A Book for Black History Month in an Age of Black Erasure

Novelist’s defiant new work challenges the mainstream gaze

PARADISE, CA, UNITED STATES, February 12, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- With a new administration denigrating black and other minority presence as “DEI,” Black History Month takes on new meaning for author Leonce Gaiter. His glowingly reviewed novel, “A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom,” explores the black middle class from the civil rights '60s to the Reagan '80s through the eyes of its imposing protagonist. “The main character, Jessie Vincent Grandier, challenges every white and mainstream American preconception of what a black man is or should be,” Gaiter said, “as well as a lot of black preconceptions.” Gaiter considers the book a direct assault on America’s historical vision of black America.

Fiercely intelligent, Jessie knows himself to be at least the intellectual equal of the white classmates and workmates he encounters from Catholic elementary schools through graduation from Harvard. “As much as anything,” Gaiter stated, “I wanted to explore the intellectual development of a black child as he grows into a man. This character is very much a creature of the mind.”

Gaiter notes that in contrast to a great many novels with black protagonists who are creatures of their circumstances as black, Jessie creates his own circumstances, good and bad. “He assumes power, just like any white man,” Gaiter declared. “He is raised never to consider himself at anyone’s mercy. He is raised by striving black parents to internalize the belief that there is no tower to which he should not have access, no privilege to which he is not privy. He struggles mightily, sometimes fails spectacularly, and ultimately wins profoundly.”

African American writers have often discussed the impact of ‘the white gaze’ on their writing—how the assumption of white readers and their historic and cultural judgments can impact the work. This book seems to sidestep that issue. “Throughout this book, you are inside the protagonist’s head,” Gaiter explained. “The time-fragmented structure of the novel places you at the mercy of how he catalogs and processes the events of his life. Even the structure of the novel telegraphs that he is in control—not your image of what or who he should be.”

In an age full of attempts to erase black presence and progress at the highest levels of government and elite institutions, Gaiter considers “A Memory of Fictions (or) Just Tiddy-Boom” a fitting entry for Black History Month. “The book is a window into a young black man’s world,” he said. “No apologies. No holds barred. No consideration of the character you’d prefer to see. The book presents the world of a black man through his own eyes, and in doing so, puts the lie to so many mainstream, and too often racist, visions of who we are.”

Layne Mandros
Books Forward
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