A HATE CRIME IN BROOKLYN

A terrible crime in Brooklyn brings the lives of a Black man and an Albanian immigrant woman together in Secular’s novel.

In 1996, 15-year-old Sofia has just arrived at New York City’s JFK airport from her small mountain village in Albania to meet Edward Hushemi, her new husband—as arranged by her parents and Edward’s powerful, dangerous brother, Victor. While Edward strives to be kind and understanding toward the frightened Sofia (“I’m going to try and take good care of you”), he is afflicted by PTSD resulting from his service in Iraq and the stress of pleasing Victor. Despite Victor’s repeated remarks that Sofia should avoid Black people in their downtown Brooklyn neighborhood, Sofia befriends a Black woman named Angela at the laundromat, happy to finally have a confidant in her new home. As the years progress, Sofia has a daughter and comes to accept her new life. In 1989, Sylvester Stanley is only 9 years old when he sees a gun for the first time in his neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn. Sylvester tries to escape his harsh reality of violence, poverty, and drugs by immersing himself in art, but the need for money and acceptance eventually puts crack cocaine on his path and lands him in jail. In 2016, Sylvester has been granted a supervised release and returns to Brooklyn to restart his life, but a chance encounter with Sofia and Victor’s thugs will change all of their trajectories and set the stage for an explosive trial that raises issues of race and community. The author hinges Sofia and Sylvester’s stories on notions of intersectionality as each character grapples with their place in a violent society as an immigrant or person of color. (This is especially true within the arc of Sofia and Angela’s friendship, which takes on a surprising queer dimension.) The competing perspectives and communities Secular has created with these characters result in a rich, complex tapestry of differing viewpoints. However, the book’s staggered structure (the story moves awkwardly back and forth in time) and protracted exposition leech momentum from the narrative. It’s only when these parallel lives finally start intersecting that the most compelling aspects of the work come to light.

Despite a long and choppy introduction, Secular’s vibrant and diverse characters shine through.