Lucky Boy

What impressed me most about this book was how in tune I felt with each character’s mind set.  I think it can often be difficult to explain to the reader why a character is making a certain choice, why they felt the need to do something or forget about something that the reader is still stewing in.  The author expertly puts us into the character’s thoughts and feelings at the time.  The author builds an environment of the character’s own logic, as surely as they write the landscape.  When Soli is assaulted on page 120, I wasn’t surprised that Soli wasn’t expecting an attack.  “Soli heard his footsteps but thought nothing of it…Any other day, she would have pissed her pants and run…cradled in daylight, she felt she had nothing to fear.” (Sekaran 120).  It’s clear how and why Soli was taken by surprise, how this isn’t like “any other day.”  I didn’t have to wonder how a character who was so on edge let a few hints of what’s coming slide by her, because that isn’t the point of the passage, and it was clear what she was thinking and what she understood of the situation at hand.  I think when characters go through these kinds of events, because it’s so shocking, it’s very important to add extra context for the reader, since seeing a character get hurt is something most readers shy away from.  I think the author has to work extra hard to position the scene and have it make sense to the reader, even when there are no good reasons for violent acts.  As horrible as that scene was, I didn’t question what happened as unrealistic or out of nowhere.  The violent nature of the men was well established and Soli’s confusion, even after she’s been alert and resourceful at avoiding other dangers, was clear.      

The way that Rishi and Kavya’ love for one another was slowly unfolded was very interesting.  At first I wasn’t sure how strong their relationship was, “In the old days, Rishi would have pulled over and inspected the air-conditioning himself…Those were the days when they’d first met…” (Sekaran 10).  I took this to mean that their affections for one another were seriously fading, but later on I had a strong belief in their devotion to each other.  I felt that a question was posed at the beginning, why does Rishi love Kavya?  Slowly, after many pages, Rishi thinks about why he loves her, “His Kavya wasn’t helpless…He’d fallen for Kavya because she moved straight and strong as a bullet.” (Sekaran 81).  I liked this slow build up, because I had never stopped wondering why, and it was important to withhold this answer for a relevant time between Rishi and Kavya, so the reader can better understand Rishi and what he’s dealing with.  Their love slowly blooms across the pages, and I became more and more sure of it as the book continued. 

I thought Soli’s flashbacks to her journey to the U.S. was paced in such an excellent way.  Just when I wanted to know more about what happened, a flashback would pop up, and then end, ushering me back to her life in Berkeley when I had had enough and wanted to return.  I think it was a great decision to split up her story about crossing and it helped keep my attention fresh and my curiosity about Soli keen.  I think telling the crossing and then the time in Berkeley would not have done justice to her story and the connections between each would not have seemed so clear.

 I was impressed with how the author was able to describe things like towns and clothes and not be boring.  Santa Clara Popocalco is described from within the town, geographically, and by weather, and I was never annoyed or bored by these descriptions, which is really hard to do.  On page nine, I found myself fascinated by Kavya’s sari, the embroidery, the colors, the cut.  I often find writing about outfits a chore, a necessary evil sometimes, but here the clothes, as well as the character, are brought to life in a way that I wanted to keep reading.             

-Iris

Lucky Boy brings to light the impossible tasks society gives its most vulnerable members for those members to prove they are worthy of the most basic of rights. This is made abundantly clear with the courtroom scene on page when Kavya and Rishi are seeking continued custody of Ignacio. Soli has been prevented from calling in to the hearing and the detention center will not allow her lawyer to speak to her. She has been prevented at every turn from fulfilling the tasks set out in the reunification plan so she may have custody of her own child. The judge expresses some sympathy, but, in the end, places a higher value on the law than on the morality of the situation. He gives custody to Rishi and Kavya because, though it is clear the reunification plan is impossible, he still asserts that it must be fulfilled.

Sekaran does not shy from the ugliness Soli faces both as she immigrates to the United States and when she is held in detention. She is raped and starved and humiliated. As she is prevented again and again from doing what is legal, she finds a way to do what is possible (though horrifically difficult). She may not have been able to fulfill the reunification plan, but she escaped detention and reunited with her child. She had grit.

And though it would have been easy to paint Rishi and Kavya in a sort of adversarial way, to demonize them and give them every flaw, Sekaran doesn't do that. Instead Sekaran takes a much more effective route. She makes them normal. They're incredibly relateable, the quintessential good people doing bad things--or, at least, taking advantage of bad laws. Kavya obviously loves Ignacio deeply. She wants a child, and she wants him to be her child and she can't seem to get beyond that in a way that is almost primal. If they'd been easier to hate, the book would have been much less complicated and definitely not as good.

