{"id":344,"date":"2018-12-31T11:51:58","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:51:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=344"},"modified":"2018-12-31T11:51:58","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:51:58","slug":"426","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=344","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book Review: LOVING DAY"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u201cI\u2019m not white, but I can feel the eyes of the few people outside on me, people who must think that I am, because I look white\u2026.This disconnect in my racial projection is one of the things I hate.\u2026 My mother was black \u2014 that counts, no matter how pale and Irish my father was.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Warren Duffy\u2019s father has died, and Warren returns to Philadelphia from Wales, leaving a failed comics shop, career, and marriage behind, to settle his father\u2019s estate. Broke, Warren appears at a local comic convention with his illustrations, maybe to sell a book or two. Instead Warren discovers that a youthful fling with a Jewish white girl has bequeathed him a seventeen-year-old daughter, Tal. She moves in with Warren and while searching for a new school the pair discover the M\u00e9lange Center for Multiracial Life, which turns out to be a sort of biracial commune for \u201cinclusion of all perspectives of the\u2026mixed-race experience.\u201d Is this the answer to Warren\u2019s search for home?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Loving Day<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong> is about belonging, responsibility, identity, and racism: intended and default, personal and institutional, rabid and casual. The fast-paced plot alternates between elements of tragedy and farce;  Johnson has an eagle eye for the absurdities of race in this country. Warren\u2019s first-person narrative effuses equal parts sharp wit, bewilderment, and longing \u2014 he should belong everywhere but instead doesn\u2019t belong anywhere.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s precise word choices will have you turning over phrases, working out the nuances. \u201cI am a racial optical illusion,\u201d says Warren. \u201cI am as visually duplicitous as the illustration of the young beauty that\u2019s also the illustration of the old hag. Whoever sees the beauty will always see the beauty, even if the image of the hag can be pointed out to exist in the same etching. Whoever sees the hag will be equally resolute.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Johnson is wicked-funny, as in this observation of a romantic rival: \u201cThis horrid, coveting, appropriating, ball of self-love shaped like a man.\u201d And he is charming-funny: \u201cI take \u20137 vulnerability points on all attractive female geek attacks.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Johnson is equally adept at grabbing your heart and squeezing. When Warren meets Tal:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I keep looking at her face. She lets me, connects her eyes with mine this time and lets me hold the gaze. And then I see my mom. I really see her, for the first time in twenty-four years. And then I start to cry. Just a little teary in the eye, it happens before I can put words to why and I grip the girl\u2019s hand firmer. I see my mother, and her mother, Gramma Jones, and Aunt Katie. Facies I thought were gone from existence, they are right in front of me.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Warren is of two minds regarding the M\u00e9lange Center (\u201cMulattopia\u201d). \u201cThe very idea, of creating a tribe where I would fully belong, of changing my definition to fit me instead of the other way around, terrifies me. It scares me because it\u2019s not crazy. It\u2019s attractive, logical even. It\u2019s just priced at abandoning my existing identity and entire worldview.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Loving Day is the best kind of literature. It made me laugh; it made me cry; and it made me think.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review of Loving Day <\/em>by Mat Johnson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,241,55,12,8,15],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fiction","tag-humor","tag-literaryfiction","tag-lonestarreview","tag-lonestarliterarycom","tag-texasauthor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}