Leah Powell's Reviews > Little Altars Everywhere

This book reinforces the marginalization of its marginalized characters. The black narrators function only as witnesses to the white characters. They have no development outside of their perspectives on and reactions to their white employers. Also, the chapters written in the voice of black characters are in dialect, but the chapters written in the voice of rural white Louisianians are not...Willetta (the black domestic worker) doesn’t pronounce her “-ings” but Viviane does? Please. I don’t mind dialect writing, but when it is only used for black characters in a setting where everyone has an accent, it just communicates otherness.

Also, the tone of the book is very weird. Truly disturbing things happen, which is not a problem in itself, BUT it is not clear that the book realizes how disturbing those things are. The end felt way too sweet and easy for the heavy content the narrative introduces.

I will say, some of the sections are very good when read as short stories. Some striking imagery that will stick with me. I particularly loved “Catfish Dreams.”