House of Cotton

As one of my most anticipated books since I heard the premise and saw the cover, HOUSE OF COTTON by Monica Brashears ended up being a major letdown. Like I mentioned in a previous post, it was taking me a while to understand just what Brashears is attempting to talk about in terms of commodification of the Black body and how easily a White supremacist society can erase our humanity in order to fill their own desires, but I still had hope it would come together in the end and that the foundation was being laid for something great. Magnolia Brown is seemingly stuck making decisions she dreads simply because she’s poor, Black, and grieving, and forced to do weird work in order to pay the bills, but I don’t know that she has any actual character development or growth by the end of the novel. I kept waiting for her to have a moment of clarity, but sis was focused on all the wrong things. While I get that it was supposed to be the insidiousness of racism that’s the horror in this book, even that is rarely addressed but in pithy moments in Magnolia’s head, and the other elements of horror were just…meh.

What a ride! This book…..

I, like a lot of other readers, was really excited about this book. Literary horror is one of my favorite genres; Southern Gothic probably one of my favorite sub-genres. The title itself implies a LOT within the Southern Gothic context, so I was really, really excited.In an essence, this was a book about grief. I thought Brashears is really successful at detailing the intricacies of grief, clinging to the past, and trying to move forward but picking the wrong outlet to do so.What made this a challenging read is that I really struggled with understanding the *why*. The plot ambled along; it wasn't necessarily a plot, as much as a string of happenstances. It was hard to see how the main character was in the driver's seat of the story at times.Ultimately, the book ended without a satisfying conclusion. The end felt rushed with a series of very confusing implications.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS! I came to this book by way of NPR and its claim that the book is a “bizarre, uncomfortable read — in the best way possible.” I found the book odd but not in the sense of its story line. Hear me out: I never got into the book, never connected with the characters (except for Cigarette Sammy) but I did enjoy the dialect Brashears gave Magnolia. In fact, I found Magnolias manner of speaking very real and relatable. What was odd to me was that if I put the book down and came back to it the next day, I had to reread the last page of the previous chapter because I couldn’t remember what happened. My interest just wasn’t there, the story wasn’t sticking with me.The foundation of the plot was a very unique one and I think it had a lot of promise. Yet Eden and Cotton both fell flat, and well, cliche. Cotton, the brooding artist with a penchant for the macabre exhibits some inner conflict that I would have love to see elaborated on. Eden is the drunken, substance addled Aunt who at times teeters on relatable and interesting and at other times disappears in a vapid mish-mash of descriptors. She most piqued my interest towards the end when she challenges Magnolia to “Shut. Up.” It’s the most directly confrontational she had been with Magnolia and I wanted to see why the talk of haints had truly riled her up. But it wasn’t to be. In fact that was her last major moment in the story.The ending comes abruptly. Like Brashears grew tired of writing and one morning decided “thats a wrap” then projects us in time and gives some half-hearted recollection of Magnolia parting company with Eden and Cotton.Brashears has a very unique story-telling voice, don’t get me wrong. I can tell she has it in her to be one of the best contemporary fiction writers but it feels like she needs to slow down and analyze the story she’s writing, it’s characters and what we’re supposed to take away from it all. I do plan to reread the novel again down the road, perhaps I missed something but until then I felt like Cigarette Sammy as I read through this…

This was the May book for my bookclub. It is a very interesting story. The main character, and the only voice telling this story, is young and poor. She is trying to come to grips with her grandmother’s death, her mother’s drug abuse, her yucky landlord, her mother’s ex boyfriend, a special needs neighborhood young man, and a very wealthy white man and his dead uncle’s wife! Whew!!! It moves kinda slow when the main character, Magnolia, is trying to make sense of her life-decisions and her losses. This book has a lot of descriptions which draws out story. I kept waiting for a big climax, but I found none. I would’ve given a 4 rating if it didn’t end so abruptly. I’m left feeling like I missed something that I was supposed to get