' THEY DREAM IN GOLD ' : BOOK REVIEW

 

World within worlds : '' They Dream in Gold,'' by Mai Sennar. Before I'd read a word of Mai Senaar's extraordinary debut novel, '' They Dream in Gold,'' I was struck by her opening author's note.

In it, Senaar describes a real-life dust storm in the Sahara whose effects were felt as far as Britain.

For the author, the storm illustrated '' the reality that our world is but one place.'' She wishes, she says, for her writing to be like the storm; that speaks to '' our shared experience in an organic, tangible way.''

Indeed, these principles whirl through Senaar's book, which is a powerful and poignant exploration of the African diaspora and global Black identity.

In '' They Dream in Gold,'' Sennar weaves a large quilt of culture and identity, delving into the American dream as part of the complexity of the global immigrant experience.

However, the scope of this novel ranges beyond just the experience of diasporic communities in the United States. Senaar has crafted a narrative in which the American dream has been overwritten by a more international imperative.

The global context is in fact the basis of Mansour's love for Bonnie, a world citizen who was born in Paris to a Black American dancer mother, moved to New York and now lives in Switzerland :

''On the first night they met, he saw in her what he'd thought he'd never find. Someone with his penchant for manifesting dreams. Someone with a need for a life of wonder. Someone ripped so violently from all roots that they needed the whole world to feel like home.'' 

In '' They Dream in Gold,'' Sennaar examines what happens '' when different cultures within a diaspora are intimately engaged with one another,'' as she writes in her author's note. She uses the mystery of Mansour's disappearance and Bonnie's subsequent search for him as the touchstone of the far-ranging narrative.

The past stories inform our understanding of the present and vice-versa.

This book moves like the storm Sennaar begins it with, revealing how we are all interlinked in a global community, just as these characters, timelines and narratives are entangled.

With '' They Dream in Gold,'' she teaches us that '' the cultures we all claim such rigid and separate allegiance to are perhaps necessarily and inherently enmeshed.''

The World Students Society thanks Jean Kwok - the author of '' The Leftover Woman,'' '' Searching for Sylvie Lee.'' '' Mambo in Chinatown '' and '' Girl in Translation.''