In five essays, Edugyan explores the ways in which race is portrayed in art and storytelling all around the world.

She begins with art in Europe, investigating the ways that Black people were portrayed in paintings (when they were at all), such as using symbols to show the "other". "Canada and the Art of Ghosts" was an interesting look at the ghost stories that do - and don't - get told, what we are collectively afraid of and what we allow to be forgotten.

I was particularly struck by the middle essay, "America and the Art of Empathy", in which she takes on the idea of transracialism, briefly talking about "passing," but spending more of her time on folks such as Rachel Dolezal who was born white but self-identifies as Black. There was a lot to chew on there, and I highlighted this quote:

Perhaps all our arguments around transracialism come down to a larger social disconnect between the individual freedoms we all cherish and the authenticity we now demand of everything. We want to everyone to be able to live out exactly the lives they wish, for our children to grow up to be anything, for everyone to be free to experience their true selves. But we are also living now in a time when the concept of identity is fragile, and we put great stock in absolute authenticity. We ask that art transport us to places and into lives we could not have otherwise fathomed, but we also put fences around those imaginative acts, by demanding, for example, that only gay actors play gay roles, or that only Black writers write Black characters.

That resonates a lot with me, as it's a tension I find in my reading. I want to read diversely, and sometimes that means I notice when a book is all-white characters, but a lot of the time it means that I'm purposely seeking out books by people who are Black or Asian American or Latinx, and yes, I do look for a certain "authenticity" in that I don't want all the diverse stories I read to be written from a white lens. But, at the same time, I do think that a creative act should allow a writer to write about things they have not personally experienced. It can be a fine line to walk sometimes, and the lack of diversity in publishing with the decision-makers adds another layer to this.

Finally, in "Africa and the Art of the Future" she talks about Afrofuturism and her experience watching Black Panther, and "Asia and the Art of Storytelling" (possibly the weakest of the bunch, but still good) details her own story of traveling Asia and the challenging relationship China and Japan have with race, particularly in accepting Black people and why their attitudes are what they are.

There is a lot to unpack in this fairly slim book, but it's well worth the effort. ( )