Fresh Air - Ghanaian Artist Blitz Bazawule Is Breaking Down Doors

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Bazawule is best-known for directing 2023 adaptation of The Color Purple: The Musical. He also co-directed Black Is King with Beyoncé. He has a new exhibit of paintings about his formative years growing up in Ghana. Also, book critic Maureen Corrigan shares her picks for summer crime/suspense novels.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley, and today my guest is Blitz Bazawule, the director of the 2023 musical film adaptation of Alice Walker's The Color Purple and The Burial of Kojo, his directorial debut about gold mining in Africa. Blitz has a new exhibit of paintings that explore memories of his formative years growing up in Ghana. I stopped by his exhibit, Those Were the Days, in Los Angeles. Two floors of paintings that Blitz created during the pandemic years. They feature slices of his childhood in Accra, kids playing soccer in the street, a man playing drums, a stylish family enjoying a birthday celebration. The exhibit allows visitors to interact with it. So, an example, I'm standing in a bright fuchsia room.

You can hear the sounds of a fan behind me. And there's an old-time gramophone. There's this table with an ornate tea set and a comfy chair. And when I sit down, I'm facing Blitz's painting, which depicts the very scene of this room. So it feels like I've stepped right into the painting. Blitz's exhibit gave me a vivid sense of growing up in Accra and his love of the visual arts. He started sketching scenes of his life at a very young age, and he'd go on to use those talents to storyboard films he's gone on to direct, including Beyoncé's musical film Black is King, which he co-directed, and the musical film adaptation of The Color Purple, which garnered 11 NAACP Image Awards, including the prize for Outstanding Motion Picture.

I spoke with Blitz Bazawule last week. Let's talk a little bit about this art exhibit. Those Were the Days is the name of the exhibit, because in many ways, it is a return to your foundation, to who you are. And the inspiration comes from your childhood in Ghana, as a little boy in your house, looking at the walls, black and white photographs that are depicting family life. Kind of take us there. What were the things that were on those walls, and what did they signify in your imagination? Well, it's truly foundational for me, photography,

specifically black and white photography as kind of the way I've seen family be depicted, whether it's, you know, our Sunday's best kind of getting ready to go to church, or we often kind of took pictures after that, or birthdays, which was kind of one that was kind of always special. We always had a neighborhood photographer who would come in and take photos for us. But it was not unique in terms of like the neighborhood. Everyone did it. Everyone did it, you know, and that's kind of where you got your photos from, you know, these special occasions. incredible memory for me of just a loving home and a space where I grew to become the artist I am. And art was also, visual art specifically, was my first kind of foray into knowing that I had

something to say. This exhibit, though, it's a compilation of paintings. Yes. And so what you do with color is so interesting because there's the absence of color and the black and white with the painting up against these vibrant colors, purples and yellows and reds. What is the story that you're trying to tell as we look at that and see that juxtaposition. Indeed. I mean, the juxtaposition of time and space for me is something that has also been a through line in my work. I'm really asking myself, how do we tell stories on the continent? And I realize that there's a lot of cyclical storytelling as opposed to linear storytelling. Oh, that's interesting. Like the Western form of storytelling, which is very linear. Very linear.

Act one, act two, act three structure. Indeed. And most black, brown, indigenous cultures have almost a different approach to storytelling, which operates in the cyclical. And I can speak specifically for the stories I grew up hearing, which were my grandmother's stories, and how they often moved in this kind of... Characters were nonlinear. We had a different way in which the story moved, and they were often kind of rebirthed.

These character and characteristics were rebirthed. And so I've always... Sometimes starting in the middle of the story. Sometimes starting in the middle. Sometimes starting at the end. Yes. But very consistent in terms of the way, the voicing of the story.

