I remember my mother-in-law once telling me about how the singer/actress Dinah Shore gave birth to a black baby, and although it nearly broke up her marriage, her white husband ended up accepting the boy was his (although they did secretly give the baby up for adoption) after it was discovered that Shore had a black ancestor somewhere along the line. My mother-in-law wasn't telling me this story because she was horrified by the image of a white woman having a black baby -- she was simply sharing a weird-but-true story about miscegenation and the mischief that genes can play in future generations. And, of course, the story isn't even true -- it's just a rumour, but a tantalising enough rumour that it has persisted, an urban legend that chillingly makes young mothers wonder: "What would I do if my husband didn't believe his baby was really his?" Um, go on Maury for a dna test?
In the 1920's Windsor of Emancipation Day, the modern tools of paternity testing weren't yet available, and so when a black mother gives birth to a very white son, he is rejected by a father who insists he isn't his. As the boy, Jackson, grows up, he learns the advantages of passing for white, and after witnessing (and feeling conflicted by) the 1943 Detroit Race Riot, he joins the Navy, happy to be shipped far away where no one could guess his true identity. After meeting and marrying a rich white girl while stationed in Newfoundland, Jackson is eventually forced to confront and reveal where it is he came from.
Wayne Grady won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award for Emancipation Day, which is an interesting accomplishment for an award-winning author of 14 works of nonfiction and an award-winning translator of a further 15 books. Originally started as another work of nonfiction, but worked over and over again for 18 years in novel form, the writing of Emancipation Day was prompted when Grady discovered that his own great-grandfather was an African American emigrant from the United States. All this talent and all this time spent on its writing should have made for an excellent book, but I suppose that, like Michael Jordan attempting a baseball career, awesome skills of one type don't always translate to related skills; as a novel, this isn't a great book.
I was intrigued to learn that the lily white Wayne Grady had a black ancestor, but I don't know that that completely excuses the persistent racism of this book (in a Only a Ginger Gets to Call Another Ginger, Ginger kind of way). Honestly, there are no likeable black people here: Jackson's father and brother are lazy drunks who would steal shampoo from a house they're renovating; his mother is a flighty ditz who is constantly offering tea but forgetting to make it; the Emancipation Day celebration of the title (a day when black people take over a local Windsor park to celebrate the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Britain and its colonies) is an annual bacchanalia, with black folks getting drunk and having sex in public, with lewd dancing and knife fights and people passed out in the bushes; Alvina and Dee-Dee aren't developed at all, but the evil "bird woman" with her Windsor special "Dark Secrets" gives an unpleasant glimpse into female society. It's no wonder that Jackson doesn't want to be associated with these people.
Jackson himself is a totally unlikeable character, unable to show affection to his new wife, Vivian, or loyalty to his own family. Vivian is a long suffering fool who is willing to accept a loveless marriage and the poverty that results from her husband's big dreams and low ambition -- and willing to be duped by his mother's face powder and father's absences. Could it have really taken years for Vivian to discover that she married into a black family, and especially when spending time in what is portrayed as a racially explosive city like Windsor?
And there are just too many coincidences -- Jackson being treated by Peter's father on a Navy ship; Jackson happening upon his father and brother during the riot (and of course they were looting a liquor store at the time); Jackson finding Della in the first place he looked. And there were strange scenes I just didn't buy into: like Peter somehow getting home to Windsor without a car during the riot (never mind him abandoning the search for his mother); and Della sleeping with Jackson; and Vivian having a vision of them sleeping together; and Della's story about Vassar and Jonsey; and Vivian having the epiphany about Jackson's race moments before she sees his father for the first time.
I did like the descriptions of jazz and bebop, was charmed by the scenes in Newfoundland, and found the suspense thrilling as Jackson and Vivian crossed the country on the train; heading slowly towards Jackson's secret past (and that's probably why it was such a letdown to have her think they were just well-tanned or overly powdered). When the little boy at the end is named Wayne, I have to wonder if that's the way that the author remembers his own childhood: and if he was that conflicted about race his whole life, 18 years and 20 rewrites turns out not to have been enough to successfully translate his inner self into fiction.
There is a persistent racism in this book that I found off-putting and Wayne Grady paints Jackson as a doomed character who will never fit in with his family or his community because of his skin colour. Related to this, I am conflicted about the degree of racism that's involved in my sister-in-law's sister leaving soon to adopt a baby from Africa.
What a gorgeous baby she is, too, but I wonder how she's going to feel, being raised by a single, white woman so far from her roots. Is she really going to be better off? Should wealthy North Americans adopt African babies or would it be more culturally sensitive to actually get down to improving living conditions in their home countries? In the big picture, this baby won't be at risk of starvation or poor health care or (one hopes) wars, but as everyone knows that adopted babies in general have abandonment issues, how much more pressing will that be to a little girl who doesn't even look like the people around her? Here's hoping that love and stability will conquer all.
