PositiveThe NationFlournoy’s spare, headstrong style enables her to lay bare, without pretensions, a story about the black American diaspora in which slavery, segregation, and gentrification are all joined in a single narrative. The Turner family isn’t a vessel for a history lesson, but history is ambient for them, right up to the present moment ... Flournoy’s language is a fit instrument for channeling the Turners’ special plight, which one of the siblings, Troy, describes as self-sabotaging self-righteousness masked as self-reliance.'
