A daring Afrofuturist debut that just scratches the surface of its own astonishing futures.
An archivist grapples with Covid-19-induced memory loss and meddling AI helper bots while preserving an account of humanity’s radical survival.
In 2035, Xandria Anastasia Brown is the curator of African American Ephemera at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles, crafting a mosaic of Black history through quotidian artifacts. When a protest against corporate influence on the library escalates into an institution-wide lockdown, Xandria is sequestered in her office; there, she must confront the ramifications of her persistent brain fog, monitored and prodded by a trio of artificial intelligences. Initially functioning as personal assistants and health bots, the AIs' competing attempts to preserve her quality of life have a direct impact on Xandria’s passion project: collecting the ephemera of Diwata, an undersea nation inspired by Octavia E. Butler and the Black Panther Party, created in response to environmental trauma and in opposition to the colonies created to plunder Mars. Xandria’s framework is broad; she includes seemingly inconsequential objects to give future scholars the full picture of Diwata. That modus operandi is reflected in Jackson’s novel, which displays an astonishing breadth of imagination spanning centuries—there's everything from a far-future symposium attended by an immortal Xandria to an exploration of Diwata’s origins and feuding factions—but it only dips into each setting. Jackson draws thought-provoking parallels between Xandria cataloguing artifacts and the bots in turn cataloguing her physical symptoms, emotional reactions, and other biomedical data. The novel posits a future in which AI can bridge the gap of humans’ limitations, taking care of us when we can’t take care of each other, yet acknowledges the violations of privacy and autonomy that will be required. Jackson makes audacious leaps forward in time and space, from a lifespan-enhancing genetic operation performed against Xandria’s will to a sentient rover bursting out of the Pacific Ocean and not stopping until it reaches Mars. Readers may wish they could take deeper dives into each of these breathtaking vignettes.
A daring Afrofuturist debut that just scratches the surface of its own astonishing futures.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781324093404
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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