Review by Booklist Review
Harry Sylvester Bird bears the burden of his whiteness heavily, especially at a time in American life when racism is causing serious damage. He is first moved to action as a teen in Pennsylvania, trying to fix the extensive environmental damage in Centralia, a near ghost town with fire burning beneath the ground. Eventually, Harry moves to New York, where he falls in love with Maryam, a captivating Nigerian woman. In her second novel, following Under the Udala Trees (2015), Okparanta takes on heavy subjects, including racism, environmental destruction, xenophobia, extremist politics, and the COVID-19 pandemic in an uneven attempt at satire. Harry's parents, Chevy and Wayne, for example, come across as extreme caricatures, and significant aspects of Harry's growth arc are missing. Okparanta hints at Harry's sexuality in the first part of the book, which takes place during a vacation in Tanzania with his parents, but that is left unexplored as the story moves on to the young man's body dysmorphia. This disjointed but ambitious and daring novel has its appeals, and some readers will appreciate the humor.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The inventive if messy latest from Okparanta (Under the Udala Trees) chronicles the coming-of-age of a young white man who is convinced he is Black. In 2016, 14-year-old Harry Sylvester Bird develops an enduring fascination with Blackness while on a safari in Tanzania. (Regarding a Black tour guide's arm hairs: "I noted them and wished I could be them.") Several years later and back home in Edward, Pa., Harry's racist parents slide toward financial catastrophe as Harry graduates high school and Covid-19 takes hold, spurring vaccination checkpoints and a national "bubble registry." Eager to distance himself from his family, Harry moves to New York and starts to identify as Black, going by "G-Dawg" and joining a "Transracial-Anon" support group. After ambivalently accepting a scholarship from the Purists (an extremist white populist political party), Harry enrolls in college and falls in love with Maryam, a fellow student from Nigeria. Despite some disastrous early dates, the couple stays together for years until a study-abroad trip to Ghana compels Harry to grapple with his identity and puts his relationship with Maryam to the test. There are weighty ideas here, but Harry's lack of self-awareness will test readers' patience, and the satire sometimes gets lost in the scattered plot. This doesn't quite stick the landing. (July)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A teenager conducts a yearslong effort to shake off his White privilege in Africa, suburbia, and New York. We meet the title character of Okparanta's second novel, after Under the Udala Trees (2015), in 2016 in Tanzania, on a safari with his parents, who exemplify ugly (White) Americanism. If Wayne and Chevy aren't bickering with each other, they're making casually racist comments and treating the Black tour guides contemptuously. Harry's embarrassment at their behavior, combined with a connection with one guide, moves the 14-year-old to resent "the prominent paleness of my skin." Back home in the Pennsylvania suburbs, the rift widens as Wayne, a mediocre teacher, loses his job and pursues ill-advised schemes like attempting to sell 3-D printed guns, while Harry plans his escape. Though Harry detests his parents and makes various anti-racist gestures, he decides to take a scholarship from a group of God-and-flag Whites called Purists (read: Trumpists) to escape his parents and go to college in Manhattan. Okparanta's satire of White racism and hypocrisy is sometimes cartoonish, especially when it comes to Wayne, but it's sharp in the latter sections, as when Harry attends meetings of "Transracial-Anon," a 12-step group that's less anti-racist and more pro--self-pity, or uses an app called Dignity that effectively removes the burden of how to treat people or when a public act of goodwill by Harry's Black girlfriend becomes warped by bigots. Harry's dream of "racial reassignment" is a fool's errand, of course, but Okparanta suggests that even more modest gestures of allyship don't meaningfully address racist instincts. The novel comes full circle with a trip to Ghana's Gold Coast, the one-time center for the slave trade, suggesting that while Harry isn't exactly his father's son, he's inherited a cultural affliction that he can't shake off. A tart, questioning exploration of how deep racism runs. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
