Book Review: Cotton
Cotton. K. Yvonne Drew. Self published, January 30, 2014, Trade Paperback, 296 pages.
Reviewed by Stephanie Wilson Medlock.
In the opening pages of Cotton, an unnamed protagonist known only as the “traveler” is drawn to a dreary decaying house, and once inside is confronted by a hideously decomposing man and his horrible cat. The old man leads the traveler to the Dying Room where a magical candle burns at both ends. When that candle has melted away, he tells his visitor, the potential for African Americans to overcome the obstacles of 250 years of slavery and racism will die forever. As the aging demon puts it:
“Our journey will be complete soon enough. Nigras cannot continue to stand with such great pressures that cause them to collapse from within their own families and communities. A dying breed, a hopeless community; you see that?”
The candle drips wax onto the glass plate.
“The more she melts away, the less nigras are left to play. Hehe . . . it’s genius that she was crafted with two wicks instead of one. Nigras are always killing one another off or dying of some disease. It’s tragic, actually… to stand by and watch two generations of one race be erased at almost the same rate. That’s what she represents… the young and the old. The burning of Black America.”
With that, the reader is plunged into a series of scenarios, some set to look like television shows, others memories of the horrors of slavery, still others poems that describe some aspect of the Black experience.
Each chapter changes focus, moving dreamlike from one set of situations to another. Cotton delivers vignettes on many of the issues facing Black Americans, from ghetto crime and the way in which young people are killed in gang violence, to the lack of self-care that creates severe health problems for older African Americans, from internal disputes within the Black community on issues of how men and women should relate, to concepts of beauty, personal power, and self-respect.
While Cotton details these problems succinctly and often in an entertaining way (author Drew imagines a television series featuring six handsome African American young people whose interactions delve into social tensions and expectations within their group), the book also offers solutions to these problems. As an example, Drew imagines organizations designed to empower black men to be better husbands and fathers and to provide them with needed educational opportunities.
Periodically, the scenes shift back to the “traveler” whose life is threatened by the demon of ignorance. In this instance, ignorance is that lack of self-understanding and self-acceptance that leads people to make endless mistakes. At the center of the book is the question, “Do you know who you are?” The author suggests that African Americans will survive and prosper only when they attain the self-knowledge that helps them to develop a strong identity.
The book’s lack of a coherent plot structure will puzzle many readers, and the magical aspect of the demons facing the never named traveler can seem annoying and overblown. But there is a great deal of power and insight in this novel, which reads more like a meditation on the pressures challenging African Americans, than a novel with a standard plot and set characters.
Instead, Cotton flows like a sermon, exhorting the “you” in the reader to take control away from the forces that seek to perpetuate stereotypes of African Americans and destroy their will, offering instead an idyllic vision of togetherness, comfort, and solidarity.