Tokenism is a hurtful practice, as Black artists already know or soon discover in Little Movements, Lauren Morrow's agreeably of-the-moment debut novel. Layla Smart grew up in St. Louis, Mo., where, thanks to her pragmatic single mother, "fear remained a cornerstone of my life." She developed an early passion for dance, a passion her mother took pains to temper. When readers meet her, Layla is 33, living in Brooklyn, and two years into her marriage to Eli, a would-be screenwriter who has surrendered his dream to become an IT specialist. Layla, who worked as an intern at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, has just received a plum invitation: nine months as choreographer-in-residence at Briar House, a dance company in a majority-white Vermont town where Pride and Black Lives Matter flags decorate the landscape.
Would it be a shock to learn that all is not as it first appears? The studio has an all-white board. The company has received criticism for a lack of diversity. And suffice it to say that a right-wing militia called the Green Mountain Men wasn't responsible for those BLM flags. Morrow skillfully blends these elements and more, including Layla's corps of dancers, all of them Black; a white company director with a "slim body swimming in Eileen Fisher" who may not be the ally she projects; and the strain a nine-month separation wreaks upon Layla's marriage. The result is an accomplished work that, at its best, is as elegant as a dance piece, gliding effortlessly from one variation to the next. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer