From the Back:
In his powerful first novel, Randel Kenan-recipient of the Prix de Rome, the Whiting Award, and other accolades-shows us the effects of a proud family heritage on a generation that must confront a world far removed from anything they are prepared for.
Horace Cross, the 16-year-old descendant of slaves and deacons of the church, spends a horror-filled spring night wrestling with demons and angels of his brief life. Brilliant, popular and the promise of his elders, Horace struggles with the guilt of discovering who he is, a young man attracted to other men and yearning to escape the narrow confines of Tim’s Creek. His cousin, the Reverend James Greene, tries to help Horace but finds he is no more prepared than the older generation to save Horace’s soul or his life. And as he views the aftermath of Horace’s horrible night, he is left with only questions and the passing of generations.
"Why is it dangerous to say 'Never Forget'?"
A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan threads the line of this question to illustrate an entangled narrative that casts light on the complicated nature of heritage, blackness, religion, homosexuality, Southernness, and remembrance. This tale of Black magical realism flows through feelings of desire, anger, nostalgia, and shame to display how the hopes of maintaining older teachings cultivate the physical and mental impacts of generational trauma. Taking place primarily in Tim's Creek, NC, the story follows the events of April 30th, 1984, and December 8th, 1985, with supplementary confessions from the cousins Horace Cross and James Malachi Greene to weave an intricate familial web. Horace takes control of his tightly wound fate by performing a ritual in hopes of transforming into a rabbit, but instead becomes possessed. His cousin, James, reflects on his past of theological practice and unfulfilled love in hopes of altering his family’s future.
The best way I can describe Kenan’s writing style in this novel is like listening to an elderly Black family member talk about their relatives, friends, and church. There’s the meandering, the same person being called 3 different names, the listener’s confusion about who is who, the unanswered questions, the conclusions without any further explanation, the preaching, the eyes glazing over at some point, and the tuning back in when something shocking is mentioned. Considering I am not familiar with Kenan’s writing style, I was genuinely impressed by the familiarity and personality he was able to evoke. This form of narration is intimate, working to strengthen the reader’s connection to the developing drama.
Time was taken when it came to the pacing of this novel. The introduction to the middle of the book was primarily composed of familial and spatial interaction that worked to build the world, develop interpersonal connections, and establish implicit societal rules. Sinners is the closest referential material to help illustrate this narrative approach; however, parallels between it and A Visitation of Spirits end at regional settings and demographic focus. Kenan did an excellent job at making all the characters dynamic and difficult to align in any way that is “good” or “bad.” Each had a concoction of conflicting emotions and varying conditions of racial trauma serving as motivators for how the family treats one another leading up to April 30th and December 8th. Kenan was able to make the older generation's thought processing comprehensible without justifying their homophobia, but rather reflected on how this intolerance implicitly affected their relationships even with those who it was not intentionally directed at. A drop of hate creates ripples of effect.
The employment of non-linear storytelling was key for transferring the dynamic of Black Southern storytelling into reading form. Now, don’t get me wrong, there were parts of this novel where I was definitely skimming [the eyes glazing over], but I don’t think that was a detriment to the writing. Sometimes, the familial talks felt long-winded and intentional, sometimes they didn’t. I didn't feel any way about their duration—I just didn't always feel like reading it all. Despite skimming every once in a while, I was still able to track each character and their goals so that the plot hook was impactful. Horace's family's homophobia was always apparent when reading between the lines, but Kenan's ability to elusively escalate its blatant recognition is noteworthy. Suddenly, the one piece of context joining all of the family talk was there, and everything immediately made sense.
