Fabulous Fiction Firsts #825, Spotlight on the Michigan Connection

Mon, 05/29/2023 - 3:05pm by muffy

Wade in the Water * (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook) by Nyaneba Nkrumah (MFA, University of Michigan) is the unlikely friendship between a precocious black girl and a mysterious white woman in rural, segregated Ricksville, Mississippi in the early 1980s. 

11 year-old Ella, the product of a fling between her mother and a black man is ignored by her mother, abused by her stepfather - her only friend being the blind old Mr. McCade. Love-starved but wise beyond her years, she is fascinated by Katherine St. James, a white graduate student, newly arrived from Princeton on a research project, who chooses to rent in the Black half of town. Curious and suspicious, most of the Black folks stay away except for Ella who eagerly befriends Katherine.

In a series of flashbacks, we learn that Katherine St. James used to be Kate Summerville, daughter of a notorious Mississippi Ku Klux Klan leader in nearby Philadelphia, Mississippi, in the early 1960s. The family fled north after the killings of three voting-rights activists, and the case remains unsolved. 

“What looks like it could be a narrative of atonement and redemption is turned completely on its head in the final chapters, as more details on Katherine's involvement with her father are presented - some to the community, some only to the reader. Nkrumah seems to agree with Faulkner, who said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past…. A furious look at the long tail of Jim Crow, with lively writing and a well-drawn setting. A promising debut.” (Kirkus Reviews) 

Moonrise Over New Jessup * (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook) by Jamila Minnicks (UM), the winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, is a period novel set in the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, and “brilliantly presents the Black struggle through an anti-integration lens that is equally powerful and persuasive.” (Booklist) 

1957. Alice Young steps off the bus in New Jessup, on the way to Chicago to reunite with her sister, in hope of starting a new life. In this unique settlement founded by a coalition of Black families who believed in the ideas of separation espoused by Booker T. Washington, Alice finds warm welcome, lodging, and a job sewing in a dress shop, and soon falls in love with Raymond Campbell, son of one of the town’s founders. 

As they marry and raise a family, Alice becomes aware of Raymonds clandestine involvement with National Negro Advancement Society, ideals that the town frown upon, believing it will draw unwanted and dangerous attention from the white side of town and the law.  Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for Raymond’s underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval.

Based on the history of the many Black towns and settlements established across the country, “(a)n outstanding writer, Minnicks excels at capturing the atmosphere and issues of a specific locale at a particular time, the Deep South at the dawn of the civil rights era.” (Library Journal)

The One by Julia Argy (MFA in fiction from the UM Helen Zell Writers' Program, 2021) (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook) is a razor-sharp and seductively hypnotic debut novel about the very fantasy of falling in love.

20-something Emily Boylan just lost her job as an adm. assistant, nevermind she does maybe 10 mins of real work every day and she is determined to move forward. So when she is approached on a Boston street by Miranda, a TV producer for the hit reality dating show The One, to join the cast after a contestant backed out at the last minute, she's on board. But the moment Emily arrives on location, it becomes clear she's been tapped to win it all, after meeting Dylan Walter and the other 29 women vying for his proposal.  And as Emily's fascination with another contestant grows, both Emily and Miranda are forced to decide what it is they really want--and what they are willing to do to get it. A brilliant send-up of our cultural mythology around romance, The One examines the reality of love and desire set against a world of ultimate artifice and manipulation. 

“Fans of reality TV will appreciate the insider feel first-time novelist Argy creates for her version of a very famous dating show, with the addition of cheeky suggestions of the secret motivations of some contestants that have nothing to do with love or marriage. The characters are flawed and likable, utterly convinced of the rightness of their participating in the unhealthy behaviors encouraged by the producers…A pop-culture send-up bound to inspire lively discussions.” (Booklist)  

 * = Starred review