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    A Wish After Midnight
    A Wish After Midnight
    A Wish After Midnight
    Audiobook8 hours

    A Wish After Midnight

    Written by Zetta Elliott

    Narrated by Quincy Tyler Bernstine

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    “Although there is plenty of history embedded in the novel, A Wish After Midnight is written with a lyrical grace that many authors of what passes for adult literature would envy.” —Paula L. Woods, The Defenders Online

    “Zetta Elliott’s time travel novel A Wish After Midnight is a bit of a revelation…It’s vivid, violent, and impressive history.” —Colleen Mondor, Bookslut

    Genna is a fifteen-year-old girl who wants out of her tough Brooklyn neighborhood. But she gets more than she bargained for when a wish gone awry transports her back in time. Facing the perilous realities of Civil War–era Brooklyn, Genna must use all her wits to survive. In the tradition of Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, A Wish After Midnight is the affecting and inspiring tale of a fearless young woman’s fight to hold on to her individuality and her humanity in two different worlds.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateNov 20, 2012
    ISBN9781469241555
    A Wish After Midnight
    Author

    Zetta Elliott

    Born in Canada, Zetta Elliott moved to Brooklyn in 1994 to pursue her PhD in American studies at New York University. Her poetry and essays have been published in several anthologies, and her plays have been staged in New York, Chicago, and Cleveland. She wrote the award-winning picture book Bird and the young adult novel A Wish After Midnight. She currently lives in Brooklyn.

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    Reviews for A Wish After Midnight

    3.5/5

    42 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      It was captivating. The story was well written. I love the amount of detail that was given. Thank you for such an amazingly.
    • 3/5
      Wasn't overly impressed with this book. Main character Genna seems to have no convictions of her own and is easily convinced to sway to others' views. The dual romance involved here ultimately goes no where with both young men seemingly lost. Genna does show some signs of character development in the portions of the story that occur in the past, but the story ends too early with no resolution when she returns to her own time. A good mirror of what low economic status and urban life is like, and a solid speculative fiction look at what life might have been like for a newly freed slave in New York City in 1863.
    • 4/5
      This! This is what I was looking for when I started the Diverse Authors Project. I bought an ARC at a kid's sidewalk sale in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. I'd already made up my mind to buy something -- it was a books 'n toys sale to earn money for a new bookshelf, c'mon! -- and the kid said this was good. It's right up my alley, being historical with a fantasy element, but had never been on my radar because Elliott self-pubbed. It came out again under Amazon Encore, so that's the ARC I have.

      This is not a perfect book. The magic has no grounding; we never even find out what wish Genna made that took her back to the past. (Unless that changed after the ARC came out.) A stronger book would have used that wish to cast ripples through her adventures in 1863, and had those adventures reflect in a more literary manner on her 2001 life. Maybe I'm overreaching, but it seems like those are ways a good editor could have strengthened the book if she'd published it "for real." But part of the point of the Diverse Authors Project is to recognize how relatively few good books by authors of color get published by major companies. I can see how this might have been a hard book for even an author of Elliott's stature to sell.

      Which is a damn shame, because it is a very good book. The characters are compelling; the settings in both early-2000s and 1863 Brooklyn felt grounded in reality. The book asks timely questions -- What makes someone "white" and why is that a privileged status? Are black and white necessarily at odds, or can individuals make authentic connections across race? How does class fit into racial conflict? Where does prejudice come from, and how can it lead to violence? -- in both eras, using authentic and well-researched historical examples. Most importantly, I didn't want to put it down! I even risked motion sickness on the bus ride home from New York to find out what happened next.

      Two-genres-in-one can be off-putting for some readers, but it can also provide twice the openings for hand-selling! Genna spends enough time in modern-day Brooklyn at the beginning to hook realistic urban fiction readers, and those who love historical melodrama can push through that part if they know what's coming. There's a great love story, but it doesn't overwhelm the book. A lot of tragic things happen to Genna, but the book (and its protagonist) never feels weighed down by them.

