Coffee Will Make You Black: A Novel
Series: Stevie Stevenson, Book 1
By: April Sinclair / Narrated By: Amber Patrick
Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
Hated the first part only to wind up wanting more
Not since The Last Policeman have I haaaaaaated something so much at the beginning yet come around to finishing it, thinking: Oh, yeah! Let’s hear the sequel!
I dunno if it’s because I’m around teen-aged girls on a daily basis, and that’s what made me so impatient with Stevie, the young heroine of Coffee Will Make You Black. Didn’t like her friends either. And the narration! Amber Patrick does such a great job that each squawk and squabble is delivered with ear-shattering precision. Imagine pre-teens screeching ENDLESSLY about boys and sex and who said what about your mother, and you’ve pretty much got the beginning of the book, narrated with high-pitched dexterity. Gosh, how I did so wish to jam an ice pick in my ears.
So that’s what you’ve got in the beginning: Stevie as a pre-teen, her best friend recently moved away, and she’ll do anything, ANYTHING, to fit in with the popular kids. She’ll be pushed around, she’ll be taunted, she’ll do some taunting herself, she’ll even consider having sex if it means she’ll fit in. That’s kinda what I didn’t like about her: she molded herself constantly without giving much thought about her own character.
But she’s also growing up during the Civil Rights Movement, after assassinations, during a time when blacks are becoming more militant, less Negro, more Black. It’s fascinating, and that’s where I started liking her. Cuz she starts finding herself, who she loves, who she can let go of, near the end of the book when the era starts going crazy. Vietnam is kicking into high gear, student protests are bearing fruit, and Stevie is making choices for herself. (By the way: boys/men don’t come out looking too good. It’s exasperating. They are gropers, just want one thing, tell you what you can and can’t do, or they come off as weak.)
There’s a lot to find interest in also. There’s the way blacks see themselves as individuals, the way they see themselves as families, the way they see themselves as communities. There’s their own brand of racism, where lighter skin is better, where natural hair is a definite no-go, sure to cause a shunning. And it all starts morphing into something else by the end of the audiobook. A white art teacher jumps the fence for a black man (who’s a dog; all he wants is sex, typical of the men in the book); a white nurse could be kicked out because students are making demands, calling for more blacks in the school system.
And maybe, just maybe, there could be an honest and true friendship between a black person and a white person. And maybe, just maybe, the affection that is felt is actually nonsexual (Imagine that!). Stevie winds up with a LOT of thoughts rushing around in her head, and she becomes a young woman of action.
And maybe, just maybe, all that’s enough for me to wanna kick into that sequel! Oh, I dunno, but don’t be surprised if you see a review of it coming soon…
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