Blue Hour summary

The story begins with our unnamed narrator visiting her therapist. She’s there for good reason – she recently lost her baby due to a miscarriage.

In flashbacks, we learn about the narrator’s life and background. She lives in New York with her husband, Asher, and works as a photographer and photography teacher. 

As a Black, Haitian, and Japanese woman, she’s struggled with her identity and appearance since she was young. In school, her Black peers taunted her for “talking white,” and she never felt like she fully belonged.

In college, she lost her parents and younger sister in a tragic accident – leaving only her and her now estranged older sister, Viola. 

We also learn that she met her husband, Asher, a Jewish store owner, when she photographed him for a magazine profile. Despite their different backgrounds, the beginnings of their love story felt magical. They quickly married, and even though she never considered herself a family person, the narrator decided to try for a baby with her husband.

But tragedy struck once more. After only 10 weeks, the narrator delivered a stillborn baby on her bathroom floor. She tells her therapist that this has left her feeling “dismembered.”

In the aftermath of this loss, her feelings about motherhood grow more ambivalent than ever. She tells her therapist she never wanted kids – but deep down knows that she longs for a baby with Asher.

This hesitance deepens against the backdrop of ongoing police brutality against Black Americans, like the recent murder of a man at a grocery store. Soon, tragedy hits close to home.

One of her young photography students, gifted 10-year-old Noah, is shot in the back by the police while running errands for his mother. The narrator is shocked when she hears the story on the news. And when she attends a protest for Noah, she sees a female protestor clubbed viciously by police. The racial violence colors everything, making raising a Black child seem impossible.

ANALYSIS

The first part of the novel introduces us to our conflicted protagonist. She tells of her experience in a fragmented style, recounting short episodes of her everyday life, fond memories, and resurfacing trauma. 

As a young multiracial woman in New York, she’s not only struggling with her own identity and loss, but with the unforgiving racialized climate of the times. The ongoing police brutality against Black Americans forms the solemn backdrop of her personal struggles with infertility. 

On one side, she desperately longs to be a mother and build a family with her beloved husband, Asher. On the other side, she feels betrayed by her body and undeserving of a family after the tragic loss of her own. On top of all that, she grapples with what it means to raise a child of color when racial violence is a daily occurrence.