A Particular Kind of Black Man: A Novel by Tope FolarinMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I had to keep reminding myself that this was not a memoir -- at least in the first part of the book, all narrated in the first person. This isn't really (just) a coming-of-age story, and this is beneficial as it allows the author to keep the deeper themes as a through line. There's a lot here about identity and particularly, agency--agency to define oneself (outside of and inside of categories), agency to grow, to move. It is a book about distances, both metaphorical and geographical. The story is multiple stories, although Tunde is the protagonist. It is a story of many lives and the choices that shape them. As Ravi Howard describes it, the books shows the "deeply personal geography of migration." That's a beautiful description. What happens when "home" constantly moving, shifting, and perhaps absent or wholly constructed from fragile memories?
There is a brief interlude that switches to an altogether different style to relate Tunde's first experience of falling in love. Because of the impact and deeply insightful narration up to that point, these passages (often one or two sentences to a page) felt forced--as though I was reading a different book. Perhaps that was the point, but as a reader I found myself engaging less and moving quickly to get back to Folarin's full and deep writing. And finally, in a (potentially comic) turn that seemed to come out of nowhere but ends up leading us to one of the most beautiful (yet heart-wrenching) moments, Folarin tells us what home truly is.
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