We Rip the World Apart by Charlene Carr

When 24-year-old Kareela discovers she's pregnant with a child she isn't sure she wants, it amplifies her struggle to understand her place in the world as a woman who is half-Black and half-white, yet feels neither.

Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child, Antony, during the politically charged Jamaican Exodus of the 1980s, only to realize they'd come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion a constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily.

Years later, in the aftermath of Antony's murder by the police, Evelyn's mother-in-law, Violet, moves in, offering young Kareela a link to the Jamaican heritage she has never fully known. Despite Violet's efforts to help them through their grief, the traumas they carry grow into a web of secrets that threatens the very family they all hold so dear.

Back in the present, Kareela, prompted by fear and uncertainty about the new life she carries, must come to terms with the mysteries surrounding her family's past and the need to make sense of both her identity and her future.

Weaving the women's stories across multiple timelines,We Rip the World Apartreveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment and with the best of intentions, can have deeper repercussions than could ever have been imagined, especially when people remain silent.(From HarperCollins)

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Named a Black writer to watch in 2023 by CBC Books,Charlene Carr is a Toronto-raised writer and author based in Nova Scotia. She is the author of several independently published novels and a novella. Her first novel with a major publisherisHold My Girl.

From the book

Breathless, the liberated curls I'm still learning how to take care of frizzing in the heat, I arrive at Spring Garden Road, just between the entrance to the Public Gardens and Victoria Park. My heart pounds from the exertion, but also from the fact that I'm here at last, doing what my father wanted to do in his final days.

I'm 15 minutes late two years and 15 minutes having missed the time for racial solitude, to sit and memorialize not just the loss of a life that's brought us here today, but all the losses before and after, and the crowd is growing by the minute. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. A sea of Black and Brown faces. Other faces, too. Every colour, every ethnicity. But it's the Black and Brown that strike me. More than I've ever seen congregated in the city, more than I knew existed. The streets are blocked off, with only police cruisers anywhere in sight on the road ahead. I push myself toward the front of the massive crowd, knowing that's where Jasmine will be, but with her nowhere in sight, I pull out my phone. Before I have a chance to dial, a hand lands on my shoulder. I'm spun and embraced. I step back to the sight of her in a T-shirt displaying a fist similar to the ones in her text.

"You better?" Jasmine looks at me, head cocked to the side, hands on my shoulders.

When I nod, fighting to conceal the fear and uncertainty welling within me, she nods back, then grabs my hand, drawing us through the crush of bodies. Before we've reached the front, the march begins. Hands still clamped together, our arms raise in the air. Our voices, too, in unison, not just with each other, but with all the voices around us. Chanting words that are more than chants. More than a plea. A battle cry erupting through our throats: not just our voices, but the voices of our parents, our grandparents. Our grandparents' grandparents' grandparents.

A battle cry erupting through our throats: not just our voices, but the voices of our parents, our grandparents. Our grandparents' grandparents' grandparents.

NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE.

BLACK LIVES MATTER.

NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE.

BLACK LIVES MATTER.

As we pass one block, then another and another, and turn onto Barrington Street, the thrum in my chest syncing with the rhythm of our voices is like nothing I've ever felt. The whole experience like nothing I imagined. The tears. The joy. Connection. I thought I'd feel guilt shame that this is my first time. I thought I'd feel like an imposter.

Instead, I feel known.

We turn into Grand Parade, where a stage, the type usually used for concerts, is set up. I'm uncertain if everyone will fit but, almost as if it's been scripted, it's the Black and Brown bodies that enter the space, the others waiting, allowing us room. As I move forward, Jasmine still beside me, all that fear that kept me away until now, the things I'd seen on television rubber bullets, tear gas, barricades and the things I knew of more intimately, seem a world away. There is none of it. Instead, peace. Camaraderie.

Mostly.

As we find a spot in the crowd, my gaze falls upon the officers lining the sidesthere to ensure the protest remains peaceful and the eyes of at least three of them hold what I dreaded: the desire to step out of line, to attack. These officers, one young, one old, one middle-aged, gaze at us as if they itch to pull out their clubs, bash them against us. See the blood flow.

Yet they stay still.

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I tear my gaze away, telling myself I'm seeing things, that my mind's recreating the look I imagined on the faces of three other officers. With the thrust of the crowd, I move forward, until they're out of sight and the people around me still chanting, singing, gyrating almost out of mind.

A man steps onto the stage, others behind him. He comes to the centre, and a hush settles. The others, five on each side, flank out in a motion that feels choreographed, imitating the motion of birds in flight. The man takes a knee, and two by two, so do the others. So do we. A screen I've only just noticed blinks to life. A countdown. Eight minutes and forty-six seconds.

Sobs, choking breaths, stifled gasps fill the air, mixing with the distant whir of cars in the unblocked streets. My chest shakes, my eyes burn, as the minutes, then seconds, count down. Then we standall of usrefusing to be held down any longer, feeling empowered, feeling as if we've taken something back.

And yet ...

My throat is closing, pushing away that joy, that connection that existed just minutes ago. I came. I marched. But nothing tangible has changed.

I came. I marched. But nothing tangible has changed.

The man on the stage speaks, though I only catch snippets the way the city painted Black Lives Matter on the street without involving the Black community, how these decisions need to be in our hands. How words are great, but action, systemic change, is what's needed. I try to focus, but the thought that nothing tangible has changed pulsates, drowning out his words. And then the question: Will it ever?

Antony marched. Antony spoke on a podium. But still we're here.

Because of another death. Because of so many. There are more words, more speakers, but all I hear is my own mind's refrain. Will it ever? Will it ever? As the rally comes to a close, the joyous energy around me clashes with the sudden defeat and anger that crushes through me.

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I'm bumped and jostled, as all these bodies attempt to clear the space, and I lose sight of Jasmine, who I suddenly want desperately. Another one of my coworkers grabs my hand. "Why weren't you up there?" She's grinning, her expression euphoric. Like this is fun. Like we're accomplished something. "You should have been up there!"

Not noticing the way my body goes rigid, she raises a fist before being swept away in the dispersing crowd. "Challenge the state! Challenge the system!"

I stare blankly. My heart pounds.

Antony stood tall before a crowd.

"Kareela."

I swallow, a blast of fear coursing through me as I picture those eyes. Feel the hate. Know that despite our protest, this rally, truly nothing has changed. Because we can't refuse. Not when it counts. That, after all, is the reason we gathered. When they decide to hold us down, they hold us down. When they decide to shoot, the bullets fly.

Excerpt from We Rip The World Apart by Charlene Carr 2024. Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Interviews with Charlene Carr

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