I have to admit my main reason for picking up Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks was the gorgeous cover. The yellow background flowing into hues of red and green plus the effortlessy cool beauty of the woman’s image, spoke to me on a deep level. A quick scan of the synopsis and I was sold.
I won’t lie, I was worried that the story would not live up to the majesty of the cover – I’ve been catfished by book covers before – so it took a year or so before I decided to read it. But I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed at all.
Yamaye is a young woman who lives for the weekend when she goes raving with her friends at The Crypt, a dancehall club in the basement of a local church. There she loses herself amid the dub reggae beats, creating lyrics of her own as she dreams of becoming an MC in her own right.
Soon Yamaye falls in love with Moose, an enigmatic young man who is far different to the men she usually meets at the club. In him she finds a safe place away from her disapproving father and the foreboding estate where she lives – gloriously nicknamed The Tombstones – and the chance to dream of begining life anew elsewhere.
But their relationship is brutally and unexpectedly cut short, and Yamaye finds her self on a painful journey of self-discovery and transformation – first in Bristol where she is caught up with a criminal gang. Then in Jamaica where her past and present collide in a dramatic climax.
This was a really satisfying read, especially during Black History month where the idea of reclaiming narratives was at the forefront of my mind. Crooks uses the musicality and freedom of dub reggae to portray the means by which Black youths used to escape the everyday trials of life in 1970s Britain and create something of their own.
I also really liked the novel’s use of language. I don’t just mean the words and/or dialect, as the novel effortlessy switches between Jamaican patois and London slang, but the language of fashion and music.
Yamaye’s raving clothes signify a shell of protection for her vulnerability as a woman in the male dominated space of the dancehall. For example, her ‘stitched-seamed jeans’ and gold-tipped patent shoes’ mark her as being a ‘Styx gyal’ – a kind of girl with whom you don’t mess with. But when she starts dating Moose, her style subtly shifts to a more softer, feminine style, for example a ‘black top and midi skirt spun in gauzy raw silk’.
When running with the Bristol gang she goes back to her Styx-style armour of jeans and gold-tipped shoes, again showing her need to protect herself in some way, before reverting to a more loose and freer style of shorts and sun dresses when she moves to Jamaica.
Similarly, when Yamaye listens to lovers rock, it signifies her softer, vulnerable side as she allows herself memories of happier times with Moose. In contrast, when she becomes an MC, she adopts a more harder and stronger persona, Sonix Dominatix, and spits lyrics to show herself as being in control of the not only the mic but the entire dancehall.
Fire Rush is a personal and rich exploration of Black womanhood. There’s something incredibly personal about the writing and the story and it touches on so many different issues and themes, such as race, sexuality, sexual abuse and grief.
It made for difficult reading at times but it was worthwhile if only to see Yamaye begin to tune into her own agency as a woman and finally take control of the destination and trajectory of her life.
Just Read It 