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A review by glassesgirl79
The Atlas of Reds and Blues by Devi S. Laskar
4.0
This was a hard book for me to finish because of how much relevant this book is today in regards to race relations. The novel opens with the narrator having trouble swallowing and lying on the ground. After this opening scene of the novel, the reader is pulled back and forth from the narrator’s past to the present day.
I feel that if you are not a person of color, when you read this book, you may be shocked by what is written, find it unbelievable, or maybe even try to justify the racism the narrator experiences as somehow her fault. As a black woman, I feel that if you are a person of color reading this book, it will bring tears to your eyes at times because at some point, you will recount your our personal experiences with racism and sympathize with the experiences of racism pelted on the unnamed narrator.
Although the narrator, Mother, is born in America and raised in America, since she is Bengali-American, her Americaness is constantly being questioned by others. Living in rural Georgia means that as a child, she is often being asked “where are you from? No, really, where are you from?” From a young age, she is often reminded that she doesn’t look like everyone else and therefore she is not a real American and opportunities to have friends and participate in sports are closed to her.
Mother attends college, she meets a friendly white man that she eventually marries and gives birth to three daughters. As Mother becomes older, she has become a stay at home mom and her husband is constantly flying for business trips so she is left to raise her children alone and endure racial microagressions on a daily basis.
It was personally frustrating how many times one of the daughters would come to Mother with a racist experience and would ask her if they should tell her husband to which Mother responds no. I think over time, Mother realizes that if she says something to her husband about their angered towards her and the girls, he won’t understand why she thinks it’s a big deal or he may not believe her.
This novel broke my heart repeatedly by the amount of weight Mother carried by being the wall protecting her daughters from a world which hates them for their brown skin. With each racist experience that happened to Mother, the wall that she had carefully built began to chip away until one final incident occurs at her house that pushes her over the edge. Overall, this book is a heavy but worthwhile read in that it provides a glimpse of the tightrope that people of color have to walk on a daily basis to survive in a country that doesn’t want them here.
I feel that if you are not a person of color, when you read this book, you may be shocked by what is written, find it unbelievable, or maybe even try to justify the racism the narrator experiences as somehow her fault. As a black woman, I feel that if you are a person of color reading this book, it will bring tears to your eyes at times because at some point, you will recount your our personal experiences with racism and sympathize with the experiences of racism pelted on the unnamed narrator.
Although the narrator, Mother, is born in America and raised in America, since she is Bengali-American, her Americaness is constantly being questioned by others. Living in rural Georgia means that as a child, she is often being asked “where are you from? No, really, where are you from?” From a young age, she is often reminded that she doesn’t look like everyone else and therefore she is not a real American and opportunities to have friends and participate in sports are closed to her.
Mother attends college, she meets a friendly white man that she eventually marries and gives birth to three daughters. As Mother becomes older, she has become a stay at home mom and her husband is constantly flying for business trips so she is left to raise her children alone and endure racial microagressions on a daily basis.
It was personally frustrating how many times one of the daughters would come to Mother with a racist experience and would ask her if they should tell her husband to which Mother responds no. I think over time, Mother realizes that if she says something to her husband about their angered towards her and the girls, he won’t understand why she thinks it’s a big deal or he may not believe her.
This novel broke my heart repeatedly by the amount of weight Mother carried by being the wall protecting her daughters from a world which hates them for their brown skin. With each racist experience that happened to Mother, the wall that she had carefully built began to chip away until one final incident occurs at her house that pushes her over the edge. Overall, this book is a heavy but worthwhile read in that it provides a glimpse of the tightrope that people of color have to walk on a daily basis to survive in a country that doesn’t want them here.