Dorothy Koomson, Race, and Culture
After hearing Karen rave about Dorothy Koomson’s books for years, I finally remembered to check my local library for any copies of her work. I was fortunate enough to find two:
Marshmallows for Breakfast
When Kendra Tamale moves back to her native England after a stint in Australia, she rents an apartment and becomes enmeshed in the lives of her landlord, Kyle, and his six-year-old twins. His wife’s recently left him, and his kids, not taking the separation too well, run rings around him. Despite the unconditional acceptance of her surrogate family, Kendra fears that her past hurts will be exposed, threatening her new-found security and catapulting her back into loneliness and misery.
My Best Friend’s Girl
When Kamryn Ryn Matika gets a call from college friend Adele Del Brannon, she reluctantly heads to the hospital where Adele is dying of cancer. The two had been odd couple friends (working-class Ryn is black, posh Adele is white) while attending Leeds University, but their friendship did not survive Del’s admission of an affair with Ryn’s fiancé Nate Turner, which also ended Ryn’s relationship with Nate. The affair did result, however, in the now-five-year-old Tegan, and Del has called Ryn to ask her to adopt the adorable girl. Ryn agrees, but must face down Del’s stepmother, Muriel, to do it. She finds surprising help from new boss Luke Wiseman, who, after meeting her unceremoniously, loves Tegan (and eventually Ryn, too), but the return of Nate, who doesn’t know Tegan is his daughter, promises to reopen old wounds.
–and would highly recommend both.
The only issues I had with the books were that I felt the “Englishness” was toned down, and they didn’t mix hilarity and wit with real life issues the way Marian Keyes does. Both books, for all their chick-lit look and tone, were emotionally muted, and focused overwhelmingly on the growth of the narrator, which made the secondary characters come across more as appendages to the plot and narrator than as real and realistic characters in their own right (particularly Luke in My Best Friend’s Girl).
However, I admit to feeling funny while reading both books. More than once I stopped to ask “Where are the black people?” or “Doesn’t Kendra/Kamryn ever date any black guys?” and I was often weirded out by how, well, “white” Kendra and Kamryn sounded. My reaction reminded me of a comment made by a black British blogger who was confused by the frequency race and racism is mentioned on blogs run by black Americans for a black American audience (not just political blogs, but personal blogs and entertainment/gossip blogs). When I read that comment a few years ago, I and others were quick to school this person of the fact that race and racism couldn’t ever be ignored, but even though I still feel funny about the Koomson books, I had to step back and assess the filter with which I view the world. Granted, I still think the black British commenter was a bit naive, but it made me realize how very American I am.
A month ago or so, a Clutch Magazine piece on uniting the black diaspora ignited a firestorm of comments from black people from the Caribbean and Africa who saw the obsession with the “black diaspora” as a sign of black Americans’ inability to know who they are and they wanted no part of the call to action. I was initially taken aback, and then came to agree with them because it’s true–by and large, black Americans continue to search for their “culture” and who they “are”, whereas the greater black diaspora have deeply entrenched ties to their country or even ethnic group of origin. Not to mention that unless we leave America permanently, we as black Americans will never experience living in a country where everyone is black–from the top of society to the bottom, throughout the government to the worker cleaning restrooms, and so on, nor will we ever experience what it is like to live in a country without the history of slavery and Jim Crow (not to say that Europe is a bastion of freedom from prejudice and racism, but the culture of race is so different).
In all honesty, while reading Koomson’s books, I found it hard to shake the feeling of “other” while reading Kamryn and Kendra’s stories because I knew they were black, but they weren’t “black” like me. But maybe I need to read more fiction written by black Brits? I’ve been eyeing Zadie Smith’s novels for some time, any other authors out there?
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I read my best friend’s girl back in 2007 and, well, Kamryn sounded pretty black to me. Maybe it’s cos I’m black and I live in Britain, so I know who black british people sound. Obviously, black brits sound different from black americans, and maybe you were looking for the black american-ness in a black brit character. I don’t know. But I can say for certain that Kamryn was black.
What I don’t understand is what you mean by her sounding “white”. Is it the way she talks? I talk like that. I’m black and I’m brit. I don’t know how to talk slang like some black brits or black americans. I should blame my parents for sending me to school and uni. But, really, I don’t get this criticism at all
Wow, you really put your finger on how I felt while reading WHITE TEETH. I loved the book, but I did not personally identify with any of the black characters. Having traveled extensively, I’ve come to the conclusion that often AAs and other people from the black diaspora have very little in common. It’s kind of like the awkwardness in college between the black kids that grew up in mostly white neighborhoods and the ones that grew up in mostly black ones — except African-Americans are the ones who grew up in the mostly white neighborhood. I’ve come to accept that it’s just a different experience, one that I couldn’t possibly understand, which is why I would write a white Brit with more confidence than I could write a black brit. Sad but true, I think we are “other” to each other.
Okay…I didn’t mean the characters “talked white” the way black people here in the States like to accuse “bougy” black people of speaking, but that her narrative did not sound distinctively “black”–but as I said, I’m filtering the book through the sound of black American literature since I’ve lived and read that narrative my entire life. This is why I put out a call for more fiction written by black Brits; because I am not familiar with that “voice” and the culture/narrative ends up sounding no different than, say, Marian Keyes (though she’s Irish, and I can “hear” the Irish in her narrative), or Helen Fielding, or Sophie Kinsella.
I think that was one of the best things about the book. That Kamryn’s blackness wasn’t a huge focus. I live my life everyday without the colour of my skin being a huge issue for me, so I don’t have that burning need for black characters to ‘act’ black for me to feel connected to them.
[...] of Save Black Romance on Dorothy Koomson, Race and Culture: However, I admit to feeling funny while reading both books. More than once I stopped to ask [...]
I love Dorothy Koomson’s books!
One of the constant refrains I’ve heard with regard to white readers being reluctant to try black romance/chick lit is that they are afraid they won’t be able to relate to the characters. Well, I’m white, and I have no problem relating to the black characters in Koomson’s books.
I think they’re multi-faceted characters who just happen to be black, rather than the colour of their skin defining who they are and how they behave. I realise this might not represent the experience of every black person, but it certainly fits the sort of fiction Koomson writes. Her books might allude to issues which are part and parcel of being black in a predominantly white society, but her stories don’t focus on racism.
Have you read ‘Small Island’ by Andrea Levy? Set in London during and after WWII, it’s about a romance between a married white woman and her black lodger. Very good.
Hi Sarah, Karen–I don’t know if I’m explaining this correctly, but as a black American, race is something I’m hit with everyday. While I don’t walk about with a chip on my shoulder, or “hate whitey”, it’s something that’s ever present, and as a result, is part of the texture of black literature. I can’t say that black Britons don’t have their own history of oppression and racism apparent in their literature, but Race in general is part and parcel with American culture. So when I pick up a book written by a black author with black characters, my first expectation is to sink into a story populated with people who grew up against the same context in which I did–whether this black person be of the Jack&Jill/AKA/Boule social set or raised on the South Side of Chicago.
Koomson’s books hit me with a dose of cold water because here were black characters whose frame of reference was that of being black in Britain, without any of the cultural and racial baggage Americans of every stripe live with, and I couldn’t fully connect to the characters or story because I was forced to readjust every cultural filter that lay over my reading experience rather than enjoying the book for what it was–a book. But as I said, I want to read more fiction written by black Britons, and will probably re-read the Koomson books to enjoy them, because I am very curious about what it is like to live in a society where you are a minority, but there is no history of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow that has shaped black culture.
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