out of the darkness by ashley hope perez

Specifically, how do authors do justice to that pain? Does there exist a point of “too much”? If so, at what point does a story reach it? Can happy endings exist in stories rooted in racial and/or sexual violence, or do they demean the real lives of those who either lived through or died from it? Alternately, does the definition of a happy ending change when writing stories about pain, suffering, and loss? Out of violent, unjustified crimes against innocent people, is there anything to salvage? Anything that has the slightest chance of creating a better world?Īfter reading the book’s synopsis-a budding romance between teenagers Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller, a Mexican American girl and an African American boy, set in 1937 in East Texas against the backdrop of the Depression, Jim Crow laws, Texas’ own tripartite system of segregation between whites, blacks, and Latinos, and the New London school explosion, the deadliest school disaster in American history-I went into Out of Darkness knowing that either Wash or Naomi, or both of them, would be dead by the book’s end. Additionally this review discusses the portrayal of racial and sexual violence.Īfter I finished reading Out of Darkness, I started thinking about the different ways authors writing historical fiction construct narratives rooted in historic realities of violence and oppression.

Warning: this review thoroughly spoils the plot, especially the ending.

Out of the darkness by ashley hope perez