1. As it turned out -- I hadn't planned this -- I didn't go to Christy's for family dinner this evening. Carol texted me with the news that she and Paul had both caught colds and had (or had had) sore throats.
The message the transplant team repeats to me is that I can branch out, do more things out and about, but that I am to avoid the company of people I know are ill, especially if I can't wear a mask or establish distance from them. Since we can't eat with a mask on and since I was going to be fairly close to Carol and Paul, physically, if I joined family dinner, I didn't join in.
I played it safe, stayed home, and enjoyed the Pert Woolum 94th birthday dinner (may Dad Rest in Peace) of Swiss steak, dinner roll, canned green beans, green salad with Sunshine Inn salad dressing, and oatmeal cookie (I had to turn down the mashed potatoes, much to my disappointment) when Debbie brought it to me at home when she, Christy, Carol, and Paul wrapped up their fun time together.
2. I also hadn't planned on finishing Esi Edugyan's mighty adventure/fantasy/coming of age quasi-historical novel Washington Black, but I did. I joined George Washington Black, a teenager who escaped the brutal Faith plantation in Barbados and, for reasons I won't divulge, traveled to Virginia, the polar regions of Hudson Bay, Nova Scotia, London, Amsterdam, and Morocco. He confronts mortal danger, experiences romantic love, nourishes and puts into practice his prodigious talents and genius, and makes agonizing decisions at crucial moments in his young life.
As I read Washington Black, I kept having Charles Dickens' stories pop in my head because Edugyan has a gift for creating singular and memorable characters with deft concrete and often peculiar physical details and endows these characters with manners of speaking that are, again, singular and memorable.
In fact, I felt compelled to pull out Great Expectations during a break from Washington Black and as I read the first chapter, I felt like Dickens and Edugyan, while not cut from the same cloth, had similar gifts of creating vivid and detailed physical worlds, unique characters, compelling and surprising plots, and great sympathy for their central characters.
3. In 2022, Washington Black won the annual Canadian "battle of the books" contest, Canada Reads. (By the way, Esi Edugyan grew up in Calgary and studied at the University of Victoria and is now a resident of Victoria.) As part of the run up to Canada Reads, Edugyan was interviewed on a video by former Canadian Olympic swimmer Mark Tewksbury. Tewksbury would be the champion or defender of Washington Black in the competition.
Tonight, I watched this video.
Both Tewksbury and Edugyan made salient points about the book.
I greatly appreciated Edugyan reminding viewers that epic adventures like Washington Black's are thrilling external journeys into strange and challenging places, but that these epic journeys are always also inward journeys, journeys, she implied, of the soul.
What's most compelling about Washington Black's travels is how they contribute profoundly to his maturity, to his psychological growth, to his leaving childhood behind and becoming an adult.
He also journeys into freedom. Even as he escapes the bondage of slavery, Washington Black continues to live in other forms of bondage within himself and he must confront those things within him he remains enslaved to as he travels from place to place, country to country, climate to climate.
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