Review: ‘Calling for a Blanket Dance,’ by Oscar Hokeah; ‘Stories From the Tenants Downstairs,’ by Sidik Fofana; and ‘Sirens & Muses,’ by Antonia Angress

When Ever was just six months old, a group of police officers beat his father for refusing to pay a bribe, leaving him with permanent kidney damage. This is Oscar Hokea’s shocking debut, Calling for a BLANKET DANCE (258 pp., Algonquin, $27),to start. The book presents Ever’s 50 years of life from twelve perspectives, from her grandmother to her adopted children. The result is a kaleidoscope of romantic buildings set against the backdrop of the Oklahoma countryside.

Although officially advertised as a novel, the narrative structure is reminiscent of books that blur the line between novel and story collection, such as Olive Kitteridge and A Visit from the Goon Squad.

Hokea’s characters are so accurately portrayed, with enough pathos that some of the narrator’s meandering (and sometimes repetitive) eloquence can be forgiven. There is a Purple Heart Army veteran who was recently diagnosed with late-stage cirrhosis and is trying to sober up so he can teach his grandchildren the traditional Kiowa dance. A young man waiting for a per capita check can waste it all on booze and crank. A woman who is four months pregnant by an absentee man named Tank and eventually gives birth to a premature baby without lungs.

At the heart of Calling for a Blanket Dance is a profound reflection on the intergenerational nature of cultural trauma. Hokea characters exist at the intersection of Kiowa, Cherokee, and Mexican identities, offering an important exploration of indigenous peoples in contemporary American script.

The cleverest thing about the whole thing is how Hokea draws the reader into Ever, even when Ever is only visible from the periphery. For example, in one harrowing scene, Ever’s sister runs into her fiancée, Ronnie, and shoots meth with a man in her bedroom after the party, while Ever stays at the military boot camp. I was. Ever is away, but his heartbreak is expected. When he learns of Ronnie’s betrayal, he refuses to believe it.”He ran out of his mother’s house and found Ronnie Norwater,” his sister says. “Then he lived with her long enough to discover the truth about her for himself.”

In “Calling for a Blanket Dance,” Hokeah shows readers that there are many ways to look at pain, and sometimes the most painful is the indirect view.

Just ask Quaneisha B. Miles of Apartment 21J, one of the many tenants of Sidik Fofana’s outstanding story collection. Stories from Downstairs Tenants (211 pages, Scribner, $26) — about her dream job, she said she wanted to work for a magazine. But the beauty of this debut is that Fofana makes sure no one misses it.

“Stories From the Tenants Downstairs” takes place at Banneker Terrace, a fictional apartment building in Harlem. Over the course of her eight storeys of collection, Fofana took over the building after her Banneker was sold to a corporate real estate firm interested in raising rents, evicting tenants, and ultimately making a profit. It expresses the struggle and rich inner life of the tenants. .

“Stories From the Tenants Downstairs” is a stunning portrait of the people most affected by gentrification. People like Mimi in her 14D involved in schemes that combined extreme coupons and diapers sold on the black market. Darius of 12H. and many others. It’s a human exploration that even shows drug addicts playing clapping games on the 25th floor.

Fofana brings characters to life through unique speech patterns. Auxiliary verbs are dropped, words are misspelled, prepositions are squashed, and all lend a touch of vernacular authenticity. “An Israeli with a piece of tinfoil on his head, clattering in front of a 99-cent bottle, yelling all the time that God is black,” he says, 14D’s Mimi. Grammar is an instrument that Fofana plays by ear, with much success.

The strongest story is also the longest collection. “MS. Dallas” focuses on her 6B Verona Dallas, a junior high school associate working with a new teacher with a savior complex. Verona sees through him, showing that it’s not necessarily the well-intentioned, condescending white liberals who know what’s best for their communities, but the people who call them home.

A character in the debut novel by Antonia Angles, SIRENS & MUSES (354 pages, Ballantine’s, $28), wake up every day and choose chaos. Structurally, the novel is divided into his two sections. The first takes place at an art school called Wrynn (probably the fictional Rhode Island School of Design). The second will be held at Art World in New York.

Chapters alternate between three students and a visiting assistant professor. Art student Louisa from Louisiana. She doesn’t make any money, her biggest concern is being able to pay for her school fees. Her roommate Karina is the exact archetype you’d expect in her novel about a young artist. She is the daughter of a talented, beautiful, wealthy art collector who is recovering from a nervous breakdown. There is erotic tension. Now add a man to the triangle. Preston is a bloating anti-capitalist trust fund and fellow art blogger. The result is a tumultuous and bizarre love triangle.

The novel juggles many questions about what it means to be an artist, how the business side of art can and cannot be approached, and whether the effort is worthwhile. In a way, this novel isn’t about art, it’s about money, power, inheritance, and everything (even likes and blog views) as commodities in this late stage of capitalism in which we find ourselves. At times, it feels like it’s been robbed from the central casting, but Angres’ strength is her ability to craft an engrossing plot, and readers can expect her messy characters to reach the finish line. You can see it moving towards

There’s a moment at the beginning of the novel where some Wrynn students are throwing a party and drawing along with Bob Ross on YouTube. Half-joking, kind of a pose. “Look what we’ve got,” says Bob Ross. “Look around. It reminds artists that beauty surrounds us everywhere. Because in Sirens & Muses, beauty belongs to lovers. Everything else is about power and money.

Joseph Kasara is the author of The House of Impossible Beauties and chair of the Creative Writing Division at San Francisco State University for George and Judy Marcus.