And I found that I could attempt that in the mediums of art that I create. So whether it's visual arts and going, all right, well, these portraitures are stories, you know, and the photographs are stories. But when you juxtapose them against modern backgrounds, right, you create a loop of sort, a time loop. And kind of what I do is I, the memories of these photos, right, that I have. So I'm not really necessarily recreating the exact photograph. I've seen these photos growing up and I kind of re-imagined them. But then what I do is I juxtapose them against the environment in which they were taken. Well, what's really interesting is that you actually got the job for the Color Purple

musical in part because of your artistic expression, your ability to sketch out how you could visualize what is an enduring American story. You have to tell us the story of how this came to be. You actually arrived at the first meeting to pitch yourself to be the director of The Color Purple with a storyboard. Yeah, visually, it's really hard to tell people what you want them to see. Especially a story like The Color Purple, I can imagine. Indeed. Because we all have in our

minds what that story is, a version, a musical, the old movie, or the book. Yep, the classic Alice Walker masterpiece. So for me, it was very important that I show and not tell. And so any opportunity I get creatively, I just kind of go back to being that kid in Ghana. And I go to the solace of knowing that I could always sketch the idea out. And that's how I've, you know, I sketched my way into every opportunity I've had. It's because I can very quickly show what's in my head. And I'm very aware that it's been a huge asset in opportunities and being able to fully realize my vision. What were some of the initial sketches that ended up being in the movie?

Well, I started first by asking myself what was going to be our true contribution to the canon. And for me, it was about figuring out where the book hadn't fully gone, where Stephen hadn't fully gone, and where the Tony Award winning play hadn't fully gone. And I think that it was the visualization of Celie's imagination. Now Alice Walker had given us an incredible kind of world in which this character had inner monologues, but we hadn't seen them visually. So I started by kind of creating this larger than life expansion ofie's mind, where she could imagine things that came to fruition but in grander ways in her head, which ultimately added a deeper layer into how she surmounted her trauma, which is something that I think is also quite important. It's that people who have dealt with trauma are often miscategorized as docile or waiting to be saved.

Celie had this incredible, expansive imagination that she was constantly working herself out of these challenges. So one of the first things I sketched was this giant gramophone, which we know the scene where Celie and Cher Gaby first meet in their first connection. But I found that if I went from this physical, real-life gramophone that is in Cher Gaby's space to this incredibly imaginative, ethereal space where Celie's mind could go. We could start seeing a grander way in which she saw herself and eventually found herself to be beautiful in her head first,

before anybody told her that. I want to play a clip from the movie. In the scene, we're going to play Suge, played by Taraji P. Henson, and Celie, played by Fantasia. They're getting closer, and they ultimately become lovers through the course of the film. But at one point, they go to the movies together. And then they slide into this musical number called What About hope? What about joy? What about joy? What about tears when I'm happy? What about weeks when I fall I want you to be

A story for me That I can believe in Forever And what about What about Love What about love? That was Taraji P. Henson in Fantasia Barrino and the 2023 musical film adaptation of The Color Purple

directed by my guest, Blitz Bazawule. The song, I mean, it just gets in my heart every time I hear it. I just get so emotional. But I was thinking about how The Color Purple is such an insular text, meaning like it's a black world. We are really living in such a small space. And then everything else, meaning white people, the mailman, Mrs. Millie, their exterior, they represent the periphery. There was a scene that I initially took issue with, Blitz. And it was until I heard you talking about it that I gained clarity on exactly what you were trying to do. And in

particular, it's the scene with Danielle Brooks, who plays Sophia. And she goes into town with her children, and she encounters Mrs. Millie. Now, in the original film, Sophia is played by Oprah, and the shots are really tight. We're seeing Oprah's face. We see her get angry as Mrs. Millie says to her, you know, your children are so clean. They're so cute. I want them to work for me. Why don't you come be my maid? We're seeing her fistball up as she gets angry. In your version, we are wide. We are incorporating place and space. Talk about why that was significant to do that for you in this particular version.

Absolutely, because the aggression is not individual. And that's something that we have to understand as we deal with deconstructing racist, biased, discriminatory environments. They're embodied in an individual, but they're institutional. And it's the only function based on the support of a larger group, right? And the environment for me was stark because I chose a location for that scene that was starkly different from the farm, the lush, the greens, the- Where they lived. They lived. So I wanted a space where the audience start to feel uncomfortable just based on that wide shot, based on the concrete. Because prior there, it's the intimacy and the shots that we're experiencing. Very intimate.