Lucky Boy Plot and Elements

Parallel Plots / Elements

1. How do two plots work together to enhance the larger arc?

Sekaran expertly highlighted the the “silencing” of the illegal immigrant’s experience by departing from the story of Soli in jail to focus on Kavya and Rishi’s adoption of Iggy

Time moved linearly, though obviously not always at the same speed. Months passed for Soli in prison while we got minute by minute, second by second updates on Iggy’s adoption experience. However, time never jumped, so I felt a momentum surging through the novel because of time marching in a forward fashion. Time was an anchor I tracked, because the characters did. Read: Soli’s and Sylvia’s It was Wednesday or “Today is Friday.”

Multiple protagonist perspectives were allowed by the close-third narrative style. I did feel a heavier emphasis on Kavya’s character’s thoughts, but that’s not to say I wasn’t in Rishi’s head as well. I think it’s just that we spent more time with Kavya. On this note, I really enjoyed that Sekaran chose not to put the reader in a close-third reading experience with the Cassidy’s. I didn’t care what the hell they were thinking.

2. Light and Wind - Elemental Influences

I toyed with the idea of making a table in this blog post, and decided to spare everyone because it wouldn’t really prove much beyond this: there are more than 30 references to sunlight, sunshine, dusk, warmth of the sun, daylight, shadows spilling, darkness. In tracking them with too many little sticky notes, I started to realize the sun was an element Sekaran used to touch “big” emotions -- joy, new awareness, discovery. The absence of sun was equally important -- think of when Soli was locked in the closet in prison, waiting to use the phone, and she could barely see her hands in front of her. The lack of light was the reader’s visual cue for devastation.

Wind was another force that pricked my ears as I read. I noticed that wind was used in the very beginning when Kavya had to roll the windows down, and Rishi was depicted as distant, cold, and unconcerned with the lack of AC in the car. Wind, in that moment, was a force that was unwelcome and seemed to indicate a rift between the two characters. However, wind was also associated with Checo, who came quickly into Soli’s life and vanished: “Checo was no more a father than the wind was. He’d blown through her, woken her up one day and kept herbreathing. And then, as quick as the wind, he was gone” (96).

Wind was also a nasty, cruel force when Soli was in prison and cold out on the yard. “Only the wind blew, a rough and dirty wind, a monstrous and foreign wind. It whistled through the yard and up Soli’s shirt, ran its old-man fingers around her nipples and down her back” (341).

The elements were so important in this novel that I knew it must mean something when both wind and light came together. It first happened on the bottom of p. 407, after this good man, Elmer, gave Soli a rosary. Soli walked out into the sun and felt a wind that blew the hair off of her shoulders. This was a moment where she has hope, real hope, of getting to Berkeley to find her son.

Also, the novel ends with wind and light converging. On the last page:

“Will the sun hide its brazen face and leave [Soli and Ignacio] be?” and “This is the story of the sun and the wind and the child they bore. This is the story of the sun and the wind, dragged aground by the meddlesome earth.”

Ignacio El Viento - wind in Spanish

Soli - sun in Latin

Discussing Lucky Boy

Humor and Heartbreak

By Jamie Harper

In reading Shanthi Sekaran’s Lucky Boy, I can’t help but notice the use of tension, and tension relief. This novel deals with some pretty heavy topics, all of which incite a definite emotional response, from immigration, to rape, to infertility, to family dynamics, to loss. When one has so many intense subjects, it can be easy for a work to become bogged down with tension or stress for the reader, making the reading difficult and unpalatable. But in Lucky Boy, Sekaran shows us how to prevent a narrative from becoming too onenote and heavy, via the introduction of levity and tension relief. In our craft discussions, we have often discussed the variability of tensions within scenes and episodes within a large body of a story, but so far we have had little discussion of the shorter, punctuations of tension relief we see in Lucky Boy.

As we follow our main characters, Solimar and Kavya, throughout the transitional phases in their lives, immigration, parenthood, employment changes, and riding out the wave of the court systems, we often see them in moments of heartbreak, fear, and grief, written with care and attention to pull us into their experiences and emotions, and even if we don’t feel these ourselves, we understand them and empathize. As we follow Solimar in her attempts at crossing the border, finding a better life, and having her son, we feel the fear of rape, drug cartels, ICE, and the effects of her cleaning job on her unborn child. With Kavya, we ache for her as she tries to sort out what she wants, separate herself from her mother’s eugenics based beliefs, and claim a family of her own with an indifferent husband and fertility issues. So, with all of these rough topics and traumatic life events such as rape and miscarriage, and the losing of a child in general, how do we keep readers from putting the book down and walking away to find more cheerful media? As Sekaran demonstrates, we make them laugh, or, if not laugh, we jolt them out of the current emotion of the scene with a specifically placed turn of phrase. By breaking up the emotional tone of an episode, we give the reader a wider gamut of emotions to feel, as well as space the breathe, and digest the messages or themes of the narrative. As the saying goes, you can either laugh, or you can cry, and clearly Sekaran would rather we laugh, strengthening or bolstering ourselves rather than feel defeated.

