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A review by greatlibraryofalexandra
Magic City by Jewell Parker Rhodes
2.0
I haven’t disliked a book this much in a while. I’m at a loss here. I don’t understand why this has such a wildly high rating. The Tulsa riots are absolutely a neglected topic that deserve stories, but Greenwood didn’t deserve whatever this is. I’m glad it led me to read more about it - to essentially get the “real story” - but I … I mean, I hated this.
The writing was just bad. I don’t know how else to put it. Here is an example of the dialogue:
“Mary! Oh Mary. Can I get you some toast, Mary? Mary, would you like some milk? Mary, oh Mary. Mary, I’ll take care of you, Mary.”
Repeat ad nauseam with every character - it was bizarre; who talks like that? Who repeats the name of the people they’re retaking to over and over and over?
Every single character was a stick caricature with no depth at all. Allen relates to the plight of Black Americans because he’s albino? That’s insulting beyond belief.
A local white Sheriff is deeply concerned with justice in a department where everyone else is in the Klan, and WHY he is so enlightened is never explored, so it makes no sense.
There is an extremely graphic rape scene that is written with the same vibes as a Harlequin romance scene, and some forty pages after a brutal rape, Mary Keane is tossed into a potential love story with a character we/she just met.
There are side plots involving the War (WWI) that serve as massive crude trauma dumps with no reckoning or resolution following. There are actually FREQUENT long narratives of trauma that seem to exist just to be ghoulish with no intricate connection to the story.
Joe is obsessed with Houdini in a rambling way that doesn’t connect because it isn’t fleshed out. The magical realism suddenly sprinkled into this story is garish and clumsy and weird and detracts from the seriousness of what happened.
This whole thing is just a mess. It’s a three ring circus of shallow inserts, cringe dialogue, and characterization so poor that none of the motivations of any characters make sense - the acts of “heroism” from the white characters don’t make any contextual sense because the reasons behind why they’ve managed to break the mold of the horrific raciest structure they’ve been raised in are never discussed, and failing to address that they’d have had to overcome this is disingenuous and reinforces a myth that some people are just naturally pure and immune to the very prevalent ills of social conditioning.
The Black characters are done a disservice because most of them exist just to die in brutal and graphic ways after spouting off exposition. The choice to sort of give a “both sides” - Joe (Black) and Mary (white) sides of this is just alarming considering it allows white people to feel comfortable and any story revolving around this should make white people SQUIRM with discomfort.
There were a few good sentiments in this, but the overall impact of the book is so weak. I don’t understand what Jewell Parker Rhodes wanted to accomplish here - why not just write a nonfiction account of the Massacre? That’s the treatment this moment in history deserves.
Read literally anything else on race relations. Read Angie Thomas, read Britt Bennet, read Toni Morrison (she captures the violence of racism in America without making it cartoonish), read Alice Walker - don’t read this.
The writing was just bad. I don’t know how else to put it. Here is an example of the dialogue:
“Mary! Oh Mary. Can I get you some toast, Mary? Mary, would you like some milk? Mary, oh Mary. Mary, I’ll take care of you, Mary.”
Repeat ad nauseam with every character - it was bizarre; who talks like that? Who repeats the name of the people they’re retaking to over and over and over?
Every single character was a stick caricature with no depth at all. Allen relates to the plight of Black Americans because he’s albino? That’s insulting beyond belief.
A local white Sheriff is deeply concerned with justice in a department where everyone else is in the Klan, and WHY he is so enlightened is never explored, so it makes no sense.
There is an extremely graphic rape scene that is written with the same vibes as a Harlequin romance scene, and some forty pages after a brutal rape, Mary Keane is tossed into a potential love story with a character we/she just met.
There are side plots involving the War (WWI) that serve as massive crude trauma dumps with no reckoning or resolution following. There are actually FREQUENT long narratives of trauma that seem to exist just to be ghoulish with no intricate connection to the story.
Joe is obsessed with Houdini in a rambling way that doesn’t connect because it isn’t fleshed out. The magical realism suddenly sprinkled into this story is garish and clumsy and weird and detracts from the seriousness of what happened.
This whole thing is just a mess. It’s a three ring circus of shallow inserts, cringe dialogue, and characterization so poor that none of the motivations of any characters make sense - the acts of “heroism” from the white characters don’t make any contextual sense because the reasons behind why they’ve managed to break the mold of the horrific raciest structure they’ve been raised in are never discussed, and failing to address that they’d have had to overcome this is disingenuous and reinforces a myth that some people are just naturally pure and immune to the very prevalent ills of social conditioning.
The Black characters are done a disservice because most of them exist just to die in brutal and graphic ways after spouting off exposition. The choice to sort of give a “both sides” - Joe (Black) and Mary (white) sides of this is just alarming considering it allows white people to feel comfortable and any story revolving around this should make white people SQUIRM with discomfort.
There were a few good sentiments in this, but the overall impact of the book is so weak. I don’t understand what Jewell Parker Rhodes wanted to accomplish here - why not just write a nonfiction account of the Massacre? That’s the treatment this moment in history deserves.
Read literally anything else on race relations. Read Angie Thomas, read Britt Bennet, read Toni Morrison (she captures the violence of racism in America without making it cartoonish), read Alice Walker - don’t read this.