What I'm Reading in this Time of Racial Reckoning

Here we are, another April, another trial about police brutality.  Yesterday lawyers finished closing arguments in the trial of the police officer accused of killing George Floyd.  In  April of 1992, officers accused in the brutal treatment of Rodney King were acquitted.

Across the years, my response is the same:  how can people be that brutal?  I am not one of those who would argue that any of us could be that brutal, given the right circumstances.  But to beat a stranger who has done nothing to me personally?  In both cases, and in so many cases of police brutality, I look at the victim--the crime is not something like child molestation.  Traffic violations, high speed chases, broken taillights, minor drug offences--that doesn't inspire murderous rage in me.

Against this drumbeat of the trial in Minnesota, the subsequent police mistakes that have lead to death in just the two weeks since the trial started, I've been reading two works of fiction.  I realize that there are many works of nonfiction that could give me important viewpoints during this time.  In fact, I read some of them last year.

In terms of understanding police brutality, the best book on the subject that I've read thus far is Resmaa Menakem's My Grandmother's Hands:  Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.  This April, I've been reading Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom and Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies.

Both writers are exploring the immigrant experience, as varied as that experience can be in the U.S.  Gyasi's immigrants come from Ghana and end up in Alabama and later California, when the immigrant daughter goes to Stanford.  Akhtar's immigrants come from Pakistan.  All of the characters are treated as racially different from the mainstream, and the authors explore what that means in the modern world.  It's good to be reminded that racial issues are much more layered than just black-white.

Both authors also explore the issue of religion in the U.S.  Gyasi's characters are Pentecostal Christian, and Akhtar's are Muslim.  But of course, it's rarely that simple.   And there are other types of beliefs that the authors explore:  the belief in wealth and money, the pursuit of truth (scientific truth, relationship truth, medical truth, geopolitical truth), and the embrace of the ecstatic, even when the ecstatic will kill.

I enjoyed each book, and I do wonder if I would have enjoyed them as much if I had read them further apart.  Probably.  I also heard each author interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, which also enriched my experience, once I finally found the books in the library.

Have these books helped me understand the heart and mind of the police officer who can kneel on a man's neck for 9 minutes?  No.  I can't imagine wanting to read that story, and I really can't imagine writing that story.

But I do believe in the power of story to help us understand each other.  Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom and Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies are important pieces of that mission.