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A review by jgmencarini
Wash by Margaret Wrinkle
3.0
This is a good first novel. Until the last 75 pages, I would have given it four stars - especially because the multiple narrators'/characters' viewpoints were inventive and well-conceived. After a lot of great build-up, though, the story fizzles out at the end. The author writes luminously beautiful sentences but they don't really advance the plot in the last quarter of the book. I also really appreciated the inclusion of references to how the violence of slavery traumatized and dehumanized everyone involved in or exposed to it.
One minor quibble from a social justice perspective - two of the female characters, Mena and Pallas, fall a bit into the old "magical
Negro" trope, which only perpetuates racial stereotypes - namely that certain dignified African-Americans have almost supernatural abilities from which white folks gain inspiration and learning. This was disappointing to me as a reader highly aware of racial stereotyping, and the perpetuation of such tropes in mainstream media.
One minor quibble from a social justice perspective - two of the female characters, Mena and Pallas, fall a bit into the old "magical
Negro" trope, which only perpetuates racial stereotypes - namely that certain dignified African-Americans have almost supernatural abilities from which white folks gain inspiration and learning. This was disappointing to me as a reader highly aware of racial stereotyping, and the perpetuation of such tropes in mainstream media.