Rachel Eliza Griffiths’ Fresh Debut “Promise” Offers a Fresh Take on a Familiar Conflict https://ift.tt/1QBin9Z
Rachel Eliza Griffiths’ debut novel Promise arrives at a time when racial and political division still rocks the United States, and Americans remain divided about their progress towards racial equality. According to a June 2023 article in The Washington Post, though some Black Americans are more “upbeat” about the current Black experience in America, others believe “the problem of racism will worsen during their lives.” Even more shocking and saddening is that most Black adults say it is “more dangerous to be a Black teenager now than when they were teenagers.”
Set during the early years of the Civil Rights Movement, Promise follows Cinthy and Ezra Kindred, two Black teenagers in Salt Point, a small village in New England. As the only Black families in Salt Point, the Kindreds and their neighbors, the Junketts, experience the many ways in which the supposedly progressive, accepting attitude of the New England region is merely a guise for covert racism. Secure in the immeasurable love in which their parents have wrapped them, Cinthy and Ezra grasp at the fading rays of childhood as their bodies, lives, and relationships with others drastically change over the span of a few months. As the girls mature, their white neighbors–including Ezra’s best friend, Ruby–increasingly view their Black bodies and minds as a threat. When news of the Civil Rights Movement sweeping America reaches Salt Point, the white citizens bristle, reacting maliciously and violently to the Kindreds and the Junketts, and Cinthy and Ezra must look inside themselves to find the strength to resist their neighbors’ prejudices.
The searing emotions of Promise which the Kindred and Junkett families experience in America in 1957 is, sadly, not far from fiction. In April 2023, NPR reported that “Black Americans are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans,” and an increasing number of Black families “have to live with the pain of losing a loved one at the hands of police.” Griffiths’ novel centers the experience of the Kindreds and the Junketts at the mercy of their white neighbors and police brutality, and Deputy Charlie is the quintessential representation of both historical and contemporary police brutality. The nephew of white, elite locals who first established a school for poor children, Deputy Charlie frequently threatens both the Kindred and Junkett families. He drives by the Junketts’ residence, using hand gestures to emulate shooting at the family. Then, along with Ruby’s drunk father, he crafts elaborate lies about Mr. Caesar Junkett, accusing him of kidnapping Ruby, even though her parents had allowed one of her teachers to adopt her for a paltry sum of money.
Ruby, too, is an embodiment of an oppressive system which elevates white women over Black women. Ruby hails from an extremely impoverished home, rife with emotional, physical, and implied sexual abuse. But she also regularly relies on racist anecdotes to belittle Cinthy and Ezra, and their experience as Black Americans. Ruby’s actions and attitudes exemplify how threatened the white people in Salt Point feel because of the Kindreds’ and Junketts’ presence. She represents the larger, systemic problems with racial inequity inherent in today’s society, especially in the workplace. This reality is represented in Promise when Ruby is presented with the opportunity to live a privileged, elite life with the schoolteacher who adopts her. Ruby’s new life stands in sharp juxtaposition to the Kindred girls, but even in her new home, Ruby lacks the emotional support which Ezra and Cinthy’s parents provide.
The Kindred girls’ father, Heron, works at a school where poor white and Black children study side-by-side and students have limited access to educational resources. Nonetheless, the Kindred and Junkett children, as well as both their fathers who work at the school, experience an onslaught of racism, and neither the children nor their fathers are offered protection by either the school system or their community. According to Time, the Florida Board of Education recently approved a controversial curriculum which teaches students that “the skills enslaved people learned [were] beneficial…(and) added specific descriptions of the massacres of Black Americans.” And according to NPR, as of July 2022, though the US student population is increasingly more diverse, public schools remain intensely segregated.
A novel like Promise offers readers is a glimpse into irrational, historical violence and national turmoil, remains of which are still profoundly embedded in America’s current socio-economic and educational systems despite the progress which politicians tout. Like today’s America, Promise’s America reckons with its violent, bloody history, while grappling with the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Nevertheless, what Promise offers its readers, through Cinthy and Ezra’s experiences, which no headline can dilute, is hope. Promise is a potent tale in which good transcends evil, and love and grace conquer fear and violence.
FICTION Promise
Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Random House
July 11, 2023
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