Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile

 

A year or so ago I heard that a new show was coming to Oprah’s channel OWN called Queen Sugar. It stared Rutina Wesley, who I have admired since True Blood. There’s a lot I like about the show so I thought I’d check out the source material: Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile. As it turned out, the book and TV show share a title, character names, a couple plot points, and that’s about it. 

***Warning: I really wanted to discuss this book and you can't really discuss a book without spoiling it a little, so beware there are some slight spoilers ahead. ***

Natalie Baszile's Queen Sugar begins with a woman named Charlotte “Charley” Bordelon and her daughter Micah driving from California to Louisiana. Charlie’s father Ernest has inexplicably left her an 800-acre sugarcane farm. Why Charlie’s father left her the farm is unclear. On the television show the father leaves his farm to his three children. There it makes some sense in that although his children have chosen different career paths, they at least grew up in Louisiana and have some familiarity with farming life. In contrast, the Charley in the book grew up in Los Angeles, is an art teacher, and knows absolutely nothing about farming. Further, Ernest ties the farm up in a trust so Charley can’t sell it. If she doesn’t farm the land successfully, then Charley will lose the farm. Frankly it seemed like a screwed up inheritance to leave a daughter who by all description was a very good and caring daughter, but I guess Baszile had to get Charley to Louisiana somehow.

There is so much going on in Queen Sugar, too much really. It hints at a range of issues, introduces several plot points, and then never follows through. One of those issues is race in the south. Charley is an African-American woman trying to farm sugarcane in the south – something that has traditionally been the province of men, especially White men. In the beginning of the novel there is very much a sense of Charley making waves in rural Louisiana merely by being an African-American woman. There are a couple White male characters early in the story who are completely disrespectful and dismissive of Charley. It is suggested that they are out to destroy her in part because they want her land and in part because they don't think she belongs in their farming world. Then those characters disappear and we don't get anything more on that plot point. There are other hints at race issues. For instance, Charley’s daughter Micah wants to enter a baking contest but her great-grandmother remarks that it is only the rich White women that ever win. Micah doesn’t win but then it isn’t clear that she should have.

In large print on the back cover of my copy of Queen Sugar it says the novel is an “intimate story of mother-daughter reinvention, endurance, and hop amid the complexities of the contemporary South.” I have no idea who wrote that description but I don’t think they read the same book I did. For starters there isn’t much of a mother-daughter story. There are several mothers and daughters: Charley and Micah, Lorna and Charley, and Miss Honey and Violet – but none of those take center stage.

The relationship between Charley and Micah is particularly frustrating. In an early chapter of the book Charley and Micah are driving to their new farm. Eleven-year-old Micah is not happy with the move, which is understandable. Charley is playing with her wedding ring, something she does when she’s anxious. Micah asked to see it so Charley gives the ring to her daughter who throws it out the window of their moving car. Micah suffers no consequences for actions. Charley and Micah don’t even really talk about it. Throughout the book Micah repeatedly engages in rude and destructive behavior. Her behavior is partly excused as preteen hormones, which I didn’t buy as an adequate reason, but even if that was the sole reason for her behavior, her behavior needed to be addressed. I was waiting for a confrontation or conversation between Micah and Charley in which both vented about their frustrations. That confrontation never happened.

Queen Sugar is mostly Charley’s story but her half-brother Ralph Angel figures heavily into the story as well, arguably to the book’s detriment. I’m not sure what Baszile was trying to say with this character or what she wanted readers to feel about him. He has a sad backstory. Ernest (Ralph Angel and Charley’s father) got his high school girlfriend (that is Ralph Angel’s mother) pregnant and then pretty much abandoned Ralph Angel and his mother. There is a strong suggestion that Ralph Angel’s mother suffered from a mental illness but no specifics are provided (why I don’t know). At some point in his teens Ralph Angel moved to California to live with his father, who by then had married and had a second child. Ernest was a much better father the second time around, doting on baby Charley. Ralph Angel couldn’t help but be jealous. He began acting out and was eventually kicked out of his father’s house and sent to live with his grandmother in Louisiana. So super sad, right? Fast forward two decades later, and Ralph Angel is still that jealous, angry kid.

The situation in California was not entirely Ralph Angel’s fault. His father and stepmother could have done better but then so could have Ralph Angel. That ends up being the story of Ralph Angel’s life. The world could have done better by him, but Ralph Angel could have also done better. Instead he spends most of his time getting high, blowing jobs, blowing relationships, and being angry at and jealous of his half-sister. He feels like she has everything while he has nothing. Never mind that just like Ralph Angel, Charley tragically lost her spouse and is now a single parent looking for a new start. On the television show I also find the Ralph Angel character frustrating at times (but not nearly as frustrating as the character in the book). On the show the character is younger so I can excuse some of his behavior as youthful stupidity. In the book however, Ralph Angel is a man in forties with a kid. He was just too old to be acting the way he did.

I kept waiting for Ralph Angel’s moment of redemption. In the beginning he seemed like a good father making bad decisions but trying to do better. For a short while it looks like he might do better then it all goes down hill. Again, some of what goes wrong isn’t his fault, but a lot of it is Ralph Angel acting like an entitled prick who never takes responsibility for any of his actions. He is constantly focused on what he thinks is owed to him. And in the end, Charley ends up feeling bad because she hasn’t done more to help him. That actually made me angry because she could not have done more. Even if she had somehow found been able to find a way, there is only so much one can do for a person who is unwilling to change. Sometimes life just isn’t fair and all you can do is forget about other people's business and mind your own. Ralph Angel was always too focused on Charley and everyone else.

I want to end on something I did like about this book – the description of sugarcane farming. Moby Dick is one of my favorite books. (Stay with me, there’s a point coming.) Part of what I love about Heman Melville’s classic is the thing most people hate about it – the long interludes about the whaling industry. I’m never going to read a nonfiction book about whaling, but teach me about whaling while telling me an adventure story and I’m in. I like learning about stuff when I read, even better when it is mixed in with my fiction. It’s like two books for the price and time of one. So it is no surprise that I enjoyed the parts of Queen Sugar that delved into the complexities of sugarcane farming. As Charley learned about planting and harvesting sugarcane, I learned.

Queen Sugar is Natalie Baszile’s first book and I think it showed. It was a good, though not great, first book. I would read another one by her. She obviously has lots of ideas and I think with more practice her stories will get better.