Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo

     This week, I read the book Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo. Blonde Roots is basically pursuing the question, "what would happen if slavery was the other way around, if white people were enslaved by black people?" In the book, the main character, Doris, was enslaved when she was eleven years old, and brought to Africa, or as they call it, Aphrika. She is given a slave name, Omorenomwara, and when she is in her mid-thirties, she attempts escape. The story follows her as she attempts to get back to England, where she was born.

      Blonde Roots completely reverses the stereotypes and labels that black slaves were given in the 1700s and 1800s. White (or 'whyte') people are called 'wiggers,' and the white women compare themselves to the black (or 'blak') women, who call the whyte women ugly for being skinny and pale. While on her journey to Aphrika, Doris is placed on a ship in the middle passage, where women are raped and men are killed. Once she arrives, she is auctioned off and placed in a home where she is told to the companion of a blak little girl, who treats her like she is lesser because she is whyte.

     If you switch around the names 'black' and 'white', the result is exactly the same despite skin color: racism. I think Evaristo was trying to show this when she wrote the novel; it would be very easy to switch around the race roles and have white people be enslaved.

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma

     I have read this book four times.
     14 year old Chloe and her 18 year old sister Ruby live next to a reservoir in upstate New York, where Ruby is queen. Everyone adores her. She gets what she wants and gets away with anything. One day, while at a party at the reservoir, Ruby brags about how amazing Chloe is at swimming, how she could swim across without coming up for breath and not drown. And because Ruby is Ruby, everyone believes her, even Chloe. So she tries, and when she is halfway across, she finds the drowned body of her classmate London. Shocked with what she's found, Chloe moves away from Ruby, to Pennsylvania, to live with her Father. Two years later, Ruby comes back for her, pleading for her to return. She does, and is shocked to find London alive, well, and with no memory of her death. As the story unfolds, Chloe realizes just how influential Ruby is, having brought London back from the dead to make everything back to normal.
     I think that though Chloe loves Ruby, part of this love is fear. She knows how powerful she is, what she can do to get what she wants. She will always get what she wants, whether it is an object, love, life, beauty- even the death of of anther person. In one part of the book, Ruby gets a whole bunch of balloons, and writes wishes on each of them, such as "bake me a homemade lasagne." One is "ask me to dance and let me say no." When Chloe asks her why she would want that, Ruby says "so I can feel powerful." Chloe is frightened out of her mind. Another, "make me cry," is explained with "I want to know that I CAN cry, that someone can reject me." Chloe is scared even more. After Ruby's death, Chloe can't believe she's gone, because Ruby gets what she wants, and why would she want to die?
    Even though Chloe loves Ruby more than she loves anybody, she is still frightened by her power.

The Girl With Borrowed Wings by Rinsi Rossetti

     The Girl With Borrowed Wings, by Rinsi Rossetti, is about a girl named Frenenquer Paje, who lives in the desert with her timid mother and oppressive father. Her father doesn't allow her to do anything- express herself, fall in love, be a normal person- if she does not shut the door "politely," then she will have to stand there for hours, opening and closing the door until her father feels that she is "disciplined." Frenenquer claims that she was not conceived in the belly of her mother, but in the mind of her father, in a sunflower field in Italy. He has already planned who he wants her to be- perfect- and he will not stop at anything to fulfill his dream. This is not a culture- although they live in the middle east and their culture is arguably similar to the culture there, they have only lived there for four years, and they are Canadian, Italian, and Thai, and their culture is their own. Her father has affected Frenenquer's life so much that she feels she is unworthy and does not question him. So when a shape-shifter, or a "free person," comes to her house in the form of Sangris, a boy with wings, Frenenquer is wary about flying away each night to have a break from her parents' torture. 
    Frenenquer's father omits any contact with men, even though Frenenquer is sixteen. She feels like she is practically incapable of falling in love, simply because her father thought she should not. When talking about how in her books there is always a boyfriend, she says "He. Does there always have to be a he? It seems weak and unoriginal, doesn’t it, for stories told by girls to always have a he? Well, not in my life, nor in the lives of my friends. …So you see, for there to be a he in my story is a very unusual thing indeed, but then, the circumstances were unusual too, and the boy himself, if you can call him that, even more so." She feels violated when Sangris walks in on her when she is wearing "only a t-shirt and jeans," while this is the normal outfit for someone in a normal family. Her father makes her wear a long sleeved, tan, baggy shirt every day, and a long skirt or pants. When Sangris confesses his love to her and kisses her, she feels sick, and like she is wrongdoing her father by being loved. She then says that she "knows what you're (the reader) thinking," that she really does love Sangris, and doesn't realize it or denies it because of her father's oppression, but that is "not the case." She didn't love him because of the oppression. If her father weren't so strict, she "probably would be in love with him." 
      Frenenquer is trapped in every way, and Sangris is as free as he wants to be, and in that way, they are completely different and similar.  Frenenquer feels she lacks identity because of her father's discipline, and Sangris feels he lacks identity because he is so free that he can never settle in one place. In the end, when Frenenquer finally breaks free of her father, she falls in love with Sangris, and the union of two identity-less adolescents creates an identity: Love.