end South for more promising prospects in places like Chicago. But majority white cities and regions resisted their incursion through restructuring and re-designating neighborhoods and school districts. All the while, the civil rights movement sought large-scale change amidst peaceful protests, riots, and violent reprisals from the law.

The influx of black workers into her own neighborhood affected Gartz’s choice of schools and friends. Civil rights struggles incited her sympathies while her parents expressed their older prejudice. They feared that all of their hard-earned investments would vanish if “the colored” came in. Still, the teen had black friends and neighbors. She felt touched by the spirit of rebellion in a new testing of societal limits: sexual freedom.

Gartz felt driven to compose this intelligent account of the changing times when she and her brother “found our gold” in the attic of their parents’ home: diaries, letters, cards, calendars and notebooks reaching back to the couple’s own youth.

The undercurrent of family tensions became clear. Grandma K’s psychosis put the house on edge. Gartz’s father struggled to balance his home and work life, needing to earn money with a job that required six months of travel across each year, and also supporting his over-burdened wife with the demands of their rooming house with as many as eleven tenants. Her mother saw her behavior in the sexual revolution as shocking. Gartz includes details of the subtleties of “redlining” that allowed cities and regions to keep African Americans down and poor by limiting their ability to own property. Family photos pepper her book, lending emotive touches. The result is a vibrant look at the coming of age of a nation through the eyes of a frank, freethinking woman.

Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago by Linda Gartz won 1st Place in the 2019 CIBA Journey Book Awards for Narrative Non-Fiction and Memoir.

January 3, 2022
JERKWATER by Jamie Zerndt – Native American Fiction, Friendship Fiction, Ethnic & Regional Fiction

Three friends in Mercer, Wisconsin find ways to deal with their problems amid a racist town in Jamie Zerndt’s Jerkwater.

Shawna Reynolds’ life changed when her white stepdad murdered her Ojibwa mother. Now living with her Naan (grandmother), Shawna surrounds herself with those who make her feel most comfortable. Besides Naan, she clings to her horse Seven, her behind-the-scenes Ojibwa boyfriend Elmer, and two white friends: Kay O’Brien and her son Douglas. But racial tension cuts through the town of Mercer itself, galvanized by a fight over fishing rights.

Soon after the death of her husband Norm, sixty-four-year-old Kay O’Brien learns that she nears the late stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Norm’s sudden demise shocks her and Douglas to the point that she withholds her recent diagnosis from him. Kay has a few church-lady friends, but feels closest to Shawna, spending time together drinking foul-tasting Manhattans. Shawna divulges that she’s been accepted into veterinary school, and in turn, Kay discloses her Alzheimer’s.

Douglas, who blames himself for his father’s death, takes over his dad’s unstable car repair business more out of guilt than aptitude. However, amongst the apparent doom and gloom of their lives, Shawna connects with animals, Douglas develops his art, and Kay still has enough wits about her to create positive change.

The three friends share something vital: they understand pain.

Each one struggles with their own unresolved issues: Shawna, anger over her mother’s death; Kay, health problems and the loss of her husband; and Douglas, caught between guilt and his desire to be an artist.

Jenna, a newbie who runs a hippish coffee house in town, takes an immediate interest in Douglas and his artwork. In the meantime, Kay discovers Norm’s poems written to a secret French love. But this upsetting news gets lost in the “Alzheimer” translation. She believes herself to be the secret love and takes off on Seven, babbling in nonsensical French. Although the situation is nothing less than strange, the friends have no idea that this bizarre moment will initiate a flurry of unforgettable and life-changing events.

Raconteur extraordinaire Jamie Zerndt produces a witty yet moving story of friendship.

Alternating his latest novel between three third-person narratives, Zerndt weaves in the local information about the Ojibwa and their constant fight with racist fishing rights in the highly-populated white town of Mercer, Wisconsin. Zerndt paints a convincing and visceral picture of emotion through his principal cast on many levels: low self-esteem, depression (leading to alcoholism), anger, and fear. His characters stay grounded, unremarkable, and relatable, especially Kay who struggles with the fact that she has no control of her mental state – something the older generation dreads.

Undoubtedly, sadness abounds from one page onward. But so does humor, love, and tenderness.

The humor arrives in darkness and sarcasm, as the characters face death and hate coming from a town dripping in racism. Sometimes, you have to laugh at pain in its face, and that’s precisely what Shawna, Kay, and Douglas do. Love unfolds awkwardly as an escape for Shawna and as a revelation for Douglas. Religion also comes into play as Kay bounces her thoughts of God between her relationship to the Catholic church, the church ladies she chums with, and a hippish priest who offers his services in an unorthodox way.

While chapters close on cliffhangers and tension builds with each character, Zerndt offers very little in the way of clues to the story’s apex. Instead, he uses the element of surprise, which allows readers to experience the depths of Shawna, Douglas, and Kay in ways they may not think possible.

Kudos to Zerndt for a brilliant literary work! Jerkwater is an absorbing read from beginning to end.

Jamie Zerndt’s Jerkwater won 1st Place in the 2019 CIBA Somerset Book Awards for Contemporary and Literary Novels.

October 8, 2021