Perish | Watkins, LaToya

Lange Beschreibung
A brave triumph of a novel that readers won t forget long after finishing it. The New York Times Book Review

Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Good Morning America * Essence* Esquire * The Root * Bustle * Ebony * PopSugar * Ms. * The Millions

Finalist for the Reading the West Book Award

Longlisted for the 2023 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award

Bear it or perish yourself. Those are the words Helen Jean hears that fateful night in her cousin s outhouse that change the trajectory of her life.
 
Spanning decades, Perish tracks the choices Helen Jean the matriarch of the Turner family makes and the way those choices have rippled across generations. We meet four members of the Black Texan family: Julie B., a woman who regrets her wasted youth and the time spent under Helen Jean s thumb; Alex, a police officer grappling with a dark and twisted past; Jan, a mother of two who yearns to go to school and leave Jerusalem, Texas, behind for good; and Lydia, a woman whose marriage is falling apart because her body can t seem to stay pregnant.
 
Called home to say goodbye to their mother and grandmother, each family member is forced to confront long-kept secrets and ask themselves important questions about who is deserving of forgiveness and who bears the cross of blame. Set in vividly drawn Texas, this beautiful yet heart-wrenching novel explores the intricacies of family and the ways bonds can be made, maintained, or irrevocably broken.

This novel will serve as a hand extended through the darkness to a great many of its readers. Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Like Walker s The Color Purple and Toni Morrison s The Bluest Eye, Perish lures readers past the pain with a spellbinding, buoyant use of language. Texas Monthly

Miraculous and moving, light glimmers at the edges of this wise novel. Esquire

Rezensierung
*A Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Book for Fiction*

*Named one of BookBub s 16 Books to Read Over Labor Day Weekend and Ebony's Books by Black Authors That Should Be on Your Fall Reading List *

*Featured in Refinery 29's As A Young Black Mom, These Are The Books I Want To Pass Along To My Daughter *

Praise for Perish

'Watkins s prose is effortless and forthright. . . .This is an impressive feat of storytelling. . . . A tender story of silences and secrets. It s a novel about coming home, despite that home being broken. And it s a brave triumph of a novel that readers won t forget long after finishing it.'
The New York Times Book Review

Though painful, this beautifully crushing experiment in empathy and brokenness is worth experiencing. Watkins and Tiny Reparations Books have made a bold statement with Perish and will both be worth watching for what comes next.
Associated Press

Perish offers a moving look into Black communities, bringing complexity and nuance to this story of intergenerational trauma and the toll it takes on the human spirit. But for all the secrets, resentments, and bitterness here, Watkins has generosity of spirit enough to entertain the possibility of forgiveness; miraculous and moving, light glimmers at the edges of this wise novel.
Esquire

Expertly weaving alternating chapters littered with regrets, fears, and hopes, Watkins's poignant prose and powerful voice cement her as one to watch.
PopSugar

With Perish, Watkins joins a tradition of Southern writers who delve into the taboo and grotesque to expose a dark past and a dim, backtracking present. . . . Like Walker s The Color Purple and Toni Morrison s The Bluest Eye, Perish lures readers past the pain with a spellbinding, buoyant use of language.
Texas Monthly

With Perish, Watkins has shaken off the shame of the ultimate taboo and brought it to light through the story of the unforgettable women who bear its burden. This novel will serve as a hand extended through the darkness to a great many of its readers.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Perish [is] an important and emotional read for anyone who s had to reckon with their roots and the influence they have on their future. . . . Readers will discover their own strength and ability to move past intergenerational trauma and embrace their roots along the way.
BUST

This debut opens with the character that will become the matriarch of the book, swilling turpentine in an attempt at an abortion. These early pages made my whole body hurt for Helen Jean and for the world that we live in. Perish moves backward and forward in time, following the Turner children as they navigate childhood and adulthood as Black Americans living in Texas. There is deep trauma for all of them as they're forced to reckon with their past and the decline of the woman that held their family together. At times, there is stomach-flipping sadness in this book, but it also marks the beginning of what is sure to be a dazzling writing career for LaToya Watkins.
Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review Editor      

In this devastating debut, generational trauma has riven a Black Texas family, but the death of their matriarch may give the family a final chance to tell unvarnished truths to each other and maybe, finally, heal. Latoya Watkins s impassioned prose brings to life her complex characters and their heavy internal struggles, as well as the flawed, but overwhelming, love they feel for one another.
CrimeReads

With grace and aplomb, Watkins electrifies and shatters.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

[LaToya's] bold and captivating writing keeps readers floating through time, leaving us with thought-provoking revelations regarding healing that begins with loving and forgiving oneself before it can be extended to others.
Booklist

