Thursday, April 12, 2018

Bluebird, Bluebird – A Timely American Crime Fiction on the Issues of Race and Criminal Justice




Texas native Attica Locke’s fourth crime novel Bluebird, Bluebird (published September 2017) doubles up as a murder/mystery and a tribute to Texan African-Americans who set down their roots despite ‘Klan’ atrocities and segregation. Locke draws on her life growing up in East Texas amidst dense woods, marshes and dirt-red roads. She weaves an emotionally dense complex tale of race, miscegenation, and blood-lust into the murky, placid-looking backdrop. Although Locke has written huge chunk of novel in 2016, she says the rise of Donald Trump and outspoken white supremacist voices have greatly enlivened the discussion on the politics of race, which is diffused throughout this suspenseful tale.

Attica Locke has promised that Bluebird is the first in series of novels featuring conflicted black Texas Ranger Darren Matthews. When the story starts Darren’s marriage is in shambles, and suspension looms over him due to the mysterious death of a drug dealer/member of ABT (Aryan Brotherhood of Texas). His drinking problems are also slowly rearing its head to the surface. Darren Matthews cherishes the ‘Lone Star’ badge of the rangers and believes he can bring justice despite the racial fault-lines. He grew in a small sleepy town of Camilla, under the care of his twin paternal uncles – Clayton and William Matthews. For generations, the Matthewses have refused to flee from racial terror and carve a free life in the metropolis of Chicago or New York. Although Darren studied law in Chicago University to follow the paths of celebrated defense-lawyer Clayton, he abruptly changed his decision and set on the path laid out by William, who was one of the first black Texas Ranger. Darren’s professional relationship with his superiors is shaky at its best. His request to pursue after race crimes and ABT is persistently declined (most of the Rangers doesn’t want to believe that there are race crimes in their state).

Even though Darren acknowledges the benefits and privileges that accompany his badge, he also adheres to the general, good-old rules of ‘Southern living’ laid out for black people. Earlier, in the novel Darren recalls, “Even Uncle Clayton, a one-time defense lawyer and professor of constitutional law, was known to say that for men like us, a pair of baggy pants or a shirttail hanging out was "walking probable cause". Locke further elaborates on Darren’s conflicted existence by remarking, “Darren had always wanted to believe that theirs was the last generation to have to live that way that change might trickle down from the White House. When in fact the opposite had proved to be true. In the wake of Obama, America had told on itself.”

Darren gets a tip from a friend in FBI about peculiar murders in a small East Texas town of Lark. A black man named Michael Wright is found dead in the town’s bayou, followed by the murder of a white young girl found in the same bayou (usually it’s the other way around). Darren decides to take Highway 59 and unofficially investigate the connection between the two killings, and get out within a day or two. Lark is steeped in climate of racial iniquities which traces back to the slavery era. The town’s population counts to less than 200 yet it’s intricately divided with black woman-owned cafe on one side and lush ranches, seedy bar on the other side. However the loyalties are much more complex and people, regardless of their skin tone, exist in the thick grayness of human spectrum. As Darren’s days ticks away in Lark, he stumbles upon a ‘American-script’ not encountered before.

In her interview to ‘The Guardian’, it is mentioned that Attica Locke’s family holds a prominent part in the history of black Texans. The first black professor at the University of Texas hailed from Locke’s family who is the inspiration behind the creation of Clayton Williams. The determined owner of roadside diner Geneva Sweet is said to be based after Locke’s mother’s maternal grandmother, who ran a similar café and cooked food for African-American travelers. Locke’s dad is a Houston lawyer and a mayoral candidate. She herself was the first black student at an all-white elementary school and went on to write and produce Fox’s hip-hop TV series “Empire” (she was also a former fellow at the Sundance Institute's Feature Filmmaker's Lab). By drawing characters from familial history and personal experiences, Locke forges a deeply satisfying tale of racial tension. Furthermore, she deftly applies her insider knowledge of the region to invest her characters with unexpected depth.

She says this novel is ‘so personal and dedicated to her ancestors, ‘the men and women who said no’”. The author uses the murder-mystery territory to plunge into the heady political stuffs. She stays away for instilling a false sense of security and purporting a simple morality tale. ‘Bluebird..’ doesn’t tackle the American racial debate by pitting innocent blacks against dangerous white supremacists. It rather shows how the right and wrong, justice and iniquity, love and hate are profoundly entangled which couldn’t be understood by any surface-level discussion. In the end, Locke’s unrelentingly dark neo-noir eschews customary generic descriptions of hate crimes and racial prejudice and gets into the core of these nearly invincible conflicts. Altogether, ‘Bluebird Bluebird’ is the perfect crime novel to be read in the wake of Trump’s ascension and in the era where contemporary American politics perceives each incident through the lens of race. 


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