Matthew McElroy > Recent Status Updates

I have had this sneaking suspicion that this book is an allegory for Black history in America. He starts in the South. He is forced to help a white man interrogate a poor Black farmer. He gets an education and is then unjustly denied that education. He travels north to Harlem. And in this latest chapter he meets a Black man from the West Indies who is clearly a Marcus Garvey stand-in.

This is a one chapter a day kind of read. It is wonderfully written, but it is dense and the subject matter is so frustrating that it is hard to be 'enthusiastic' it. The narrator meets a Black couple being evicted who are 87 years old. I can only imagine there is a parallel with Lincoln's phrase "four score and seven" from the Gettysburg Address, not the Emancipation Proclamation, which feels noteworthy.

This is an ideal book for a book club. It requires discussion, someone with a good understanding of literature and someone else with an understanding of 20th century history or Black history. Goodreads has options for book clubs, but I haven't unable to figure out how to join, whether on the app, or on the PC site. If anyone can point me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated .