The victims of the past are often compared to birds. Ghosts and Birdsīird symbolism also plays a role in this novel. Some bits remind me of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It uses touches of magical realism just as deftly as One Hundred Years of Solitude. The novel feels like it belongs in the same world as Their Eyes were Watching God. It means learning from past techniques and uses the best of them to create something new. But this is an excellent example of what I mean when I say stealing. It’s a wholly original work with a voice all its own. Learning From the Greatsįirst off, I’m not saying that Jesmyn Ward is plagiarizing anything. In addition to that, her brother, Given, was murdered, and his presence is felt throughout the novel. Like the Breedlove family in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, we learn about her painful past and why she’s headed for self-destruction. She is obsessively in love with her children’s father, who is himself an addict. In the 90s, every made-for-tv movie seemed to be about crackhead moms living in poverty, but in the hands of Ward, Leonie is a fully fleshed-out character. Twenty years ago, she would have been a cliché villain. Leonie disappears for weeks, leaving her two children with her elderly parents. Jo-Jo’s mother, Leonie, is one of the POV characters and is a drug-addict.
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