And so kind of when we start and eventually we slowly get tighter when the men kind of surround Daniel Brooks's character, Sophia. But again, I wanted to kind of show the complicity of not just the mayor and Miss Milley, but the rest of the world. And that's something we have to remember when we think about how we navigate trauma and we navigate oppression of any sort. It requires a larger environment and a larger society that says it's okay. And so there were several people sitting around. There were several people who worked at the gas station. They were all complicit either through their silence or their participation. And that for me was more important about that scene. But I was also clear that I wasn't making Steven Spielberg's movie. That was a very important thing for me. You grew up in Ghana, in Accra.

Your dad was a civil servant. Your mom was a teacher. You were born in the early 80s. So this is right after, this is on the cusp of what was a military dictatorship for Ghana that ended in 79. Lots of things were shut down during that time. It was a pretty quite severely. My dad, before becoming a civil servant, worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and worked for the government that was overthrown. The previous government before the military. So, you know, we went from, you know, we lived briefly in Egypt and kind of the coup happened and then we had to come back home. My mom, unfortunately, was arrested for fears of my dad's job and that. So my family. How long did she spend time in jail? She was in jail.

It was a couple months, but they were difficult months. You were really young. I was young. I was very young. Where were you during that time? I was with family. My dad was still overseas. Do you remember?

Do you have memories? I don't have much memories of that, besides, of course, what my mom recounts. And my mom kind of is the rock of the family. Not only did she survive that, she thrived past that. I'm grateful that of all my mom went through, she still was truly a true believer in expression and all expression. I think you said she let you be. She did. And I'm an artist fully because of not only her creating space for me to thrive, but being a strong encourager of voice. On the continent of Africa, and I'm speaking specifically about Ghana, it is rare that an artistic kid is nurtured. I'm not saying it's improbable or never occurs. I'm just saying your parents want for you.

To be a doctor or to be someone of high importance. Because that's what they come from and that's what they know and that's what they strive for. That's a measure of success. Exactly. So it was quite a rare thing that my mom allowed me to have a little space in the house where I wasn't disturbed and I drew and I made music. Things where hip-hop had just come to Ghana at the time, this was early 90s, let's call it 92, Public Enemy came to Ghana and was a huge shift in the social. How old were you when they came? I was 10.

It blew your mind. It was a huge shift of consciousness and creative possibilities. We had high life music at the time, which was quite subdued and kind of ballady and love songs, right? And then comes hip-hop that is brash and energetic and youthful and also Pan-Africanist. You know, this was the era of the dashikis and medallions and the red, black, green. Very Afrocentric. Very Afrocentric.

And so we saw ourselves in that, and it deeply transformed our entire culture. And we moved from high life to hip life, which was a kind of an amalgam of hip hop music and high life music. Yes. And it kind of reinvigorated our linguistics because a lot of us were rhyming in our local languages, but we were also doing what the American youth were doing, which was sampling other music, often high life and Afrobeat records. So it also rekindled our appreciation for music that was past, right?

And, you know, all you had to do was loop it and add some hard drums and you'd have a version of hip hophop that was hip-life. You came to the U.S. with the intention, of course, to go to college. Yes. But you also wanted to be a rapper, like you were coming here to be a rapper. Yes. Is there anyone that you were modeling your career after or wanting to be the next well i think the fujis were the first kind of i mean hip-hop culture of course is has deep immigrant roots of course dj kool hurt jamaica i mean that but i think the fujis for me

were like the first clear immigrant story right um of course laura i mean not lauren but but why clef and pras being kind of of haian descent, but proudly of Haitian descent, which was rare because there's obviously a flattening that occurs in America where to assimilate requires you kind of letting go of these elements that you are because it's just easy to get ahead. And so I think just seeing that Haitian flag constantly represented and Wyclef's Carnival and foreign language rap, which at the time wasn't a popular thing. That whole B side of Carnival was Haitian Creole. And it kind of was mind-blowing for me. And I said to myself, if that's accepted, then perhaps what I'm attempting to do will be accepted, right? And so that was kind of the model, you know, and slowly but surely, you know, through a few albums, I kind of got close to that thing.

