Palwick, Susan - The Necessary Beggar

[oyceter]

I think this is one of the better books that I've read so far this year. I am of course being rather iffy in my statement because it's only June! There is still hope!

But this is a very good book.

Timbor's family has been exiled from Lemabantunk because his son Darroti murdered a Mendicant, a holy beggar. So Timbor, his sons, and their families all find themselves in the unknown land of Reno, Nevada in 2022. And here, Zamatryna, Timbor's granddaughter, starts a new life in which she must reconcile her few memories of Lemabantunk with becoming American.

I am really simplifying the story. But the book is about culture and immigration, on love and loss, on faith, on the ghosts of the dead, and on hope. I loved how Palwick uses the fantasy elements to literalize some of the problems of immigration. Timbor and his family are from a place that does not exist on the world; they are the only ones who speak the language and know their own customs.

Palwick also did a great job with the worldbuilding of Lemabantunk, so much so that when Timbor's family first arrives in Nevada, you experience the same shock that they do -- beggars here are not holy, and the souls of the dead are not necessarily in everything, so things are not blessed. I loved that Lemabantunk and Timbor's family are clearly not-white and that white America, so often the norm, is the Other, because we are always seeing it through Timbor, Darroti and Zamatryna's POVs.

I had a few problems with the ending and with the real story of what happened with Darroti and the Mendicant he murdered, particularly because the ending slots together so neatly. Palwick knows this, and it's part of the point, but I think I would have preferred something a little messier, without quite so many parallels. And sometimes, I felt as though Timbor's family's experience wasn't quite as complex as a three-generation immigrant family's would be -- I would have liked more on language and losing language, on identity politics, especially for Zamatryna and her generation -- but it's pretty good nonetheless. I also had a few qualms with the portrayal of Christianity, but they are also fairly minor. I think Palwick did a good job of showing that there are many different kinds of Christians and how each of them interacts with their faith and their God. It was only one end plot point that pinged my buttons, and I was generally ok with it because it was with one Christian character, not both.

But those are fairly minor nitpicks; I enjoyed this book a lot, and it made me think a lot. And dude! A book with POC! There are white people in it as well, but as secondary characters. They help, but the agency and sympathy and points of view all remain with the POC!

I liked most of all that it felt like the right mix of loss and hope for Timbor's family, because those feel like the central emotions when you move cultures.

Links:
- minnow1212's review (spoilers)

Comments

[penmage.livejournal.com]

I also loved this book. I found it beautiful and unexpected. It stayed in my head for a long time after I closed the last page.

[jesse_the_k]

What she said.

I particularly appreciated how the Americanized daughter is aware that she's a bridge between the two cultures, and yet doesn't feel the need to "make things nice."

[oyceter]

Yes, I really liked that too. And I really liked how she felt like she had to be happy and perfect for her family, to take advantage of all the opportunities -- that felt very real to me.

[oyceter]

Yes! It's very haunting in the best of ways.

[perkinwarbeck2.livejournal.com]

I also loved it. I loved their culture, and I loved the ways in which they could and could not hold onto it. And they were such great characters

[oyceter]

They really were great characters! And I miss Lemabantunk with them, which impresses me.

[cyphomandra.livejournal.com]

(hope you don’t mind wandering commenters, procrastinating on their own booklogs by reading other people’s) – I really enjoyed this as well. I’d completely forgotten the blurb when I started reading, and I loved that the family really are from another world, and both cultures, and the interaction, are so well drawn. It reminded me a lot of Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which is nonfiction about a Hmong family’s interactions with the American medical system - there’s a bit in there where an educator gets a family to line up in their traditional hierarchy (men and elders), and then line up again based on their experiences as first gen immigrants, where suddenly the youngest family members get the power by speaking English, and gender often switches as well. I thought Zamatryna was a great example of that.

I agree with you that the ending’s too neat, and one of my own buttons was having everybody be matched up in couples at the end (or almost matched up, clown-throwing aside); but they don’t go back, and they do think, and change. Very cool.

[oyceter]

Hi! Wandering commenters are very welcome!

Oh, I think you are the second person to mention that Fadiman book to me. I need to go find that.

I wanted a little more with language and generation gaps, namely because I know a lot of first-generation ABCs who don't have close relationships with their grandparents (myself included) because of that language divide.

And yeah, I really didn't like the love stories in the end. But I loved the book and the portrayal of immigration and class and all those wonderful things!

[cyphomandra.livejournal.com]

The Fadiman book is awesome. She also has a great book of essays - Ex Libris - about books, reading and her family, who are the sort of people who compulsively proof-read restaurant menus.

On the flimsy pretext of having two train journeys and only one book, I visited my local sf/f bookshop today and found a new Susan Palwick book; Shelter, about an intelligent house offering entrance to a homeless man in a storm, in a near-future US where such things are not done. It looks very good, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of how she examines class; there aren't a lot of sf books about beggars and homeless people.

[oyceter]

I read Ex Libris, but it actually turned me off a little -- I think partly because I didn't grow up in a reading family, and partly because there is this sense of snobbery underlying some of the essays.

Oh, yay new Palwick! I saw that and her short story collection at Wiscon, but didn't buy them... I should go and finally read my copy of Flying in Place.