RaveThe RumpusAs riveting as ever, Jamison’s writing elicited within me many of the same responses I felt while reading her previous essay collection, The Empathy Exams: enlightenment, amusement, and of course, empathy itself ... Jamison isn’t trying to convince me or you or any of her readers of anything except that perhaps this unsureness we feel toward the unknown—this uneasiness—is absolutely essential. Perhaps, when we try to tell a story that is not our own, we should be asking ourselves, What am I doing here, anyway? And perhaps this question belongs in the narrative, even if we don’t know the answer.
Casey Gerald
MixedThe Rumpus\"... while Gerald’s writing is direct and painfully honest, it lacks a bitterness or grudge that one would say he’s warranted in holding ... At times his tone might be read as detached, or too cold, but the matter-of-fact (and occasionally flippant) tenor he takes with such recollections feels well-measured and necessary ... this book is Gerald’s attempt to construct his own narrative as best as he can, and it’s successful. It teaches, it confounds. It’s funny, and sometimes it makes you suck your teeth in irritation.\
Tayari Jones
RaveThe Rumpus\"Contrary to Hollywood norms is the fact that An American Marriage does not focus on prison reform. Nor does it spend much time on racial profiling or rape. Rather, Jones examines the countless ways in which \'marriage\' can be turned, twisted, and redefined. Her agenda is personal, not political, and with each shift in point-of-view from Roy to Celestial and eventually to Andre we’re more invested in their well-being. We’re itching to know if Roy and Celestial’s marriage can survive something so dreadful, and we’re dying to know which will triumph: love, or scruples ... It’s rife with all of the romantic and familial drama of any movie, but the real joy is that it boasts the character exposition and contemplation that a two-hour film can’t, all while maintaining the endearing trappings of good old-fashioned black cinema: powerful flashbacks, earnest narrators, and spot-on black culture references.\
Stephen O'Connor
RaveThe RumpusO’Connor could easily explore master-slave relations by presenting the Jefferson-Hemings 'relationship' merely through the lens of attacker and victim. It would be the safer route for a novel whose primary narrator is a black female slave, particularly when it has been authored by a white male in the 21st century. Instead, the Jefferson-Hemings 'relationship' is much more nuanced ... O’Connor compels us to look at both the ugliness in Jefferson’s hypocrisies and the hopelessness in Hemings’s resistance. We will always be outsiders from their story, just as we are outsiders from the experience of sexual assault until it happens to us.
