Racial Myths and Our American Narratives
Starred review from October 31, 2022
Poet and critic Mura (The Last Incantations: Poems) delivers a searing collection of essays on race in America and how it’s treated in literature. Mura, a Japanese American, recalls growing up striving for assimilation and “wanting to be thought of as white”; in turn, he makes an urgent plea that white readers listen “to the narratives that the white versions of our history and our present leave out.” In “Whiteness in Storytelling: Amistad, the Film and the Novel,” Mura juxtaposes the Steven Spielberg–helmed film with its novelization by Alexs Pate to demonstrate how the same story can be told in strikingly dissimilar ways. In “Portraits of Slavery: Faulkner and Morrison,” meanwhile, looks at William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Toni Morrison’s Beloved for an examination of the “significant differences in the way the white imagination has dealt with the institution of slavery in contrast to the imaginative re-creations by Black American novelists.” The author bookends his collection with reflections on the killings of Philando Castile and George Floyd. Full of insightful analysis and powerful personal anecdotes, Mura’s top-notch cultural criticism delivers. Challenging and provocative, this one’s sure to stick with readers.