B+

The protagonist of White, Bechard, is tortured by his sense of White-guilt, and has positively exasperated himself trying to avoid White savior tropes—among other problematic tropes.  He’s so preoccupied that his “gaze” might be offensive to the Congolese, the setting of his journalistic mission, that he would seemingly prefer to self-detonate rather than offend the morally superior Africans with his presence, and the legacy of colonialism which his presence inevitably suggests. 

So this is what it takes for a White male to get published these days. And yes, Bechard is a good writer, so I’m glad he found an angle, even if he has to emasculate himself in the process.

Synopsis 

Bechard is searching in the Congo for a Kurtz-like figure–one of several references in White to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a classic novel also set in the Congo and featuring adrift Westerners. Actually, there are several Kurtz-like figures, which makes White’s plot intricate or arguably confusing.  White focuses on the conservation industry; Bechard’s man of interest is Richard Hew, a dastardly mover and shaker who is effective at creating parks to preserve wildlife. However, he is also reportedly abusive to the native Congolese. 

Meanwhile, there’s a subplot in which Bechard is trying to track down a White girl in the Congo who believes that she has a White demon inside of her and speaks in mysterious riddles, according to the notes of another Western researcher who has also taken an interest in the wayward girl. 

Sola, the female protagonist of apparently mixed race, meets Bechard on the plane to the Congo and helps him in his mission to find the White girl and Hew.  Also an activist in conservation, Sola presents another opportunity for Bechard to agonize over his White guilt.  

Bechard is loathe to ask Sola where she’s from: 

“I was again tempted to ask where she was from…But I refused to speak the question that she no doubt heard more often than any other.  Rather, I wished I could delta not only that impulse from my brain but also my memories of the culture that had created it” (10).  

In fact, people being triggered by being asked where they’re from is a motif of White. When Bechard finally asks the female protagonists where she’s from, she “flinched,” physically affected by the triggering question.

Pastor Omega

Meanwhile, the narrator’s African friend Pastor Thomas Omega has no trouble frankly asking this woman if she’s from America.  Then again, Omega doesn’t have the second class citizen status which the narrator has internalized for himself as a Westerner in Africa.  

Anyway, the narrator is off to the Congo in his mission as a journalist who freelances from global hot-spots for shitlib publications such as Mother Jones.  On one hand, he is interested in the ultra-PC world of conservation (a noble cause though to be sure).  On the other hand, Bechard’s secondary mission seems to be not to offend anyone.  He feels especially apologetic in his interactions with Omega.  He is embarrassingly obsequious, although interestingly, we don’t expect visitors to the US to walk on eggshells.  

It plays into the trope of identity that Omega himself, we learn, is also mixed race, from which we’re supposed to wonder at the complexity of race I suppose.  

If you were worried about this becoming a White savior trope, you’d be happy to learn that Terra Sylvan-Gaia, a do-gooder/ Jane Goodal-type figure is presumed to have been killed after her jeep is found overturned in a ditch with bullet holes in it.  That detail was at least realistic, although this murder is later attributed (of course) to a White man–Richard Hew.   

Closing Thoughts 

In conclusion, White is the wokest novel that I ever read, and that is not meant as a compliment.  Yet I don’t want to say it’s a bad novel either.  The writing is adroit and Bechard knows his craft. 

But at what point does a respect for another culture cross over into a form of self-abnegation?  This is the line which Bechard crosses with White, whether the protagonist is meant to be an extension of himself, or merely a fictional character. 

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