Now Lila Knows

Written by Elizabeth Nunez

Narrated by Lynnette R. Freeman

Lila Bonnard has left her island home in the Caribbean to join the faculty as a visiting professor at Mayfield College in a small Vermont town. On her way from the airport to Mayfield, Lila witnesses the fatal shooting of a Black man by the
police. It turns out that the victim was a professor at Mayfield, and was giving CPR to a white woman who was on the verge of an opioid overdose.

The two Black faculty and a Black administrator in the otherwise all-white college expect Lila to be a witness in the case against the police. Unfortunately, Lila fears that in the current hostile political climate against immigrants of color she may
jeopardize her position at the college by speaking out, and her fiancé advises her to remain neutral.

Now Lila Knows is a gripping story that explores our obligation to act when confronted with the unfair treatment of fellow human beings. A page-turner with universal resonance, this novel will leave readers rethinking the meaning of love and empathy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781705056257

Elizabeth Nunez

Elizabeth Nunez is the award-winning author of eight novels. Both Boundaries and Anna In-Between were New York Times Editors' Choices and Anna In-Between won the 2010 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award and the 2011 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers and Barnes & Noble. Nunez also received a NALIS Lifetime Literary Award from the Trinidad & Tobago National Library. She is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, CUNY, where she teaches fiction writing.

Reviews for Now Lila Knows

[booklover217 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"It's not about resentments. It's about righting a wrong that people have been forced to suffer for hundreds of years. It's about justice." Now Lila Knows by Elizabeth Nunez was a compelling and timely read. It was a reflective read that interrogated accountability, racism in academia and social justice, the disconnect between American Blacks and the Caribbean and the power dynamics at play when someone chooses to speak up. The core of the plot revolves around Lila, a Caribbean immigrant who witnessed police murder a Black professor who they perceived as harming a white woman when he was in fact performing CPR and saving her life. Lila, has to reckon with her own ideas about race, identity and race relations in the U.S. as she ponders whether she should disclose to police what she witnessed. I really enjoyed this one because of how relevant it is. Nunez asks us to reckon with ourselves when we see injustices happen. Who is harmed and benefits when we are silent about injustices that happen to Black people? Who speaks for the victim when witnesses stay silent? Are we willing to risk it all for equity and justice? How do we live with ourselves when we allow people to continue to be killed without calling for accountability?Nunez also illuminates the way the institution of academia is a reflection of greater U.S. society in the ways that it calls for diversity but in reality just wants to fulfill quotas and check boxes but doesn't care about leveling the playing field or about social justice. Academia is also a place where white supremacy goes unchecked and becomes a vehicle of oppression for BIPOC professors and students. Only when systems are challenged, can seeds of change be planted and bloom. Another great point that Nunez made is that all Black people of the diaspora need to be a united front in social justice movements. Decolonization is the first step to unlearning the falsehoods we've internalized. White people who call themselves "allies" need to take the lead & be responsible for cleaning up the mess that they made & not expect Black people to do the work for them. Black lives are being lost while too many remain silent. The time for action is now.I highly recommend this one because it was such a solid read from start to finish. The writing was thoughtful and beautiful. The multiple perspectives were illuminating. Nunez is a voice that is relevant, propulsive and necessary. Everything she writes, I will read.

[tellen81 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received this book as an advance reader copy. I enjoyed this book. It covers a lot of what is unfortunately occurring in our county. It seemed to cover a lot of topics at once though and I felt that there was some disconnect as far as the book flowing. It is a good book to make people more aware of issues that have been and are occurring in society. Hopefully, some day soon that can change.

[ashleypelleti-219062 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I feel like this book was extremly slow pace until the last 10 or so chapters. It was not a bad book but definantly more dificult to stay interested in. I did like the ending though.

[bayleaf_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Elizabeth Nunez’s book, Now Lila Knows, was aptly named and I think its content will hopefully open the eyes to those who read it. It is timely and the message important and educational. There are far too many George Floyds and Tamir Rices. There are not enough Elaine McLeans, Terrence Carters, and Gail Coopers. And soothing consciences by hiring visiting professors from outside the United States is not the answer. Lila’s epiphany, if one may call it that, at the end, was well done. The dissimilarities between African Americans and those born in the Caribbean were very enlightening and a subject I’ve not come across in any other book.That said, I found the writing and the characters to be rather flat and disappointing. For such a demanding subject I could only wish for stronger voices to transmit Nunez’s message. I also was distracted by the Clive/Lila insertion into the story. I found it not only unnecessary, but disturbingly sexist and racist on Clive’s part to consistently comment on Lila’s appearance. He’s supposedly an enlightened white lawyer. I didn’t find him so. For the most part, everything felt rushed. Perhaps if the book had been longer, there would have been more depth and more time for things to be developed. I would have liked more conversations and interactions between the characters both in Vermont and in the Caribbean. More introspection. I’m not questioning the message. I’m commenting on the delivery.

