What Fowler did with A Good Neighborhood is what Selena Gomez and team did with 13 Reasons Why.
Goodreads Summary: In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son. Xavier is headed to college in the fall, and after years of single parenting, Valerie is facing the prospect of an empty nest. All is well until the Whitmans move in next door - an apparently traditional family with new money, ambition, and a secretly troubled teenaged daughter.
Thanks to his thriving local business, Brad Whitman is something of a celebrity around town, and he's made a small fortune on his customer service and charm, while his wife, Julia, escaped her trailer park upbringing for the security of marriage and homemaking. Their new house is more than she ever imagined for herself, and who wouldn't want to live in Oak Knoll? With little in common except a property line, these two very different families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers.
The last thing I read by Therese Anne Fowler was Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, and I genuinely enjoyed it. Reading the book, I could tell Fowler did her research. Unfortunately I could not say that Fowler did the same for The Good Neighborhood. If she did, she did not do it well.
It was obvious that the writing's motivation was to expose modern day racism (which is a noble mission), but it effort to do so, Fowler's characters came out quite two-dimensional. The only one that I could honestly root and care for was Xavier. His thoughts and experiences were complex. He was honest and kind but not in a way where Fowler was forcing him down our throats (although I have a feeling that's exactly she was trying to do). But other than him, I kind of didn't care for the others. I liked Valerie, but I wish Fowler gave her more. Anything. Something. NY Times calls Juniper the "ingénue" of the story and that's pretty much all she serves as: the innocent heroine who is trapped in her submissive role as the virginal beauty who has no autonomy of her own. Julia does a bit of her own victim-playing which irked me. Every time I wanted to feel for her (and the author tries her best to give us opportunities to do so) something happens or she says something, and I'm back to rolling my eyes. And then of course is Brad Whitman, but more on him later. The point is, in a valiant effort fight racism, Fowler forgets to tell a proper story. I could have forgiven her for that, but quite frankly, the way she talks about racism and its manifestation causes me to grumble.
Reading this book, I found myself reminded of stories like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. And while there is nothing wrong with a modern re-telling of these stories, it paradoxically invalidates the racial issues that are prevalent today. I'm not saying cross-burning, lynching racists don't exist anymore because they do; we know they do. But it is also misleading because one, it shoves the micro-aggressions and systematic ways in which we have made it hard for black individuals to live to the back-burner, and two, it fetishizes the old image of racism. One of the characters (and the main antagonist) Brad Whitman plays what most people think of when they think scum of the earth. Not only is he racist, but a chauvinist. He continuously belittles Valerie as black woman who happens to be a single mother; he starts lusting over his step-daughter and fantasizes about taking her virginity. Fowler doesn't hold back and goes all out to make sure the audience hates him. And that's pretty much where Fowler lost me. In an effort to tell a story about how modern conventions doesn't mean we have escaped racism and the collateral damages of slavery, Fowler creates a caricaturist take on what racism looks like today and missed the point. Instead of focusing on the tree and the tension around it, she did a quasi-rewrite of Jean Toomer's "Blood Burning Moon."
I compare this book to Thirteen Reasons Why because allegedly what happened with that show was that the staff talked to experts and psychologists on what and what not to do when writing about mental illness, and the writers did exactly what the aforementioned experts and psychologists told them not to do. I'm not saying the Fowler was as unethical, but as I was reading, I could tell that either Fowler did not talk to or know enough people who have lived the black experience. And to be fair, that is easier said than done. We don't live in a culture where people are encouraged to talk about race. Because of it, white people are taught only to be familiarized with being racist, being a white savior, or not talking at all and be bliss in ignorance. The most common and prevalent ways in which white people really talk and learn how to practice being anti-racists is via social media (which isn't as effective as people think without the right guidance), college classes (which are expensive and still regulated by collegiate higher-ups who are typically white, cis, heterosexual men), and reading books (which can also be expensive, but also, can be hard to find depending on where you live). I know it kind of sounds like I'm being a Debby-downer and insinuating that there is no solution which is not true. With the nice combination of the aforementioned three and practice, you're on your way to being an anti-racist. It takes active practice, but you can do it! But the problem is that A Good Neighborhood isn't really an attempt at being anti-racist. Instead, it's a unimaginative, scrapbook page from cut-up images and words from our old public school textbooks that tell history the way the white hegemony intended.
I urge you guys to read Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race because I learned a lot of what I am saying from her, and I think the way I felt about his book came from the fact that I was reading her book alongside The Good Neighborhood. And with that being said, I want to make it clear that I am not trying to shame or cancel Fowler. We should never stop trying to talk about race. Fowler tried her hand and talking about something a lot of people would shy away from. If I could, I would tell her to continue talking about race. Hell, I encourage all writers to intertwine real issues into their fiction. But do it with the proper research.
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