Reviewed by Danielle Y. Hatchett
Deciding on the life of somebody else ain’t the best place to be when you’re deciding on your own.
Herein lies the dilemma facing fifteen-year-old Shivana Montgomery, the protagonist of Kalisha Buckhanon’s sophomore novel, Conception. After becoming pregnant by a married man more than twice her age, she is faced with one of the biggest decisions of her young life. Should she bring another fatherless child into the world, whose future would certainly be as precarious as her own?
At first glance, the answer seems clear. Although Shivana had always felt an innate maturity beyond her years, she was still unable to see beyond the bleak existence in front of her. Life certainly had not been a crystal stair growing up among broken homes and abandoned dreams that littered the streets of the South Side of Chicago. The gray walls of the desolate tenement she shared with a mother who long ago chose to stop living and merely exist, seemed to be closing in on her daily. While Shivana always knew there was a better life outside of the surrounding “graveyard spread up, not out,” that Cosby Show existence seemed unattainable for her and the unborn child.
Even as she desperately searches for a way to get the “thing” out of her, she can hear a voice calling out to her, urging her on to the unknown. Buckhanon frames the novel with the surreal presence of the unborn child who has traveled 150 years through the wombs of three women, searching for a chance at life. Three times, its soul was conceived inside of a new mother–the enslaved Toshi, the recently emancipated Darlene, and finally the Harlem migrant widow, Tawana. Each of their lives had ended soon after the conception, teaching the child the hard lesson of not “mourning when my life ended before it began.”
Fifty years after the last time its soul had found a home, the child finally sees a real chance at life with Shivana. They share that same longing for the love, comfort, and security of a real family. Now came the seemingly indomitable task of convincing Shivana that the world can open up for her if she gives her baby life.
The unborn child knows it cannot achieve this feat alone. It also realizes that at the root of Shivana’s doubt is her need for love. If she had unconditional love, she would believe. On the very night of the conception, she meets nineteen-year-old Rasul, who had been sent away to live with relatives by a mother who also had nothing left to give. After being shuttled between eleven homes in eight years, he had grown numb until he encountered Shivana. There is an immediate connection between the two, as they have both had to forge their own existence in a world in which they felt invisible. Wary of each other from the first encounter, the relationship is slow to take off. The unborn child decides that it is Rasul that will complete the circle and help Shivana listen to that voice screaming inside of her. Ultimately in each other, they find a home, unconditional love, and the realization of their collective and individual dreams.
Much like her acclaimed debut novel, Upstate, Buckhanon is again at her best with the powerful construction of an informidable us-against-the-world relationship between two young people. Despite seemingly insurmountable odds, you root for Rasul and Shivana to make it. You ignore the flashing warning lights and believe just as strongly as they do that despite what the world says, they have all they need to make it in each other.
Conception reaches far deeper than the scandalous impregnation of an inner city teen girl by a married older man. While the child they conceive is the driving force, the larger story is the triumph of the human spirit and the power of hope.