Red Polka Dot In A World Full Of Plaid / Varian Johnson

I’ve read good things about Varian Johnson’s books, so I looked through the Seattle Public Library’s ebooks and audiobooks available for download in order to try his writing out. Red Polka Dot In A World Full Of Plaid is what they had, so I downloaded it to my MP3 player.

I have very mixed feelings about the book. On the positive side, the main character Maxine Phillips is a likable realistic confused teenager. Johnson handles the issue of racial identity thoughtfully. On the negative side, other young adults act more like adults than teens and are very one dimensional. The teen love story follows the standard best friends should be together script, a standard arc that I think is unrealistic and can sometimes be creepy when it happens in real life. More personally, the treatment of religion pushed some of my atheist buttons.

There are some minor spoilers in the rest of this discussion, so skip reading if you care.

Maxine Phillips grew up in South Carolina with her best friend Deke and her single mom Catherine. All her life she’s been told that her father died. Mom loves her, but became a workaholic to provide for Maxine. She takes offense when she doesn’t feel like Maxine properly acknowledges her sacrifices. At the start of the book she’s 18 and has just graduated from high school when she finds out her father is alive. She’s impulsive and has a quick temper, so her quick decision to drive to Oklahoma to meet her dad without her mom’s permission causes some consternation among her family.

On arriving in Oklahoma, she learns several unpleasant facts for her. First, her father Jack is white. This does not go over well with Maxine who has some prejudiced views about whites. The second is that the reason why Jack Phillips abandoned his family is that he spent 15 years in prison for manslaughter. Nevertheless, she decides to face these family problems head on and stay with Jack for the summer to get to know him. Despite her dislike for the man. Deke stays with her for moral support.

I really liked Maxine as a character. As noted, she’s impulsive and quick tempered. She changes her mind often. She doesn’t know how she feels about things. All this matches up well with the teens I know. Her resistance to authority appeals to me as well. She’s a great rebel without being a delinquent. She’s not trying to be bad; she’s just trying to find a her own way to being good. When she finds out her parents have lied to her about her father’s absence and race, the hurt comes through the words.

The short version of Maxine’s view is that she takes pride in being black, and finding out that she has a white father makes her think that pride is misplaced. She also doesn’t feel at home with the white country kids who populate Jack’s hometown of Chickasha, Oklahoma and doesn’t see many black faces (with whom she does identify) either. A large part of Maxine’s bluster is rooted in her uncomfortableness of her situation. She uses a lot of defense mechanisms to avoid facing truths she doesn’t want to know.

While Maxine is awesome to read about, the other teens bothered me. Deke spouts religious platitudes much as a condescending adult would, rather than how religious teens do. He started off well. But midway through the book he transforms into a junior Billy Graham. The religiosity fit the character, but the manner changed from realistic to aphoristic (and that leads into my criticism of religion a few paragraph from now). Other characters like Marcus and Abby were straight out of central casting from the beginning. They were smooth talking players who say all nice things beforehand that get vicious the second they don’t get their way. Any reader should be able to pick up Marcus’ exact role in the story within a couple of sentences of his appearance. He could have been written with far more depth and still retained his spot as the traumatizing force.

Deke’s obvious from the start crush on Maxine really bothered me too. This aspect doesn’t ring false, it’s that I’m not a fan of the best friends who realize they are meant for each other trope. A nice guy that stays close to his not so secret crush is pathetic, manipulative, and creepy. By that I mean the practice of sweeping in to save the girl using all the confidences he’s gained over the years, of playing the nice guy sidekick while the girl goes after the assholes. I think it’s much healthier for people to move on rather than hang on for years.

And lastly, while not something innately bad about the book, the role religion played in the book bothered me. I don’t mind religious characters. Deke and Jack being religious is fine. What bothers me is that Johnson had a free-thinking girl like Maxine become religious because she’s told some b.s. platitudes like god only gives you what you can handle. I don’t insist that my characters stay as resolutely atheist as I am, but I do expect them to have a transformative spiritual experience to switch, and not of the no atheists in a foxhole variety either. Christianity comes off as if it is intrinsically the right thing. For believers I’m sure that makes sense, but I want justification of sorts for belief. Or meaning. It’s hard to explain. Religion should not be a law of nature like gravity that just exists.

Despite all the sour notes, I do recommend the book. Maxine as a character and her struggle with her heritage are readable and meaningful. The bad aspects keep it from being great, but it’s still quite good.

Title: A Red Polka Dot In a World Full of Plaid
Author: Varian Johnson
Narrator: Sisi Aisha Johnson
Imprint / publisher: Recorded Books
Format: Netlibrary download
Length: 5 h. 51 m.
Publication date:
ISBN-13: 978-1-4294-1206-3
Subject: Father and daughters — Fiction
Subject: African American women — Fiction
Subject: African American families — Fiction
Subject: Fathers and daughters — Fiction
Subject: African Americans — Fiction
Subject: Self-acceptance — Fiction
Subject: Interpersonal relations — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.J63844 Red 2005