POMEGRANATE

Lee’s third novel returns to the terrain of The Serpent’s Gift (1994) as it follows a Black woman working to reunite with her children in the wake of addiction and incarceration.

After a four-year sentence, Ranita Atwater exits the Oak Hills correctional facility into a freedom that is shackled to her past. As Ranita seeks to shore up her sobriety and defend her parental status, she bumps up against memories from her former lives—her childhood as a girl with a loving Daddy and a Mama who found her wanting; her tumultuous relationship with Jasper, the father of her children, who introduced her to opiates; her descent into heroin addiction with David Quarles; and the blossoming joy of her love for Maxine, a fellow inmate. The novel alternates among these timelines, following the logic of Ranita’s memory. Each chapter-length flashback trades the first-person narration of the present-day sections for a third-person perspective. But as she opens up to state-mandated therapist Drew Turner, Ranita reveals the traumas at the core of her struggles with addiction. Throughout, Ranita speaks of racism and systemic injustice with awesome clarity. “In prison,” she tells Turner, “...you’re just breathing flesh that can house contraband, and cause violence, and run.” Also: “Being a commodity. Being bred….All of that’s echoing, day in and day out.” Diction is a central theme, as Ranita, a lover of words and facts, considers how men have used a nickname—Cherry—to define her according to their perception. The novel bristles with strong women, from aunties Jessie and Val to the inmates and sponsor who inspire Ranita to have faith in herself. Because it eschews plot twists for emotional reflection, the novel drags at times; but Lee’s handling of trauma is deft, and her portrayal of the carceral system’s cruelty is unflinching and empathetic.

The novel's slower moments are like a pomegranate's dull skin before it breaks to reveal a cache of jewels.