From its opening pages, Panorama, authored by J. Ross Victory, shows the reader that self-growth and self-discovery are not easy journeys to embark on. Positioned as a standalone narrative but also an extension of the author’s memoir Views from the Cockpit, Panorama is a soul-baring look at how one man reckons with identity and healing past wounds, told through a series of narrative vignettes based on the author’s time in South Korea and his life post-return to the United States. His voice is a welcome one to the world of memoirs, as there is a noticeable literary dearth of bisexual Black men openly discussing their challenges and successes in love and life. 

Coming off the heels of recent representation via Love is Blind, the Netflix reality show in which a man named Carlton made a name for himself by going on a hyper-misogynistic rant about being rejected by his fiancée for being bisexual, Black bisexual men have been on the offensive doing damage control. With an essay after the book’s conclusion positing the development of a BSP (bisexual-sapiosexual-pansexual) identity umbrella, Victory’s positioning of his bisexuality within the larger story arc is a needed reminder that hypermasculinity and biphobia do more than just oppress people who are on the receiving end of it; they develop a form of spiritual death in the people who embody them as well.

In talking about his love(s), loss, and the consequences of avoiding pain, Victory seeks to remind readers that our decisions are ours alone to make, and while you cannot undo something once it has been done, you can use that knowledge to grow as a person. Whether that growth is always at another person’s expense is up to us to decide.

While Panorama is better contextualized when read directly alongside Views from the Cockpit, it reads easily on its own once you, the reader, understand that the book drops you in the middle of an existing story. It can be a bit jarring at first because you feel like you’re missing some important background information, but everything that needs to be explained, is, over the course of the book. This kind of structure demonstrates the tension and urgency that Victory feels, due to the stream-of-consciousness narration style at certain points. Within this tension is, to me, the fundamental question the book wants us to answer: “where do we find love?” and its companion, “what do we do with it once we’ve found it?”. 

Panorama does a great job of telling us what NOT to do with love. The major concern that most people have when reading a first person narrative about real life is the risk of an unreliable narrator. We’re only receiving one side of the story so it would stand to reason that the author would want to make himself look better. If that’s the case in Panorama, then the real story behind some of the experiences described in the book must be abhorrent, to say the least. Victory is not a particularly likable character for a decent portion of the book — I often found myself wanting to shake him back to reality or give him an Iyanla Vanzant-esque dragging for his behavior. 

Panorama’s power lies in its nonchalance. On its face it appears to be simply part of a memoir by a Black bisexual man who has chosen to publicly reckon with his misdeeds via his art. And while it is that, it also pushes readers to look at themselves and where they find themselves — politically — in the world. Where is love there? How can we all extend grace to ourselves for what we feel are unforgivable mistakes? Victory doesn’t answer this for readers, obviously. But by sharing his story, after reading, you are left with a need to reach into yourself and see how you can answer those questions. I urge you to pick up a copy of Panorama — and Views from the Cockpit while you’re at it — if you are interested in a Black ex-pat perspective of South Korean life, want to support a Black bisexual male author, or want to know how one man has chosen to search for answers to life’s difficult questions.

Link to Panorama

Link to Views from the Cockpit

Ross Victory’s Website

Instagram: @rossvictoryofficial