Book 805: The Prophets – Robert Jones, Jr.

This was a stunning debut novel. Jones (re)created a world that draws you in and takes you on an emotional journey. There were so many side/back stories that I wanted to know so much more about! It’s amazing he got as much into the story as he did, I can’t fathom trying to cut back or reign in the story.

The real problem is my digital copy was due back before I finished typing up my response so I can’t actually use characters names for those side stories/back stories so I’m just going to have to gloss over them—booo.

At its heart The Prophets is a love story about Isaiah and Samuel. It’s, perhaps shockingly, not a sitting in judgement, holier than though, or even trope-ful sad gay story, even though all of this happens at some point or another. The love and hope and magic shine through, especially in the magical realism laced throughout the novel.

No, those boys risked more than was necessary searching each other’s faces, again and again, for the thing that made rivers rush toward the sea. Always one smiling and always the other with his mouth angry and ajar. Reckless. (38)

I couldn’t get over the breadth and depth of what Jones commented on throughout the novel. From the Out of Africa theory of evolution (Wikipedia link):

And despise not the dark of your skin, for within it is the prime sorcery that moved us from belly-crawl to tall-walk. From the screaming, we brought forth words and mathematics and the dexterity of knowledge that coaxed the ground to offer up itself as sustenance. But do not let this make you arrogant. (80)

to systemic and institutional racism against Black people in the US:

To survive in this place, you had to want to die. That was the way of the world as remade by toubab, and Samuel’s list of grievances was long: They pushed people into the mud and then called them filthy. They forbade people from accessing any knowledge of the world and then called them simple. They worked people until their empty hands were twisted, bleeding, and could do no more, then called them lazy. They forced people to eat innards from troughs and then called them uncivilized. They kidnapped babies and shattered families and then called them incapable of love. They raped and lynched and cut up people into parts, and then called the pieces savage. They stepped on people’s throats with all their might and asked why the people couldn’t breathe. And then, when people made an attempt to break the foot, or cut it off one, they screamed ‘CHAOS!’ and claimed that mass murder was the only way to restore order. (301)

to the existence of trans people in all times of history:

She knew of one such woman who was hanged when discovered, not for the fighting—for she heard that she had fought even better than the men—but for the deception, which they claimed was in more than just her disguise; it was in the way she lived even in times of peace, rejecting ‘she’ for ‘he,’ an affront to Christ. (128)

How many midnights had they between them? An audience of animals, kinder than toubab, who could keep what they knew to themselves. He and Isaiah had stumbled into something he had never exactly seen before. There was someone called Henry once who would only answer to Emma, but that was different. She wasn’t a man and everybody except toubab knew it. But that wasn’t the same. No one cared much about Isaiah and Samuel, either, until a person thought he could also be a toubab and the two simply couldn’t coexist.” (300)

Jones touched on so many things and/or really just gets intersectionality to an extend that so many people just don’t. And speaking of people who just don’t get it, I couldn’t help but laugh and nod my head and think about the GOP and a lot of conservative religious people when I read this passage:

These colorless people had the strangest system of grouping things together by what they did not understand rather than by what they did. He could see bodies, but it was clear that he could not see spirits. It was humorous to observe someone who did not know the terrain but refused to admit it, stumbling around, bumping into trees, then asking who put them in their path so suddenly. (183)

It was particularly apt in this instance, because these were white Portuguese missionaries/slavers going into Africa and bumbling along ignoring the fact that these already advanced societies had their own ways of doing things.

Even with all of these wonderful inclusions, where Jones really excelled, for me, was the “a ha” moments many of which happened in the last 100 pages which really picked up the pace of the book. From Samuel realizing what he felt for Isaiah wasn’t just some fling, from finding out who Samuel’s mother was, to this really intense moment when Ruth (I think—see aforementioned loss of book access) realizes that white men aren’t anything other than men and holds her own in what is going on.

When they approached, she had figured out something that had been like a splinter in her foot: the easy thing to believe was that toubab were monsters, their crimes exceptional. Harder, however, and even more frightening was the truth: there was no such thing as monsters. Every travesty that had ever been committed had been committed by plain people and every person had it in them, that fetching, bejeweled thing just beneath the breast that could be removed at will and smashed over another’s head before it was returned to its beating place. The splinter pushed out, she could walk evenly, though cautiously, whether the ground was level or not. (353)

The last 100 pages of the book really made it. They not only broke my heart and then healed it and then ripped it out again, they were so intense that you didn’t really know who or what to believe. You also didn’t know what was happening and you desperately tried to figure out if what happened could happen or if it didn’t happen and when you resigned yourself to it, Jones twisted it again and you had to start the process all over again. Seriously, both scenes by the river had me in tears and I desperately want to know what happened after, but know that it’s better not knowing.

