In Pomegranate, we meet Ranita as she’s just getting free from incarceration. Daunted by the task of regaining custody of her children, she’s also facing the loss of a lover she’s left behind bars & the hard work of staying sober in a world that’s working against you. She goes to meetings, she shows up to therapy, she tries to work the steps & embrace honesty in everything she does. But she misses her lover. She misses her father who passed while she was locked up, who taught her to love pomegranates. She misses the comfort of family who has turned wary in the wake of her many mistakes. She’s doing her best, & it never seems like enough.

First & foremost, Pomegranate is a story of healing. Freedom is a complicated dream for the marginalized people of America. But freedom as a dream of the traumatized? That’s often not something we can conceptualize. My therapist once told me that recovery rates are so abysmal for people who survived childhood abuse because we have no conceptualization of safety, of a time “before” the trauma. Trauma is all we’ve ever known, so it becomes impossible to conceive or dream of safety & freedom. As Ranita emerges from the added trauma of incarceration, this is the plight she faces: trying to establish a semblance of stability when all she’s ever known is chaos.

Surprisingly, Pomegranate is also a mommy issues story. The pain of trying to please, live up to, & care for her mother & her ever-changing moods eventually sets Ranita down the path that lands her behind bars, struggling to survive. Throughout Ranita’s recovery, her mother looms large, despite her death during Ranita’s adolescence. Lee does a wonderful job of elucidating the grief of over-enmeshed mother-daughter relationships, while also illuminating the added complexity of such a journey for families of color.

And at the heart of all this, Pomegranate is a story of queerness. During flashbacks to Ranita’s childhood, we see glimpses of moments when Ranita’s bisexuality almost bursts through the surface. Unfortunately, navigating survival in her family and in our world forces Ranita to suppress these feelings until she is incarcerated and meets Maxine. Maxine breaks Ranita’s world open. Aside from her mother, Maxine also thrums behind every scene of this book, cheering Ranita on, reminding her that someone believes in her. During Pomegranate, we get to see Ranita come out to her traditionally religious family, to which her elderly aunt says, “If you can get it, love’s the thing to have.” Ranita’s journey of sexuality offers an example of how, for many people, queerness means freedom.

I loved this book. I loved all the topics it tackled and how deftly Lee handled them. There are a lot of authors I could compare this to, but I truly think anyone who considers themselves a diverse litfic reader would enjoy this. Please read it.