PREMISE: At 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted three white Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with using excessive force to subdue a black man named Rodney King, and failed to reach a verdict on the same charges involving a fourth officer. Less than two hours later, the city exploded in violence that lasted six days. In nearly 121 hours, fifty-three lives were lost. But there were even more deaths unaccounted for: violence that occurred outside of active rioting sites by those who used the chaos to viciously settle old scores.

All Involved vividly re-creates this turbulent and terrifying time, set in a sliver of Los Angeles largely ignored by the media during the riots. The novel tells seventeen interconnected first-person narratives with characters that capture the voices of gang members, firefighters, graffiti kids, and nurses caught up in these extraordinary circumstances.

Holy shit, I’m learning a lot whilst doing this blog. Today, whilst doing my usual Goodreads look at what others think about this book (I really don’t know whether it can be considered research or whether I’m now genuinely just looking for people to take the piss out of), I learned about ‘#ownvoices’. Now, I’d not heard of this before but Denise let me in on it with this:

“Book has 17 different POV’s. All of them diverse and most of them dark, raw and hideous. It matters that the author is a white male from Colorado. To be fair my reading experience may have been different a couple of years ago. I would have still found it raw, gritty and disturbingly violent, but now I am concerned about #ownvoices”. Which Google AI explained to me means this:

“OwnVoices is a movement that emphasizes the importance of authors writing about stories that align with their own lived experiences and identities, particularly marginalized ones. It highlights the authenticity and credibility of narratives when authors have a personal connection to the characters and issues they represent”.

I’m not going to add anything new or particularly earth-shattering to the actual debate (and whether I agree with it or not is largely irrelevant). However, my issue is with Denise’s comment “my reading experience may have been different a couple of years ago”. Why? Why does it matter who wrote the book? And if we start taking the stance that a book should only be written by someone who has the relevant life experience, then where the fuck does that leave us? Can a white writer not include a black character? Can a straight black writer not write about a gay Asian? Please explain to me what is wrong with someone taking time to learn about a subject in order to write about it? I’m pretty sure Ryan Gattis didn’t just make all this up? His research must have been pretty staggering and I think – in all his books – his characters are so well-rounded and very much real. In fact, if I hadn’t stumbled across ‘#Ownvoices’ I wouldn’t have questioned the authenticity of this book at all.

This book is fantastic and everyone should read it. Which is what I will also say about Safe and The System whenever I get around to adding them here. Ryan Gattis is an awesome writer.