Guest post written by We Rip The World Apart author Charlene Carr
Charlene Carr has published eleven novels. Her first agented novel, Hold My Girl, sold to HarperCollins Canada and three international publishers. It was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by CBC, shortlisted for multiple awards, and has been optioned for adaptation to the screen. Charlene received grants to write and revise her most recent novel, We Rip The World Apart. She lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia with her husband and young daughters.
About We Rip The World Apart: Weaving the women’s stories across multiple timelines, We Rip the World Apart reveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment and with the best of intentions, can have deep and lasting repercussions―especially when people stay silent.
Whether you’ve travelled to a new country, new school, new workplace, new neighbourhood, or nowhere new at all, but have ever felt out of place, I’m sure you can relate to the yearning to belong or questions about your identity.
Those questions may relate to race, orientation, age, gender, or your taste in music, but at the heart of each question is the fact that as humans, we want to know where we fit and that there are others who fit there, too.
I was a nerdy kid, quite overweight, the only girl in a family of boys, the only mixed-race person in my school, and in many circumstances growing up, the only Black kid, and so I’ve always been drawn to books that explore themes of identity and belonging. I often didn’t understand where I fit or what was expected of me, but when I sunk into a book where the characters felt the same way, and triumphed despite that, I always felt a little less alone.
So, it makes sense that I would write a novel where a number of the characters struggle with those same feelings, and that many novels that explore these themes have come to be some of my favourites. Below, you’ll find my most recent novel, (which I highly recommend!), two wildly popular books, just in case they’ve slipped past your radar, and three other gems you may not have heard of, but I wouldn’t want you to miss. If you’ve made it this far, pick up these books, and something tells me they’ll become dear to you, too!
We Rip The World Apart by Charlene Carr
We Rip the World Apart is a moving multi-generational family saga following the life of a young bi-racial woman, Kareela, pregnant with a child she isn’t sure wants, and struggling to make sense of and find healing from the generational trauma passed down to her through her family’s experience of the far-reaching affects of anti-Black violence.
As this “charged emotional epic” explores the “nuances of love,” it also delves deeply into questions of identity and belonging through characters who must understand who they are and where they fit before they can determine who they want be. (Marissa Stapley)
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vanishing Half is the story of identical twins who take on differing racial identities—one Black, one white—which leads them to lead extremely different lives. The sister who is ‘passing’ has chosen to live a lie, hiding her true racial background from everyone she knows and loves, even her child.
Spanning decades, the novel is a compelling, emotional read that kept me compulsively turning the pages as it explored questions of identity and the ways in which so many of us, either in small or massive ways, present multiple versions of ourselves as we search for a place to belong.
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
Black Cake is a multi-generational story that shifts between the past and the present as two siblings uncover the secrets of their late mother’s life. These revelations bring into question everything the brother and sister thought they knew about not only their mother’s identity, but their own, too.
Expansive and tender, Black Cake is an exploration of the intermixing of cultures and the ways in which the choices we make in an effort to survive and, maybe no less important, to belong, can ripple through the years.
Daughters of the Deer by Danielle Daniel
Daughters of the Deer relays the tale of Marie, an Algonquin woman of the Weskarini Deer Clan who is pressured to marry a French man in order to help keep the peace between the French and her people, and of her daughter Jeanne, who, caught between the expectations of being part white and part Weskarini also faces the challenge of being two-spirited in a French community who views that as not only unnatural, but sinful.
As both women’s stories unfold, we see their struggle to belong along with their yearnings to stay true to the identities that feel most genuine to them in this deeply beautiful and moving book.
Hollow Bamboo by William Ping
Based on a true story, Hollow Bamboo is the tale of William Ping the first—a Chinese immigrant who landed in Newfoundland in 1931—as told by a snarky spirit guide to Ping’s grandson William Ping the third. The two men’s lives couldn’t be more different, except that they both struggle with their identity and the desire to know where they belong.
A thoroughly engrossing read that, as well as being entertaining, informative, and delightfully funny, explores the complexities of sacrifice, heartbreak, family, and housing both the blood of the oppressors and the oppressed in one’s veins.
One Who Has Been Here Before by Becca Babcock
Inspired by the true story of the notorious Goler clan of Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, One Who Has Been Here Before is the engrossing story of a young woman who tries to ignore her own history until, despite her best intentions, that history begins to rise to the surface.
Intelligently written, with just the right amount of squirm in your seat discomfort, the novel challenges the reader to look beyond her preconceived notions, reminding us that our identity is not defined by our past or our families’ past, but by who we choose to be despite and in recognition of what has come before.