Our guest today is Blitz Bazawule. We're talking about his life and career as a visual artist, director, novelist, and musician. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. Hey, sister, what you gonna do? Going down by the river, gonna play with you. Papa don't like no screaming around here. No lip from a woman when they chug that beer.

Shaun of sun, gonna shine. Gonna be girl ladies of the Marian kind. Shaun of moon, gonna rise like a huckleberry. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

Hey there, Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado here with another promo for our latest Fresh Air Plus bonus episode. Do you remember the Shell Bank Junior High alma mater? No, I don't. Do you? Yes, I'm not going to sing it. Would you sing it for me? Yes, that's singer-songwriter Carole King trying to get Terry to sing.

To find out if Terry sings and to find out more about Fresh Air Plus, visit plus.npr.org. Fun fact, you have five studio albums under Blitz the Ambassador. I do. Tell me about that name. Blitz the Ambassador was a, so my style of rap was fast and kind of like double time. And so my peers called me Blitz because that's what the sound felt like. But as I went on, I was like. That it's Blitz. Oh, I love it.

Yes. Yes. And because those were also the days of cyphers and battles. So we did a lot of that. But then as I kind of got closer to understanding kind of purpose, I realized that I needed to represent where I'm from because there was so little representation. I mean, today, a lot of people go to Ghana. There's a lot of understanding of what Ghana is through whether the year of return and several other things and Afro beats music. But back then when you were telling people you're from Ghana, no one knew.

What would they say? Well, it was rare. And we had to kind of be, we had to represent. We had to represent the fabric. We had to represent the flag. We had to represent in the music the samples. I mean, these were all things that were kind of a floor that set up kind of what would come. And I got really fortunate.

In 2010, I performed in France at one of the big music festivals called Transmusicale des Rennes. And that was a big, huge leap. We played over 50 festivals a year in Europe. And we really became a formidable force. But the challenge with music, it was also at the real odd moment of a plateau in the entire industry where it just couldn't. This was 2010 to about 2015.

So we were moving away from iTunes music being sold for $9.99. CDs were beginning to phase out completely. And then it became the streamers had kind of started to take over. And so the access and plausibility of making a living started to dwindle. After college, you moved to New York. I do. And there's a time when you're selling your music on street corners, like the guys on the street corners. Yes.

I did that right after graduation, which is, I think, 2005. I always wonder, do those guys make money? Were you making money? I was. I paid my rent doing that. But I quickly realized that walking up to people and asking them if they liked my kind of music, like, do you listen to hip-hop, wasn't working. So you would be on corners, and as people were walking by, you'd say, like, hey, would you listen to hip hop? Wasn't working. So you would be on corners and as people were walking by, you'd say like, hey, would you like to? I realized quickly that that was not going to do it because I walked into the Virgin Megastore. Remember those?

Oh, yeah. There was one in Union Square and I saw people standing in a long line waiting to purchase whatever new album had come out. But they were listening to it first on headphones to sample it. That's what we used to do. And I realized that if I was going to – because New York is brash and New York is aggressive. If you're going to get people's attention, then it's better to set up and have them invite themselves. So what I did was I built a similar listening booth, right, with headphones. And I would cart it all the way to Union Square and set it up.

Take the subway, get out, yeah. Set it up and people would line up and listen. And I sold so many albums that I started selling the CDs of other people. Yes. Like there was a brass band who were played in the subway called Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, whom like we just all clicked up. And so I'll sell their CDs as part of my setup and a few other people. So I realized quickly that the marketing I'd studied at Kent State.

Because you majored in marketing. I majored in marketing. I realized that it was of value. And that was actually how I paid my – and sustained myself for a while. One of the other things you were spending money on was movies. You'd go watch movies. That was it. I would go watch any and everything.

Foreign movies. There was the Film Forum. I would go watch any and everything, foreign movies. There was the Film Forum, and then there was the IFC. I practically lived there. I would spend sometimes whatever I made from selling CDs that day would go straight to, like, two, three movies back to back. And I would, you know, I mean, I didn't go to film school. So that eventually became my film school. I had a little notebook I would write and, you know, like things I'd seen. Were you doing it for a purpose or were you doing it just because you were really loving it?

