Listen to Your Sister is partly a horror story, but the focus is on three African American siblings, raised in Hollywood, Florida and now living in Seattle at a time of racial strife. The youngest, Jamie, is 16. His 23 year old sister Callie is his guardian because a determination was made he was no longer safe with his mother. Their father died in a car wreck years ago. Dre, the middle sibling, is two years younger than Callie. She feels overwhelmed as Jamie is constantly in trouble at school and failing to observe her rules and expectations and Dre does not help as he had promised to. She is prone to terrible nightmares that she believes foretell danger to her brothers, especially Jamie. Dre lives in his own apartment with a roommate and he works in restaurants. Dre’s roommate, Roberto, is two-timing his girlfriend and things are stressful. Callie also works full-time, but her job is at risk because she constantly has to deal with Jamie’s wayward behavior.
At some point, it becomes clear that Jamie is mixed up with a group of friends that have similar social and political sensibilities to his. They plan to support a city-wide protest by giving food and drink to protesters. Except it gets way more complicated and along the way there are incidents that put Jamie at the scene of some serious criminal activity. Dre, too, is faced with danger when people come around thinking he is his roommate Roberto and threaten Dre for cheating on “his” girlfriend. Eventually the situation for the brothers gets so hot that the siblings decide to leave town for a while. The descriptions of the Air BNBs they rent are priceless. Throughout, the horror part of the story involves sibling encounters with supernatural individuals who seem to intervene in dangers they face seemingly to help them but leaving them at risk. To avoid spoilers, that’s as far as I can go.
Ultimately, what is amazing about Listen to Your Sister is the way that Viel has captured the sibling dynamic and what it is like to be young and black and living on the edge financially, politically and personally in the United States. All of them experienced trauma at their parents’ hands and Callie, as the eldest and maybe because she is female, took on tremendous responsibility to protect her younger brothers. Everyone is damaged and each feels a need to love and protect one another. But there was no roadmap for them. The tension is real and the danger is real, but there are many laugh out loud and sweet scenes in Listen to your Sister that add to the flavor of love and hope throughout some very big messes. I loved the audio version which used three narrators, Eric Lockley, Kristolyn Lloyd, and Zeno Robinson to portray the siblings to amazing effect.
They Called me Bookworm 