Dreamland Burning

Dreamland Burning, Jennifer Latham

Brace yourselves for a bit of a rant that isn't directly about this novel and yet is. It's a re-hashing of my thoughts on The Help, so if you are tired of that one, feel free to skip this entry.

The concept of this novel is good. It has so much potential- two mixed race teens separated by decades, united by a corpse. There's a hint of mystery, some interesting historical detail, and a whole lot of trying too hard.

I'll start with the heavy-handedness of the social issues that create the tension of the stories. Considering that the central events revolve around a race-line conflict that left the black areas of Tulsa in ashes, we don't need to be hit over the head with "racism is bad, mkay?" And the supporting character, the girls best friend who also happens to be an asexual guy, is the weakest conjured sidekick I can imagine. He's got a cool car and he's asexual. He's asexual. Oh, by the way, he's asexual. He's also black- which would be much more pertinent to the main story- but we'll keep focusing on his sexual identity, regardless of how little it progresses the story. There are no situations where it's relevant, except to really make the point that their friendship is truly platonic. So it comes across as a detail that was just thrown in to make the whole novel more diverse. Same with the other teen's native mother, although her background gives a little bit of structure and context. We also get a homeless man and an addict as secondary or even tertiary (man, I love that word!) characters to round out our coat of many colors. And this, my friends, is also where I get my knickers in a knot.

This book is written by a white woman. Now, don't get me wrong, I love intersectional feminism and want WW to be good allies. Every important character in this novel is a Person of Color. All of them. Then why is Nice White Lady the one telling it? What insight could she possibly have into the everyday lives of mixed-race Tulsans that we couldn't get from, I dunno, actual POCs? Maybe, just maybe, this isn't her story to tell. Maybe, she could've told it from a different perspective that she can actually relate to better, and, therefore, made it more believable.

Elvis didn't invent rock n' roll.
Aibileen should've written the book, not Skeeter.
Miley wasn't the first to twerk.
The list goes on.

Now, without trying to sound like a hipster, I want authenticity in a storyteller. That doesn't mean that no white person can ever write a character of color, no straight person can ever write a queer one, no man can ever write a woman. But for the love of Benji, can we please, as white people who like to write, please take a step back? Can we please not assume we can tell these stories better than the people who have actually lived them? And, if we insist on still telling them, can we please do some actual first-person research? Maybe not try to frame an entire novel as a way to fix the social injustices that we are actually largely (if not totally) responsible for? I mean, can you imagine if Jodi Picoult tried to write Push? That's pretty much how this one reads.

And, let's be honest, the two main characters are heroes for different reasons. The young man, who passes as white but is called half-breed by the utterly one dimensional bad guy, who is not in touch with any of his native ancestry, swoops in during a tragedy to rescue a couple of black people that he happened to actually talk to. Thank you, White Savior. We're all so super grateful that you went from punching a guy and getting him worse-than-lynched to carrying beaten black men to a sanctuary. Really, it's great that this guy had a change of heart and did some pretty brave acts on that one single night, but ... then he gets to vanish. He's done his part. Give him a cookie. The young woman, who benefits from her white daddy's public standing, lives in her ivory tower, and is so far removed from not only her black ancestry but also even middle class life, gets to pin a rose on her own nose because she finally has empathy for a homeless man after he dies. I get it. They're kids. They haven't experienced the world outside of Tulsa. It's just so ridiculous that both of them have these massive changes of perspective seemingly overnight. It's so insincere and they have hidden in their privilege for so long I find them hard to like.

I could probably ramble on for several more semi-coherent paragraphs, but I won't. This story is weak and ambitious. It's not particularly well written. It's not challenging or engaging. I did read the whole thing, so it's better than The Orchardist. It gets credit for giving me something new to research- the Tulsa race riot. Dreamland Burning gets a lowly one and half Marias.

P.S. I'm trying to consume more works by outsiders. If you have a recommendation, drop a comment, please.