What do you think?
Rate this book
Revolutions of All Colors
Gabriel Mathis, a twenty-three-year-old aspiring fantasy writer and reluctant Russophile, travels to Ukraine to teach English and meets the love of his an international arms dealer very much out of his league. Simon—a former Special Forces medic, torn over a warped sense of duty and a child he did not want—returns to the US to pursue his dream of becoming a mixed martial artist. After spending his adolescence defending his bisexuality, Michael makes his mark in New York’s fashion industry while nursing resentment for a community that never accepted him. Farria traces the lives of brothers Michael and Gabriel and their friend Simon from adolescence to their mid-twenties, through Oklahoma, Afghanistan, New York, Somalia, Ukraine, and New Orleans. Revolutions of All Colors is a brash, funny, and honest look at the evolution of characters we don’t often see—black nerds and veterans bucking their community’s rigid parameters of permissible expression while reconciling love of their country with the injustice of it. At its core, this is a novel about the uniquely American dilemma of chiseling out an identity in a country still struggling to define itself.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published December 14, 2020
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 19, 2022
Real Rating: 4.25* of five, rounded down
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: So, what does one do with a story that sets him reeling, causes hours-long meditation breaks, and ultimately makes him want to scream in outrage? How, on each and every page, something just...beats against the inside of his skull? No, not the racism.
I'm used to stories about how hard it is to be Black, but told in the SATANIC SECOND PERSON?! Okay, okay, not *all* of it's in the Satanic Second, but more than the occasional bit it...everything from Simon's PoV. (And why doesn't Michael have a voice? The bisexual and proud of nothing man could be a novel by himself!)
Oh my stars and garters, it took a lot out of me to finish this really well-structured, emotionally resonant as only the most complete and truthful ones are, novel of three brothers. Well, two brothers and a brother-friend who's essentially raised by their father. Quite, quite fraught, these relationships...and it shows in the way the narratives are created: Simon, the outsider, gets the Satanic Second Person narrative voice, which hurts me to see or say; Gabriel (every time I read his name I hear Blow Gabriel Blow, even before...events...transpire) the direct address of first person along with his beguiling love interest the Ukrainian arms dealer; Michael...a ghost, no direct narrative. It's a complicated schema (in the literary sense) that guides the reader's perceptions and responses to each character. It also reinforces the characters' own sense of themselves, with Simon being the perpetual outsider, only addressed never addressing, and Michael the unwanted Other, something he can never forgive the world for. He opts out...bullied bisexual different lad, it's the only way he can see to make himself the center of his own story. He has to vanish himself from the world he came from to present himself in his new milieu of the fashion and beauty industry. And how perfect is that, I ask you....
So the burden of this refrain is that fathering isn't parenting, and mothering can only get a boy so far. The people in your life, all of them, are part of your coming-to-be process for better or worse, and they're there because they could be, chose to be, and chose you. Again, for better or for worse. Simon, whose wildness is more a cosmic scream of agony, never stops, rarely slows, and always disappoints. Hey, it's an identity...and Michael, whose fade-away was so much less theatrical than Simon's, is the one who calls him to account. When their father, their shared father, dies, as we know our elders must, it's bog-standard typical of Simon that he doesn't show for the funeral of this man whose presence in his life was an anchor, a stability that he had to reject to bring into the open the rejection he feels he must deserve. "He was your father too. Closest thing you had. But fatherhood doesn’t mean shit to you, does it?" says Michael, invisible gone-away Michael, to him, hitting the one sore spot that only your real family can reach.
The blow lands; the wound is mortal; but to what, remains the question.
The read is part of the Syracuse University program called the "Veterans Writing Award sponsored by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families and Syracuse University Press." Longer-term readers will remember my review of Thomas Bardenwerper's < href="https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/... Passage, also a winner of this prize, and see the thread that connects them: I like reading about people not like me, and not like me in positive, interesting ways. Author Farria writes as a veteran (as I am not) and about bisexual Black men, absolute hen's teeth in the QUILTBAG representation algorithm. Bisexual when unmodified by "man/male/men" is now meant to be read as "woman." Or so it seems in the marketing done to the QUILTBAGgers. I am all for that changing to include the bisexual men of our various overlapping communities.
What made this novel such a good read for me was that acknowledgment that we, the QUILTBAG folk, exist in all families, take up space that we deserve and we are entitled to, and that goes for every family everywhere. It's telling that Michael's bullying drives him away; it's telling that he is the only one to have the standing to call out Simon, the man mired in a sense of himself as unworthy, because Michael has been sent that message as well. It's the way Author Farria makes all those pieces come together that gives me such a vivid and personal sense of this read's message of inclusiveness. It's a screwed up family that produced Simon, Michael, and Gabriel, but it's a family and it is a powerful one to make men whose monstrous sadness and pain didn't destroy them. Take a minute...think about your own life...what were the before-and-afters there? These three men, brothers, are bound by that before-and-after that came long before the showy, flashy one.
