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Kate
Or, was this just about relationships in your twenties? This reminded me a lot of what I and my friends were going through in relationships at that age. Most were super dysfunctional, with lots of bad sex, commitments made too soon (some ending in divorce in our thirties), people dealing with the first signs of mental illness, cheating, etc. It's a lot to work out at that stage of life. And it seems also like women bear a disproportionate share of the emotional/relationship work, while men just sort of do their thing, which was maybe a point the author was trying to make about straight relationships.
Cavak
The book's real themes were how damaging racial stereotypes can be in two different cultures, especially when the only identity formed within oneself is "not truly belonging." It extends to all of her relationships throughout the book, including her disastrous romance with Tom and her one night stands.
Queenie's in-character reasoning for not probing is because she feels too overwhelmed to try with wholehearted support and earnest. It happens when you're severely depressed and feeling powerless about yourself. For the most part, it feels crushingly impossible. She gets a little better by the end.
Darcy's the kind and sensitive friend. Yet when it comes to the racial issues, she means well but can't completely relate to Queenie's dilemmas because she's "colorblind" (in a loving way) for the most part. So, Queenie's subconsciously holding back about her "what it means to be black" issues with her.
Kyazike is probably the most emotionally stable and supportive friend to Queenie's values. She represents the person who Queenie wants to match in confidence and identity. Yet she sometimes projects her values onto Queenie during their chats that make her uncomfortable. Like the "You should just go back to black" attitude and "This is my side, you need to know your side."
So, those tiny defects in her relationships were efforts to expand the cast from being too flat. Since nobody's perfect and it's realistic. Everyone's meant to contribute to the question of what race may mean for a woman growing up nowadays. That's kinda how I took the creative choices about what details to include and omit about the characters and their dysfunctional relationships.
Queenie's in-character reasoning for not probing is because she feels too overwhelmed to try with wholehearted support and earnest. It happens when you're severely depressed and feeling powerless about yourself. For the most part, it feels crushingly impossible. She gets a little better by the end.
Darcy's the kind and sensitive friend. Yet when it comes to the racial issues, she means well but can't completely relate to Queenie's dilemmas because she's "colorblind" (in a loving way) for the most part. So, Queenie's subconsciously holding back about her "what it means to be black" issues with her.
Kyazike is probably the most emotionally stable and supportive friend to Queenie's values. She represents the person who Queenie wants to match in confidence and identity. Yet she sometimes projects her values onto Queenie during their chats that make her uncomfortable. Like the "You should just go back to black" attitude and "This is my side, you need to know your side."
So, those tiny defects in her relationships were efforts to expand the cast from being too flat. Since nobody's perfect and it's realistic. Everyone's meant to contribute to the question of what race may mean for a woman growing up nowadays. That's kinda how I took the creative choices about what details to include and omit about the characters and their dysfunctional relationships.
Rhonda Weiss
I'm glad you are mentioning this because it bothered me. I was hoping that at some point the story would circle back to these characters and give us a look inside their lives a bit. I thought it could be a growth opportunity for Queenie to realize she's ignoring everyone else's problems. This peek outside of Queenie happens a little when Gina mentions all of her personal issues and when Grandma talks of her lost love and the pain she has from it, but this type of thread/theme is dropped. Instead, we wind up with friends who are flat characters, just receptacles for Queenie's issues.
Katie Young
I especially wanted to know more about Darcy's relationship. She was my favorite character ("Kyazike, I looked that up on urban dictionary, but I still am not quite sure . . ."), but we're so deep in Queenie's psyche that there's not room for much else.
Laura
That's interesting. I didn't pick up on that, but now that you point it out, I can see it. I think the hints are pretty subtle, though, in a book where most other plot devices aren't that subtle, which makes me think it might not have been intentional... ?
Amanda Jones
I think Laura, with publishers asking writers to keep books of this nature down to 90,000 words or so, to really tell a good story, the story often has to be VERY focused. Supporting characters support the story. They don't get their own story within the story they are meant to be supporting. But fan fic can fix that. lol
It's okay for us to be interested in characters that we don't get to delve deeply into - and it's a sign that they were well presented. Trust me, unless Queenie had a tendency to deflect her own problems by expressing care for her friends' problems, and that was part of her character and psychology, such probing would have annoyed and bored the readers as going 'off-story'. That's the stuff editors ask you take out, UNLESS it shows the reader more about your character that they need to know.
It's okay for us to be interested in characters that we don't get to delve deeply into - and it's a sign that they were well presented. Trust me, unless Queenie had a tendency to deflect her own problems by expressing care for her friends' problems, and that was part of her character and psychology, such probing would have annoyed and bored the readers as going 'off-story'. That's the stuff editors ask you take out, UNLESS it shows the reader more about your character that they need to know.
Jules
Interesting question. Darcy 'seems' happy though and also 'seems' to suffer less drama. Kyazike certainly seems like the stronger female and seems to know what she wants from a relationship - much of this being material. The other females do seem more passive in the relationships that they form with men but Queenie's relationships seem more dangerous - this is also possibly down to the frequency (the number of times she puts herself at risk) of her errors, bad judgement and abandon of all sense of self care.
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