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elementarymydear
I’ve been hearing a lot about Queenie, the debut novel from Candice Carty-Williams, so when I saw it in Tesco (the only place right now you can buy books!) I decided to pick it up, and I’m glad I did!
The story follows Queenie, a young black woman living and working in London and navigating the whirlwind that is her break-up with her boyfriend. It’s not just any break-up though; the day they split she discovers she had a miscarriage from a pregnancy she didn’t know about, and the cracks in her and her boyfriend’s relationship stem from his unwillingness to stand up to his racist family or acknowledge her perspective.
Queenie is a fantastic main character. She’s funny, tender, and flawed. She wants to be more politically involved, but can’t quite make it work. She wants to do well at her job as a journalist, but it never seems to be a priority. She wants to find love, but keeps making increasingly bad decisions until it all comes crashing down. And yet through all of this, we understand her. We may not support or agree with her actions or with the decisions she makes, but we understand why she’s made them even if we’re desperate to pull her out of her own story and try to talk some sense into her.
The core of the story is Queenie’s battle to find her place between her Jamaican family and upbringing and her white friends and colleagues, narrated nicely by the looming gentrification of Brixton. The novel has enormous heart and is utterly readable. If you get a chance, make sure to pick it up this summer.
Find this and other reviews at my blog: https://elementarymydearbookblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/28/review-queenie-by-candice-carty-williams/
The story follows Queenie, a young black woman living and working in London and navigating the whirlwind that is her break-up with her boyfriend. It’s not just any break-up though; the day they split she discovers she had a miscarriage from a pregnancy she didn’t know about, and the cracks in her and her boyfriend’s relationship stem from his unwillingness to stand up to his racist family or acknowledge her perspective.
Queenie is a fantastic main character. She’s funny, tender, and flawed. She wants to be more politically involved, but can’t quite make it work. She wants to do well at her job as a journalist, but it never seems to be a priority. She wants to find love, but keeps making increasingly bad decisions until it all comes crashing down. And yet through all of this, we understand her. We may not support or agree with her actions or with the decisions she makes, but we understand why she’s made them even if we’re desperate to pull her out of her own story and try to talk some sense into her.
The core of the story is Queenie’s battle to find her place between her Jamaican family and upbringing and her white friends and colleagues, narrated nicely by the looming gentrification of Brixton. The novel has enormous heart and is utterly readable. If you get a chance, make sure to pick it up this summer.
Find this and other reviews at my blog: https://elementarymydearbookblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/28/review-queenie-by-candice-carty-williams/
The first thing to say about this book is that the title is perhaps misleading. When I first saw it on the bookshelves in Waterstones, I assumed it was going to be a series of essays as to why we should all be feminists, but a quick look at the blurb told me otherwise. This book is a collection of essays from women and gender non-conforming people from marginalised communities who, in one way or another, have found that mainstream feminism (ie white feminism) has failed them. The book covers a huge range of topics, from the Black Lives Matter movement, to abortion rights in Northern Island, to immigration and refugee rights, to feminism in the diaspora. It was such an eye-opener into not just the way that mainstream feminism has left so many people behind, but the number of issues that are feminist issues and aren’t considered as such.
With seventeen essays I won’t delve into each one, but I’ll mention a few that stood out to me. Many of them were about how the civil rights movement and the feminist movement have failed to intersect, both in the UK and the USA, discussing everything from the way women are repeatedly left out of the Black Lives Matter movement to the way that suffrage movements often pitted white women and men of colour against each other, leaving out women of colour altogether.
‘A Hundred Small Rebellions’ by Eishar Kaur describes feminist politics in British-Punjabi communities, although the word ‘feminist’ is not used to describe them. She describes the way that neither white feminism nor Indian feminism is at all useful or helpful even though she and her family live in both of these worlds. In ‘Ends, Means and Subterfuge in Feminist Action’, Emer O’Toole describes the way that in order to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland, in what was an undeniably feminist campaign and cause, the only way to achieve success was to not say the F word and instead talk about the husbands and families whose lives had been affected because a woman was unable to get the healthcare she needed. Notably, the essay was written before the actual referendum, so at the time of writing O’Toole had no idea whether or not the campaign would be a success.
The essay that hit me hardest was Wei Ming Kam’s The Machinery of Disbelief, which delves into why British immigration laws (and immigration laws of most Western countries) are fundamentally patriarchal, and how there is little to no support for women caught up in a system of a country where they have no legal standing. I couldn’t quite believe that something that is clearly such a huge issue, and should be at the very least a core part of the shelter movement, had not only never crossed my mind but also never been brought up by politicians, campaigners, books, articles, news stories, even friends. It’s an enormous issue under our very noses and nothing is being done.
Every single person should read this book. It opens up your eyes to the plethora of human experiences, and a whole host of lives and stories that you probably didn’t know anything about. I defy anyone to read this book and not learn something. At it’s most basic level, it’s the difference between feminism and girl power. At it’s most complex, it’s the mechanics of societies all around the world that consistently leave behind the most vulnerable.
With seventeen essays I won’t delve into each one, but I’ll mention a few that stood out to me. Many of them were about how the civil rights movement and the feminist movement have failed to intersect, both in the UK and the USA, discussing everything from the way women are repeatedly left out of the Black Lives Matter movement to the way that suffrage movements often pitted white women and men of colour against each other, leaving out women of colour altogether.
‘A Hundred Small Rebellions’ by Eishar Kaur describes feminist politics in British-Punjabi communities, although the word ‘feminist’ is not used to describe them. She describes the way that neither white feminism nor Indian feminism is at all useful or helpful even though she and her family live in both of these worlds. In ‘Ends, Means and Subterfuge in Feminist Action’, Emer O’Toole describes the way that in order to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland, in what was an undeniably feminist campaign and cause, the only way to achieve success was to not say the F word and instead talk about the husbands and families whose lives had been affected because a woman was unable to get the healthcare she needed. Notably, the essay was written before the actual referendum, so at the time of writing O’Toole had no idea whether or not the campaign would be a success.
The essay that hit me hardest was Wei Ming Kam’s The Machinery of Disbelief, which delves into why British immigration laws (and immigration laws of most Western countries) are fundamentally patriarchal, and how there is little to no support for women caught up in a system of a country where they have no legal standing. I couldn’t quite believe that something that is clearly such a huge issue, and should be at the very least a core part of the shelter movement, had not only never crossed my mind but also never been brought up by politicians, campaigners, books, articles, news stories, even friends. It’s an enormous issue under our very noses and nothing is being done.
Every single person should read this book. It opens up your eyes to the plethora of human experiences, and a whole host of lives and stories that you probably didn’t know anything about. I defy anyone to read this book and not learn something. At it’s most basic level, it’s the difference between feminism and girl power. At it’s most complex, it’s the mechanics of societies all around the world that consistently leave behind the most vulnerable.
I first came across this story in school when I was about 12, and although we didn't read much of it I was really intrigued. I am so glad that I finally got round to reading the whole thing - this was the most intense 26 pages I've ever read. I actually had a headache at the end; Charlotte Perkins Gilman somehow accesses a deep part of you, sucking you in and making you fixate over this wallpaper that you can't even imagine. The ending was just so, so powerful that I had to just put it down and take several deep breaths. It was a very descriptive book, but what was incredible about it was I don't have a clear picture in my mind of what the wall-paper looked like, but I know exactly what it felt like, because I could feel myself going mad with the woman in the story. It was just an incredible experience reading it - it's fifteen minutes of your life you won't regret.