[susanbooks · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Though this is a review of Elizabeth Nunez's Now Lila Knows, I want to briefly mention her superb novel, Prospero's Daughter. As in Now Lila Knows, in Prospero's Daughter, Nunez uses Shakespeare's The Tempest to structure her story. In Prospero's Daughter she retells the Tempest in a modern setting from Caliban & Miranda's points of view. It's a stunning, smart, lyrical book that's impossible for me to put down each time I pick it up. I highly recommend it.In Now Lila Knows, Nunez's protagonist writes an essay on Caliban and literary appropriation that garners enough attention to gain her a visiting professorship in Vermont. The parts of the book that discuss the essay's ideas are interesting and make me wish Nunez had made this a nonfiction work instead -- because as fiction this is just a mess. I won't go into plot, which is full of actions without motivations, improbable characters, and unlikely occurrences. I will say that the English and Humanities faculties portrayed in the book are politically disengaged to the point of ridiculousness. The students who support Black Lives Matter are unthinking, menacing thugs. The protagonist is so self-absorbed that she (SPOILER AHEAD) witnesses an unarmed man get shot by police and spends the book worrying about how it affects her.Bad novels happen. As an English professor, though, I was disgusted by Nunez's fast and loose use of English texts within the novel. Her protagonist brings Derek Walcott's Omeros to class. Remember, the protagonist is at the college in the first place because she's written about Caribbean representation and literary appropriation. A student asks if Walcott hasn't appropriated Homer's work in writing Omeros and our protagonist is stumped, silenced. Walcott has written extensively on why his work draws from European classics. Those texts, Walcott has argued, having been taught in colonial schools to the exclusion of more local literature, are his literary inheritance as much as they are anyone else's; it is the right of colonial and postcolonial writers to use them in their work. Nunez's protagonist, though, who has written on this very subject, is completely unaware of Walcott's comments, which are shared by other writers, most famously by Achebe and Cesaire. The improbability of a scholar's not knowing this basic argument made an already painful read even more excruciating.Technically, Nunez is a good writer. Her sentences flow; she has lovely phrasing. That kept me reading. The rest of it, though, was just bad. I can't recommend Prospero's Daughter highly enough. It's beautiful, smart, moving, everything this book is not.

[jgoto_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Now Lila Knows is the story of a Caribbean woman (Lila) who is invited to teach at a small New England town as a visiting professor for one year. On her first day in the predominately white town, Lila witnesses the murder a black man by the local police. The novel explores racism and the cultural differences between African Americans and people of color from the West Indies. Elizabeth Nunez's prose is easy to read and engaging. All in all, however, i found the story and characters to be a little too simplistic to be memorable for me.

[blbera · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Lila Bonnard is from a fictional Caribbean island. She is a literature professor and receives a yearlong appointment at a small, elite liberal arts college in Vermont. On her arrival, she witnesses the shooting of a black man by the police. She later discovers that the dead man, Ron Brown, was a professor at the college, and Lila is drawn into the protests surrounding the shooting.The novel has a great premise, but the story suffers from being too didactic. Too often, as I read, I felt I was being lectured about the differences in racism in the States and in the various Caribbean islands. We learn about colorism and the effects of colonialism in the islands. I would have liked to see more in-depth characterization. Even Lila, the protagonist seems flat.Maybe my expectations were too high -- I've loved the other books by Nunez that I've read.

[astridnr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This one was total page turner. It starts with Lila arriving in Mayfield, Vermont to begin her year as a guest professor at Mayfield College. On her way to her new lodgings traffic stops, and Lila has to walk the final few blocks. Someone has collapsed on the street and another person is trying to help her. The person trying to administer CPR is a black college professor in what is a predominately white community. The police end up shooting and killing the good samaritan, totally misinterpreting his attempt to rescue the woman. Lila is a witness to this incident of police brutality and blatant racism. The question of what Lila will do in response to this is central to the development of the plot and her own evolution.

The novel deals with the topic of racism on many levels, both here in the US and in the Caribbean. The author handles this topic so well. I found the book so enlightening. The characters are real and engaging. In her interaction with the African American teaching staff at Mayfield College Lila comes to broaden her understanding of how racism in the US differs from her experience of it in the Caribbean. She also realizes how important it is for her personally to take a stand. I highly recommend this book!