Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo

19 reviews

feeohnaemily's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Colonisation, Physical abuse, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Sexual violence, Slavery, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Violence, and Torture

Moderate: Suicide, Suicide attempt, Excrement, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Rape, Alcoholism, Suicidal thoughts, Alcohol, and Child death

amyvl93's review against another edition

challenging funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I have loved both of the previous Evaristo novels I've read, so perhaps I was due one that didn't quite land as well for me. In Blonde Roots , Evaristo takes an alternative look at history - where white people are enslaved and black people are the ones exploiting their labour and experiencing the benefits of labour. Our story is narrated by Doris, a young white woman whose rural childhood is disreputed when she is snatched from fields in England and sold into slavery.

It is clear that Evaristo had a lot of fun playing with places, geographies and what a world steeped in black culture for hundreds of years would look like, in comparison to one dominated by white culture. There's some interesting reflections in particular on beauty standards and relationships - however, after a while these start getting a little grating. Whilst the sense of place of individual locations is strong, the narrative also feels at times unmoored from a sense of time - is this taking place now, in the past, somewhere in between?

What does makes this book readable still is Evaristo's impactful writing; her reinterpretation of the middle passage is excellent, as are scenes later on in the novel where Doris really starts to feel the horrors of her situation.

I'm not necessarily sure I would recommend Blonde Roots as a place to start with Evaristo's work, but for completists it's probably worth a read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Slavery, Murder, and Torture

Moderate: Sexual assault and Rape

mog261's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

absolutely brutal. brilliant, but awful. many, many content warnings. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Grief, Torture, Violence, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Racial slurs, Emotional abuse, Gore, Death, Kidnapping, Murder, Physical abuse, Racism, and Slavery

Moderate: Confinement, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Animal cruelty, and Alcohol

alexreadsall's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

Bernadine Evaristo is a genius. I love her mind and her writing so much. Blonde Roots is her debut and even in this you can see how good she is going to be.
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This book explores the idea of power and what absolute power can do. Blonde Roots asks the question ‘what would have happened if the African peoples had come to enslave white Europeans instead?’ And what an exploration it was.
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I don’t really know how to talk about this book. In a lot of weird ways I loved it because of Bernadine Evaristo’s pure writing ability. She has such a way with words and characters that it’s hard not to love what she writes. But it wasn’t an easy read in a lot of different ways. The horrors that happen to the whyte slaves inflicted by their blak masters are graphic and she just lays it all out without apology.
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I have to admit I had a hard time remembering that our main character was whyte. I had to consciously remind myself that this was a fictional made up history and that everything was flipped. Which might have been part of Evaristo’s point. That absolute power over others will eventually and always lead to the same horrific results. Regardless of race.
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I’m not a scholar, I’m not even a college graduate so I’m not sure if I have the language to talk about this book. But it made an impact and I think that what Evaristo did was incredible. It didn’t change how I feel about history and it didn’t give me sympathy for white people but it did help me to explore how power works.
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Here’s the deal I will read anything that Bernadine Evaristo has written or will write. I’m glad I read it because it’s such a unique idea, taking a race of people who historically have always had the power and taken whatever they wanted and taking that power away from them in the most horrible way possible. It’s clever and at times darkly funny and the way she takes every aspect of that awful time in history and made it about whytes was brilliant.
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I guess all of this is to say I liked the book with caveats. And I would love more people to read it so I can chat with others about it. If you have read it please let me know so we can chat!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Violence, and Racism

zoebill96's review against another edition

challenging reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Grief, Hate crime, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Slavery, Child death, Classism, Cultural appropriation, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Sexual assault, Trafficking, Death, Torture, and War

laurataylor's review against another edition

challenging reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Slavery, Racial slurs, Death, Domestic abuse, Hate crime, Kidnapping, Self harm, Racism, Colonisation, Death of parent, Forced institutionalization, Suicide attempt, and Trafficking

rhianonw's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Blood, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Racism, Violence, Slavery, and Torture

Moderate: Abandonment

Minor: Addiction, Alcohol, Body shaming, Confinement, Rape, Alcoholism, Infidelity, Pregnancy, Racial slurs, Sexual harassment, Suicide attempt, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cannibalism, Child death, Classism, Genocide, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Death of parent, Death, Excrement, Fire/Fire injury, Self harm, and Vomit

yaelm's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

אני מבינה את הרעיון מאחורי ההיפוך (נראה לי), אבל מעבר לשינויים נסיבתיים זה לא באמת שינה משהו בסיפור העבדות. אם המטרה היא להראות שגזענות זה דבר שתלוי בהתניה תרבותית ושכל טיעוני העליונות/נחיתות גזעית הם מטומטמים, אז כן - זה עבד, אבל אני לא מרגישה שהיה צריך את הספר הזה בשביל זה. מניחה שאני מפספסת משהו (באמת, רפרנסים תרבותיים למיניהם), כי לא מצאתי את זה ״סאטירה מבריקה״. ספר מאוד קריא עם קונספט מעניין וביצוע שלא עמד בציפיות מבחינתי (“Girl, Woman, Other” שלה שקראתי לפני שנתיים הוא אחד הספרים הטובים של השנה מבחינתי, אז היו לי הרבה ציפיות)

שימו לב שיש טריגרים רבים - כל סוגי האלימות

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping, Rape, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Slavery, Racism, Sexual violence, and Trafficking

amberinbookland's review

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Rape, Trafficking, Slavery, Racism, Violence, Vomit, Excrement, Torture, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Pregnancy, Pedophilia, Murder, Miscarriage, Kidnapping, Grief, Gore, Death of parent, Death, Confinement, Child death, Cannibalism, Blood, and Body horror

Moderate: Alcoholism and Alcohol

helendipietro's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

 I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one as I like the concept but found the plot itself to be anticlimactic. I definitely respect and appreciate the idea but didn’t enjoy it. I listened to this as an audiobook and found it to be an interesting mixture of history and satire. Evaristo, who is of Nigerian and British descent, describes the history of a slave, her family and her owners, with the clever twist that the roles of Britain and West Africa are reversed. In this book those who exploit, murder and rape have black skins, and the oppressed are white. 

Because of the subject matter, it is a very heavy read at times and is something that will stay with you afterwards. However, I found that the novel lacked continuity as the story went on and instead of switching perspectives, I would have preferred to hear more of Doris’s story. Overall, the content was thought-provoking but as a story quite confusing and hard to follow. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, Violence, Slavery, Rape, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Racism, Rape, Violence, and Colonisation