In White Is for Witching, her third and most explicitly political novel, Oyeyemi interweaves the Gothic as used by Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson, the Caribbean myth of the soucouyant or “the wicked old woman who…consumes her food, the souls of others,” Haitian voodoo, and exclusionary British nationalism left over from World War II, all in an exploration of twenty-first-century racism. A mysterious house set in the chalky white cliffs of Dover serves as the central point of the action as Miranda and Eliot, twin protagonists, struggle to cope with the death of their mother. The house has its own voice, and is possessive, imposing its obstinacy on all others and asking, “Why do people go to these places, these places that are not for them?” Pica, Miranda’s eating disorder, forces her to compulsively eat chalk, an action that recalls both Dover’s white cliffs and her own “white white face.” Miranda’s subversive lesbian relationship with Ore, a black Nigerian girl, figures as the text’s ultimate instance of interracial twinning, reinforcing her proximity to “other” cultures: “Is it alright to say how much I like this…The way our skin looks together.”

Oyeyemi’s writing of queer sexuality is refreshing, rich with affection and light, and if the idea of reading about lesbian sex in a graveyard doesn’t make you want to read the novel, I’m not sure what will.

Natalya Din-Kariuki on Helen Oyeyemi @ Asymptote

How can you resist that beautiful cover?

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