Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez
Rainbow Milk has definitely been added to my list of 2020 books that are knocking it out the park 👏🏻 It’s so good to see wider representation finally happening in the publishing world!
This debut from Mendez follows the story of a young Black man who’s making a fresh start in London after being brought up in a Jehovah’s Witness household. Nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy turns to sex work in order to understand his own identity, his class, his culture and his own concept of love.
The first fifty pages of this novel are written in the Jamaican dialect of Norman Alonso, showcasing the struggles of the Windrush Generation and their move from the Caribbean to Britain around the 1950s. Immediately, the narrative explores blatant and ruthless racism. These first fifty pages are staggering because it slowed down my reading and challenged me to absorb a different accent which really drives home the message of change and understanding. Beyond these pages, Jesse’s story as a Black British man, scrutinised by a white step father, takes the forefront.
I’ve read a lot of reviews calling this a coming-of-age novel, which I agree with on some level, but it’s also a novel about what young people, young Black people, shouldn’t have to keep facing when they’re actually coming of age.
The narrative feels quite uncomfortable at times, but in the most powerful way. It isn’t indulgent and fantastical, it’s real and important. Rainbow Milk digs up what many mainstream novels don’t: sexually transmitted diseases, losing faith, male relationships and questioning sexual preference. The dialogue is stunning and the narrative is brutal and tender in equal measure.
A particular favourite moment for me is when Jesse listens to Joy Division’s Disorder for the first time:
‘Plosive drums at the beginning, pumping like the heart of a black boy being chased into a dark tunnel by white thugs . . . These were the echoes of his childhood . . . this was the sound of the streets, the factories and the warehouses’.
This book calls out to those who have faced injustice, the working class, the people who feel like they don’t belong. It’s really beautiful 👏🏻
Katie S x
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