After escaping from the farm, Eddie drove through the night. Sometimes he thought he could feel his phantom fingers brushing against his thighs, but above the wrists he now had nothing. Dark stains covered the terry cloth wrapped around the ends of his wrists; his mother had stanched the bleeding with rubber cables. For the first hour or so, the divot-riddled road jostled the car, increasing the young man's agony, and he clenched his teeth through the sickening pain. Steering the vehicle with his forearms stuck in two of the wheel's holes, Eddie couldn't keep the Subaru from wobbling and swerving, and he feared the police would notice, pull him over to find he had no license, and arrest him for stealing the car.This captivating opening hints at the horror, danger and mystery to come in James Hannaham's Delicious Foods, and while the horror, danger, and mystery are all explored, this book is, at heart, an examination of the bonds within families and society, and what holds us together and what tears us apart. This review will need to contain spoilers.
From that explosive opening, time and perspectives shift until Eddie and his mother, Darlene, have had their personal stories told. Ridiculously-happily married, Darlene became widowed when her husband was lynched for trying to register black voters in response to David Duke's election. As a Canadian (who does remember David Duke and the outrage he evoked), this stretched credulity for me -- could a black man be killed without consequence in the Louisiana of the late 80s/early 90s? -- but for all I know, that's exactly the way things were. Hollowed-out and unable to properly take care of her nearly six-year-old son, Eddie, Darlene moves to Houston and eventually discovers the escape offered via crack pipe. In a clever twist, chapters about Eddie and a sober Darlene are told in a straightforward third-person omniscient style, but when Darlene is on the pipe, her chapters are told by her good friend, crack.
Out all my friends -- and baby, I got millions -- she make me wonder the most if I done right by her. Sometimes I think to myself that maybe she shouldna met me. But then again, can't nobody else tell her side of things but Yours Truly, Scotty. I'm the only one who stuck by her the whole time.That may sound gimmicky, but "Scotty's" voice is both enjoyably foul-slangy and seductively understanding of Darlene, and its unique perspective makes the reader empathise with the addicted mother instead of resenting her for Eddie's childhood. When Darlene hits bottom -- doing a terrible job of crack-whoring -- salvation arrives in the form of a blue minivan: recruiters from Delicious Foods offer Darlene a job as a fruit picker; promising her fine accommodations, decent pay, and all the crack she can smoke. Once she arrives at the farm, however, not only is Darlene not allowed to phone Eddie as promised, but she is locked into a foul barracks with a crew of other dark-skinned rock-bottomers and told that she will need to work extra hard to pay off the debts she has already accrued: $500 for the ride, $100 for her first night's stay, $10/pipe, etc. The most interesting part of this modern-day slavery is that Darlene doesn't even hate it -- with safe (if disgusting) accommodations, non-judgemental access to drugs, and days spent in the open air exercising her body, she sees it as an improvement over street-hustling.
Meanwhile, Eddie is now nearly twelve and spends his evenings searching the streets for anyone who might have information about his mother's whereabouts. As the opening scene shows Eddie "after escaping from the farm", readers know that he will get to Darlene, and the story takes on a fresh urgency as we realise that the circumstances of him losing his hands will soon be revealed.
As with the lynching, I was really skeptical about this modern-day slavery (complete with the nutty white owners living in a plantation-style mansion), and not only did I not believe that the workers would stay in these conditions for years on end, but the whole concept of white people using crack to literally enslave black people felt like a politically motivated storyline. And then I discovered that this is based on a true story. So, that's disgusting, and along with the fact that it makes me reconsider the impact of this novel, it also makes me reconsider the justice of our food supply (and why does it take a story about flat out slavery to make me give a moment's thought to the migrant Mexicans who come even this far north every year to pick our fruit for us?)
Delicious Foods was a propulsive read with many uncomfortable images, made more disturbing by the idea of their plausibility. I wouldn't be surprised if it is recognised with multiple literary awards.
