Book reviews exploring the intersections of race, class, sexuality, etc.

A family curse, a deaconess falling for a new church member, and an adulterous archaeologist with a pregnant wife. Just a few individuals that stand out in Carrie M. Moore’s Make Your Way Home: Stories. A fascinating exploration of what it means to be black in contemporary America. But like these many characters, it shows Black Experience as a multifaceted kaleidoscope of experience. It is easy to fall back on lazy stereotypes and misconceptions, assuming Black Experience being some monolithic, alien thing. (This misconception having its origin in the equally idealized and demonized White Male Default. In our complex world, it can be a relief to put people, places, and things in clear-cut unambiguous categories. White = This. Black = That.) Through a series of short stories focusing on deeply drawn characters, Moore teases out the joys and agonies of being black in America. With white nationalism once again rampant in the political scene, saying the quite parts loud, and conservative whites affecting a farcically obscene notion of victimhood, Make Your Way Home remains a relevant piece of literature. Despite its obvious importance as a literary snapshot, it is also a joy to read. One must never forget the pleasures on can extract from literature. Turning something into “mandatory reading” can easily suck all the enjoyment from a piece of storytelling.

The short story collection deals with an upcoming wedding. The wedding is for the main character’s sister and her fiancee. The main character, a black man native to West Texas, is dealing with a family curse. Due to actions from a distant relative in the Antebellum South, the men in the family have had to deal with all their relationships ending badly. The tarnished family history is told in terms almost Faulknerian (at least from this reviewer’s biased personal perspective). In order to lift the curse, he visits elderly relatives and hunts for an obscure document once thought lost. The crippling weight of the past upon the present requires a Herculean effort to defeat. Is the family curse a real thing? Or is the record of broken relationship the result of coincidence and interpretation? Moore leaves the reader hanging until the very end.

The challenge of the short story is it leaves the author less room for mistakes. Moore consistently crafts short stories that contain worlds. Each could easily be extended into a full-length novel, yet the short-form leaves the reader satisfied without a lengthy investment in time. In “Naturale,” she tells the story of a hairdresser dealing with her adulterous husband, an archaeology professor who had an affair with a student. The hairdresser’s mother is in jail for murdering her husband. When the hairdresser invites the student to an appointment at the beauty salon, family history weighs heavy on the hairdresser. A pair of scissors become a stand-in for the Sword of Damocles. What’s going to happen? Is the student going to be safe when the wife has all these sharp implements at her disposal?

“Morning by Morning” is about a church deaconess falling for a new church member. The struggle between the desires of the spirit and the flesh become a real battle for her soul. Yet the narrative is much deeper, much more intense. The deaconess, Sariah, had a rough upbringing and pursued sex with a reckless abandon. It left her life in ruins. These details add complexity to a tale that could have been a simplistic fable favoring outdated puritanical dogmas. With her life a disaster, the church become a refuge. In the process, she realized God talked to her. The arrival of the handsome new church member provides opportunity for a kind of erotic rebirth, but at the cost of God’s silence.

Make Your Way Home, by Carrie R. Moore details the particulars about living as a black person in the United States. Meshing the historical and the individual, it is laced with characters who feel real and lived-in. It relates the contradictory feelings involved when one years for home, especially when that home is the American South. Southern hospitality, good food, and energetic spirituality struggle to endure a morally rotten culture fed on race hatred, KKK rallies, and legal segregation’s legacies. Yet one loves one’s home despite all the savage monstrosities hidden beneath a veneer of courtesy and religious morality. These are stories that resonate now, both for their aesthetic brilliance and contemporary relevance. Carrie R. Moore is a literary voice to look out for. Whatever fictional production she has next in line – a full-length novel, a play, a showrunner – will be of interest and a real source of excitement.