Black Wall Street
The 1921 section of the story is about Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street Massacre” which was the wholesale destruction of a segregated section of the city that did the one thing more likely to agitate racists than merely being black: being black and more financially secure than some whites. When racism and laziness mix and mingle among whites with too much time and not enough brains, the result is never good:
“Supporting the Klan’s the right thing to do. We got coloreds round these parts thinkin’ they’re good as white folks. Black Wall Street my foot! That strip of junk shops and cathouses up on Greenwood ain’t nothin’ but a blighted piece of Africa befouling our fair city.”
The Tie that Binds
What binds the 1921 narrative together with that of the present-day narrator a body. Well, in 1921 it was still a body, but by the time it is finally discovered, that description no longer quite fits:
“The skeleton bothered me even more, because someone had dumped it like garbage without even bothering to turn it faceup.”
History Repeats
“I understand now that history only moves forward in a straight line when we learn from it. Otherwise it loops past the same mistakes over and over again.”
This sounds like an observation constructed in metaphorical language that would be found at the end of a book. It is a meditation upon the tendency for history to continue repeating itself in a Nietzschean sort of eternal recurrence kind of way. Surprisingly, however, the present-day narrator, Rowan, gives us this lesson learned very early on, a mere five paragraphs into the opening chapter.
Dirty Bubble
Social awareness of systemic racism seems easily enough understood. And yet a large faction of the population is still willing to openly deny it. The novel explores this phenomenon in a way that ups the ante by making one of the characters who fails to grasp the full extent of racism biracial and situating the disconnect within the social construct of economic division rather than a simple racial divide:
“sometimes you disappear inside this rich-girl bubble where someone always fixes things when they go wrong, and your brown skin only counts against you until you mention your daddy’s name. Most of us don’t have that luxury, Chase. There’s no room for us in your bubble.”
One-Liners
Although an intensely serious novel about an intensely serious chapter of American history, opportunities still arrive for the narrators to use metaphor for the purpose of humor. Rowan, the modern-day narrator, is especially adept at this usage:
“Mom asked if I had my phone, which was like asking if I’d remembered to bring both kidneys.”
