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There Is Confusion has been on my radar since reading “The Forgotten Work of Jessie Redmon Fauset” but it moved up my TBR the instant creemyles described it as domestic fiction in conversation with novels like Pride and Prejudice, a text deserving of the attention and adaptations showered on novels by Austen and Brontë and Alcott. And though I could talk for ages about the craft of this book, how had me ignoring my responsibilities to turn page after page, all I can think about is how angry I am that not one of the many literature courses I took mentioned her, let alone held her work up as canon. It’s a tragedy that Fauset worked tirelessly alongside DuBois and Locke and promoted the careers of writers like Langston Hughes only to be consigned to the margins — a line in their more prominent bios. There Is Confusion is a character study that’s in conversation with Austen, it’s true (the plot feels delightfully Austen-esque), but it also exists as a precursor to Fitzgerald, whose most popular work similarly explores identity, ambition, romance, NYC, and the reverberations of WWI. His novel is included on nearly every high school’s required reading list. I’m hopeful that just as Alice Walker’s championship of Zora Neale Hurston shined a spotlight on her work, Victoria Christopher Murray’s upcoming novel, Harlem Rhapsody, will help bring Fauset’s work to the forefront the way it deserves. 📸: I’m holding up a kindle displaying the ebook cover of There Is Confusion. via Instagram https://instagr.am/p/DFiGPTbSgC0/