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I read this wonderful book in a day, there is an energy about it that draws you on. Typeset in short lines even the prose has a poetry to it. It put me in mind of Bernardine Evaristo – and not just because she also explores people of colour’s experience of sexuality, it also shared some of the energy of Hello Mum – Atta stands up favourably as a writer against the award-winning Evaristo in my mind.
It is a coming of age and a coming out tale, in which Michael finds freedom in his drag persona The Black Flamingo, as one of the poems interspersed within the narrative says:
“…
When it’s time to go on stage,
know that you’re not ready but
this is not about being ready,
it’s not even about being fierce
or fearless, it’s about being free.
...”
The power of the drag persona is celebrated – it is not there for cheap laughs, when asked who is The Black Flamingo Michael responses
“He is me, who I have been,
who I am, who I hope to become.
Someone fabulous, wild and strong.
With or without a costume on.”
Although a positive tale running through it there is an edge of realism and grit
“I come from being given permission
to dream but choosing to wake up
instead.”
But it also provides a great image of simple delight
“I remember the ‘sandcastles’
Anna and I built
on our day trip to Brighton,
how she didn’t care there were pebbles
and not sandcastle
but how on the journey
I was so fearful
that she was going to cry
when we got there,
that she would only be happy
with sand
but she didn’t mind
that her ‘sandcastles’
didn’t stay
in the shape of the bucket:
she was perfectly happy to play
with pebbles
and call it a sandcastle
anyway.”
It also has that hint of the question, when do we tell ourselves we are inadequate pebbles?, that we will cause people to cry when they find out we are not sand – forgive me for explaining the metaphor, but having ripped it a bit out of context it feels like you might need a signpost.
He talks of the room where the University Drag Society meets
“I feel safe in this room
with my new drag family;
I carry this room with me
for the rest of the week.
This room has many other
functions to other people,
just another room in the
Students’ Union building,
but when we meet here,
it’s a place without there.”
This is the exact feeling I have for the Vane Tempest in Dunelm House, where the LGBT Association used to have its weekly social – the description on the Students’ Union website doesn’t give any hint of how it was for a couple of hours or so on a Monday night a sacred space – where friendship and liberation were found that could sustain you through the rest of the week.
I feel I need to acknowledge the sort of obvious point that the eponymous Flamingo is Black – or I would risk editing that critical element of the story, or engage in some kind of cultural appropriation by claiming it could speak to my very “white” self. I am cautious to speak too much on this aspect which is removed from my own lived experience. But I will note that to be queer is a challenge to traditional conceptions of masculinity, and the, sometimes problematic, conceptions of “black” masculinity seem to come under particular challenge when the “queer” in question is also “black”. Atta unpacks the complexity of identity with skill – Michael’s biological father might fit a caricature of absence male role model, but his Uncle is clearly identified as the positive opposite to everything his father isn’t. Some of us will behave in ways that fit a stereotype but that does not validate the type. I read this with a feeling of closeness to parts of Michael’s experience, but nevertheless in the full knowledge that my white, male, and middle class privilege in almost all cases more than compensates for any disadvantage being queer might bring.
Is it a book that changed me? It sits alongside Hide by Matthew Griffin and Until Our Blood is Dry by Kit Habianic for the emotional punch it delivered, books that continue to churn in my mind, years after I read the last page they are fresh in my mind.
