White Fur by Jardine Libraire is a novel that is said to be, “Brilliantly written and deeply felt, White Fur is a love story by turns and comic and tragic, but always moving…Jardine Libaire is a keen observer of human nature”. I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement. I don’t find this novel in any way moving or a brilliantly written love story as so many have expressed.
First the novel seems to lack something genuine in language. But primarily I want to engage in a conversation about how the woman of color seems to function in the text. Elise Perez is half white and half Puerto Rican, she is the protagonist and love interest of Jamey Hyde. Jamey Hyde is an elite white male who feels lost and confused and is waiting for something in life to clear his doubts and fears. Elise Perez comes into the picture and does that just for Hyde. She is described as, “ twenty years old, never finished high school…not lost and not found, not incarcerated, not beautiful and not ugly and not ordinary…”, through this language it seems this woman has nothing to tie her down, she is a plastic bag floating in the wind who does not have any true characteristics to make her someting real.
Elise Perez expresses her fascination with Jamey Hyde, she expresses “ Im getting sorta obsessed…he seems different”. The problem I had with the manner in which Elise Perez is created is that it is a hypersexualized trope. The book describes that the first time in which Elise has an orgasm she was eleven years old, “ …on a Bridgeport bus coming home from school-the seat was vibrating. Her cheeks got hot, and she felt pressure, this sickness or desperation, the sense that something had to happen or she would die, and then it all broke open in her, hot syrup spreading in her blood, and she swiveled her head on her long neck like a bird, having missed her stop, trying to understand where on Earth she was.” This is another base on how Elise is hypersexualized to the extreme, at such an early age she is already having sexual acts and by the mere movement of a vehicle. On her first date with Jamey, Elise gives him a blowjob as he sits in the car without any regard to the outside world.
I in no manner declare that Elise should hide her sexuality or her sexual desires. However, I state that Elise is treated like a body created to “fuck”. She is the promiscuous Latina girl from the streets in this book and somehow Hyde has become the token of her affection. There are moments where Elise declares things to Hyde such as, “ I’ll do anything in the world for you”, only to then as an audience learn that Hyde hates her and is disgusted by the whole situation. There is a scene in the book where the audience learns from the narrator that Elise is aware of some of Hyde’s feelings, “She can tell something is wrong since after sex he usually hates her and wants to disappear or die, but then he comes back the next night, or the night after, and that’s all that matters.
Elise as a woman is belittled and unappreciated by Jamey Hyde. Throughout the entire novel she stays, waits, and at some point Hyde does develop feelings. However, the treatment of Elise is horrendous. There is no exploration into her identity as a woman of color. And from the start to the end Elise is merely the answer Jamey Hyde waited for, the way in which he would leave his elite life while always being able to point the fingers at Elise that she has taken a hold of him and brought out the lust that drove him mad.
Many will disagree with me, many have given this novel great reviews. However, I would just like to say to please read Elise Perez and ask why she functions the way she does, why although she is the strongest character she is reduced? Why she serves to be the opposite of the elite intellectual women Jamey Hyde is surrounded by, who are all white women? Why when she tells Hyde to stop during sexual intercourse he believes it is okay to continue without her consent? And finally why does Elize Perez exist only to fulfill the quest Jamey Hyde could not find to complete on his own.