The only complaint I have about the novel is that the first 3/4 were very slow. They were beautifully written, but the pace was so slow I found my mind wandering constantly. However, once I hit that final 1/4 of the novel I devoured the book. There was so much action and so much unknown/changing that I couldn’t put it down. I’m still reliving those last few pages and it’s been over a week since I finished reading it. Take this with a grain of salt as it could’ve just been the time I was trying to read it and a me thing, but it definitely felt like two different books.

Recommendation: This was a stunning debut novel. The way Jones plays with language and time intersecting storylines across continents and eras is masterful. He has a way of telling you bits and pieces of stories that you don’t really need to know all of, but desperately want to know all of, for the story to make sense. I don’t think it could’ve ended any other way even thought it was incredibly bittersweet and I’m still reeling from it. I’ve never been happier not to see an epilogue.

Opening Line: “You do not yet know us.”

Closing Line: “And nothing in creation able to stop the coming. Nothing except You.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from The Prophets
“You do not know who you are. How could you possibly reckon with who we are? You are not lost so much as you are betrayed by fools who mistook glimmer for power.” (1)

“Lies are more affectionate than truth and embrace with both arms. Prying you loose is our punishment.” (2)

“Maybe it wasn’t that Isaiah was obedient, but did he really have to give them so much of himself and so readily? To Samuel, that spoke of fear.” (2)

“Isaiah smiled at Samuel’s unwillingness, his grunts and sighs and head shaking, even though he understood the danger in it. Tiny resistances were a kind of healing in a weeping place.” (8)

“He was himself, he was sure, but what had just come to him, from a pinpoint in the dark, proved that time could go missing whenever and wherever it pleased, and Isaiah couldn’t yet figure out a way to retrieve it.” (13)

“The world tried to make her feel some other way, though. It had tried to make her bitter about herself. It had tried to turn her own thinking against her. It had tried to make her gaze upon her reflection and judge what she saw as repulsive. She did none of these things. Instead, she fancied her skin in the face of these cruelties. For she was the kind of black that made toubab men drool and her own men recoil. In her knowing, she glowed in the dark.” (28)

“Given enough time, betrayal—no matter how tiny—makes its way up the steps and sits on the throne as though it had always belonged there. Maybe it did and it was actually surprise that had no place.” (49)

“Yes, even now he noticed the reality flickering between them. It was like the finest of spiderwebs with a tenuous amount of dew trembling on the strands of it, suddenly snatched away and then reconstructed within the blink of an eye, delicate tendrils that were somehow stronger than they appeared, holding the weight of a rainstorm before finally giving way and allowing an unobstructed view. But that was no reason to be sad because the morning, after rain, offered up beauty of which the smell of hawkweed was just the beginning.” (72)

“Everywhere a girl existed, there was someone telling her that she was her own fault and leading a ritual to punish her for something she never did. It hadn’t always been this way. Blood memory confirmed this and women were the bearers of the blood.” (98)

“Puah knew that the secret of strength was in how much truth could be endured.” (103)

“Sarah saw that same look between Isaiah and Samuel, sometimes. Only sometimes because the mean one, Samuel—who seemed to be choosing man because he didn’t understand how that made the other possibilities remote—was fighting against himself because his desire didn’t look like anything he had ever seen before. The other one, Isaiah, had better imagination. She wasn’t sure if he had chosen woman or free, but it was clear he had chosen one or the other because violence wasn’t his primary motion.” (116)

“‘We was always doomed, won’t we?’ That was the last thing she said to Mary as they tied Sarah down and carted her off to Mississippi.” (118)

“She knew that Northern ways were slippery and could slither their way through any boundary given enough will. If the North had anything, it was that: will. Loud was what Northerners were, and hypocrites. The South was a constant reminder of their roots, these U-nited States that were neither united nor stately, but were some loose configuration of tepid and petrified men trying to remake the world in their own faded image. This wasn’t a framework for liberty; this was the same tyranny of Europe, only naked and devoid of baubles.

What Northerners lacked in charm, they more than made up for in speeches: heartbreaking and endless speeches that made men raise their pitchforks and torches and march to the edge of nothing-yet with yelling mouths and tearstained faces to declare, before all of creation, that they were ready to die so that a dream they would never be a part of should live.” (126)

“Whenever and wherever nothing encounters something, conflict is inevitable.” (128)

“Men were bluster, endless, preening bluster that needed, more than anything in the world, encouragement through audience. For men, privacy was the most frightening thing in the world because what was the point of doing anything that couldn’t be revered? What difference did it make to stand on a pedestal when there was no one there to look up?

