Creatures of Passage -Morowa Yejide - 4.5 rounded down

[Booknblues]

I am still trying to process the amazing novel Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejide. It is a difficult boo to pigeon hole a literary fiction with elements of magical realism, horror and fantasy, told like a myth. One interviewer called it fantastical.

Set in the Anacostia district of Washington DC in 1977, the central protagonists are the Kinwell family, Nephthys, a female cab driver, Osiris, her dead brother, Amber, her niece and Dash, her grand nephew. This is not an ordinary family and her cab is not an ordinary cab and that in part is what makes the book so special:

"Nephthys Kinwell was not a savior of souls. That was God’s charge. Or maybe the trade of the Devil. But she did ferry souls from one quadrant to another, and over the streets that now covered the prehistoric marshes of the capital of the territories. There was a certain geography to it all, she’d learned. To the win lose draw of lives. For Nephthys Kinwell knew—as all wandering hearts do—that it was not enough to know where things happened in the lines and circles of human lives, but why, since the reasons for happenings were buried much deeper than the happenings themselves. So she never had to look for the signs omens bones of creatures of passage. They found her.

The book has a mythic feel with the states being called kingdoms and the White House the Acropolis. But there are many sightings of the landmarks of the Anacostia district, so within the myth is a very real place, with very real problems.

At the heart of the book is a horror and with it a trigger warning. The tone in the book is ominous as the author says in one interview.

for some interesting facts, Yejide's grandmother was one of the first Black female cab drivers in the D.C. region . The crafting of this book took 17 years.