“—You different, Lilith. You have more darkness ’bout you now. You turning into woman, Homer say to her.”

I've heard much about Marlon James before reading The Book of Night Women . I can confidently say now that I am a fan of his.

Lilith is not a likeable character. She is colourful; as a reader, you can feel the depth of her rage to the brief feelings of happiness she experiences. None of the characters are likeable, but they are real and raw. As a reader, you can feel Lilith being squeezed on all sides by enslaved people working in the field, the white people in the house, and the maroons who live free. There is no escape from the bondage that she was born in. Readers can see the psychological strain of enslavement through the characters. Lusting after whiteness is something readers see in Lilith again and again. Finding comfort in white men and the 'protection' they can provide. It's easy to fault Lilith for this, but it also causes the reader to think about what drives enslaved people to the security a white person could provide. Being the white man's whore could be worth all of that.

The historical detail and study that went into this had me GEEKING. I appreciated everything James did to bring us into the time and present. He presented us with background information that made the plot come to life. The plot of revolt for The Book of Night Women is weaved into former historical plots. The end of the book hit me extremely hard. I knew where James was going, but I still had to see it through. The pain and brutality of the stark reality of enslavement is worth the read.

I see people had problems with the language in here - the dialect and how the conversation was written. I can understand the dialect complaint if you are used to reading 'standard' English all the time. (I think this is still a poor excuse for lazy reading). However, I cannot look over people complaining about how the conversation was written. Are you a child who needs to be handheld? Must quotation marks accompany every utterance leaving a character's mouth for you to recognize that a character is speaking? The short answer is no. If you were paying attention to what you were reading, it was not hard to keep track of what was happening.

People complained about this book being trauma porn; I would hardily disagree. I want a raw description of what was experienced by enslaved people during this time. Now it felt like everything compounded on each other, but my awareness of time for the plot made it feel that way. I'm going to expand on this in another IG post.