      Be aware that the n-word is used often -- appropriately so, but that still might be painful for readers. It also ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, including a "gotcha" in the last pages: Genna returns to NYC on Sept. 10, 2001. Elliott was supposedly writing a sequel, but that doesn't seem to have happened. I hope we get one someday!
    • 4/5
      Genna is a fifteen-year-old in modern-day Brooklyn. She lives with her single-parent, two-job-working mother, her flirty, sexy older sister, her drug-selling older brother and too-sweet baby brother all in a one-room apartment. Unlike her siblings, Genna works hard at school and plans to go to college and get out of the ghetto. Her poetry-writing boyfriend Judah wants to escape too, by moving to Africa. Genna’s favorite place to go is the botanical gardens where she always has a penny to throw in the fountain for a wish.After a family crisis, Genna goes to the gardens late at night and makes a wish—one that seems to work, although in an unexpected way. Genna is taken far away (in time, not location), to Brooklyn during the Civil War, where she is suspected of being a runaway slave. Barely saved from being shipped South, Genna is taken to an orphanage and allowed to heal from horrible wounds she doesn't remember getting. Stuck in 1863 Genna must adapt to a new world, where black people have even fewer options than they had in twenty-first century New York. Elliott masterfully draws both Brooklyns. The modern-day city is alive and dangerous and yet home. The Civil War-era Brooklyn is all those things, and yet totally different. Genna is a strong and adaptable character, one readers can easily sympathize with, and the story is both gripping and informative. Elliott brings to life little-studied events and explores the many difficulties faced by blacks, both of today and during the Civil War.I was disappointed in the ending, but not so much that it ruined the story. Actually, the ending might precipitate discussion in a high school classroom or adult book club, for which I highly recommend it.
    • 2/5
      A Wish After Midnight by Zetta Elliott – bringing history alive for teenagersThis book stars Genna, who is a fairly ordinary teenager. A bit too clever to be popular with her classmates; a bit shy with boys; family problems at home – there are plenty of characters like this in young adult literature, and Genna is well portrayed by Elliott and her “voice” feels very natural on the page.After a particularly bad row with her mother, Genna runs to a local gardens to cool down. Somehow (exactly HOW is not explained in the book), Genna is magically transported to Brooklyn of 1863. Here she is taken for a runaway slave and savagely beaten; she is lucky to be rescued by some free blacks, and eventually goes to work for a white Doctor and his wife. The rest of the book explores how Genna reacts to being bullied by whites generally and patronised by the doctor (who is otherwise kind to her) both on the count of her race and her sex. Rather unbelievably, her boyfriend from modern day Brooklyn, Judah, has also been magically transported to the same time; this provides the author with an opportunity to present some different experiences of blacks in 1863, and present Genna with some interesting dilemmas in terms of acceptable behaviour in 1863 vs Judah’s 21stC expectations.This book is an historical study text, written by Elliott to catch the interest of (possibly disaffected) black and mixed-race urban teenagers. And I must say it does an excellent job of presenting facts about the American Civil war and early emergence of black rights in an entertaining way. There is also a nod to the problems of poor white Irish immigrants, and Elliott does a nice job of portraying the violence that flares up between this group and free blacks in a non-judgemental way.However, it is not, in my opinion, good enough as a novel to cross over into general fiction. The cover claims that it is “written with a lyrical grace”, but I found the writing to be pretty mundane. Moreover, the story line is shallow and predictable and has themes that have been dealt with far better in the wider body of young adult literature. As other reviewers have noted, there is no attempt at all to explain or exploit the time travel aspect – it is simply there as a device to get her 21stC teenage readers to try to imagine how they would feel if they were in the position of blacks in 1863.So how to rate it? Well as an historical study text I would happily give it 5*s. However, it isn’t being marketed as a study text, it’s being presented as a time travel novel. And as a time travel novel, I have to say it simply isn’t good enough. I would give it 1* except for the “voice” of Genna, which comes so convincingly off the page – hence 2*s. I do feel that the author may have it in her to produce a good time travel novel – but this isn’t it.
    • 4/5
