Stigmata

By NADYA LABI

How do you survive a legacy like enslavement? It takes Lizzie DuBose 20 years, most of them in an asylum, to recover from the inheritance she receives in 1974: her grandmother Grace's quilt and the diary of her great-great-grandmother Ayo, a slave. "I come from a long line of forever people," reads one entry. "We back and gone and back again." Ayo's restless spirit twice returns, once with enough violence to drive Grace from her family, and again during Lizzie's teenage years. This leads to convoluted identity politics, for the dead Grace also inhabits Lizzie's body. Soon, Lizzie is waking to African dust between her sheets, the rolling of a slave ship and her own blood seeping from torn flesh. Although Perry has clearly read her Toni Morrison, her insights into slavery are no more piercing than, say, Steven Spielberg's in Amistad. But to be fair, this debut novel is not really about remembering that peculiar institution; it's about healing relationships between mothers and daughters. The twist: Lizzie is both daughter and mother.

--By Nadya Labi