Daughter (2015) by Asha Bandele

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

Daughter (2003)

by Asha Bandele

New York: 62/105

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 1/28

    Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island is the last sub-chapter of the 105 books from New York- that's over 10% of the entire list for a single state, and something close to 70 percent of the books from New York state are from New York City.  I checked out the Audiobook from the library- when I say it was absolutely excruciating to listen to, that's neither a criticism nor a compliment, just a reflection of the heartbreaking AND extremely over-wrought narrative, about a mother who loses her college age daughter to a mistakenly fired police bullet.  

    The Publisher's Weekly review that is quoted on Daughter's Amazon product page calls it "maudlin" which was a thought I frequently had listening to this book.  I'm not exactly a stranger to the difficulties faced by African American people at the hands of the police, and I've had plenty of experience counseling people who have been through the kind of tragedies that this book covers.  Still, the actual details of this plot defy believe- both the daughter of the title and her father are shot mistakenly by the NYPD thirty years apart. 

  Also, the decisions made by the characters in this book are simply excruciating to hear.  Like every chapter is filled with either the Mother or the Daughter making a terrible decision and paying a terrible price for that poor decision.  I can't remember another book like it where the decision making by the characters was so cringe inducing.  It was definitely a function of my life in the criminal justice system- I just can't stand to read fiction/watch tv/movies about people making bad decisions. 

    

   Generally speaking Daughter is an extreme example of common narrative:  A family has a child who they treat in an over-protective fashion, seeking to shield them from their own mistakes or to overcome their underprivileged background.  This then causes the child to make the exact same mistakes the parents are trying to prevent, providing the ironic tension in the narrative.

   Here, Miriam, the mother of the dead daughter, is raced by a religious couple who welcome her as their late arriving, miracle baby.  She feels suffocated in this environment and, at 17, falls for the school janitor, a young guy just back from Vietnam.  When her parents catch her making out with her boyfriend on the street, they forbid her from seeing him, and she responds by moving in with her boyfriend and his grandmother.

   Of course, she gets pregnant immediately.  Of course, they don't get married.  Of course, it doesn't work out, which, you know, everyone can see except for the character herself.  Bandele makes a point that is similar to other African American authors, which is that African American families struggling to better themselves often restrict their emotions to survive, which can then have negative consequences for their children.