Lauren Wilkinson
Author of American Spy
About the Author
Works by Lauren Wilkinson
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1984-07-19
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Columbia University (MFA)
- Occupations
- writing professor, Columbia University
- Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- New York, USA
Members
Reviews
Marie is an intelligence officer with the FBI. As a young black woman, she isn't taken all that seriously, although she's good at her job. When she is suddenly offered the chance to be part of a task force to gain intelligence on, and undermine, Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary president of the African country Burkina Faso, she takes the opportunity. She has mixed feelings about the job, the Burkina Faso government, and Sankara himself, whom she finds charismatic, brilliant, charming, and show more magnetic.
The book is written as a letter to her young twin sons, in case she isn't around to tell them her stories later in their lives. In her letter, she wrestles with her thoughts about women, sexism, racism, America's role in the world, her broken family, and more.
Sankara is a real historical figure, though the story is fiction. show less
The book is written as a letter to her young twin sons, in case she isn't around to tell them her stories later in their lives. In her letter, she wrestles with her thoughts about women, sexism, racism, America's role in the world, her broken family, and more.
Sankara is a real historical figure, though the story is fiction. show less
'American Spy' turned out to be a fascinating, well-written thought-provoking book, that I almost didn't buy. 'American Spy is Lauren Wilkinson's first novel so I only had the publisher's summary to go on and that almost made me pass. It opens with:
'What if your sense of duty required you to betray the man you love? One woman struggles to choose between her honor and her heart in this enthralling espionage drama that deftly hops between New York and West Africa.'
Can you hear my eyes rolling? show more A Cold War Spy Romance. What a pitch.
Then I saw that 'American Spy' had been on Barak Obama's 2019 summer reading list so I assumed that it was more than pulp fiction.
From the rest of the publisher's summary, I thought I'd be reading an American spy thriller, with fictional characters woven into the real efforts by the CIA to undermine Thomas Sankara, a charismatic Marxist-Leninist Pan-Africanist who become the first President of Burkina Faso in 1983, with the twist being that I the main character was a black woman.
That is the frame that this book hangs on, but it's not really what the book is about.
Anyone looking for a black female version of Jack Ryan is going to be disappointed. This book is closer to Le Carré than Clancy but with a voice all its own.
Like Le Carré most recent novels 'Agent Running In The Field' or 'A Delicate Truth' or 'A Legacy Of Spies', Wilkinson's novel focuses on what kind of person becomes a spy and what it says about them. Where Le Carré focuses on establishment insiders who appear to be fully paid up members of the Old Boys Club but who actually sit a little outside of polite society, Wilkinson focuses on what it means to be a black woman, who is neither welcomed nor valued by the white male establishment and yet chooses to make a career in the FBI in the 1980s.
The style of storytelling shapes the feel of this novel. It's written as a first-person account by Marie Mitchell to her two twin sons. The account opens with a description of an armed man breaking into their home and trying to kill them. The rest is an explanation, for the sons to read when they are old enough, of the background to the attack and the need for the flight from home that follows it.
This 'letters to my sons' format means that the book is as focused on their family history as it is upon the ins and outs of Cold War spying. It also means that it tends to be more reflective in style. There are moments of tension and there is a fair amount of action but most of the novel is a mother's attempt to pass on to her sons who she is and who they should strive to become. Not surprisingly, this means a lot of the novel is about what it means to be black in America in the eighties.
I found the storytelling style very engaging. Marie Mitchell is an unusual woman who understands that some of her choices are driven by her history with her parents and her sister and some are simply about the kind of person that she is. She doesn't sugar-coat that or apologise for it but she does explain it clearly.
As I came to know Marie Mitchell, my understanding of what the 'American Spy' title meant changed. At one point, she tells the story of her FBI Graduation Ceremony. She has been asked to speak at it but, in a training session shortly before the ceremony, her face has been badly bruised by her large, white, male opponent. Mitchel's father, a senior police officer, sees her on the day of the ceremony, takes in her bruises and tells her that she doesn't have to speak. He says:
'You don't owe them anything. You give them what you wanna give them. But it's easier if they think you're one of them. It's easier to work from the inside. That's what I try to do. I've been a spy in this country for as long as I can remember.'