Definitely a talented writer's first novel. May many more follow it.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: So, what does one do with a story that sets him reeling, causes hours-long meditation breaks, and ultimately makes him want to scream in outrage? How, on each and every page, something just...beats against the inside of his skull? No, not the racism.
I'm used to stories about how hard it is to be Black, but told in the SATANIC SECOND PERSON?! Okay, okay, not *all* of it's in the Satanic Second, but more than the occasional bit it...everything from Simon's PoV. (And why doesn't Michael have a voice? The bisexual and proud of nothing man could be a novel by himself!)
Oh my stars and garters, it took a lot out of me to finish this really well-structured, emotionally resonant as only the most complete and truthful ones are, novel of three brothers. Well, two brothers and a brother-friend who's essentially raised by their father. Quite, quite fraught, these relationships...and it shows in the way the narratives are created: Simon, the outsider, gets the Satanic Second Person narrative voice, which hurts me to see or say; Gabriel (every time I read his name I hear Blow Gabriel Blow, even before...events...transpire) the direct address of first person along with his beguiling love interest the Ukrainian arms dealer; Michael...a ghost, no direct narrative. It's a complicated schema (in the literary sense) that guides the reader's perceptions and responses to each character. It also reinforces the characters' own sense of themselves, with Simon being the perpetual outsider, only addressed never addressing, and Michael the unwanted Other, something he can never forgive the world for. He opts out...bullied bisexual different lad, it's the only way he can see to make himself the center of his own story. He has to vanish himself from the world he came from to present himself in his new milieu of the fashion and beauty industry. And how perfect is that, I ask you....
So the burden of this refrain is that fathering isn't parenting, and mothering can only get a boy so far. The people in your life, all of them, are part of your coming-to-be process for better or worse, and they're there because they could be, chose to be, and chose you. Again, for better or for worse. Simon, whose wildness is more a cosmic scream of agony, never stops, rarely slows, and always disappoints. Hey, it's an identity...and Michael, whose fade-away was so much less theatrical than Simon's, is the one who calls him to account. When their father, their shared father, dies, as we know our elders must, it's bog-standard typical of Simon that he doesn't show for the funeral of this man whose presence in his life was an anchor, a stability that he had to reject to bring into the open the rejection he feels he must deserve. "He was your father too. Closest thing you had. But fatherhood doesn’t mean shit to you, does it?" says Michael, invisible gone-away Michael, to him, hitting the one sore spot that only your real family can reach.
The blow lands; the wound is mortal; but to what, remains the question.
The read is part of the Syracuse University program called the "Veterans Writing Award sponsored by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families and Syracuse University Press." Longer-term readers will remember my review of Thomas Bardenwerper's < href="https://expendablemudge.blogspot.com/... Passage, also a winner of this prize, and see the thread that connects them: I like reading about people not like me, and not like me in positive, interesting ways. Author Farria writes as a veteran (as I am not) and about bisexual Black men, absolute hen's teeth in the QUILTBAG representation algorithm. Bisexual when unmodified by "man/male/men" is now meant to be read as "woman." Or so it seems in the marketing done to the QUILTBAGgers. I am all for that changing to include the bisexual men of our various overlapping communities.
What made this novel such a good read for me was that acknowledgment that we, the QUILTBAG folk, exist in all families, take up space that we deserve and we are entitled to, and that goes for every family everywhere. It's telling that Michael's bullying drives him away; it's telling that he is the only one to have the standing to call out Simon, the man mired in a sense of himself as unworthy, because Michael has been sent that message as well. It's the way Author Farria makes all those pieces come together that gives me such a vivid and personal sense of this read's message of inclusiveness. It's a screwed up family that produced Simon, Michael, and Gabriel, but it's a family and it is a powerful one to make men whose monstrous sadness and pain didn't destroy them. Take a minute...think about your own life...what were the before-and-afters there? These three men, brothers, are bound by that before-and-after that came long before the showy, flashy one.
Definitely a talented writer's first novel. May many more follow it.
October 13, 2023
2.5 stars. it would have been a full three but i'm a little peeved by the fact that michael is only incidental to the story and the other characters, barely there and barely felt, when the description posits him as important as the others (and made me look forward to him the most, at that).
