Welcome BACK to BOOKSPO! This time I’m talking to novelist Charlene Carr (“the Canadian Jodi Picoult,” in case you didn’t know) about her new novel WE RIP THE WORLD APART, and how her bookspo was David Chariandy’s 2018 memoir I’VE BEEN MEANING TO TELL YOU: A LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER.
Charlene talks about how David Chariandy’s memoir gave her permission to write the story she needed to tell, why she chafes at the ideas that she’s obligated (as a person of colour) to “fix” racism or that all her work must concern race, how “racial identity is so rarely a matter of personal choice,” and the ways in which ideas about reproductive justice are interwoven with all of this.
About WE RIP THE WORLD APART:
A sweeping multi-generational story about motherhood, race and secrets in the lives of three women, perfect for readers of Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half and David Chariandy’s Brother
When 24-year-old Kareela discovers she’s pregnant with a child she isn’t sure she wants, it amplifies her struggle to understand her place in the world as a woman who is half-Black and half-white, yet feels neither.
Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child, Antony, during the politically charged Jamaican Exodus of the 1980s, only to realize they’d come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion—a constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily.
Years later, in the aftermath of Antony’s murder by the police, Evelyn’s mother-in-law, Violet, moves in, offering young Kareela a link to the Jamaican heritage she has never fully known. Despite Violet’s efforts to help them through their grief, the traumas they carry grow into a web of secrets that threatens the very family they all hold so dear.
Back in the present, Kareela, prompted by fear and uncertainty about the new life she carries, must come to terms with the mysteries surrounding her family’s past and the need to make sense of both her identity and her future.
Weaving the women’s stories across multiple timelines, We Rip the World Apart reveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment and with the best of intentions, can have deeper repercussions than could ever have been imagined, especially when people remain silent.
CHARLENE CARR lives in Nova Scotia with her husband and daughter. She has published nine novels and recently received grants from Arts Nova Scotia and the Canada Council for the Arts to write her next one.
Episode Two: Charlene Carr