We see examples of Sekaran’s unique use of humor and levity multiple times throughout Lucking Boy, starting with the opening line of the prologue, “Clara, patron saint of television and eye disease.” This unexpected cold-open surprises us, the irony clear to anyone who grew up hearing “don't sit so close to the tv, you’ll ruin your eyes,” leaving the reader intrigued as to where this line will lead them, what this patron saint will have to do with the experiences of motherhood and being an immigrant. Following this opening, anytime the subject matter strays a little too somber or heart wrenching, Sekaran provides a breath of fresh air, such as on page 68, when Silvia suspects Solimar of being pregnant, a further complication in her already complex situation, and we are provided with the line “[Soli] had pissed on many things during her journey, but never expected a reply.” This novel line proved a moment of pause and humor as we consider the idea of not only peeing on something, but of that something in someway responding to the act. Especially something like a “very expensive little stick” (p.69) to see what answer it will give us. We also get a moment of relief on page 329, when, Kavya and Rishi are forced to face both the reality of a custody battle and the mortality of Ignacio, and Rishi is contemplating the loss of a child, with the example of losing a child from being “sat on by a cat.” Which, in the grand scheme of things, seems a rather unlikely and laughable incident to worry about, especially as no indication is ever given of the couple owning a pet of any sort, let alone a smother-happy feline. Perhaps my favorite example of Sekaran’s unique brand of tension release, however, occurs on page 296, when Rishi’s sudden erectile dysfunction is described as being like “cramming a wand of string cheese into a parking meter,” an incredibly vivid description that left me howling with laughter as the visuals manifested in my mind, effectively breaking the tension of the strained moment.

As someone who also incorporates heavy, emotional topics into my writing, I found Sekaran’s skill in relieving tension and easing heartbreak to be incredibly masterful and enlightening, as the relief doesn’t necessarily have to come in the form of a surface level joke, nor does it even have to be relief for the characters.                        

Unexpected Character Traits

Right from the beginning of the tale I was impressed and surprised by the multiplicity of both Ballister and Nimona. I am not used to villains having such complexity. Nimona was playful yet sinister, Ballister held a grudge yet didn't believe in murder. The plot was also unpredictable to me—I wasn't expecting Ballister to be able to become friends again with Ambrosius. I also wasn't expecting Nimona to be a liar to Balllister, their friendship seemed so airtight as soon as it formed. Different plot elements came as a shock to me; that Nimona turned out to be immortal, that she started to seem like she had been using Ballister the whole time, yet still wanted him to be King in replacement of the Institute. Still wondering how she came to survive the explosion of the jaderoot at the end.
There was a sense for me that Nimona never knew what she was, and she had spent her life being an outsider, which attracted her to the "bad guy" role, because society was against her regardless. She was impatient and reckless, yet so loving and supportive at the same time.
Ballister never wanted to be a "bad guy", but his role was created for him when the Institute kicked him out once he lost his arm. When it was revealed that the director planned for him to take the fall, giving Ambrosius the special joust weapon, he was vindicated for being against them the entire time.
I was also surprised that Ambrosius was so malleable, spending his life with Ballister as his arch nemesis, but wanting forgiveness all the while.
I love how nuanced each of these characters are, all fully three dimensional with pasts that show their arcs.

