Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

 

Thirteen of us met on Saturday, Nov. 16^th to discuss Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby (2021.) The main characters are Ike and Buddy Lee. One Black and one white, fathers of sons who were married to each other. Both men hated that their sons were gay and pretty much wanted nothing to do with anyone from a different race. Yet, when their sons are murdered, the two men come together to find out who killed their sons and to seek vengeance.  

Shelara started us out, saying, “The biggest takeaway from the book for me was how cinematic it was: The way he weaves the story and layers the story and like illustrates the pictures and the way he writes the dialogue,. To me I read it like a movie. I imagine the characters; I know the actors I want to play the characters. I envision Bing Rhames as Ike and of course Sam Eliot as Buddy Lee.

Barbara M. added, “I enjoyed the characters. I’m a mystery junkie. The way they introduced the characters was very challenging for me.”

Kay said, “That’s me too, I just love crime mysteries anything like this. This is my kind of book.”

Barb L. told us she had to keep putting it down during the violent scenes.

Meghan responded, “I loved it! I listened to it. One actor did everything. He’d do like a southern white accent but there’s a difference between southern white poor and southern white rich, and then there’s the Black accent. It was really interesting. The whole violent, bloodiness I was really into. That’s how I like my movies.”

Robin said she had a hard time reading the violence. “The first third was really hard for me. The only way I got through it was to skip to the last few pages to see who survived. I really really liked the book, but it was hard at the beginning. I think it was really good and there were so many messages in it. I think that Ike and Buddy Lee developed a friendship. They wouldn’t have said it early on, but they really did learn from each other. Buddy Lee learned a lot about his racism. They both learned about their homophobia. They really sort of got to the other side of it.”

 

Barbara M commented on how she liked the way the author divided Ike’s alter ego, Riot. “This vehicle the author used to create this monster that Ike had been controlling for 15 years.”

Marian ventured, “Ike showed so much self-control the 15 years he had been out of prison. He truly built a life. He built a business that hired 15 people. He owned a home. He sent his son to college. In a lot of ways this father was like the father in Don’t Cry for Me, (novel by Dr. Daniel Black 2022) He sent his son to college too.”

Maria asked, “Do you feel that all the violence the goriness was justified? “

Shelara answered, “They were ex-cons. They lived a very violent life. Ike and Buddy Lee spent their youth and more than half of their lives in a violent environment. Ike said that when he went to prison, he had to give up parts of himself to survive. He had to join a gang and prove himself. When he gave that all up upon his release, the moment his son was killed, he had to pick back up his violent tendencies because that was the only thing that would allow him to seek justice. Ike and Buddy Lee had to act inhumane in order to show the humanity to their sons they didn’t show while their sons were living.

 

Barbara M. pointed out that, “This happens all the time. We just don’t see it. We don’t live that life. We don’t get those notices that 14 people froze to death on the Green. We live in a very narrow world. Violence is abhorrent to us, but this is their lifestyle. There are biker gangs in the West who take each other out., fighting to take over towns. We just don’t see it. This kind of violence in the book is more realistic than fantasy. What they call love for their sons we might call revenge.”

Wendy said, “The one character I felt the author had to write in to make a connection was Christine. I also love mysteries, and I have a fair tolerance for violence. I don’t know if anyone read the early works of Dennis LeHane. He’s a great mystery writer and in his early books he had two protagonists who were private investigators a man and a woman. They were really violent, and I always felt that it was kind of justified because of what happened.”

Shelara explained that “Christine was the reason Derek was so angry. He wasn’t angry because his stepfather dumped Tangerine. It was the fact that he was a hypocrite. Christine reminded me of the mother from Prince of Tides, (novel by Pat Conroy 1986) she was poor, she had good looks, she was able to leverage those good looks to marry a man with power and money and she cut her kids off.”

Kay read to us from three passages she had marked:

When they went to the bakery. Buddy Lee shook the young man’s hand, p. 56 “Buddy Lee had felt a firmer grip from his grandmother on her deathbed.”

p.108 there was a very tense moment when the bikers entered Ike’s office area and Jazzy shot her gun up to the ceiling. “Ike didn’t know if Jazzy could hit the broadside of a barn. Right now, that didn’t matter. All that mattered was if these peckerwoods believed she was a markswoman.”

p.118” Over the last few months, death had carved a valley between them as deep as grief and as wide as heartbreak.”