It was both. It was both. I knew that I would one day want to make films. I knew that. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, it's all part of the same stream. I want to play one of your songs, Shine, from your 2016 album, Diasporadical. It's your fourth studio album. Let's listen. I'm Bastog.

I'm gonna shine my light. I gotta let them know that I'ma shine my light. Let's listen. I tell the whole world I'm a shaman Fresh from the start I'm about to door sprinkle the bullet fire on y'all I'm thinking how could he get it, get it, we got it anyhow Ties in the river so my spirit is alive I'm on my two packs, only God can judge me Look into the heavens, no man can touch me Struggling together yet my people never settle Africa's new representative, the moon's high, bless me That was my guest Blitz Bazaule from his fourth studio album, Diasporadical.

Blitz, there are so many influences there. I'm hearing funk. I'm hearing jazz, Afro beats kind of. Who were your influences? It's all the things you said. In my household, it started with high life music. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned high life.

Yes. And so it was Ibo Taylor. It was Pat Thomas. it with high life music yeah yeah you mentioned high life yes and so it was a bow taylor it was pat thomas it was you know osibi san like those were the bands that i grew up on and then kind of you know my dad was also a huge james brown fan so like we had all the james brown funk records and then you know there was also some jazz we had miles had Coltrane, we had a few of those. So like, you know, for me, it's always been an amalgam of like these worlds, sometimes feeling disconnected, right? But then there's also like the hip hop that raised me, right? And so I always kind of try to think about the edge and kind of how all of these sounds kind of synthesize.

If you're just joining us, my guest is Blitz Bazawule. He's a writer, musician, and director of the 2023 musical film adaptation of The Color Purple and The Burial of Kojo. He has a new art exhibit of his paintings in L.A. called Those Were the Days, which explores memories from Blitz's formative years growing up in Ghana. We'll continue our conversation after a short break.

This is Fresh Air. Your first feature film, The Burial of Kojo, it came out in 2018. Yes. You wrote, composed, and directed the film. Yes. Which it was entirely shot in Ghana. Yes. You wrote, composed, and directed the film. Yes. Which it was entirely shot in Ghana. Yes. As you mentioned, on a micro budget. Yes.

Put this in context to us. What was that budget in comparison to, say, something like The Color Purple? Oh, my God. My entire first movie cost what we probably spent a day in. No, no. Not a day in shooting. A day in catering, catering and craft service. Like that's how the leap has been, you know. But for me, it's still all the same, right?

It's still. Does it take a little bit, though, of expansion of the mind when you know what you can do with like a little bit of money? Yes. But when money is no object, was it pretty easy to get there? No. The problem with money is that it's always the object, no matter how much you want, right? Because it boils down to, oh, well, now the crew costs more. Well, now the locations cost more.

Now the hotels cost more. But I found that they all boil down to the same experience, which is do you have a vision and do you have something to say? I still have to draw all my storyboards myself, quietly identify what story I want to tell and how I want to tell it. I know you mentioned that you learned so much about filmmaking just from watching movies, everything you could watch, you were watching. Is it true you also learned from YouTube?

Oh, yeah. YouTube is, I mean, I tell everybody, if you're looking for it, it's out there. I mean, because when I went to Ghana, I'd never worked with a crew, a real crew of any sort. So I didn't know what the first AD did. I didn't know what the— And an AD is a— First assistant director. An assistant director, yeah. Right.

I didn't know anything. But I went online, and, you know, people tell you what they do and they tell you how they do it and they walk you through their day and this is what we do and da da da. So I was able to put together a crew. So it was more like film education in Ghana, you know, and which actually ended up birthing the organization that I founded, Africa Film Society, because we started by just watching movies to learn how to make them. And then we realized that we needed to watch African movies if we were going to make an African movie because we have a distinct vocabulary.

