In recent years, American literature has seen the emergence of a large number of Afro-descendant authors who explore the racial question through very different genres and styles. We think among others of SA Cosby who uses the detective story to describe a South that is still very divided.
This debut novel, written by a Brooklyn author ranked among the five most promising writers under 35 in the United States this year, immerses us in the neighborhoods where he grew up, in these council estates located on the edge of Jamaica Bay, well east of the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Here, it smells of the sea, but the ocean that borders these places has nothing to do with that of the posh beaches that are nevertheless so close.
The story alternates between the story of young Colly, a teenager trying to survive the death of his mother after 2007, and her youth in the late 1980s. With Audrey, the grandmother, they share a gift that is passed down from one generation to the next and that allows them to see ghosts stuck in the in-between worlds — mainly people from their neighborhood that they have crossed paths with at one time or another. Their story is woven slowly, tracing a long trajectory between the Killing Fields and more recent tragic events, such as the death of Eric Garner.
In its way of blurring the boundaries between reality and dream, The Ghosts of Brooklyn is reminiscent in some ways of Jason Mott’s novel The child who wanted to disappear.
The locations, on the other hand, are reminiscent of David Chariandy’s Scarborough in Besidesas both reflect on how to cope with the loss of a loved one when nothing around us is secure, least of all oneself.
The whole novel revolves around the idea that “the world and the human condition are built around local actions.” That to build a community and a future for young people who grow up in an environment where everyone has let them down, to repair broken people who haunt places that will never belong to them, mutual aid, support and solidarity are needed. “We have to be like a family. Without that, how are we going to get by?” asks one of the characters.
Beyond these considerations tinged with a certain melancholy, Tyriek White makes himself the standard-bearer of a fringe of the population “desperately invisible” who need voices and pens like his. And if he continues on this path, he could well be one of the essential authors of his generation.
The Ghosts of Brooklyn
Calmann-Levy
360 pages