April 30, 2021
This is well-written, and does indeed cover ground that I don't often see covered. Overall I'd recommend this. I was disappointed, though, that the book description is misleading and really oversells a part of the book that I was more interested in - a description that made me pick up the book in the first place. Pretty much everything mentioned in this quote (from the description) is covered incidentally in the second-to-last chapter:
I read the book with this in mind, waiting and watching for it. There were tiny indications that Michael was bisexual, but tiny enough to be missed. And my biggest disappointment was that Michael and his "differentness" (including his epilepsy), in the last chapter, only serve as plot points to further develop the other two characters. I may be wrong, but I don't think any chapter is told from Michael's POV, though we get the POVs of pretty much every other character: Simon, Gabriel, Ettie, Frank, even Tamara.
Anyway, all that said, I did enjoy quite a lot of this book: The Black Panthers material at the beginning, the character of Ettie throughout, and the Somalia chapter. The Kyiv chapters reminded me a bit of Garth Greenwell's two novels, What Belongs to You and Cleanness (and that's a good thing).
After spending his adolescence defending his bisexuality, Michael makes his mark in New York's fashion industry while nursing resentment for a community that never accepted him.
I read the book with this in mind, waiting and watching for it. There were tiny indications that Michael was bisexual, but tiny enough to be missed. And my biggest disappointment was that Michael and his "differentness" (including his epilepsy), in the last chapter, only serve as plot points to further develop the other two characters. I may be wrong, but I don't think any chapter is told from Michael's POV, though we get the POVs of pretty much every other character: Simon, Gabriel, Ettie, Frank, even Tamara.
Anyway, all that said, I did enjoy quite a lot of this book: The Black Panthers material at the beginning, the character of Ettie throughout, and the Somalia chapter. The Kyiv chapters reminded me a bit of Garth Greenwell's two novels, What Belongs to You and Cleanness (and that's a good thing).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 7, 2022
A novel-in-stories or more like a multi-generational family saga condensed down into a few fascinating snippets. Each chapter does stand on its own very well, but also leaves you begging for more and turning the pages in wonder at where the author's experience, wit, and imagination will take you next.
April 8, 2021
Powerful, provocative novel in stories with multiple narrators, set in New Orleans, Oklahoma, Ukraine, Somalia. One of the primary narrators is enlisted in the Air Force, then Special Services; the book is a Winter of the 2019 Veterans Writing Prize, and the fight scenes (whether in Mogadishu 2005, the Black Panther HQ in 1970s New Orleans, or in the parking lot of the Kickapoo gas station in 1992) are as vivid as any I've read. But it's also about manhood, fatherhood, and young people resisting being forced into socially expected roles. It's about race: the black father speaking to his black sons, cautioning them that they cannot expect justice. Watch yourself, he's saying. It's about brothers, lovers, friends.
The author references Tim O'Brian's masterpiece, The Things They Carried, and O'Brian's influence is evident in both the novel's structure and in its wide-open gaze, large enough to contain all humanity. This would be an excellent textbook for anyone teaching creative writing, race, gender studies at the advanced high school or college level.
The author references Tim O'Brian's masterpiece, The Things They Carried, and O'Brian's influence is evident in both the novel's structure and in its wide-open gaze, large enough to contain all humanity. This would be an excellent textbook for anyone teaching creative writing, race, gender studies at the advanced high school or college level.
December 30, 2020
In his debut novel, Dewaine Farria tells the story of a single family, with episodes spanning both time and distance (1970s New Orleans to 1990s Oklahoma to 2000s Somalia and beyond). For such a short novel and easy read, it is amazing how much Farria is able to accomplish. The characters are believable and compelling, and the dialogue is authentic and rich. While many authors can tell powerful stories and others can write beautiful prose, Farria is the rare author who can do both. Highly recommended.
December 15, 2020
Dewaine Farria’s debut is enlightening, disturbing, beautifully written, and a pleasure to read. I met the author while we attended the same MFA program, but until I asked for an advance copy of this book from the publisher I had not read his work. This novel shows tremendous range and talent. Highly recommended.
February 28, 2022
This is a phenomenal book, made even more impressive by the fact that it's the author's debut novel. The characters in "Revolutions Of All Colors" are superbly developed and the personal knowledge the author weaves into his settings gives the novel an authenticity that can not be faked. I found this book captivating and I look forward to Mr. Farria's next work!
February 26, 2021
A captivating story that emphasizes how lives impact and permeate one another's. The ending is a gut-punch of revelation and sorrow. The movement through time and space is masterful. I couldn't put it down.
January 14, 2021
This book packs a lot of serious topics into a small, easily digestible package, with great characters. I would have loved to hear more from some of them, but really enjoyed this book all around.
March 6, 2021
An beautifully written debut novel about race and identity told in vignettes from various perspectives. Loved it!
August 2, 2021
This starts out really strong.
Unfortunately my interest started to wane about halfway through.
Pet peeve: writing in second person never works.
Unfortunately my interest started to wane about halfway through.
Pet peeve: writing in second person never works.
