RaveThe New York Times Book Review... Chude-Sokei writes from that space outside, detailing with unflinching directness the confusion, isolation, horror and bizarre humor of his life as a child born to a high-ranking Biafran major father and a Jamaican mother in the midst of civil war in Nigeria ... Chude-Sokei’s prose is both direct and poetic, describing horrific trauma with such flat immediacy that at times I had to set the book down for a moment, just to process what I was reading ... I cringed with recognition as Chude-Sokei attempts and fails to escape American racism by embracing his African forebears’ prejudice against Black Americans. But Chude-Sokei resists editorializing. There are no life lessons, no rationalizations of the bigotry and violence that exist in a diaspora so ravaged by white colonialism. We must look at the author’s story, see how messy it is, and try to figure out why alongside him. Reading this book I wondered if white readers would get its complexity ... Herein lies the beauty of Floating in a Most Peculiar Way: It reveals how we carry trauma with us, how that trauma can cause us to hurt one another, and how we still love and carry one another with wounds unhealed ... There were times when I enjoyed this book and times when I felt like I survived it, but there was never a time when I did not find myself within it.
Darnell L. Moore
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewIn No Ashes in the Fire, Darnell Moore writes a deeply personal memoir of growing up in the cross hairs of racism and homophobia in Camden ... But despite the shocking cruelty depicted in this book, Moore also infuses the pages with great humanity — humanity capable of great horror and even greater beauty. Moore’s descriptions of parental hands that could be a source of love as well as pain reminded me of some of the most beautiful scenes in Moonlight ... The reader will arrive at the end of this book with a respect for Moore and the many levels of self-realization he has reached, excited to see his already admirable career as a writer.
