Monday, February 22, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: American Street by Ibi Zoboi

 





American Street is an award nominated debut novel of author Ibi Zoboi, featuring the story of a teenage girl from Haiti coming to live in America, particularly Detroit, while her other is detained by immigration.  A fair warning to anyone who usually reads my reviews: whether this book qualifies as genre is highly debatable - it's the type of "magical realism" where the existence of potentially fantastical elements: in this case, the presence of voodoo/voodoo figures.  So don't expect must fantasy here.

What you should expect is a compelling but often heartbreaking tale of immigrant/minority life in modern America, where black and immigrant teens are forced to make compromises & sacrifices to secure their lives, the lives of their families, and their loves in the unjust world of America today.  As you might imagine, that often makes it a tough read to follow, as a reader is likely to know when the sometimes wise sometimes naive protagonist's actions are going to lead to disaster, but it's all the more realistic and powerful for it.  Well worth your time and the praise.

-------------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
It was supposed to be the start of a new life for Fabiola Toussaint - leaving Haiti for the United States with her mother Valerie to join her Aunt and her cousins in Detroit, where they supposedly live a better life.  But when her mother is detained by immigration and sent to detention in New Jersey, Fabiola finds herself heading to Detroit alone - and what she finds there isn't anything she expected: Her Aunt suffered from a stroke and never seems to leave the house and her three cousins - Chantal, Donna, and Pri - form a tightknit group of fierce but different individuals who are known in their area of West Detroit as the "Three Bs".  

With the help of her voodoo prayers, Fabiola tries to make it work in this strange new world, trying to figure out her three cousins - studious Chantal, diva Donna, brawler Pri - and the rough and tumble world of the west side.  She even finds a boy she seems to like....and maybe more.  But as her mother's time in detention increases, she can't help feeling more and more lonely, and when her new family's troubles come to a head, she finds herself confronted with only impossible choices, choices which jeopardize everything.
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American Street is the story of immigrants and black people - particularly women - in America, trying to make it in a world that is arrayed against them.  And it's told near entirely from Fabiola's point of view, except for interludes here and there to tell the stories of various other people - Fabiola's family members, her loved ones, and even the location.  These interludes provide extra perspective on the lives of blacks in Detroit and in America itself (if the symbolism wasn't strong enough the characters live literally on a cross section of American and Joy Streets).  Meanwhile, throughout it all, Fabiola prays to her Voodoo deities and sees in people - a beggar who sings most particularly, but others as well - their very incarnations.  

And Fabiola is a fascinating character - for she's not quite the new naive girl to America you might expect her to be from the start.  Instead, her experiences with the harsh life in Haiti make her well aware of some of the rough parts of the world and with a decent sense of when certain people aren't quite looking out for her best interests....even if her lack of knowledge of how the Detroit streets work does prevent her from taking full advantage of that awareness (her cousins not providing her with the best guidance doesn't help).  She has a clearly good heart, wanting what's best for everyone - both her family and the friends she makes, and struggles when those groups wind up on opposite sides, because in this world, everyone is trying to act for their own interests in a way that sometimes puts them against each other when they really shouldn't be.  

That's exemplified perhaps best by Fabiola's three cousins - Chantal, Donna, and Pri.  The three couldn't be more disalike in some ways: Chantal is likely asexual/aromantic and incredibly book smart and probably could have gone to a premier college but instead goes to a community college to support her mother and siblings - and longs for a better world, even seeing that in what she thinks of as Haiti (her birth country she's never truly known).  Donna is a girl who acts knowingly like a diva, all caught up with her abusive (and likely drug dealer) boyfriend who she both cannot quit, getting extremely jealous over any girl she mistakenly thinks is going after him, but despite all this, she too sticks to her sisters first and foremost.  And then There's Pri, who is openly queer* (at the very least she's openly a lesbian, although her portrayal makes me suspect she's not cis either) and takes the role of the family's protector-brawler, laying hands on anyone who she thinks might cause problems for her sisters.  The three are known around town as "The Three Bs" (guess what the "B" stands for) for the fact that they put up a mean and often physical front to prevent others from trying to take advantage of them....even if they do often go too far, making poor Fabiola sometimes wonder if she really wants to possibly be known as the "Fourth B".  But it's what they've had to do to survive the streets of Detroit, and to protect their own, which is all that matters to them most of all, and its all they can seem to be.

*Pri's queerness is never an issue for anyone in the book - it just is: she likes a girl, and her sisters and Fabiola know it, and no one has any problems with it.*

This is shown even more with several other characters, a smart girl in Fabiola's class who wants to help her but is (rightfully) afraid of getting on the wrongside of the Three Bs, Fabiola's love interest Karim - a boy who dropped out to run legit jobs to try and support his family but is a cousin to Donna's bad guy boyfriend Dre, and a cop who tries to get Fabiola to help snitch on Dre in exchange for helping getting Fabiola's mother out of detention.  Everyone is trying to do what they can to survive in a harsh world, both for themselves and their fam, in order to get their own version of American Joy, and the result - especially with people who try to take advantage of them like the cop - is one that is never going to allow for true happiness.  This makes it not an easy book to read as things start going downhill, but it's a book that feels real and powerful all for it.  

The weakest part of American Street is honestly its ending - the story marches quite clearly and inevitably toward disaster and tragedy, with the only question in the reader's mind being how things are going to go wrong (which I will not spoil), but then follows up that tragedy with a pair of events - one coincidental, one highly improbable - that give everything somewhat of a happy ending...which just doesn't fit.  But aside from that, this is a strong book, well worth your time.  Recommended.


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