Half Blood Blues, an award winning novel by Esi Eydugan, really surprised me with all it had to offer. Its not everyday you can find a book that gives you a deep insight into the jazz community of the 1930's. If you were to go through the music app on my phone you would find about 6 hours of swing, jazz, and blues. The style of music is appealing to me, and upon opening the book I found that the pages were filled with lingo and aspects of that community. A theme erupts involving how places change, and the language helps to enrich the experience.

The first few pages of the book follow the young jazz musicians in the 1930's. Some topics such as racism, the 2nd world war, and poverty are introduced as well as the setting. Although the exposition of a novel tends to be boring, Edugyan integrated a massive plot point that is revisited later in the novel when the book flashes forward to the 1990's. …show more content…
His colloquialism drives us deeper into the novel and lets us surround ourselves in the setting. The author commits to the colloquialism and even uses it to provide imagery. If it wasn't for the slang writing style I would not have been able to visualize and see the smoky room the band was recording in. For example, upon reading we can see the use of informal language when Sid thinks to himself "What I done got myself into" (Edugyan 8) for