Take Michael’s female friend for example, who right off the bat is displaying signs of internalized racism.įemale Friend: Gay guys are great, but lesbians are the worst. And then there’s multiple points where the writing is just offensively lazy and bad. Sure, there’s lots of preaching about sexual and gender identity to and it feels like Dean Atta wants to fit every hot-button issue in there. Then the non-white characters go to painfully obvious lengths to explain all the problems with race in our country to Michael (and us.) Look, I pick up a book for a good story with interesting characters, not a heavy-handed moral lesson about all the different kinds of racism and how they hurt minorities. That means that every page gives a didactic-as-fuck sermon about racism, with white characters dutifully performing ‘microaggressions’ that about as micro as a Klansman burning a cross in unwelcome neighbor’s yard. The parts of the book where Michael is a child held my attention well enough, but eventually he goes off to college and The Black Flamingo suddenly remembers it’s an issues book. When I think back on Michael’s character, his sexuality immediately comes to mind but not much else. There’s nothing wrong with that but his character doesn’t have that much else to him. Michael is what you might call a more ‘classic’ example of a gay male- he surrounds himself with female playmates, plays with Barbie dolls, and enjoys cross-dressing. The Black Flamingo follows Michael, a mixed-race boy who early on begins to realize that he’s gay. At a certain point I was fed up with it but decided to force myself to finish it just for the sake of finishing it. Needless to say, I was badly disappointed because the first 1/3 or so of this book was great and then it just started going downhill. Why do I feel so alone? The thing is, I was really excited to read this book because I fully expected it to be something I would enjoy. Consider this review sort of a homing signal to readers who didn’t think The Black Flamingo was an amazing indispensable work of art.
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