Book Review: The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya

 

I can count on the fingers on one hand the number of books featuring musician characters I´ve read. The latest I can surely remember is The Ensemble by Aja Gabel. The Subtweet, the latest book by the Canadian multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya is a story with a more complex context.

The main topic of the book is the exploration of the relationship between a couple of brown Indie musicians in the digital age. Neela´s songs are discovered by the Internet artist RUK-MINI with whom a friendship is born. Until a subtweet created an online storm that disrupted not only the relationship between the two, but also raised important questions about the position of brown musicians in the white world. How exactly they are supposed to create music? And for whom? Is the white praise important for the success? Should it be requested, after all?

Altough the story in itself is relatively simple the dynamics between the characters and particularly their different identities they are becoming aware of during the enfolding story are very complex. The approach of race and identity and the creative act is not necessarily new but outlines aspects that are less outlined by both writers and musicians themselves. By introducing the social media pressure that is so genuine nowadays to all the creative streams of life - what happens when someone stops tagging you, what is your ´Likes´ count situation from a day to another, how to create and attract an audience through social media targets - Shraya is exposing the everyday struggle of an artist. For female brown artists though, it´s just one part of the general complicated story.

I had access to the book in the audio version, read by the multidisciplinar human Nisha Ahuja. The Subtweet was a finalist of several international literary competitions, such as 2021 Dublin Literary Award, Toronto Book Award or Lambda Literary Awards For Transgender Fiction.

A short praise is deserved for the cover, which convenes the Indie spirit of the book in a very inspired way.

Although music-related topics are not necessarily my area of interest right now, The Subtweet helped me to understand the complex relationships that do cross in the music creative acts. Hopefully in the next weeks and months I would be able to read more in this area and expand a bit my relatively limited knowledge in this respect.

Rating: 3 stars