There's a lot in this book about what the excluded owe to those who exclude them and about how to make a place for yourself in a world that doesn't want you to be in it.
Marie Mitchel sees the world a little too clearly to be entirely comfortable in it. Here's an example of how her teenage self saw her boyfriend.
'I loved Robbie, which meant he could truly make me furious. In too much of what he said, I heard over-confidence about his limited life experience and his aggressively average intelligence. He was the type of guy that, had he been born white, especially if he’d grown up with a little money, would probably have wound up at an excellent business school.'
It was also interesting to see Marie Mitchel take stock of her own privilege and her very American identity when she finds herself in an African state where everyone sees her as American first and black second.
But this isn't just about being black in 80s American. It's about being Marie Mitchel, a woman who grew up with a mother who left one day to return to Martinique. with an older sister who. from a very young age, was determined to become a spy, and with a father who worked within the system, providing them with a good quality of life but finding himself boxed in to a senior but powerless job.
Marie Mitchell is someone who has learned to keep her inner self secret, hiding it behind constructed identities that she thinks will help her get what she wants. She does this because, at a very deep level, she accepts that she cannot have what she wants if she presents herself as she truly is. I think that instead of the clichéd 'What if your sense of duty required you to betray the man you love?' pitch in the publisher's summary, the real tension in this book is 'What if you getting what you want required you to break cover and show who you are?'
I think the mindset at this novel's core is shown by what Marie Mitchel writes to her boys about Robbie towards the end of the book:
'A part of me still loves Robbie but I can't tell him that. He'd take it as an invitation. I can only confess that to you two, here in these pages. To tell anyone else how I feel about him is to blow my cover. Throughout my life, the most consistent way I've revealed who I really am is through whom I've chosen to love.'
The words 'revealed' and 'chosen' and the thinking they imply drive the events of the novel.
I won't go into the spy story, other than to say that it's credible and has enough twists to keep it interesting. This novel stands or falls by whether or not you're engaged by Marie Mitchel and her worldview.
I found myself fascinated by what she had to say. I think I was greatly helped in this by having the words delivered by Bahni Turpin, whose narration is flawless. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.
https://soundcloud.com/hachetteaudiouk/american-spy-by-lauren-wilkinson-read-by-... show less
Marie is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She's brilliant, knowledgeable and dedicated. But it's 1986 and Marie is a young black woman, so the FBI doesn't know what to do with her, leaving her to fill out paperwork and cultivate assets she'll never be allowed to use. She's seen a family friend sidelined and she's intent on avoiding his fate. So when the CIA comes knocking with an assignment that sounds too good to be true, she's cautious, but very interested. And so Marie becomes show more involved in the workings of the government of Burkina Faso and with American interests there that may or may not be above board.
This is a well-plotted spy thriller that respects the parameters of the genre while blowing them away with a clear-eyed look at how our government's agencies worked to destabilize foreign governments and how racism and misogyny kept them largely composed of clean-cut white men. Which is not to say that American Spy isn't full of action-packed scenes or fascinating geopolitics. Lauren Wilkinson has managed to write a novel that is a fast-paced thriller and a nuanced exploration of what it means to be a black woman working in a field dominated by white men. show less
This is a well-plotted spy thriller that respects the parameters of the genre while blowing them away with a clear-eyed look at how our government's agencies worked to destabilize foreign governments and how racism and misogyny kept them largely composed of clean-cut white men. Which is not to say that American Spy isn't full of action-packed scenes or fascinating geopolitics. Lauren Wilkinson has managed to write a novel that is a fast-paced thriller and a nuanced exploration of what it means to be a black woman working in a field dominated by white men. show less
I was a little wary of this novel because of the terrific hype that accompanied its publication in the UK, with its dazzling cover strewn with encomia from the likes of former President, Barack Obama. Still, who am I to question the judgement of the President, and in this regard, he was right on the money.
The book takes the form of an account of here activities written by Marie Mitchell to explain to her children why various things had befallen them as a family. Ms Mitchell certainly has a show more strong story to tell. Born in Martinique, and consequently fluent in French, she had grown up in New York in the 1960s, where her father was a police officer. Her parents had split up while she was still young, and her mother had returned to the Caribbean, leaving Marie and her sister with their father. Following their mother’s departure, Marie’s elder sister assumed a huge role in her life, and Marie increasingly yearns to be like her, and to make her proud of her. This is significant for the story because, from a very early age, Marie’s sister had been determined to become a spy.
