JJ Bola’s, debut novel, No Place To Call Home attentively develops the themes expected in a novel about refugees surviving in a strange new country. Bola touches on language, community, parent-child relationships,
specifically father-son and father-daughter relationships, expectations of first generation African children, religion, moeurs, and most of all home. All of these subjects are catalysts for developing each of the main characters.
The personable third person voice of No Place To Call Home tells the story of Papa, Mami, Jean, and Marie. The ingenuity of the narrator’s voice gently pulls us into the complex life of this family. Refugees from the Congo living in London, we follow the difficulty of Papa and Mami to survive while waiting to get their papers, which will allow them to stay in the UK legally. They are fleeing political horrors of the dictator Le Maréchal.
The story quickly focuses mostly on their family life. Jean is about 11 years old, trying to fit in and master the English language. This comes with many tests, from fitting in with the boys to making excellent grades to pleasing his exigent father. Jean’s sister Marie is the model child and student. She is younger and not the first-born boy so she doesn’t have the same expectations placed upon her as, her brother, Jean.
Bola does an excellent comparison of Papa and Jean by starting out developing Jean’s character at school in the UK and then later paralleling that with Papa’s adaptation to École Polytechinique in Brussels. They are two different ages in these scenes but it depicts similar difficulties they have, how they deal with them and how they develop and reinforce their personalities. This also depicts the way Bola has chosen to talk about African societal expectations for African men and women. The roles of men are incorporated in the story and juxtaposed with those of women. For example, there is Tonton, the lazy womanizer, Pastor Kaddi the dishonest evangelical priest, and Koko Patrice, Papa’s manipulative, elusive father, and Koko Mobali, Mami’s domineering father.
I strongly urge you to pick up No Place To Call Home. Its touching characters and well-developed story lines will have you completely submerged. I read this book in two sittings. I couldn’t put it down. However the only thing that disappointed me about this book was the ending. I was hoping for something a bit more concrete.
“JJ Bola is a Kinshasa-born, London-raised writer, poet, educator, and workshop facilitator. He has published two books of poetry, Elevate and Word, and performs regularly at shows and festivals. In 2015-2016, Bola performed on a US poetry slam tour that took him to San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Toronto, and more. He lives in London.” (back cover of No Place To Call home)
No Place to Call Home, 286 pages, Arcade Publishing
Rating: 4 stars
Recommended to: Readers looking for interesting fiction novels about refugees in the UK
Book quote: “If you are lucky, you will never have to remember home through your mother’s tears or the rage in your father’s voice when it shakes. Home will be somewhere you run to, never away from. It will never chase you away; a rabid dog hot on your heels with teeth like a shark, teeth so sharp you can already feel it cutting into you.” (No Place to Call Home, p. 285)
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The Unkind Hours is the latest exciting thriller from Dwayne Alexander Smith, the author of terribly underrated 
Michael Eric Dyson is back with his newly released book today, What Truth Sounds Like. What Truth Sounds Like is Dyson’s continued discussion of race in America, carried over from his book last year called 
to shine a spotlight on some books that frankly, I can’t begin to understand why more people aren’t raving about them, particularly authors that are being read lately because of their new releases while their backlist novels remain untouched.
literary fiction. Having only read excerpts of 
about the characters. Gyasi is brilliant with writing male characters because they seemed to be more memorable than some of the female characters. I’d say this book felt like reading a linked short story collection more than a real novel. The characters have to share the pages since the voice changes every twenty or so pages. I still found myself having to look back at the family tree to remember the names. This being said it is well worth the read and sparked some passionate conversation at my book club. We could all agree that we could see how she was trying to make the family history go round 360° to give it depth and more historical meaning.
unapologetically real, from the words chosen to how they are printed on the page. She’s telling us about race, gender, beauty, death and more. It may not be the best collection for debuting poetry readers, being that it’s slightly experimental in its wording and structure, but for those who love poetry that touches you deeply and makes you think, Ordinary Beast is ideal.
as 
shortlist before the winner is announced. I even read this one in French. Now I’m curious to read a bit of the English version to see how the translator made out with all the French slang. As for the story it wasn’t really for me. The first 150 pages had me engaged with its critical, pessimistic view on society, the economy, and everything else having to do with adulting and living in the world. Vernon Subutex is ignoble, lazy, and misogynous. He used to own a record store called Revolver that went out of business. So in the beginning of the book he is being evicted from his apartment. He has to accept some generosity from past friends and eventually winds up having to live on the streets of Paris. Since he was a good friend with a famous rock star called Alex Bleach and possesses a last recording from him, everyone is trying to get their hands on it. Sounds intriguing right? However, past page 200 I checked out mentally and became bored with the all of the off the wall characters and the incessant rants (Virginie Descents’ rants). Vernon Subtext could win the prize though. It has all the right characteristics – being different from what’s expected, it critiques society heavily, and its divisiveness. There are 3 other books in the Vernon Subutex series and that idea alone tires me out just thinking about it.
have fond memories of reading his earlier works. I didn’t love this one. I feel like he’s abandoned the good story writing he used to do in exchange for trying to impress millennials to read his books these days. Bad Men and Wicked Women contains a ton of bad Men and only one true “wicked” woman. So the title needs to be reviewed.
#MarchMystery Madness has been in full swing since March 1st and I decided to participate for the first time. I’m also doing #ReadingBlackout this month for the second time. January was a #ReadingBlackout month and February was of course #ReadSoulLit, specifically in honor of African-American writers.
“passing” (=the ability for a fair-skinned black person to move in society as a white person because of his/her light skin color) through the storyline involving a journalist from the New Holland Herald newspaper. Zane Pinchback, alias icognegro, travels south as a “white” man from New York to report on lynchings. However, his last incognegro story almost goes wrong and he barely escapes when he is recognized as being black. He makes it back to New York to the unfortunate news that his brother has been arrested in Mississippi for brutally murdering a white woman. And the story unfolds……
some time in jail and that’s when Blanche’s bladder starts to nag her. You’ll just have to read the book for the rest of the details. Anyway, this novel will appear to be slow-moving but Neely is giving you the clues and information with her detailed storytelling, which may appear to be off the subject. It’s not. The reader follows the story through Blanche’s eyes and through her thoughts. She is hysterical but mostly she’s very intelligent and intuitive to people’s behavior. Neely uses the story to astutely talk about racism, sexism, and classicism. It’s brilliant! I can’t wait to pick up book 2 Blanche Among the Talented Tenth. You can already see from its title that it will be as vivid if not more than Blanche on the Lam. You can check out the video below where Barbara Neely talks about using her writing as a way to talk about her activism. There’s one thing I’d like to know and that’s where is Barbara Neely these days. Why hasn’t Neely hasn’t Neely written anything else since the Blanche White series? Her writing is a breath of fresh air in this genre. The Blanche White series is a must read.
Unbelievable I stuck to a TBR!😅 Sadly Black History Month will soon be over but luckily #readsoullit can continue on. Hope you all had a good one and have discovered some new authors and new books to read throughout the rest of 2018. My #readsoullit stack was pretty good. No duds and I managed to read 7 books. Wish I could have gotten in a 400+ page book so it looks like that will be a priority for next month. Happy continued #readsoullit reading and Thanks to you all for participating! Please check out the video below of Frank X Walker, a great Affrilachian poet from Kentucky. The best works I read this month were from him. Buffalo Dance and When Winter Come are two excellent poetry collections – MUST READS!
This was the first book I read by J. California Cooper and I was forever hooked on her captivating and life lessons-filled short stories. They were Wonderful stories, especially since I’m not a fan of short story collections.