The Burial of Kojo, the film, tells the story of Kojo, a man from Ghana who is left to die in an abandoned gold mine as his young daughter, Essie, travels through the spirit land to save him. This is a beautiful film. What drew you to the story about the miners? I was out there looking for a story to tell. I didn't know what the story would be. So I spent a lot of time just traveling. In Ghana, I traveled quite extensively. And the more I traveled, the more I recognized the plight of small-scale miners who originally were a thriving small community, but then with globalization and first the British miners, but then the Chinese miners showing up, they show up with equipment that is a lot more,

it turns small-scale mining into large-scale mining, but without the oversight. So our waters are polluted now. And, you know, it's just been really, they call it galamse. That's kind of the challenge there. So I knew that I wanted to tell the story about that. But then the more I learned, the more I realized that the work was deeply dangerous because the guys go, you know, several feet deep into it. And sometimes these caverns, you know, implode or shut down or, you know, and they get buried alive. And it's astounding to see it in the film, the way that you're able to capture it. Yes. Thank you.

I am. It was a deep. But I also knew that I wanted to tell the story in the way my grandmother told stories. And that's right. That goes back to that nonlinear storytelling. This story is told in that way. Yes. Your grandmother was the foundation of you understanding storytelling. Indeed. She would tell stories. What kinds would she tell? Oh, man, they were the kind that stick with you forever. They were nocturnal because at the time, electricity hadn't quite come to our neighborhood yet.

And so at 6 p.m., life starts to shut down. So my grandmother's stories, I always say, was kind of the de facto HBO, Netflix, Hulu, because we looked forward to them and they were episodic, you know, because she had to kind of, and it was somewhat spontaneous. But she always knew how to kind of take characters and turn them sometimes into inanimate objects, sometimes into animals, sometimes with human characteristics. They were always ongoing. Folklore, yeah. Indeed. And so I grew up with those. And so I've kind of tried my best to not abandon that storytelling approach

because it's what makes us who we are. Many storytellers from the continent come from this lineage of storytelling. And it's just about if we are allowed or have the material or have the support of studios and such to tell our stories this way. My great fortune was that Color Purple gave me the ability and the tools to do that and the support from my producers for sure. I think I heard you reference, and I apologize if I can't remember the name, but it was an Ethiopian filmmaker who said his quest to make film is to capture that feeling of the freedom that we feel in making music.

Yes, that's highly Garima. That's highly Garima. I think that when I think about how much, and I always say this, it's incalculable how much the world loses every day from the intentional exclusion of black, brown, indigenous approach to storytelling. Right? Because, and I always start by saying, think about your life without the brilliant manifestations, the brilliant intellectual and creative genius that is black music.

And it's long lineage. I mean, we can go, we can list them. We can list them. Afro, beat, samba, rumba, reggae, hip hop, blues, jazz. I mean, it goes, and it seems like every week there's a new invention. This is probably due to the fact that the barriers to entry are low and making music just requires us to get together self-expression we can do it we don't need and producers and big budgets and studio schedules those things we can just open our mouths and get it done

the challenge with mediums that have higher barriers to entry, like this is where it gets challenging. Because what inevitably happens is that they tell you, they give you the opportunity, but they only give you the opportunity to create echoes and mimic what the dominant culture perceives as artistically astute. And this is the grandest challenge as an artist of color. The mediums are colonized, deeply colonized mediums. They weren't made with you in mind. They weren't made with me in mind. I think the challenge is that we have to show up

audaciously and wrestle the tools. My hope is that what we're able to do is kick in doors that allow so many more to try. And out of that trial, whether successful or unsuccessful, we learn more. And I think the mediums will be better for it. I think that our larger human family will be better for it. Blitz Bazawule, thank you for this conversation. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Blitz Bazawule is a writer, musician, director, and painter. His new exhibit of paintings at Secret Studios in Los Angeles is called Those Were the Days. Coming up, book critic Maureen Corrigan shares part two of her summer reading recommendations. This is Fresh Air. As promised, our book critic Maureen Corrigan is back with more summer reading recommendations. This time, mystery and suspense, crime and spy stories.