Following her sister’s lead, Marie is recruited into the CIA in the 1980s. There she is at first largely overlooked, and subjected to fairly blatant discrimination on the grounds of both her gender and her race. She is, however, temporarily assigned to the FBI, to assist their operation to observe Thomas Sankara, charismatic pro-Communist leader of the newly independent Burkina Faso, which as Upper Volta had been a French colony.
Sankara is an enigma, and poses an awkward dilemma for the West. Although clearly sympathetic to Communist powers during the height of the Cold War, he seems to the closet Africa had then come to a benevolent dictator. Vowing to excise corruption from his country (then one of the poorest in the world) he had sold the government’s fleet of luxury Mercedes limousines, replacing them with small Renault cars for government ministers. He had also established a viable programme of school building throughout the country, and seemed genuinely bent upon lasting reform. He had, however, bolstered his position with military support, and was moving to stop multi-party elections.
In 1987 Sankara visited New York to address the General Assembly of the United Nations, and Marie is deployed by the FBI to get to know him. Her fluency in French is a definite asset, and she manages to gain his confidence. Having established a rapport with Sankara, she is later deployed to Burkina Faso, masquerading as an employee of an NGO operating there.
That is the basic scenario, but does not do justice to Lauren Wilkinson’s skill in telling her story, all the more notable as this is her first novel. We pick up the story through a series of Marie’s recollection, moving back and forth in time as new events happen, and other memories are strewn along the way. Overall the effect is very impressive – I did feel that the story seemed occasionally to become bogged down, but just as I was starting to feel frustrated with it, the writer seemed also to sense that the story was straying, and she hauled it back on course. All in all, a very impressive debut. show less
The book takes the form of an account of here activities written by Marie Mitchell to explain to her children why various things had befallen them as a family. Ms Mitchell certainly has a show more strong story to tell. Born in Martinique, and consequently fluent in French, she had grown up in New York in the 1960s, where her father was a police officer. Her parents had split up while she was still young, and her mother had returned to the Caribbean, leaving Marie and her sister with their father. Following their mother’s departure, Marie’s elder sister assumed a huge role in her life, and Marie increasingly yearns to be like her, and to make her proud of her. This is significant for the story because, from a very early age, Marie’s sister had been determined to become a spy.
Following her sister’s lead, Marie is recruited into the CIA in the 1980s. There she is at first largely overlooked, and subjected to fairly blatant discrimination on the grounds of both her gender and her race. She is, however, temporarily assigned to the FBI, to assist their operation to observe Thomas Sankara, charismatic pro-Communist leader of the newly independent Burkina Faso, which as Upper Volta had been a French colony.
Sankara is an enigma, and poses an awkward dilemma for the West. Although clearly sympathetic to Communist powers during the height of the Cold War, he seems to the closet Africa had then come to a benevolent dictator. Vowing to excise corruption from his country (then one of the poorest in the world) he had sold the government’s fleet of luxury Mercedes limousines, replacing them with small Renault cars for government ministers. He had also established a viable programme of school building throughout the country, and seemed genuinely bent upon lasting reform. He had, however, bolstered his position with military support, and was moving to stop multi-party elections.
In 1987 Sankara visited New York to address the General Assembly of the United Nations, and Marie is deployed by the FBI to get to know him. Her fluency in French is a definite asset, and she manages to gain his confidence. Having established a rapport with Sankara, she is later deployed to Burkina Faso, masquerading as an employee of an NGO operating there.
That is the basic scenario, but does not do justice to Lauren Wilkinson’s skill in telling her story, all the more notable as this is her first novel. We pick up the story through a series of Marie’s recollection, moving back and forth in time as new events happen, and other memories are strewn along the way. Overall the effect is very impressive – I did feel that the story seemed occasionally to become bogged down, but just as I was starting to feel frustrated with it, the writer seemed also to sense that the story was straying, and she hauled it back on course. All in all, a very impressive debut. show less
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- Works
- 2
- Members
- 1,015
- Popularity
- #25,389
- Rating
- 3.5
- Reviews
- 58
- ISBNs
- 18
- Languages
- 1