BookLife Prize – 2020 Visibility : Plot/Idea: 7 out of 10 Originality: 7 out of 10 Prose: 7 out of 10 Character/Execution: 7 out of 10 Overall: 7.00 out of 10
Assessment:
Idea: Listen Mama is a memoir written as a series of journal entries addressed by the author to his mentally ill mother. As the eldest child, Williams, who suffered horrific scarring to his head and face from a burn accident in his infancy, navigates the chaotic waters of his mother’s mental illness, her frequent pregnancies and tumultuous relationships with a series of abusive men, and her financial irresponsibility which often leaves her children hungry or facing eviction, while also facing the challenges of bullying and mockery of the disfigurement left by his burns, compounded by the heartache and indignities visited upon children growing up poor and Black in America.
Prose/Style: The prose is polished, sometime to the point of being unconvincing in the early sections, where Williams does not always sound like a teenager addressing his mentally ill mother; the early journal entries too often serve as a vehicle for exposition. Williams finds his voice around the midway point of the book, emerging as a genuinely decent, warmly likable man doing his utmost to struggle through more tragedy and bad luck than any human being should be handed in a single lifetime, but always doing so with courage, humor and gallantry.
Originality: Some readers may be reminded of Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, when reading of the pain, disfigurement, and reconstructive surgeries the author endures after suffering severe burn injuries in his infancy. But these are secondary problems in his life, compared to the quotidian misery and anxiety engendered by life with an unstable single parent who has shot one ex-boyfriend and keeps a stash of guns around just in case she wants to shoot another.
Character Development/Execution: Williams’s emotional enmeshment with his severely mentally ill mother Selita is sadly typical of children who are forced by horrific circumstances to take on the parental role during their childhoods. Like many adult children who’ve gone through such an upbringing, the author is self-aware and self-critical, sometimes to excess, yet frequently self-sabotages due to a misplaced sense that he is the only one who can rescue his family, and from having involuntarily internalized the belief that he never comes first. Nonetheless, Williams grows in strength and stature as the book progresses, thanks to his intelligence, his humor, and his personal integrity.
Blurb: Williams emerges as a genuinely decent, warmly likable man doing his utmost to struggle past more slings and arrows of outrageous fortune than any human being should have to take on in one lifetime, and always doing so with courage, humor and gallantry.
Date Submitted: December 31, 2020