On the steps of New York's City Hall, five ageing Mothers sit in silent protest. They are the guardians of the vogue ball community - queer men who opened their hearts and homes to countless lost Children, providing safe spaces for them to explore their true selves.
Through epochs of city nightlife, from draconian to liberal, the Children have been going missing; their absences ignored by the authorities and uninvestigated by the police. In a final act of dissent the Mothers have come to pray: to expose their personal struggle beneath our age of protest, and commemorate their loss until justice is served.
Watching from City Hall's windows is city clerk, Teddy. Raised by the Mothers, he is now charged with brokering an uneasy truce.
With echoes of James Baldwin, Marilynne Robinson and Rachel Kushner, Niven Govinden asks what happens when a generation remembered for a single, lavish decade has been forced to grow up, and what it means to be a parent in a confused and complex society.
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[We had a church here: on the steps of City Hall, waiting for answers they were reluctant to give]***
(Dialogue Books, 6 June 2019, 304 pages, paperback, copy from @AmazonUK #AmazonVine)
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I thought this book was incredibly sad. It weaves back and forth between three keys players. The first key characters are the women who offered queer youths a roof over their head when nobody wanted them who have reached the end of their tether because some kids have gone missing and nobody seems to care. The third voice I struggled with, known in the book as a vogue caller who is a narrator at vogue balls and the language used in these sections is hard to understand at times. The third key player is Teddy, who was raised by one of the mother's and works at City Hall, torn between professional loyalty and his emotions. I found the vogue caller sections difficult to really understand and this had a negative impact on my enjoyment of the book. For example the word walk is repeated for seven full pages and I couldn't see the point to this. This was mixed read for me.
