@Fabirucho When I started reading Palaver I kept comparing it to Memorial, also by Bryan Washington, which I read not long ago and really enjoyed. However, as I moved through Palaver, which has similar themes, it was less the characters and more the concepts (home, family, awkward conversations) that really grew on me. The deliberate designation of ‘the son’ and ‘the mother’ to foreground the sense of relationship in their subjectivity rather than naming added to this, so the final shift of identification to ‘I’ really hit me at the end.

Although I’m not familiar with Japan geography the addition of pictures at the beginning of each of the chapters helped with the world building while still remaining abstract. I used to teach a subject to Planning students called Culture, Space and Place and this would have been a great addition (although students were resistant to reading anything of length).

Washington’s provocations on belonging (home, community, found family, the third space, self/identification) resonated with aspects of my own experience.

Often I also found myself being struck by revelations of aspects about a character that I hadn’t contemplated, and I think that’s often true of how we engage with people in real life as much as in fiction. Posting this online to interact with people I’ve never physically met makes this seem even more relevant as a consideration. It’s not that I was making assumptions about the characters, but rather a reminder of how little we know about the ‘whole’ of somebody, if such a thing is even possible (I think we are fractured, imperfect beings even to ourselves, changing with time and context).

There's probably a lot more I could say about this, and I haven't even dug into specific characters or elements but I'll wait for thoughts from others before saying more since I'm jumping in first given time zone differences.

#PrideAndPages #books #lgbtqia #bookclub #RainbowReading #QueerBookClub