monkeelino 's review for:

Confrontations by Simone Atangana Bekono

4.0

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A tense, slim novel about a black teenage girl (Salomé) living in the Netherlands sentenced to rehabilitation/detention from a violent altercation with classmates outside of school. It's a novel that deals probingly into the various racial and systemic mechanisms at work at both the individual and the cultural level. I read that this debut fiction manifested at a kind of extension from Bekono's first poetry collection (how the first sparks became visible: Poems) with some reviewers lamenting the lack of lyricism (by comparison) in this writing. But I personally found Bekono struck a magically uncomfortable balance between detachment and nearly incandescent rage with her prose---certain sections incredibly capture the struggle to maintain sanity through immersing the reader in a mental cascade of thoughts/memories/utterances.

This was part of a translated literature book discussion group (in-person!) just recently started at my local library. Here are some of the upcoming reads planned: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1G1E...
(If you're on Facebook, a like and/or follow for the Friends of the Bladensburg Library page would be most appreciated, especially since I help run that page.)