A Martyr Ramble

For Black August I have challenged myself to write everyday.  I am starting off the day before August begins in hopes that one can engage with discipline the same way physics works on a slingshot.  If I start the day before perhaps I will have built up a bit of momentum to increase the possibility that I will see the project through.  I am here to write about the book I just finished, Martyr!

Let me start off by saying that one day I would like to write for the New York Times book review.  For the New Yorker.  Sort of.  Being Black in America is so endlessly complicated with complicated of course being a euphemism for repetitive.  The New York Times and the New Yorker are historically the ops.  Why would I want to write for them?  But what is the other option?  Live my life in oblivion on this Substack getting progressively better and stronger as a writer and then dying so that in 100 years when you can wear a light jacket in Alaska during Christmas someone will discover my bounty and I will posthumously be hailed a great negro writer and thinker for my time?  I guess that would be ok but admittedly I’m a bit vain so if I get to choose between being published in the most revered publications alive or dead I’m going to begrudgingly choose alive. 

I read the New York Times book review for Martyr! It was beautiful, I can’t write like that yet.  Junot Diaz wrote it. He has a Pulitzer and a job teaching at MIT.  In the review he used words like indefatigable, exeunt and logophile.  It’s so funny because despite the words, and the Pulitzer and MIT he used the exact same format that was drilled into me by my fourth grade teacher when we were assigned book reports.  Start with a hook to get your reader interested, summarize the book, do you like the book why or why not.  That is quite literally what Diaz does in his review just with more advanced sentences and words.  It’s like taking twinkle twinkle little star and giving it to Jazmyn Sullivan.  

Martyr!  Follows Cyrus,a recovering addict and Iranian- American poet in his late 20’s. He hardly writes.  He’s stuck.  He’s sad.  His mother died when he was an infant, she was on an airplane from Iran to Dubai when the plane was shot out of the sky. Like a goose.  The United States was to blame, they thought it was a fighter jet. Oops.  There were over 60 children on board and over 200 civilians all together. 

This event shaped Cyrus’ life.  From childhood on he suffered from insomnia and night terrors.  His father did his best as a single parent to provide stability and structure but he spent the large majority of his time at the industrial chicken farm where he worked once he and Cyrus relocated to America.  Once Cyrus was reared and out of the house his father died.  He died in the way one dies once they're done needing to live. Emotionally relieved of their duties. Freshly orphaned,Cyrus starts obsessing over the idea of martyrdom.  He considers his parent’s deaths a waste and while he is occasionally suicidal he still wants his death, whenever it happens, to mean something.  He plans on writing all about it, in a book.  As he begins research he stumbles upon an Iranian artist who is doing an installation called “Death-Speak”.  She has cancer and has decided to die in a museum on display speaking with whoever is interested in connecting with her.  Cyrus makes the trip to see her and his life and perception of death is altered forever.

I have a propensity for drama but I think Martyr!  Is a masterpiece.  Grappling with grace, forgiveness and self indulgence is always a resounding yes for me.  Give those topics to a poet, a real poet and it's like giving Dave Ramsey a neurologist that’s 1.5 million dollars in debt.  We’re going to see some Michelin star level budgeting and writing.  The sentences. “A photograph can say “This is what it was.” Language can only say “This is what it was like.”’ “It happens like it does for anyone, fame.  Bullshit luck disguised as a lifetime of hard work.  But also vice versa.” The book was almost perfect. It was a bit too coincidental and neat at times and Roya’s backstory, Cyrus’ mother, felt impossibly absent of maternity but other than that tens across the board.  I think this is going to be my favorite read this year.