News/Press – Page 10 – Bridgett M. Davis

Brittle Paper: Into the Go-Slow “is as much an African story as it is an American story”

High praise from the site run by a Duke University Ph.D student in African literature! Here’s some of what Ainehi Edoro said about Into The Go-Slow:

Stories about African Americans going off to Africa in search of things past and lost have become familiar. But in Into the Go-slow (2014), American novelist, Bridgett Davis, breathes a new life into this classic motif.

And here:

Davis has a thing for space and setting. She is able to capture the spirit of a place with a poetic flair that I found to be a joy to read.

And finally:

As a Nigerian, Davis spoke to me. She took me back to what I like to think of as the weird ’90s. It was the decade of botched democracies, sky-high inflation, psychopathic rulers, and widespread panic.

Davis captures a good bit of what was so unsettling about the political climate, but she also captures the lighter mood of the decade—the obsession with Michael Jackson, American ballads, and what would end up being the last years of Fela’s life.

In Davis’ work, Africa is not this abstract idea. Her Lagos, her Kano bristles with abundant life, around which she weaves a lovely story about those small but lasting redemptions that only a sister’s love can bring.

Read the full review here.

Full Stop review

Here’s what this review site had to say about Into The Go-Slow:

By avoiding a convoluted plot and overwrought prose, Into the Go-Slow effectively highlights the difficulty of understanding the world’s many contrasts and contradictions while remaining extremely approachable. Davis’ coming of age narrative offers a needed contribution to the collection of stories that discuss the challenges of finding oneself amid all those who are already present.

Read the full review here.

Read For Pleasure’s review of “Into The Go-Slow”

Lit site Read For Pleasure had some wonderful things to say about the book. Here’s a quote:

From Detroit to Nigeria, Davis takes readers on a sometimes painful, yet engaging, journey. She captures the spirit of the late eighties; a Detroit beginning to crumble under Reaganomics, student activists’ newly found awareness of South Africa’s apartheid structure, and injustices around the world. She vividly paints a picture of Fela’s Nigeria as experienced through Ella and re-told to Angie. And she does it all masterfully.

Read the full review here.

Ebony previews “Into The Go-Slow”

Ebony Magazine included Into The Go-Slow in its September round up of new releases. Here’s what they wrote:

Into the Go-Slow (Feminist Press $16.95) by Bridgette M. Davis is a self-discovery adventure set between Detroit and Nigeria in the 1980s. The nostalgia is all there, from the Detroit that was to Fela-era Nigeria. The main character, Angie, has just graduated college and proceeds to backtrack her older sister’s life path in Nigeria through her letters back home up until the moment of her death via a car accident. The woman Angie was when first going to Nigeria is definitely not the one who comes back. Get into this tale of loss and understanding, and enjoy.

Read about this and other picks for September at http://www.ebony.com/photos/entertainment-culture/steve-harvey-acts-and-thinks-successful-111#ixzz3JuqVKh9T

Detroit Free Press Q&A!

Thanks to Anna Clark, founder of Literary Detroit, for the Q&A that she did with me. It just ran in yesterday’s Free Press. Nothing like getting covered in your hometown newspaper!

Here’s an excerpt:

QUESTION: How did this novel come to be?

ANSWER: It was fascinating for me to have written this. I did travel to Nigeria when I was young, similar to Angie in the book. And I too lost my sister when I was a senior in college, though clearly not the way it happens in the novel. But while the basic autobiographical pieces are there, the story changes. The first few efforts in writing the story, I felt like I was too close to truth. (The novel only took off) when I exploded the story by combining these two intense experiences by placing the sister in Nigeria — that’s where she needed to be.

I wanted to explore the fundamental themes about what it means to figure out who you are in the shadow of a loved one, in the way that you always define yourself against your siblings. Who are you when that person’s gone? I also didn’t want to give up the piece about a young African-American woman’s experience (in Nigeria) at a very particular time in history. It was not the ’70s, when “back to Africa” made it easy to figure out how to be part of it. I put (Angie) in a floundering time for all of us: the ’80s.

