After A Country of Ghosts introduced me to the Black Star series by AK Press, I decided to dive into Grievers by adrienne maree brown. It is a decidedly different story that focuses heavily on the nature of grief and loss in a community devastated by a plague. I know a lot of stories I choose to focus on are not for the faint of heart, but I mean it doubly here, so tread lightly.
Dune’s mother is patient zero in a new plague, H-8, that is ripping through the neighborhoods of Detroit. Those who contract it become immediately unresponsive until they die. No one can figure out what is causing it or how to stop it. Those who can flee the city find their escape before a quarantine sets in. However, Dune is not so fortunate and has to learn to live within the slowly dying city. As the days go on, she learns how to survive just enough that she can spend time researching the disease herself. Using her father’s old model of the city in her basement, she begins to track the areas H-8 has ravaged. She runs across others who are just as curious, sometimes forming bonds, but more often than not just passing by. Can Dune find a way to survive and maybe find a bit of hope?
Grievers is the first book in a trilogy, and that might make it a little harder for some people to digest. Brown spends the entirety of the short novel’s length digging into the enormity of the situation in Detroit. It is brutal and saddening the way she portrays the city and the people who inhabit its poverty-stricken margins. There are no reliable services, the community has been torn apart by both decades of neglect and the recent plague, and so many are succumbing to the disease. It’s deftly handled by brown’s writing, though, as there are moments of pure poetry that capture the dread and the anxiety that Dune encounters. There are small moments of levity and agency peppered throughout that make the walk through the devastation easier to take in. But you still have to take it all in, and brown succeeds at making the problems clear.
Dune herself is a great protagonist in the situation. She feels lost and overwhelmed but has a conviction to make it through and understand the world before her. She was raised by community leaders and activists who had been fighting the tides for decades. That her mother was patient zero is a major blow, and thematically sets the stage for what lies ahead. Dune’s ability to muscle through some days, while being absolutely drained on others feels real and earned. Even the days she gets through, it feels like she barely makes it. I also appreciated her journey of discovery, learning how to live in this emptier world with even less access to goods than she previously had. Her adventures gathering food and materials for jarring and canning, and then morphing those escapades into a research project was delightful even when the downers busted their way in through the door.
Dune also makes the whole experience feel real because she herself isn’t particularly suited for the situation. She is not some extraordinary prepper waiting for the end of the world. She’s just existing, and despite her ability to adapt, it feels like she makes due because she can just exist. Survival is necessary, sure, but for most of the book it doesn’t feel like she is hanging on to just prove to the universe she can, she just does. It makes the devastation feel so heavy and inescapable. So when she comes across others who have not yet succumbed to the disease, they are all in various stages of their lives as well. Better suited or not.
But where Grievers really shined for me is in Dune’s spiritual journey, for lack of a better word. She builds upon and expands a shrine for her father in the basement, including her mother, and keepsakes from others who died. While her life wasn’t particularly amazing before this, it’s a chance for her to truly see the way society had already sidelined her community and the neighborhoods surrounding Detroit. She looks it square in the face, again and again trying to understand it all. She cares for the dying, reports them to others who might care where possible, and lives in it. It’s brutal, but effective in seeing the ways that people have to learn to care about those around us, no matter their situation.
If it isn’t apparent already, just by title alone, Grievers is not a happy book. It doesn’t even end on a hopeful note. It just sort of ends. And I really appreciate that about the story. It leaves room for work to be done in the other stories. It also lets the reader truly sit with the magnitude of the decay and the disease. It is a space to grieve for all of the things that have been to communities like Dune’s across the country, and across the world. To end with hope would have felt false, which makes me more interested in seeing where brown takes the next book.
Rating: Grievers – A Funeral To Be Present For
-Alex