Women, most women, did it differently. Privacy allowed them the power to be cruel but regarded as kind, to be strong and be thought delicate. It was crucial, though, that she be alone in this, for men were liable, even in these spaces, to snatch from her these tiny moments of a more balanced nature in bloom. Men, it seemed, were built for the sake of catastrophe and were determined to be who they were built to be.” (134)

“Meanwhile, Isaiah avoided Samuel’s glances because they hid nothing and what use was it to explain to him that a last resort should be last, not first? But still, Isaiah’s chest swelled with the strain of understanding that they were bound together by something much stronger than the rusty chains that held them. Tempting, though, was the thought of how much peace, however fleeting, there could be if one boy dared to be remiss in his duty and failed to bring the other boy water.” (146)

“They placed desire above the indisputable for the sake of not wanting to think, which is another way of saying surrender. And they couldn’t surrender now, not after all of this, not after they had stunned even themselves at how expert they were in uniting the entire plantation against them, toubab and person alike.” (150)

“The key to every man’s lock was going along with the untrue assessment of himself as worthy.” (160)

“It dawned on him briefly that he had never seen a Negro in the South seated in a chair. On the ground, yes. On haystacks. In driver’s seats. But never in a chair. Maybe that was why the Negro continued to sit: to have a small idea of what it meant to be fully human, to rest a spell on a comfortable surface and to have support for your back. But he got up and Timothy watched him move slowly back to the river and collapse to his knees at the edge of it before bending forward to splash his face.” (190)

“He had perhaps not been careful enough: stared too long at a passing gentleman; said a male name during his slumber, maybe; or it could have been the gentle way in which his hand would occasionally drape at the end of his wrist. You could never know for sure what it was that inspired their malice, so every part of your inside self had to remain inside.” (191)

“If the South had taught him anything, it taught him how to hide his flaws, flatter his audience, feign deference even when he was clearly superior in every conceivable way, and be quintessential in the art of courtesy. This while holding vile and impure thoughts, while even suppressing the girth of his manhood behind britches that threatened to burst at the seams. A raindrop at the tip of his being that would never reach fertile ground. Yes, he was a gentleman’s gentleman, and they were completely taken with him.” (201)

“It didn’t go unnoticed by Adam the stark contrast between himself and Isaiah and Samuel. It began with the skin. Of theirs, one was a deep cavern without lamplight to guide, the other a midnight sky, but without any stars. He saw his own as a starry night without any sky. All three were impossible, but there they were, connected by terrain and grievance, and also by the thickness of lips that outlined the mouth in a most peculiar way. Adam’s were pinker and, too, the dead giveaway.” (283)

“Not that they honored law above skin. Their commandments—haphazard, arbitrary, and utterly provisional—shattered sense to pieces.” (291)

“Samuel headed for the door. He turned back to look at Isaiah. The dead he felt inside didn’t move in Isaiah’s direction. No, there he felt something move and kick. There he felt something tremble and yawn. He had tried to look away from it, but it called to him. It called his name and he was anxious, stumbling over himself to say, ‘Yes, I’m here!’

It was almost happening. Almost happening in his eyes. Go away mist! Don’t descend yourself here.” (299)

“You in this place, but you ain’t of it. you hear what I telling you? Neither you or Isaiah—what you call him, ‘Zay?—ain’t neither one of you belong here in this place. Now, I ain’t saying that you ain’t welcome. No. What I saying is there be a whole better place for you, maybe not somewhere, but sometime. Whether that particular time is in front or behind, I ain’t got the power no more to tell. When you don’t use a thing, you lose a thing, you know. But I know for true it ain’t this time. So you gotta make a place to find the time where you belong. That’s what they tell me.” (302)

“Up in Massachusetts, the winters are so long and brutal you start to think you’ll never see a flower again. That’s not true, of course. But for a little while, you think that the color won’t come back ever. Maybe one day you’ll get to see the North in the winter.” (306)

“Maybe that was the sin his father left out of the story, the part about how, in order to survive the mountain people, they had come down from a mountain of their own, had to wear the remains of some other people’s children around their own necks. Victors gave themselves the right to rename murder ‘triumph’ and adorn themselves with jewelry made from the bones of the vanquished.” (318)

“She knew this as a way to connect them both to the line of women who had come before them, women who had, in some other time, met their fates with the kind of courage that she was looking for in the crowd right now. Who would be the first? Would it have to be her? It seemed that it had always fallen upon the women to be the head or the start, to throw the first spear, to shoot the first arrow, to clear the first path, to live the first life. It was a thing that took too much energy and that was why they needed so much rest now. So ready to put it all down, lay it all by the river and let some greedy tide take it if it wanted to, flow it to some other body to let them fish it out of the water and drape it over themselves if they thought it would do any good.” (339)