Coffee Will Make You Black
By April Sinclair
Hyperion, 239 pages, $19.95
April Sinclair’s heartwarming first novel tells the story of a young black girl’s coming of age on Chicago’s South Side in the 1960s. In 1965, when the novel begins, Jean “Stevie” Stevenson is 11 years old, a girl so innocent that she does not know the meaning of the question “Are you a virgin?” posed to her in a boy’s note at school.
“Not exactly,” she replies, considering her small misdeeds, after finding the word defined in a dictionary as “pure” and “spotless.” A comedy of errors follows, in which Stevie’s straitlaced mother refuses to enlighten her, and the kids in the fast crowd try to pressure and then betray her.
The book’s themes are adolescent conformity and popularity vs. family teachings and morality, the relationship between social consciousness and racial politics, and the byplay between sexuality and friendship. The title comes from a saying Stevie’s mother remembers from her Florida childhood: “The old folks in the South used to tell that to children so they wouldn’t want to drink coffee. The last thing anybody wanted to be was black,” she tells Stevie.
The slogan “Black is beautiful,” which Stevie’s mother discovers spraypainted on a building in downtown Chicago, comes as a breath of fresh air and possibility, countering this pervasive prejudice against dark skin color among blacks and whites alike.
The events of the 1960s have been told and retold in fiction and nonfiction. What makes this account memorable is Sinclair’s ability to involve us in the conflicts and decisions that Stevie confronts.
She persuasively depicts adolescent confusion about sexuality, which Stevie finds both threatening and tempting. Pressures on Stevie to be sexually active grow more intense as she matures, and it becomes harder for her to resist them. She holds back, not only because of her mother’s preaching, her own fears and the disillusioning crudeness of the boys who try to seduce her, but also because of a deep disinclination within herself, which perplexes and troubles her.
Stevie is likeable, vibrantly drawn and believable. Secure in the affections of her family, she is a loving child. She longs to be popular yet finds it hard to make friends she values. Studious but no goody-goody, she has a quick wit and a sharp tongue. It’s a pleasure to watch her develop from the sweet little girl who says, “Grandma’s lap is my favorite place in the world” to the young woman who realizes that to remain true to herself she must move beyond the beliefs and prejudices of her friends and her family.
Sinclair creates other vivid and sympathetic characters who speak their minds. Here is Stevie’s mother, a serious, church-going bank teller:
“No matter what a man does, he can always get somebody. Baby, they got women who want to marry murderers on death row! It is still a man’s world, and don’t you forget it. I’m telling you this because I want you to be somebody.”
Stevie’s grandmother, who has come from being a maid back in Florida to owning Mother Dickens’ Fried Chicken, tells Stevie:
“The white man in the South is different from the white man in the North. In the South, a black person better not get too big, and in the North a black person better not get too close.”
Diane Horn, the white nurse at Southside High who becomes Stevie’s mentor, confessor and best friend, expresses her frustration at a black teacher who only wants to socialize when it is convenient for her:
“I’m supposed to forget you’re black on one hand, and then, on the other hand, I’m never supposed to forget you’re black. Is that it?”
This is a coming-of-age story with a twist. As Stevie begins to confront her realization that she is more attracted to nurse Horn than to her boyfriend Sean, she turns to her friends and family for support but instead discovers deep-seated prejudice and fear. Yet her love for Horn is a cause for joy in Stevie, and one senses that she will survive others’ disapproval. Told with earnestness and humor, “Coffee Will Make You Black” is a realistic, entertaining examination of a girl’s maturing and self-discovery as she prepares to find her place in the world.
