Episode 45 -- Trains, Pains, and Barnacles: Suzette Mayr’s THE SLEEPING CAR PORTER

In this, our 45th episode, the Spoilers are back with what they thought would be a frolicking, early summer show about Baxter, a Black Canadian aspiring dentist who works as a sleeping car porter on a cross-continent train in the late 1920s (surprise! it took a while to edit!). Paced like a marathoner in a Dodge Challenger, this novel is relentless in its depiction of racialized labor in a very close environment. Not all of us loved this book, but that always makes for an interesting conversation -- and you will get nothing less here, even though you had to wait for three months. Anticipation makes things even better they say . . .