Not having grown up in Canada, I know little about the history of the country I now call home. There is so much to learn about the peoples, lands, treaties, politics, cultural development… a short summary would be too overwhelming and a long history would unfortunately not keep my attention. Fiction such as The Sleeping Car Porter is perfect to get to a glimpse of history and an opportunity to explore. Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2022 award, The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr isn’t a book I would normally pick up and I am glad that my commitment to read all the finalists for the award led me to this book. Take a look at the synopsis below:
The Sleeping Car Porter
By Suzette Mayr | Goodreads
When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair
The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a queer man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that you’ll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment.
Baxter’s name isn’t George. But it’s 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but he’ll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with “George.”
On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days; their secrets start to leak out and blur with the sleep-deprivation hallucinations Baxter is having. When he finds a naughty postcard of two queer men, Baxter’s memories and longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can’t part with the postcard or his thoughts of Edwin Drew, Porter Instructor.
Content notes include sexual content, homophobia, and racism.
The Sleeping Car Porter – Review
I love trains and by my rough estimates, I have spent maybe a month worth of nights in them. I will never forget the thrill of taking a train to Amma’s house! It felt great to recently take a train with my husband and give him first hand experience of what summers for me used to look like. Overnight trains are my favorites. When I moved to Canada, I realized they weren’t really as popular here. In India trains are an important mode of transport, for both short and long distances. Here, at least in Alberta, they are mostly used for cargo and passenger trains are few.
Set in 1929, The Sleeping Car Porter is the story of a train ride from one end of Canada to another. I have never interacted with a car porter on a train and while I initially thought of them like ‘coolies’ in Indian trains, these car porters did so much more. Baxter is a Black queer man who is committed to become a dentist. The amount of money Baxter needed for his degree and the rate at which he was earning it through his duties as porter was mind blowing.
I loved how the business of departing trains was described! The start of the book sets the stage beautifully for a train journey, starting at the hussle and noise of the train station and the chaos of settling passengers and helping getting departure-ready. I did not realize how demanding Baxter’s work was at the beginning. People expect him to fix the heat, remove the ghost from the train compartment, shine his shoes, entertain the kids, bring tea and drinks… he has to be on everyone’s beck and call all the time. On top of all that, being a porter is stressful. He can be written up for anything and complaints led to demerits which led to ultimately his losing his job. This was a sad reality of the time and other complexities were layered on top of that such as his race, orientation and people’s prejudices.
Baxter funds a photo at the beginning of the train ride. It depicts an intimate scene between two men. Realizing that it would be incriminating and he would get fired if he is found in possession of it, Baxter looks for a chance to get rid of the photo. Baxter has been a porter long enough to know that his passengers may react poorly to the photo if it is found out. The longer the photo stays with him, the more his stress increases.
As the story progressed, the cast of passengers that Baxter interacted with became stable and I enjoyed the variety they offered. There are all kinds of people on a train for all kinds of reasons and this was represented well in the cast.
By the end of the book, I was invested in Baxter like I am in my friends. He is written with great care and depth. His life experiences are interwoven with great craftsmanship into the narrative. He may fear for his job but Baxter is also a caring individual and I loved the bonds he formed with some of the passengers. When the photo was finally revealed, the story took hold of me and the anxiety that Baxter had came crashing into me. It was a really tense situation! There are other porters on the train that Baxter interacted with and helped support. Some of them are highly educated people who are stuck in these low paying jobs. The solidarity that fellow porters showed for Baxter was heartwarming to read.
The message of The Sleeping Car Porter was powerful. It gave a glimpse into the struggles of existence and the freedom of a dream coming true. It educated me about a time in Canadian history that I had never looked into before. I saw the power of historical fiction and as I closed the book, as much as I had loved the two finalists I had read up until that point (Lesser Known Monster of the 21st Century and If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English), I understood why this was the winner amongst them.
If you are interested to pick up this book, find it on Goodreads. Additionally, the narrator of the audiobook represented the main character well so I recommend the audiobook as well!
At the time of writing this review, I have two more books to read: We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies, another historical fiction, and Stray Dogs, a short story collection. At the posting this review, I am halfway through We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies and you can find my thoughts on Stray Dogs here.
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