Keenan Norris's debut novel, Brother and the Dancer, follows two African American teenagers in Southern California along the winding route through high school and into adulthood. Erycha Evans, from the poor, crime-riddled neighborhood of West Highland, dreams of dancing ballet, while Touissant Freeman, living on the other side of town, is preoccupied with belonging, trying to connect his middle-class privilege with his black heritage.
As Erycha and Touissant follow divergent trajectories, Norris develops an intricate, looking-glass narrative. Erycha works hard to earn enough to buy ballet shoes, only to be held back at every turn--by her boyfriend and her parents, by expectations and obligations. Meanwhile, Touissant keeps his grades up, hits the clubs with his older sisters and stars on his high school football team. The rare instances when their lives intersect potently show more of the disparity between their experiences than the similarities.
The alternating narrative structure and leaps in time can be jarring occasionally, but Norris nevertheless succeeds in thoughtfully portraying the powerful tension between privilege and poverty in the variety of black experience as Touissant's internal struggle to maintain the integrity of his identity synchronizes beautifully with Erycha's fight to dance the way she wants. --Dave Wheeler, bookseller, The Elliott Bay Book Co., Seattle, Wash.