April 10, 2022
Beautiful book, but a bit difficult to follow.
April 23, 2023
This was a fantastic read. The author here navigates between 3 brothers and pulls it off seamlessly…really spectacular book, highly recommend!
December 18, 2020
Revolutions of All Colors switches between viewpoints in a series of interconnected vignettes. The book starts with Ettie, a young black woman in New Orleans in the 70’s. We follow her as she meets Black Panthers and falls in love We introduced to her son, Simon. Raised by his mother in small town Oklahoma, Simon and his friends, siblings Michael and Gabriel, make up the heart of the book. We follow their struggles and their travels: Kyiv, Mogadishu and New York; friendship, love and obsession.
Revolutions doesn’t hesitate to shy away from conflict, or difficult topics. Ettie is trying to improve lives by fighting for the community in her job at the housing association, she didn’t much like the attitude Black Panthers she had seen around campus and so is wary of Troy when she first meets him. In front of a group of black children Troy rebukes a white grocery store owner for raising the prices for his black customers:
While race is an important and necessary theme in Revolutions, if only because of the effect on the lives of the characters, it is far from the only focus. The effects of war, on soldiers and civilians, are neatly interspersed with smaller scale, but no less powerful stories of friendship, love and belonging. Each character is seeking their place in the world, and we see them strive for acceptance or to bring about change and watch the changes in turn wrought on them by the world.
Family is another thread running through the book – Ettie raises her son alone, her friend Frank is as good as a father to Simon as well as his own sons. Michael struggles with the accidental pregnancy of his girlfriend, and his fear and shame at the idea of a son he never wanted. He has always valued courage and resents the stereotype of black absent father, yet he flees from his feelings rather than confront them:
Farria’s writing brilliantly captures the world his characters inhabit, whether that is teenage swagger in a parking lot, bureaucracy in the middle of a war zone or an arm’s dealer’s perspective of international borders. I found some of the descriptions relied overly on simile (is it necessary for a cargo plane being loaded to resemble a ‘gaping maw’?) but that is a personal pet peeve, and it certainly never got in the way of my enjoyment of the story. The characters feel real, and the little details are spot-on. I really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it.
Revolutions doesn’t hesitate to shy away from conflict, or difficult topics. Ettie is trying to improve lives by fighting for the community in her job at the housing association, she didn’t much like the attitude Black Panthers she had seen around campus and so is wary of Troy when she first meets him. In front of a group of black children Troy rebukes a white grocery store owner for raising the prices for his black customers:
The importance of that tiny moment of insurrection in these – their – children’s lives struck Ettie hard. More than simply replacing the services of an absentee state and corroborating the injustice in this community’s daily existence the Panthers legitimized a feral sort of black masculinity. Yes, many were misogynistic, arrogant and dangerously naïve. But they were also young, black and unafraid. And Ettie suddenly understood just how important it was that their kids saw that.
While race is an important and necessary theme in Revolutions, if only because of the effect on the lives of the characters, it is far from the only focus. The effects of war, on soldiers and civilians, are neatly interspersed with smaller scale, but no less powerful stories of friendship, love and belonging. Each character is seeking their place in the world, and we see them strive for acceptance or to bring about change and watch the changes in turn wrought on them by the world.
Family is another thread running through the book – Ettie raises her son alone, her friend Frank is as good as a father to Simon as well as his own sons. Michael struggles with the accidental pregnancy of his girlfriend, and his fear and shame at the idea of a son he never wanted. He has always valued courage and resents the stereotype of black absent father, yet he flees from his feelings rather than confront them:
You told everyone that you took the contracting job in Mogadishu for the money. But that’s a lie. You took the job in Mog because – after Afghanistan – you knew you could lose yourself in Somalia. War zones are great like that. Turned out fighting was even better. The Fight God doled out that same sublime, single minded clarity of purpose, and victory in the ring was clean and pure. All the Fight God demanded was a life shorn of complex human relationships, alcohol, drugs, and pleasure in food. In return he shrouded you in his little sect, made you difficult for the rest of the world to find. And that’s exactly what you wanted.
Farria’s writing brilliantly captures the world his characters inhabit, whether that is teenage swagger in a parking lot, bureaucracy in the middle of a war zone or an arm’s dealer’s perspective of international borders. I found some of the descriptions relied overly on simile (is it necessary for a cargo plane being loaded to resemble a ‘gaping maw’?) but that is a personal pet peeve, and it certainly never got in the way of my enjoyment of the story. The characters feel real, and the little details are spot-on. I really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it.
January 23, 2021
This debut pulses with questions about race, identity and loyalty in America. What does it mean to serve a country that does not serve you? This complex question follows a family with a legacy of military service, and their friends and lovers, back through history and into the present day. Arresting and ambitious. Wow.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews