A review by mellabella
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay

4.0

I started reading this book and put it down for a few weeks. When Mireille was about to be gang raped for the first time... I just could not read it right then. When I picked it back up, I could not stop. Mireille's parents are from Haiti. They are wealthy. There is a vast disparity between wealthy Haitian people and, poor Haitian people. Mireille is married. Her, her husband (who is White), and her young son are on their way to the beach when she is kidnapped. Her father takes 13 days to pay the ransom. During those 13 days Mireille is brutalized. We flash back and forth between when her and her husband Michael first started dating and the present. We learn about how they met, their families, their relationship (which seems... Slightly immature). This book isn't just about Mireille's kidnapping. It's about how she was still a prisoner even after she was released, about race and class, sexual violence and resilience. I felt that something more should have happened to "The Commander" (the ringleader of the men that kidnapped her) when she saw him years after. But, I guess the ending was fitting.