THE DISAPPEARERS
MARLON JAMES
Riverhead Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now
Rating: 5* of five
The Publisher Says: From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings: a propulsive novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences.
In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica begin rehearsals for a play. Though strangers to one another, they share an inescapable truth: All of them are gay. And they live in a world that refuses to accept them.
One night the men are savagely beaten and one of them is killed. As their bodies heal, the survivors begin to face the hatred and contempt that the violence laid bare. Some try to ignore what happened. Others double down on retribution. Some disappear completely.
In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written a riveting and deeply human story of men forced to make compromises to survive what the society they live in demands. It is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Y'all do not know what it means to be at risk of your life for what you do in your bedroom. It's okay with church ladies, sports stars, politicians, dumb fucks on street corners, to insult, threaten, jeer at, and...if there are enough of them...chase and beat you, often enough to death, because of what you do in your bedroom.
It's the reality of being yourself as a queer person. It's not different in the US, only for the most part quieter.
So these 640 pages will come as a illusion-threatening denial-generating surprise to the majority of you. It will cause knee-jerk "no, it's not *that* bad." Yes. It is.
Yes. It is.
This story is based on real events. It should shame every one of you who's made a homophpbic joke, laughed at stories with lisping queens, or any of the other minstrel-sho-with-fags stuff you've seen and heard, because it Others and thus aids in desensitizing murderous idiots. Maybe you didn't mean it to, but it did and it does. I don't think any of you will read this book, so let me tell you what happens:
A bunch of gay guys get together to put on a play that no one is forcing anyone to watch. A gang of those guys who make the jokes you laugh at decide they don't like the fact they're doing this, so they go to the place the rehearsals...not even a public performance...take place, and beat the actors for daring to address the feelings and concerns of people like them before, I remind you, the play that no one is forced to watch unless they choose to so severely one loses his sight.
And one dies.
The remaining six are traumatized.
Because y'all hate people. Who do not ask you to participate in sex, celebrate Otherness, or even make yourselves aware of individual acts of entertainment's existence. "*I* didn't do that" no, but did you ever fail to stop a joke to deride a bigot to interrupt a hate-filled sermon?
No. You did not.
So these eight men lost lives they weren't through living, altered or ended, because no one ever stood up and said "what you do to these men you do also to me" and stood in solidarity at a grocery store, in a meeting, at a dinner party, and said "stop."
Sleep tight.