I d be hard-pressed to say what I admire most about LaToya Watkins s debut novel the nuanced, fully realized characters, the firmly rooted sense of place, or the author s fierce, elegant, and fearless prose. Perish is a heartrending story, urgently told, about family, trauma, and the salvific power of forgiveness and love. Helen Jean Turner and her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will linger in my heart for a long time.
Elizabeth Wetmore, New York Times bestselling author of Valentine

LaToya Watkins writes with a gaze that is warm and compassionate, but courageous and unflinching, refusing to look away from difficulty. Perish is a resonant debut novel, a robust family story told with beautiful cadences and textures. Watkins has a wonderful heart that animates every page from beginning to end.
Jamel Brinkley, author of A Lucky Man

The love LaToya Watkins has for her characters is evident on every page of this incredibly moving debut. Read Perish with a family member.
De'Shawn Charles Winslow, author of the prize-winning novel In West Mills

LaToya Watkins is a writer of undeniable talent and her debut novel, Perish, is a piercing family drama with characters who will stay with you for a long, long time.
Regina Porter, author of The Travelers

From the early pages of this novel, I knew I was in the hands of a master storyteller. Watkins stuns in this impressive debut about how trauma travels with us across generations. This story of family and forgiveness will stay with you long after the last page.
Nancy Johnson, author of The Kindest Lie

Perish is distressing, wildly unpredictable and entirely unforgettable.
BookBrowse


Buchausschnitt
The Flats, 1955

Helen Jean sat on the hole inside the musky outhouse and pushed her palms flat against the bench, willing her body to do the work she needed it to. She waited for the heavy knot to begin to throb and her bowels to break. For the familiar pain to erupt from the core of her stomach. She had followed all of Ernestine's orders, just like the first time. Nothing to eat all day but toast. Nothing to drink. Not even water. But all she felt was nervous.

She tried to remember exactly how it had happened before. Last time, she had been early on when she went to her cousin for assistance. This time, a tight knot had already formed on the inside of her belly, a knot that she was beginning to notice on the outside. A knot her father and three brothers had likely noticed, too. The one they all chose to ignore because it told each of them too much about who they were.

Ernestine had warned her, It might be too late, Helen Jean. Can't give you too much cause you be dead, too. Got to be just enough to ruin the seed but not you.

Helen Jean had prayed to the God of Moses that it would work. She reminded him that she had never gone to the Mr. Fairs Pleasure Gardens with the other girls and boys her age. She reminded him that she'd never sat on any of those benches, letting boys wrap their thick lips around her neck or touch her in the places that were meant to be secret. That she had been a good girl. Obedient to her parents, her father after her mother was dead. She promised God that if he spared her the hell of carrying the thing growing inside her, she would leave Jerusalem, Texas, and find a place where she could fully serve him. A place where no one knew her.

She inhaled and clenched her teeth and then let all the air out of her body in one powerful push. She couldn't hold the grunt, almost a scream, that came out with the push.

The last time she'd taken Ernestine's turpentine, her stomach had cramped up while she was serving her father and brothers turkey necks and beans. It happened just after she popped open her father's can of Hamm's beer. It was unlike the cramps from her monthly and felt more like the time she had drank too much castor oil to relieve herself of a bad case of constipation. She'd wrapped both arms around her stomach and almost toppled over right there. Without moving his head, her father allowed his eyes to shift to her from peering down at the spoon of beans hovering in front of his mouth.

She'd excused herself to the outhouse, which, unlike the one in her current situation, was a two-holer that her father had wired for electricity. The outhouse was the thing her father hated most about their shotgun house. He always complained about indoor plumbing and how it would never reach the blacks in the Flats because nothing was expanding for them, being built for them.

On that night, the last time it happened, Helen Jean sat down on the hole just when she thought her bowels would explode, and, to her surprise, she felt a slimy mass pass through her womanhood instead.

This time, however, nothing was happening. No horrible stomachache. No slimy mass. Just dry pushing, gas, and grunts.

'Did it come out?' she heard Ernestine's squeaky voice ask from outside the door.

She didn't answer. She turned her mind to Jessie B. It was setting in that she'd have to accept his marriage proposal. That she'd have to say yes to the nowhere man. She wanted to cry, but she just sat there breathing hard and staring in the direction of her feet. It didn't matter that she couldn't see them through the darkness. Just like the seed growing inside her, she knew her feet were there. If she had been her usual self, she would have been concerned about snakes being curled up in the corner of her aunt's outdated restroom. But she wasn't her usual self tonight.

She exhaled again and reached down to pull up her panties. Her chest began to tighten