Nimona, Art, Dialogue, and what 11-year-olds have in common with NPR reviewers

       When my 11-year-old son found out I was reading Nimona by Noelle Stevenson for class this week, he said, “Wow! College is so cool! I’ve been wanting to read that book.” We read it together. Or rather, he consumed Nimona in an afternoon like he gulps down gluten-free cookies and tacos (his favorite foods). Then, I meandered through the book. Here’s something he said, “I like it because it’s funny, but it’s about real life stuff.” Tasha Robinson said something similar in an NPR review: “Much like Jeff Smith's Bone, it starts in a goofy, accessible place before deepening into a morally and emotionally complicated fantasy.” I think I like the way my kid says it better. I found this to be true in my own reading experience, too.  
       Nimona begins with its title character inexplicably in the dungeon/lair of bad guy, Ballister Blackheart. He’s a typical bad guy who doesn’t need a sidekick, but Nimona convinces him to take her on because of her very cool shapeshifting abilities. Opposite the two villains is Goldenlion, the flaxen-haired hero who created the villain in the first place because, as Blackheart puts it, “Ambrosius hates to lose.” Nimona is eager, a go-getter, who doesn’t stop to take directions or wait for Blackheart to tell her what to do. Her tendency to jump without looking is endearing and dangerous.  As I read, I loved that Nimona doesn’t have a model body, her hair is different, and she’s self-assured, telling Blackheart “No offense, but your plan was just gonna end with us getting arrested. I like mine more.” She also doesn’t allow her backstory to interfere with her positive attitude. Nimona’s character is what carries me through the story.  
     On craft, Stevenson makes the choice to poke fun at and subvert the fantasy genre on almost every page. The traditional, hero + sidekick model is flipped (at least at the beginning) with the bad guy getting a quite monstrous sidekick. Goldenlion seems to be the gallant knight if a bit dull in the wits department. But, by the end of the story, the situation is much more complex. It’s Blackheart who has to do the saving. Stevenson sets up the reader’s expectations by incorporating fantasy tropes, then surprises by flipping those tropes on their head.  
       On the artwork: I appreciated Stevenson’s style and use of color. The Nimona sections at the beginning are fairly light and punchy, while the art seems to grow more sinister as the story starts to become more serious. I recognized Stevenson’s style from LumberJanes, which I’ve read with my kids too.  
       Since this is one of our last two graphics, I’ll mention that I think the actual writing (words) is fairly weak in all the graphics we’ve read. While I have read graphics that I’ve enjoyed and felt strongly about (Saga cough cough), I don’t think it’s the writing that is compelling. The artwork has to be strong. I think this is why Belle Yang and The Cautioner’s Tale fell flat for me. I enjoyed Nimona much more because of the art. It’s hard to say whether I’d love this story, or be engaged by this story, as a prose work. When you can rely on art to communicate the majority of the story (mood, setting, character, tension, etc), what’s left is dialogue that doesn’t even necessarily need to be written well. Here’s an example from pg 53: Tabitha and Diego engage in pleasantries (which is discouraged generally in prose because it wastes time—an actual line of dialogue “How’s business then?”). Then, we finally get into the reason for the conversation on the next page—“Institution says it’s a hoax. Says it’s Blackheart.” For these reasons, I’ve been wondering what aspects of craft I’m supposed to be taking from the graphics. What aspects are translating for other students? Or maybe, what am I missing? 

Time/Shifting Camera/Questions - Nimona

What happens when you put the camera in the protagonist’s hands and jump forward in time? I’d like to zoom in on Chapter 6. At this point in the story, Ballister Blackheart has not revealed how he will poison the population -- only that they should probably do something to scare the public into believing that there’s a jaderoot contamination.


Remember that pages before, Nimona and B.B. were sitting on the couch, eating popcorn (did anyone else worry a little bit about the appropriateness of a girl hanging out with a villian on his couch watching Netflix?). Suddenly, we are in a market. And through whose eyes are we looking? For an entire page, it is not clear who controls this camera. We don’t find out until the next chapter that B.B. has devised a plan to get Nimona to poison the apples (it’s only then that we realize Chapter 6 is a flashforward, which places it in a different context retrospectively -- which we actually “remember” at the bottom row of page 58… I know it’s a memory/flashback because the colors go to the rusty orange of Chapter 6).


It felt strange to suddenly embody a new perspective, and I think this is the only time it occurs in this graphic novel (correct me if I’m wrong). It was so sudden that I thought we were going to be introduced to more important characters or a subplot here.


At the bottom right panel on p. 53, who are the peasant townspeople staring at? I.e., who is the "me"? They look so judgmental and it rattles my middle-school nerves. I like the idea that these two flirting peasants have no idea what the witch-Nimona is up to. It works, because who doesn’t hate a good flirting couple? They’re allowed to be oblivious and play the “dumb” card because they’re too absorbed being annoyingly flirtatious. That was a clever choice and a way to categorize their annoyingness without being explicit.


I have some questions I would like to park here --


Did anyone feel like the action scenes were something quick to glance at and turn the page? Was it important to focus on each panel? I definitely scanned quickly to see if anyone got hurt, and if they didn’t, I kept turning pages.


I said it above, but was it a point of tension for anyone that Nimona was a young teen and B.B. was an adult, and they had this relationship? Was anyone worried he’d be a predator, or was it just me?


Did the fantastical nature of this graphic novel, and the fact that Nimona was actually a creature with many mysteries, make her age irrelevant? Am I putting too much of a nonfiction-writer-lens on this? How much does real world get to bleed into fantasy and how do authors establish this?


How invested were you in the relationship between B.B. and Ambrosius? Was there something wrong with me as a reader that I wasn’t super invested? Not a critique, just an observation. I think that is maybe some of the point? Aside from the backstory between them, I didn’t know B.B. or Ambrosius as characters that well. We got a clear sense of their moral compasses, but not about their hopes, dreams, fears, favorite breakfasts, first memories, etc.