Rainbow
Milk - Paul Mendez
Publication
date – April 23rd 2020
ISBN:
9780349700595
Publisher:
Dialogue Books
Synopsis
Rainbow Milk is
an intersectional coming-of-age story, following nineteen-year-old
Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities
against the backdrop of a Jehovah's Witness upbringing and the
legacies of the Windrush generation.
In the Black Country in the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman
Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has moved to Britain
with his wife to secure a brighter future for themselves and their
children. Blighted with unexpected illness and racism, Norman and his
family are resilient in the face of such hostilities, but are all too
aware that they will need more than just hope to survive.
At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh
start in London - escaping from a broken immediate family, a
repressive religious community and the desolate, disempowered Black
Country - but finds himself at a loss for a new centre of gravity,
and turns to sex work to create new notions of love, fatherhood and
spirituality.
Review
Listen.
I've raved about this book to anyone who listen but i'll say it once
more. This book is stunning. With rave reviews from Bernadine
Evaristo and a pick for the Dialogue Books Book Club last month, I had
to pre-order this.
There
is so much depth and nuance in Mendez' depiction of Jesse that to
call in a coming-of-age story just doesn't do it justice. In addition
to coming into one's own, imagine contending with being ostracised by
your religious community, fleeing to another city, penniless. all the
while unpacking a lifetime of repressed sexuality and internalised
racism.
One
passage sticks out in particular:
"It's
not your fault, you know. It's because you've been taught that God is
a white man, and that white men are the earthly embodiment of God.
You've been taught to worship white men and to hold everything that
they represent, everything they own, as the dearest, most important,
more sacred thing in your life.That's why you love their smiles,
their skin, their beauty, their voice, their words, their sex. You've
been trained to hate yourself and love and desire them."
And
yet, Rainbow Milk does all of this, while still giving you
heart-wrenching prose. This isn't a story of trauma full of shock
value but one of the many facets of the Black British experience. The
ending reads more so like a brief pause; now out with a semblance of independence , life can commence. I wholeheartedly look forward to
Paul Mendez and his next steps after this incredible debut.
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