Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile (review)

384 CLA JOURNAL Book Reviews Natalie Baszile, Queen Sugar. New York: Penguin, 2014. 372 pp. ISBN: 0670026131. Paperback: $16.00 In the ground breaking debut novel, Queen Sugar, Natalie Baszile has chosen a large canvas on which to paint the characters she creates. Her novel contains a number of characters that are essential to the development of not only the story, but also the development of Charley Bordelon, the heroine of this compelling story. The motivating influence in the life of Charley, the young, emotionally scarred, thirty-four-year-old widow, is her desire to make her life mean something. Charley, along with her opinionated grandmother, Miss Honey, and her elevenyear -old daughter Micah, leave Los Angeles to travel to Saint Josephine Parish in southern Louisiana to run a sugar cane farm. The eight-hundred-acre sugar cane farm Charley inherited from her father, after his long and hard battle with cancer, is Charley’s second chance to make a success of her life. Because she has spent a huge part of her life as a struggling art teacher, Charley feels, the “move will be good…an adventure…a fresh start” (8). However, once Charley realizes it will take more than she had mentally, physically, and emotionally, she feels like a girl who “keeps losing things” (14). Charley’s struggle to maintain the farm is filled with labor and financial problems, but several broken relationships that threaten to tear her family apart as well. Ralph Angel, Charley’s surly, older half-brother has been estranged from the family for years. A widow and a father of a six-year-old son named Blue, Ralph Angel feels bitterness toward his father and this bitterness is the cause of the deterioration of his relationship with his sister, and ultimately the damage of the relationship between Miss Honey (Ralph’s grandmother) and Charley. Another relationship that is at the forefront of this novel, and the center of Charley’s search for happiness for herself and her family, is the one she has with her daughter Micah. Micah is the most complex character in this novel. After being severely burned (because of Charley’s negligence), Micah spends much of her young life dealing with the emotional and physical scars created as a result of her injuries. Her pain is so deeply rooted she spends her days at the farm taking pictures of beautiful things because she no longer sees beauty in herself. Probably the most telling relationship in the novel is Charley’s love affair with Remy Newell, a white sugarcane farmer. Race is such a central issue in this book that is hard to understand why Baszile choses a white love interest for Charley. Charley is constantly mistreated and looked down upon by white, male sugarcane farmers, but she is secure in herself and the color of her skin to face all of the racial issues. Thus, when race becomes an issue between her and Remy, Charly who is comfortable with her blackness confronts the issue without hesitation. After Remy makes a comment that Charley is not like ‘other black people,’ she fires back with a CLA JOURNAL 385 Book Reviews powerful response. She tells Remy,“every morning when I wake up and look in the mirror, I see a black face, and I love it…I am black Remy, which means everything and nothing” (282). Baszile opens up the discussion of race and throughout the novel the reader sees the effects of racial differences. Even though Baszile’s novel is a poignant story with captivating characters, there are a few characters that are underdeveloped. Micah, for example, is an extraordinary girl faced with even more extraordinary issues.And even though her problems are discussed, there is no‘true’end for her. Micah is unsure of her beauty, her skin color, and even her self-worth (as is shown in her disturbing reaction to the white Queen Sugar and her all white court). Even after Micah is given an opportunity to be included on the float with the all-white court, there is not a clear ending for her, and the is reader left with questions about whether or not her identity issues...