Mini-Reviews: Disturbing Reads

It is amazing what Kearse knew from family stories about her family history and even more startling what she learned from her research. A terrific alternate history and memoir.

I borrowed the book from my public library.

The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family
by Bettye Kearse
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published March 24th 2020  
ISBN132860439X (ISBN13: 9781328604392)

from the publisher

For thousands of years, West African griots (men) and griottes (women) have recited the stories of their people. Without this tradition Bettye Kearse would not have known that she is a descendant of President James Madison and his slave, and half-sister, Coreen. In 1990, Bettye became the eighth-generation griotte for her family. Their credo—“Always remember—you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president”—was intended to be a source of pride, but for her, it echoed with abuses of slavery, including rape and incest. 

Confronting those abuses, Bettye embarked on a journey of discovery—of her ancestors, the nation, and herself. She learned that wherever African slaves walked, recorded history silenced their voices and buried their footsteps: beside a slave-holding fortress in Ghana; below a federal building in New York City; and under a brick walkway at James Madison’s Virginia plantation. When Bettye tried to confirm the information her ancestors had passed down, she encountered obstacles at every turn. 

Part personal quest, part testimony, part historical correction, The Other Madisons is the saga of an extraordinary American family told by a griotte in search of the whole story.

I had read Things We Lost in the Fire and quickly requested this new book. I was unsettled by the early stories, then became squeamish and finally had to walk away. The horror was too much for me. That being said, I will admit that the writing is amazing.

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories
by Mariana Enriquez
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Hogarth
Pub Date 12 Jan 2021 
ISBN 9780593134078
PRICE $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Following the "propulsive and mesmerizing" (New York Times Book Review) Things We Lost in the Fire comes a new collection of singularly unsettling stories, by an Argentine author who has earned comparisons to Shirley Jackson and Jorge Luis Borges.

Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken—fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history—with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.

Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with a resounding tenderness toward those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is Mariana Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.

Unsettling Stories from Argentina: Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez

The stories in Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez are more than eerie or creepy. They are disturbing, upsetting, and some are even repulsive.

A Goblin-like creature sinks its teeth into a cat. A woman's husband conveniently disappears. A woman obsesses over a skull, driving her boyfriend from her life. Women walk into bonfires to be deformed, or starve themselves to be thin, or are 'ordered' to cut themselves. A priest working in the barrio becomes suicidally insane.

In 1970 an Argentinian exchange student stayed with my family for a weekend exchange. His father owned a prosperous shoe factory. We felt his disdain for our blue collar life. He was used to maids and servants and a large home. I learned that his was a country of wealth and poverty.

Reading theses stories I realized how Argentina's bloody political past has left its imprint on the Argentinian people's souls. I shuddered while reading about the street children of poverty, six-year-olds turning tricks to feed their addiction, the hopeless barrios with their shrines to cults or Expeditus, the unofficial patron saint of speedy cases. The ghost of a violent past is ever present.

In the story Under the Black Water cops are charged with beating and killing two teens, dumping their bodies in the polluted Riacheulo river that runs through Buenos Aries. Only one body has been found. The cops are jaunty and sure they are untouchable. The DA on the case decides to visit the scene of the crime. The taxi driver won't even take her inside the boundary of the dangerous slum.

The children who live along the river are mutants from the lead, chromium, and toxic waste dumped into the river. They are born with extra arms and deformed faces.

"It was the most polluted river in the world, experts affirmed, Argentina had taken the river winding around its capital, which could have made for a beautiful day trip, and polluted it almost arbitrarily, practically for the fun of it."

She is looking for the priest of the church, who she has been unable to contact.

"The building was no longer a church...The crucifix had disappeared...In place of the altar there was a wooden pole stuck into a common metal flower pot. And impaled on the pole was a cow's head."

The priest tells her that the missing boy "woke up the thing sleeping under the water." Outside a procession is carrying something on a mattress.

"You know, for years I thought that rotten river was a sign of our ineptitude. How we never think about the future," the priest tells her. But now he realizes the pollution and filth was intended to cover "something up, something they didn't want to let out, and they buried it under layers and layers of oil and mud!"

The story concludes open-ended. The reader can decide what evil lurks, and if it is physical or spiritual.

I see these stories as warnings of the evil we can unleash, the psychic and spiritual deformities.

I received a free book through Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories
Mariana Enrique
Hogarth
$24 hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-451-49511-2