      This book of first love for young adults tackles some somber themes in American history, including economic deprivation, racism, slavery, and violence. According to the author, this book was inspired by Olivia Butler’s masterpiece, Kindred, and indeed, it contains some of the same elements, albeit updated. But it is far from a recapitulation; there are notable differences, and it is worth reading in its own right.Genna, who narrates, is a 15-year-old girl who thinks she’s an ugly duckling: too tall, big feet, short nappy hair, and just not “cute” like other girls – not even like her own sister, who is very popular with the boys in school. Her mother is black, and her father, who left them, is Panamanian. He didn’t like the way blacks were treated in the States, but Genna’s mother told Papi she was an American and refused to leave the country. Genna, her mother, and three siblings live in a tiny two-room apartment in a depressed area of Brooklyn. But it is blissfully close to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, an oasis of beauty in an otherwise horrible environment. Often Genna goes there, tosses a penny in the fountain, and makes a wish that she “could live inside someone else’s body, even for just one day.”There are two ways in which this dream comes true for Genna. The first is in the figurative sense, through meeting Judah, a handsome boy in her class from Jamaica who unbelievably (to Genna) decides he likes her. He has his aunt do her hair in dreadlocks and wrap it in African fabric. He kisses her right in front of his aunt. All of the sudden she is in a different body:"Before we left, Judah pulled me over to a mirror and made me stand there next to him. He looked at my reflection and told me to look as well. ‘What do you see?’ Judah asked me. For the first time, I really looked at myself in the mirror, and for once I didn’t feel ashamed. With Judah there beside me, and the African cloth wrapped around my head like a golden crown, I felt beautiful.” But in a reflection of her mother’s life, this boy to whom she now feels emotionally bound wants to go to Africa. Genna doesn’t feel the African connection – she sees her destiny in America. She wants to go to college and become a psychiatrist. Judah has no interest in studies.One day, Genna also gets her wish in a more literal way. At night, visiting the fountain in the Botanic Garden, Genna loses consciousness, and awakens to find herself as a runaway slave in 1863 Brooklyn. She still has her own body, but she has traveled back to a time just before the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Day, 1863. Her back has been flayed (she has no memory of time spent as a slave), and kindly blacks arrange for her to be treated by Dr. Brant, an abolitionist white doctor.When Genna heals, Dr. Brant, impressed with Genna’s learning, employs her as a nanny to help his wife and baby son. Soon she also accompanies him on rounds to the black part of Brooklyn, then called Weeksville, to help other escaped slaves who are ravaged by typhoid fever. And there she finds Judah. He too has come back in time, to find her, and he too has returned as an escaped slave. Telling Dr. Brant that Judah is her brother, Genna convinces him to give Judah special care, and he later takes him in to stay in the coach house with his black driver.The story then progresses to an historic event not well-known, the New York draft riots of 1863. In March of 1863, a new stricter federal draft law was passed. All males between 20 and 35 and all unmarried men between 35 and 45 had to enter a lottery for enlistment in the Civil War. But men who could pay $300 could hire a substitute. And blacks were exempt. The first lottery in New York was set for July. On July 13, two days after the lottery, five days of rioting and bloodshed began, started by poor whites who did not want to go off to fight a war to ensure freedom for blacks. Not only were they racist, but they did not want competition for jobs from free blacks when they themselves could barely find work. The Colored Orphan Asylum was set on fire. (The children managed to escape.) Black men caught outside were tortured, stoned, hanged, mutilated, and burned. In all, rioters lynched eleven black men over the five days. Hundreds of blacks left the city.In A Wish After Midnight, Judah and Genna get caught in the streets during the mayhem. They run from the vicious mob, but are overtaken. Genna soon loses consciousness. When she revives, she is back in the Botanic Garden in present day Brooklyn. Judah is not with her. Nevertheless, she knows that somehow he will get back to her, just as he found her in 1863. It is September 10, 2001.Evaluation: Zetta Elliott, the author, who is a beautiful swan, somehow knows exactly how it feels to have been a teenager who felt like an ugly duckling. She understands the pain of being an outsider, and yet this book doesn’t dwell on that pain. Rather, it focuses on Genna’s determination to make a better life for herself.I love having followed the author’s blog before reading this book, because so much of the book sounds like her. Subtle things: a post about how she felt in a writing lab echoes Genna’s insistence on being who she is; her compassion for women and children is also felt by Genna, whose sympathy overcomes barriers of race, color and class; and above all, the author’s belief that fiction should serve as a bridge from the world that is to the world that ought to be is reflected by this story: optimism and hope radiate from Genna, no matter what her circumstances.This is a book that you won’t easily forget. It would make a good addition to lessons teaching about this period in history. Highly recommended.