The student who introduced Angela Flournoy started by reading some of her tweets. Not just random tweets, but a particular set where Flournoy had attempted to describe a group of teenagers in a store. Her suggestions included such quips as “a selfie of teenagers,” “a snapchat of teenagers,” “a whatever of teenagers,” and many more. But the point of these descriptions was not to create some witticism or remark about the age of vain and vapid teenage wasteland we are living in–in fact, the goal was quite the opposite. Flournoy sought to find a term to describe the teenagers that was reflective but not judgmental. She wanted a way to capture what they are without a condemnation or negative connotation. This idea of truth without judgement is present throughout her work.
When Angela Flournoy took the stand, she talked for a few minutes about why she chose Detroit as the setting for her novel. According to her, Detroit is a rare kind of place: a city where everything is changing and falling apart, where the home you grew up in or the store you used to visit is simply not there anymore. And unlike other areas, this isn’t because something replaced it, something new and shiny, something to tender the loss of the old–no, now there is nothing but weeds and cement. Detroit is unique because it is place of vacating and decay where nothing grows anymore. For Flournoy, this particularly interested her as a place of change. For most of us, when things change, they don’t really change completely, there are always elements of the old remaining. When we walk of the old neighborhood changing, we might mean that a new group of people moved in and the old moved out, but we rarely mean that the neighborhood just isn’t there anymore. As Flournoy said, the demographics might change but the physical reality hardly does. And this was the idea that she wanted to explore in her book, The Turner House: how do we cope with memories when there are no physical landmarks.
She read from only one section, a chapter titled “Motor City, Friday Night.” This chapter involved Lelah, the youngest of the Turner family and also currently homeless, visiting a casino she frequents. Lelah has a gambling addiction (part of the reason she’s homeless) and spends part of the night watching a woman win at a roulette table. When the woman wins, she gives Lelah a chip before exiting the casino herself and with this chip, Lelah goes over to her own roulette table and with the skills and knowledge she’s picked up during her addiction, she transforms that $20 dollar chip to $300. She considers walking away and enjoying herself in a hotel room for a week, and she almost manages to, but addiction is a beast not easily beat, and she thinks of what she could do with just a little bit more money, another week off the streets and–she loses most her money in a quick spiral down.
The reading was short, as that was the only section she read. From the beginning of the introduction to the end of Flournoy’s reading, the whole thing was over in half an hour. I didn’t find the reading or perhaps the prose itself particularly engaging, but I thought that Flournoy’s ideas on memory and physical reality had great potential and if The Turner House spends time pondering these things, it might be a really spectacular book. Angela Flounroy will be back on campus for the Voices of the Middle West literary festival on March 12th, so if you’re interested in seeing her speak, check it out.
