Off-White

In the intricate latest from Surinamese Dutch writer Roemer (On a Woman’s Madness), a family reckons with their racially mixed heritage in 1960s Suriname, as the South American country entered its final stage as a Dutch colony. Grandma Bee, the white cigar-smoking matriarch of the Vanta family, narrates the clan’s history, beginning with her childhood in a Catholic convent in Suriname and her marriage to a Black man named Anton. Among the many tales of Grandma Bee’s descendants is that of her granddaughter Heli, who’s sent to Utrecht in Holland because of a flirtatious friendship with a married teacher. Stories involving other characters, who narrate in turn, involve incest, rape, abandonment, and a mental health breakdown, and Roemer illustrates how each of the incidents are tied to the family’s racial and class hierarchies. Throughout, the harrowing indignities these characters face are juxtaposed with a seductive tropical background of flowers and food. It adds up to a thought-provoking portrait of a fraught familial and colonial history. (Apr.)