Saga Boy

Starred review from June 28, 2021
In this deeply moving memoir, novelist Downing (Molasses) offers a lyrical story “about unbelonging, about placelessness, about leaving everything behind.” As he reflects on the long and arduous path from his youth in a small town in Trinidad to his evangelical teenage years in Northern Ontario to his eventual success as a musician and actor in Toronto, he attempts to understand himself as a Black man toggling between worlds. After his grandmother’s death in 1986 forced Downing, at age 11, to leave his home in Monkey Town, Trinidad, and live with his aunt in rural Canada, he discovered hair metal music, decided to become a “rock’n’roll badass,” and spent more than a decade cycling through a number of identities: “They called me Tony in Trinidad... Mic Dainjah when I toured England with my rock ’n’ roll heroes, Molasses when I crooned soul songs, and Mike D. when I plucked the banjo at folk festivals.” The son of a wandering, absent father—and a sexual assault survivor—Downing traces how he “turned the ugliness of my life into something beautiful” through art and music, eventually finding his “boldest, baddest self” in his 30s as a Canadian pop star by the name of John Orpheus. Suffused with poetic prose that jumps off the page, this inspiring account sings.

August 1, 2021
From the musician known as John Orpheus, a debut memoir about rootlessness and metamorphoses "across continents and calamities." Growing up in post-colonial Trinidad, Downing witnessed the daily Whitewashing of his Blackness by school and church. Early on, he also suffered personal rejection when his parents left him to live with his paternal grandmother. The fracturing of his world grew deeper when his grandmother died and he was sent to live with his aunt in Canada. In his new home, he was still a Black boy conforming to the norms of White classmates who "were dumbstruck that I didn't listen to rap music and talk slick ghetto jive like the Black people on TV." As consolation, Downing cultivated a love of the transformative possibilities of the stage not long before he went to live with his father and girlfriend, both drug addicts, in Toronto. Neglected and abused by both, Downing took solace in music. He returned once again to live in relative stability with his aunt only to find himself put out for unruly behavior. The rootlessness of the author's early life later manifested in the many identities he assumed--Michael Downing, corporate employee; Mic Dainjah; "soul preacher" Molasses; and John Orpheus, musician--and the peripatetic life that kept him moving among the U.S., Europe, and Canada. He craved "redemption" from "the patchwork of broken things [and people] that had spawned me," but only after he looked to the island home he had left behind and accepted the Trinidadian culture he had never fully appreciated did he finally achieve a measure of peace. With its overly detailed reminiscences of boyhood and a storyline that delves into the many complex people, events, and situations that have comprised Downing's life, the narrative suffers from pacing issues. However, the author compensates for these problems with an engaging narrative about the search for home, belonging, and identity. Not without flaws, this book is nonetheless intriguing, passionate, and often moving.

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August 1, 2021
Born in tropical Trinidad and raised by his grandmother, Downing recounts an increasingly wild sequence of transformations that begins when his grandmother passes on, and 11-year-old Tony is sent to snowy Canada to live with an aunt. Called ""Michael"" at Wabigoon Public School, Downing dives into music and adopts a range of performative personas as he grows into young adulthood. He tours England as ""Mic Dainjah,"" croons soul as ""Molasses,"" and rocks out at folk festivals as ""Mike D,"" until finally landing on ""John Orpheus,"" perhaps his best-known moniker. Downing weaves these experiences together through the evangelical intensity of his family's religious convictions, his struggles to connect with and confront his birth parents, as well as facing the legacies of colonial imperialism in Trinidad, Canada, and the UK. In the midst of his musical pursuits, Downing realizes he's become a stereotypical ""Saga Boy,"" an untethered rolling stone, not unlike his own estranged father. Downing's lush language and sensory details make the fascinating events of this memoir pop. An authentic, entertaining, and timely account of a creative immigrant's experiences.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2021

In this memoir, novelist Downing (Molasses) attempts to process his upbringing as a child in rural Trinidad and his adulthood in Canada. Abandoned by his birth parents, he was raised by his loving grandmother until she passes away. After being torn away from Trinidad, the only home he'd ever known, he was suddenly tossed between Canada and New York just as he came of age. He became a lost soul struggling to come to terms with his identity. Does a place define him? The color of his skin? The generational trauma that has been passed down? Through many highs and lows, Downing takes on various personae to eventually find himself, comes to terms with his blood relatives, and embraces a loose-knit found family. Passages set in Trinidad are particularly lush and rich in detail. VERDICT Downing's elegant, engaging memoir will have particular significance to readers from the Caribbean diaspora, but it will be understood by any reader who has ever had their world suddenly upended and needed to make it whole again.--Kelly Karst, California Inst. of Integral Studies

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