This was such a beautiful, beautiful book, so full of heart and hope, just a gorgeous experience. It follows Ranita, who’s just finished her time in prison and is adjusting to life back on the outside, fighting to stay clean and sober and to regain custody of her kids. She’s also trying to come to terms with her late-found queerness, which blossomed during her stint in prison with Maxine (side note, please can the author write a book about Maxine next because I would read that ten times over). The story flips back and forward in time, so we see snapshots of Ranita’s life as a child, as a wayward teenager, during prison, and then after her release. I loved all the chapters, Lee writes with such assuredness and Ranita was an incredibly developed character. My heart broke for her a million times over - she did not have an easy life. Lee addresses complex mother-daughter relationships, emotional abuse over physical, with welts left just as deep, sexual abuse at church, the lure of alcohol and drugs as numbness, but above all the ability to heal and redeem.  I love everything about Ranita’s journey, but obviously especially the queer aspects of her life she begins to seek out and embrace. 

My one critique is that the issue with Ranita’s old partner, DQ, didn’t seem fully resolved. There’s one confrontation with him when she’s back home, but then he just melts away. It felt a little too neat, but honestly with all the shit Ranita has to deal with, she deserves a win like that!!

 Pomegranate is a stunning jewel of a book. It’s the story of Ranita Atwater, newly released from a four year stint in the Oak Hills Correctional Centre for opiate possession. She needs to stay clean, find somewhere to live, find a job and rebuild her relationship with her kids before she has any hope of achieving her goal of regaining custody of them. Plus she has to come to terms with issues from her past as well as her new identity as a queer woman - all without the support of her partner who is still incarcerated. I loved the structure of this book with Ranita telling her present day story in the first person, while events from her childhood up to her incarceration are told in the third person. A really clever way of showing how Ranita still needed to come to terms with her past. The book did an excellent job of highlighting the barriers women, particularly if they are Black and/or queer, face in trying to reintegrate into society after a period of incarceration, of trying to stay clean and trying to reunite their families. The system which should be helping them provides more in the way of obstacles than assistance, and appears to be looking for any reason to fail women and separate them permanently from their children. It seeks unrealistic constant linear progress and has little tolerance for even minor setbacks or regressions. I was really rooting for Ranita and so many times I was worried that her own actions or those of others, were going to cause her to lose her kids. In many ways this was a heavy read and Ranita suffered more than her share of trauma. But there was also joy, hope and love - the support she had from her aunts, the relationship she had with her father, the strength she eventually found via therapy, the support of one of her case workers, her love for her son and daughter.

Ranita is a character I really rooted for. I admired her determination, resilience and perseverance, was cheering for every success and biting my nails and every setback, real or potential. I found Pomegranate a really well-told story that highlights important social issues and deserves a wide readership.