Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Forty Acres by Dwayne Alexander Smith

After young attorney Martin Grey trumps celebrity litigator Damon Darrell in a ­multimillion-dollar civil rights suit, Darrell inexplicably welcomes him into his circle of influential African American men. For Martin, acceptance into this circle is the realization of a life’s dream. He’s even invited on their men’s retreat, and Darrell cryptically promises a life-altering experience. But when they arrive at their secret destination, a secluded plantation called Forty Acres, Martin enters a horrific alternate reality. The group’s charismatic leader, Dr. Kasim, promises to free Martin from the legacy of slavery by avenging his ancestors. At Forty Acres, the slaves are captive descendants of plantation owners and slavers, and Martin’s new friends are their masters.
Independent of his thought-provoking plot, Smith has written a fast-paced thriller, one I didn't want to put down; I particularly enjoyed the way in which he plays with the reader's expectations in the final chapters. I did have one relatively minor quibble with Smith's legal jargon, which I hope was corrected before the final printing; although most laypeople probably wouldn't have noticed, this attorney-reader cringed at the statement by "the number one legal website in the world" that Grey represented the "prosecution" in a civil case (the correct term is plaintiff) and the repeated references to Grey's contingency fee as a "commission check."
All quibbles aside, Smith has done a superlative job in using fiction to explore American race relations, and I hope his novel can serve in furthering a non-confrontational dialogue on this topic. I highly recommend it.

These comments are interesting

Interview with the author

Summer Reading Project Blog
This book is going to piss people off. No matter who you are, what gender you are, or what color you are, this book is going to piss someone off. This is not to say that Dwayne Alexander Smith's thriller, Forty Acres, is a bad book. It's a deliberately provocative book. It asks questions about race the we still need to talk about.  The other issue I had with this book is that Smith spends so much time focusing on race and Black men, that he doesn't spend much time on African American women. How are they supposed to quiet their own, no less soul-killing "Black noise"? With the exception of Anna and the wives of Darrell's group, the women are all white slaves that are used by men just the way female slaves are. None of the women, even Anna Grey, gets to strike back. This bothered me a lot. Forty Acres has a great premise for a thriller, but as I said before, this could have been a mind blowing work of literary fiction that asked all kinds of unanswerable questions.

Book Musings Blog
http://bookmusings.com/2014/07/05/review-forty-acres-by-dwayne-alexander-smith/
There are huge ideas taken on in this book. I am sure every reader will attach to something different, but here are three quotes that just make me queasy:

1. “Theres a kind of interference that clouds the black man’s mind. This interference keeps black children from focusing on their studies. This interference turns black teens into drug addicts and killers. This interference keeps black men from being good fathers and providers. This interference keeps a black man behaving like a slave … It is this interference that keeps the black man from walking the earth with pride. There’s no scientific name for it, you wont find it in any medical books, but its as real as depression or bipolar disease or any other psychological disorder. I call it simply black noise.”  This idea is just disgusting. Not to mention infuriating. While I admit that I can never understand what it is to be black, I can certainly understand what it is to be different. And I could never dream of blaming my failures, crimes, or hopelessness on those who didn’t show me the respect I deserved, or even actively harassed me about my disabilities.

2. “Keep in mind,” Oscar said, “ that these so called ‘maniac followers’ are influential, conscious black men. Doctors, businessmen, politicians, even one prominent church leader. These men that you’re so determined to destroy do a lot of good for our people. Ruin them, and countless innocents will suffer as well.” Oscar paused to underscore his next point. “And thats just the beginning. Once you tell the world … just imagine the resentment and distrust. It will be directed not only towards the men involved, but toward the entire black community. You think blacks are discriminated against now? Just wait. What you do here tonight will set race relations back decades.”  This one just scares me deeply. There are two seeds here for me, one is how far and wide  corruption can run in society and how complicated it becomes to do anything about it. And two is the idea that a small group of people can be accused of an awful crime and suddenly the entire ethnic group is shunned, attacked, or worse.

3. “I’m Helen, from Far Hills, New Jersey,” the woman said. She tugged forward a boy who [he] judged to be about thirteen. “And this is my son, Aaron. He was born down here.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “Right in that corner over there.”  And this one makes me want to cry. How cruel. To allow a baby to be born in a subterranean hellhole, never to see the light of day, is barbaric.  Unfortunately, all of these examples ring way too close to home in our history. Some recent, some where the intensity has faded from time, but all despicable.  Smith does an honourable yet terrifying job of bringing these ideas and more to light in an engaging, page-turning story. The character development and story are not perfect, but Forty Acres will most definitely have you grappling with your own feelings and beliefs on the subject of slavery and racism.


In discussing how some discrimination has not been eliminated, I mentioned a Batgirl PSA from “long” ago.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szZsKdJYR-A


The Discussion Questions we used:

  • What's fictional?  What's real?
  • Which character did you like the most? Least?
  • What did you learn by reading this novel?
  • If you could change one historical event in the novel, what would it be? How might it have affected the course of history?