A point I found peculiar that I haven’t seen talked about ever, honestly, was the connection between queerness and whiteness. This point was brought up a few times as it regarded Horace, the white friends he hung with, the media's depiction of sexual presentation, and his internal battle with his homosexuality. I consider this to be a form of interpretive overlap. Horace internalizes the negative sentiments that his family holds about white people and gayness. They are both deemed as wicked, unwanted, and non-mutually exclusive, which is made explicit during a Thanksgiving dinner where Horace shows up with his ear pierced. This “good, bad” dichotomy sets up the black and white clause of “if it’s not for me, then it's against me.” You are either Black and straight or white and gay [which leads to another conversation about the performative necessity of Black men's masculinity and heteronormativity relating back to the weaponization of the human body as punishment during slavey].
This conflation of queerness and whiteness can further be explored through the concept of cleanliness politics. White American society has always upheld notions of cleanliness as a mechanism of othering. Cleanliness served as another compounding material during slavery to demarcate race and perpetuate the systematic and sociological hate of blackness. As such, notions of clean and unclean not only worked to apply to literal hygiene but also texture, material condition, and moral belief. When it comes to interpreting and preaching biblical text, lessons regarding moral, holy practice have historically constructed homosexuality as a foundationally immoral habit. Gayness is considered sinful, and sin is dirty; that’s why you're baptized and reborn [“cleanliness is close to godliness”]. This is merely the setup since Horace’s family is framing queerness and whiteness as tangentially negative, not opposites. Blackness had to optically fit within white cleanliness as a means of surviving in a racist country. However, this assimilation still does not have the anticipated outcome, as black quite literally cannot be white, no matter how chemically altered. Because of this, a form of black cleanliness, a derivative of white cleanliness, had to establish itself. This black cleanliness, working off the fundamental and religious groundings of white cleanliness, is its own articulation and understanding that rejects whiteness (and thus homosexuality) while simultaneously maintaining the same barriers of othering.
Throughout the book, Kenan continually establishes the importance of change in the present for the future but never exchanges it for nostalgia and limerence for the past. The layered lives involved in physical labor and community sustenance weren’t standalone facets but their own ecosystem. There must be recognition that people, relationships, beliefs, habits, rituals, love, and conflict surround these processes, which makes the heritage rich and establishes what we know as culture and history. How can we be respectful and bring pride to our heritage without shaming or feeling guilt from our community? We must recognize the culture for what it is and not accept the factors that make it harmful.
Now addressing Horace, I deeply understand the yearning to escape a circumstance, though what I have felt is in no way equivalent in intensity and weight to his. I know when I have felt my emotional lowest, I wish I could turn into a dog and have a doggy best friend. My human despair is so palpable that being something else liberates me from such feelings, and I can still exist without having to worry about them ever again. I understand just wanting to be an animal. In the end of the book, Kenan questions the plausibility of Horace’s solution-turned-possession. Was he actually possessed, or was it something not so magical? I think religious and spiritual vernacular served as a mechanism in which Horace could comprehend his depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation, as resources for mental health were next to nothing [if not existing at all] in the black rural South. Along with this, dark mental emotions were taught to youth as the work of the devil, especially by black Christian communities. As he couldn’t find real mental health help, Horace turned to the most reasonable method for a seemingly spiritual issue: witchcraft. The act of him attempting to turn into a rabbit and its failure caused his mental breakdown and, with no rational escape in sight, resulted in the ending of his young life.
I would recommend reading A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan. I am not a library, so I cannot speak to the extent of Black southern writing on religion and homosexuality, but I think this novel is an important contribution to the genre. I’ll also state that this novel includes a lot of other aspects that I didn’t engage with in this commentary, but I think are worth conversing about. All in all, I can see someone having a difficult time progressing through the book due to its pacing and writing style, but when it hooks you, it’s difficult to put down.
[Very brief movie commentary: I thought Sinners was fine—not vaguely good nor vaguely bad—just a movie that I appreciated and thought was necessary for people and media, but I won’t pay to watch it again or put it on to watch myself after my initial viewing. I also took the time (and money) to see it the correct way: 65 mm film with a combination of IMAX 15-perf and Ultra Panavision, so don’t come at me.]