Experiment in self-discovery
Feb 21, 2020
4 minutes
By Michael Arceneaux
—Annabel Gutterman
By Joshunda Sanders
IN BRANDON TAYLOR’S HIGHLY anticipated novel Real Life, protagonist Wallace—Southern, black and gay—has left behind his family and their fraught shared history to pursue graduate studies in biochemistry at a predominantly white Midwestern university. The novel unfolds over three long days spent in and out of the lab, diving into the daily indignities Wallace faces in a quietly toxic environment.
Wallace finds himself stressed by the discovery that his experiment, breeding nematode worms, has been ruined by mold; we wonder, perhaps, if it was the work of a saboteur. Still, he chooses to celebrate the last weekend of summer with friends from his program. But as the only black person among this
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