Also, I’m thrilled to note that Literary Detroit will be hosting my reading on Sunday, October 19 at Signal-Return in Eastern Market. Mark the date: More info shortly. Hope to see you there!

Read the full Q&A here.

Interviewed by Natalie Peart – September 10, 2014

Here’s my conversation with Natalie Peart. We covered a lot including:

– The challenges of writing Angie and Ella
– Portraying black male characters
– My becoming a writer
– How a writer knows when a novel works
– And much more!

The PSC/CUNY Op-Ed: “From Ferguson to Detroit”

For the September issue of the newspaper of the Professional Staff Congress/City University of New York, I had an op-ed published. Some excerpts:

And so the basic rights of more than ten million underprivileged African Americans are undermined by the limited resources allocated to them: those deemed worthy by a racist society receive the most, those deemed unworthy receive the least – and have the most exacted from them.

That is the backdrop against which, this summer, water was withheld in one place, a life gunned down in the other. No wonder that out of frustration and necessity, people in both Detroit and Ferguson – and in solidarity protests across the country – have taken to the streets to demand that their humanity be recognized.

Denial of common humanity has always been fundamental to white supremacy, throughout history. We can draw a direct line from the anti-slavery slogan, “Am I Not A Man And A Brother?” in the 19th century to this summer’s protests (“I AM a Man”) to see the pattern.

A life can be taken by the fast, brutal violence of a police bullet or a chokehold. But there is also the slower violence that can kill you just as dead, more gradually and in pieces – through poor health care, unemployment and bad housing, through denying you the resources you need to live.

Read the full op-ed on The Clarion’s site here.

KIRKUS REVIEWS CALLS INTO THE GO-SLOW ‘PARTICULARLY RESONANT’

A strong review of Into the Go-Slow in Kirkus Reviews.

“Davis (Shifting Through Neutral, 2005) explores the ambivalent, often troubling experiences of African-Americans in Africa through the lens of a young woman who, having grown up during the civil rights upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s, struggles to find her place in the world during the less idealistic ’80s……The difficult intellectual questions Davis raises about personal identity and an African-American’s relation to contemporary Africa are particularly resonant given Nigeria’s current woes.”

Duke’s New Black Man Calls It “A Page-Turner”!

What a great way to kick off publication date!

Into The Go-Slow was given a thoughtful review on the site run by Dr. Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of Black Popular Culture in the African and African American Studies Department at Duke University. The review on the widely-read site was written by Danielle Jackson. Here’s an excerpt:

Author Bridgett Davis has essentially inverted Americanah’s storyline. While Americanah focuses on a Nigerian-born Igbo woman who moves to the United States for university, stays to make a living and observes the paradoxes of American life, Into the Go-Slow allows us to experience the vast country of Nigeria through the eyes of an idealistic black American with an impossibly insatiable hunger for knowledge and who believes that travel to distant lands will enlighten her. I loved that Davis’ portrayal of Angela is full and that the character feels like a flawed, multidimensional human being on the page. Sometimes you want to shake her, other times you want to comfort her. Because of this careful, artful humanity and stunning, sensual depiction of Nigeria and Detroit in the 1980s, the book is a page-turner.

Read the full review here.

Bookslut: “A Compelling And Succinct Read”

Here’s what Bookslut had to say about Into The Go-Slow:

The narrative is deeply character-driven and the Mackenzie family, through their momentous joy and devastating heartbreak, showcases a stunning spectrum of the human experience. The communities of Nigeria are drawn with the utmost respect and care. Although the narrative is propelled by the political climate of Nigeria and the desolation of 1980’s Detroit, Davis ensures that the focus is on the plight of the novel’s heroine. Into the Go-Slow is a work that spans across continents, cultures, and time yet the author’s smooth execution makes for a compelling and succinct read.

The full review is here.