There's something about the shadowy moral recesses of crime and suspense fiction that makes those genres especially appealing as temperatures soar. I'm beginning my recommendations with two distinctive novels that appeared this spring. Gary Phillips introduced the character of LA crime photographer and occasional private eye Harry Ingram in the 2022 novel One Shot Harry. The second novel of this evocative historical series is called Ash Dark as Night, and it opens in August 1965 during the Watts riots. Harry, who's one of two African-American freelancers covering the riots, has looped his trademark speed graphic camera around his neck and headed into the streets. We're told that Harry's situation is of course riskier than that of his white counterparts. Maybe one of these fellas might well get a brick

upside their head from a participant, but were less likely to be jacked up by the law. Ingram realized either side might turn on him. Indeed, when Harry captures the death of an unarmed black activist at the hands of the LAPD, the photo makes him famous as well as a target. This novel is steeped in period details like snap-rim hats and ragtop Chevy Bel Air convertibles along with walk-ons by real-life figures like pioneering African-American TV journalist Louis E. Lomax.

But it's Harry's clear-eyed take on the fallen world around him that makes this series so powerful. You might think a mystery about an inked-up lesbian punk musician turned nun is a little far-fetched, but New Orleans, the setting of the Sister Holiday series, is the city of far-fetched phenomenon, both sacred and profane. Margot Duahy's second book in this queer cozy series is called Blessed Water, and it finds the 34-year-old Sister Holiday up to her neck in murky floodwaters and priests with secrets. Duahi's writing style, pure hard-boiled Patti Smith, contains all the contradictions that torment Sister Holiday in her bumpy journey of faith. Here she is in the prologue recalling how she survived, swallowing a glass rosary bead. After my prayers for clarity,

for forgiveness, for a cigarette, deep inside the wet cave of my body was an unmistakable tickle. The bead fought my stomach acid for hours, leeching its blessing or poison or unmet wish. Anything hidden always finds a way to escape, no matter its careful sealing. Amen to that, Sister Holiday. I'm turning now to two new tales of suspense. The Expat is an excellent debut spy novel by Hanson Shi. The main character is an alienated young man named Michael Wang. He's a first-generation Chinese-American a few years out of Princeton, who's hit the bamboo ceiling at General Motors in San Francisco, where he's been working on technology for self-driving cars. Enter a femme fatale named Vivian, who flatters Michael into believing that his brilliance will be recognized by her enigmatic boss in China. Once Michael settles into life in Beijing, however,

he realizes he's been tapped not as a prodigy, but a patsy. The expat wraps up too abruptly, but it's also true that I wanted this moody espionage tale to go on longer. Liz Moore's extraordinary new literary suspense novel called The God of the Woods reminds me of Donna Tartt's 1992 debut, The Secret History. There are superficial similarities. Both are thick, intricate novels featuring young people isolated in enclosed worlds, in Tart's story, a Vermont college campus, in Moore's, a summer camp in New York's Adirondack Mountains. But the vital connection for me was a reading experience where I was so thoroughly submerged in a rich fictional world that for hours I barely came up for air. There's a touch of gothic excess about The God of the Woods, beginning with the premise that not one, but two children from the wealthy Van Laar family disappear from Camp Emerson in the Adirondacks 14 years apart. Moore's story jumps

around in time, chiefly from the 1950s into the 70s, and features a host of characters from different social classes, campers, counselors, townspeople, and local police, and the Van Laars themselves. The precision of Moore's writing never flags. Consider this reflection by Tracy, a 12-year-old camper who recalls that her father once told her casually that she was built like a plum on toothpicks, and the phrase was at once so cruel and so poetic that it clicked into place around her like a harness. Moore's previous book, Long Bright River, was a superb social novel about the opioid crisis in Philadelphia. The God of the Woods is something weirder and stranger and unforgettable. Happy summer reading, wherever your tastes take you. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University.

She reviewed Ash Dark as Night, Blessed Water, The Expat, and The God of the Woods. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, comedian Michelle Buteau, who stars in the new movie Babes, about friendship, pregnancy, and motherhood. This year, she became the first woman to film a Netflix comedy special at Radio City Music Hall. I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salad, Phyllis Myers, Sam Brigger,

Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shurock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley. This message comes from NPR sponsor Grammarly. What if everyone at work were an expert communicator? Inbox numbers would drop,

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