Laura told us, “This is the first crime book I’ve ever read in my life. My mother never allowed us to watch any violence on television ever. So, my callouses for brutality are so thin. But Randy my husband watches these god-awful violent tv shows. I can’t even bear to hear the sounds from those shows. But to read it I got a lot of insight from this, into a really different world. The thing that was really important to me was hearing people’s internal dialogues as opposed to just watching scenes on a television. I found it really powerful I was amazed. I wasn’t going to read this book and then I thought I’ll give it a try. I often wonder how people can do things to each other. There was one thing Ike said on p. 285 when Tangerine asked him how do you do this?”

p.285 “’People like Isiah and Derek and your mama didn’t deserve to die the way they did. And the people that killed them don’t deserve to live. I can’t speak for Buddy Lee, but that’s what keeps me going,’ Ike said.

‘Revenge?’ Tangerine asked. Ike smiled ruefully.

‘No, hate. Folks like to talk about revenge like it’s a righteous thing but it’s just hate in a nicer suit,’ Ike said.”

S.A. Cosby (photo from Macmillan Press)

Nancy added, “I just wanted to say something about the character of Mya, Ike’s wife. I feel like I could identify with her in some ways but I was thinking about it in terms of she was the one who could really stand by their sons, when the sons were still alive. She really loved the granddaughter and she really loved Ike and I tried to think about what it would be like to be her, to really love this man, to love the life that he built for her and to also know how violent he could be and want him to be that.”

Barb M. replied, “I thought she was a little edgy because remember she was saying, “Don’t do anything you can’t walk away from.” I think she kind of embraced Ike’s “Riot” part because it was functional for her. She really wanted something to happen because her son had died. She launched him but it’s so complicated because she showed such tenderness to her grandchild, yet she was kind of blood thirsty."

Shelara: “She knows him as “Riot” from when they were young.”

Ann said, “I keep thinking this is a reflection of our society, America, which is a very violent country, and our prisons make people worse, which shows up in this. I don’t know if anyone here saw the Michael Moore movie, Where to Invade Next, which compares our prison system to the prison system in Finland and other countries.  The people from Finland prisons don’t go back again. Our system is very aggressive and very violent, and I think of violence sort of like an addiction, like alcohol or drugs. It’s a temporary fix when people are in pain, and when they’re afraid.”

Barb L., steering us back to the characters, said, “Going back to the book and the conversation we’re having about the role of violence, that was part of the takeaway for me, how does Ike manage his rage? How does Buddy Lee harness his? His whole plan to provoke Ike into action. It gave me a lot to think about, like Laura I have fewer callouses.”

Barb M. Insisted that, “I think it was an honor thing more than a revenge thing. Their sons were the vehicle for their honor. I don’t see it as Ike and Buddy Lee coming into an acceptance of their sons’ homosexuality.”

Robin, pushing back against this, said, “I thought that at the end they came to the realization that they’d rather have their sons alive regardless of who they were.”

Shelara commented, “I thought it was more of a guilt thing."

Bonnie pointed out that, “On page 254 Ike called Adrianna his granddaughter and Buddy Lee his friend, and on p. 297 Buddy Lee said, ‘I wish we had met at the wedding. I wish both of us had been there.’ So people here are saying that if the sons hadn’t been killed, Ike and Buddy Lee’s consciousness would have never been raised. I’m not sure I agree.”

Maria: agreeing with Bonnie said, “I don’t accept that these men would have never grown. These two men were loving people: Buddy Lee was a drunk but there was a next-door neighbor who cared about him. There was a woman who he had been married to, who cared about him. You can’t say that they never would have changed.”

Shelara said, “I think the guilt that they had compelled them to go back to their violent lifestyles and avenge their sons’ murders, and through this process, they came to the realization that they could accept their gay sons.”

Robin pointed out that Buddy Lee knew he was dying, and this knowledge might have pushed him to make things right with his son. “It’s like the father in that book by Dr. Black, “Don’t Cry For Me: Once the father realized he was dying, he starts to accept his son.”

Ann, speaking about the notion that the men may have come to accept their sons, said, “I like it as an idealization and I think the book is expressing something that is idealized, but I think in reality, people often shut down or get worse.”