The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta, illustrated by Anshika Khullar
Published by Hachette Children’s Group

IN recently reading and reviewing CG Moore’s Trigger, a dark novel about recovery from sexual assault as a young person, I was reminded of the powerful books in the form of poetry which made the style popular.

It is impossible then, not to come back to Dean Atta. With a short film based upon his poem Two Black Boys In Paradise on the way and his recent debut picture book Confetti hitting the shelves, his work has always strived to show the spark and joy of youth for those from oppressed groups.

In dealing with race and sexuality, his acclaimed novel in verse, The Black Flamingo follows a young life that is conflicted and messy, but permanently honest and hopeful.

Starting when Michael is only six years old, there is a lot in his life he cannot yet fully understand but that still affects him – captured in the first section of this novel through moments of innocence often more telling than the complications and pessimism of adults around him.

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He doesn’t understand why when he asks for only a Barbie on his birthday, he’s thought not to be serious and doesn’t get the one toy he wants when the girls around him have many.

As Michael grows older, he feels divided, living with his Greek Cypriot mother and growing closer to everyone in his Jamaican father’s family, except, seemingly, his father, who fades in and out of the story and his mind.

He learns slowly, over time not to see himself in these two halves while also dealing with the uncertainty of friendships at school and learning he’s gay.

While some at school – particularly those he once thought would be kind – become bullies, he finds refuge in the quiet girl in his class, Daisy, who accepts him for all he is and sits with him to read in companionable silence as his passion for poetry grows and he starts to write his own.

Through his teenage years, Michael falls in and out of the possibility of relationships with boys who are unavailable or untrustworthy, longing to be able to find someone with the simplicity and safety of his peers.

While he struggles with his friendship with Daisy, he must learn how to make new friends after relying on only one for so long. With separation from his family, he finds independence – for better or worse – studying English at university.

It is within this space that Michael searches for community, struggling to feel at home until he joins the drag society.

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He makes new friends in and outside of his new drag community, faces and copes with racism and homophobia with pain and bravery equally and discovers a deeper level of self-expression.

Through his drag persona, the Black Flamingo, Michael recalls his childhood feeling left out as though a single black flamingo in a sea of pink, his desire to find and allow himself femininity and to say all he never felt he could. A book with the power to entertain and inspire.