Dead Souls by Angela Marsons is really hitting me close to home. Being born in the deep South, Alabama, I came to age when desegregation was hitting the South. I remember going outside as a kid and finding flyers for KKK meetings littering the streets of our quiet neighborhood. I remember miniature KKK comic books also left in the gutters for kids to find, making KKK members almost superheroes.
I remember the first black kids in my all-white school and couldn't get over how shy they were. It took years for me to figure out they weren't shy, they were scared to death. I remember being in the High School band where there was no racism, or so I thought.
I remember living in OKC, OK at 21 and making best friends with a Kickapoo Indian, attending pow-wows and learning their customs at these events. I practically lived with them and watched how they were treated, and how some of their family reacted.
I remember moving to California and when visiting back in Alabama being asked how I could live around "all them Mexicans". This was from a family member.
I was lucky not to have had racist parents, even though most of my peers were and I became racist at a young age through osmosis, I don't think I ever hated a group of people but I did do things that were hurtful. I later found out that if you put yourself in the melting pot you could overcome and become to embrace the people that impacted my life, and many of these people I grew to love, my teachers, schoolmates, bandmates, and friends and learned how to correctly judge people.
Dead Souls is about racism, hate, and nationalism in the UK. It's a work of fiction but I'm sure there's a lot of truth in it. Marsons really brings to life the worst in people with her thrillers. Marsons also brings out the best in people with her thought-provoking fiction.
Dead Souls halfway through is a great book.