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IIt is not hyperbole to say that The prophets, which explores the life of black homosexuals on a Mississippi plantation known among slaves as “Void,” evokes the best of Toni Morrison, while being his own distinct and virtuoso work. It’s hard to believe this is a start: where it falters, it does it like ambitious novels – in an effort to innovate.
The story revolves around the love between Samuel and Isaiah, two slave boys aged 16 or 17, “one black, the other purple; one smiling, the other sullen ”. Growing up on Empty, the two have been inseparable from childhood, turning into lovers whose romance turns the plantation’s operation upside down. These two figures move with clarity and lyricism across the page, and their love is elevated to a powerful symbol that not only illuminates the workings of slavery, but compels others to act, unveiling deadly secrets, desires and desires. follies.
For Paul, the slave owner, the couple is made up of “young males” able to raise more slaves to work on his plantation. They refuse to do so, instead finding refuge and pleasure in their romance, which inspires them with a delicious but heartbreaking joy. Impatient with the results, Paul rapes a slave named Essie whom Isaiah failed to impregnate. The encounter produces Solomon, who numbs Essie and angers Amos, a slave who loves and hopes to build a life with her on the plantation. Amos tries to protect Essie from further assault by having fun with Paul; he became his protégé and began to preach the Christian gospel to slaves. Little by little, Amos succeeded in turning against them the slave community, which was the protector of Samuel and Isaiah and of their love.
The novel has an impressive cast of characters. There are the title prophets, “speaking in the seven voices,” who communicate from the world of the dead and try to offer slaves advice. The story goes back in time to explore the genealogy of Samuel and Isaiah, who descend from the Kosongo people in an unknown part of Africa. The Kosongo are distinguished by their fluid notions of gender: we meet Kosii and Elewa, male lovers whose spirits, like Samuel and Isaiah, were linked from birth, and who play a special role in the world and customs of Kosongo. The slave trade demolishes the Kosongo people, some of whom are taken on a brutal journey across the Atlantic. In this way, the book examines the breaking down of genealogies and the creation of the American slave, pitting eclectic worlds and belief systems against each other – the African world from which the slaves descend and the new world from the southern antrum.
Then there is the ethereal Ruth, Paul’s wife, who lives in the midst of her own delusions and turns on Samuel and Isaiah after a slight insult. There is Tim, Paul’s son, a painter with abolitionist sympathies who is drawn to the two boys like a sinner of the forbidden fruit. There’s James, the overseer, who isn’t much better than slaves and deeply despises them for it. There are the female slaves – Maggie, Essie, Beulah, Sarah and Puah – whose voices help drive the novel, and who are all tied, whether out of love, motherhood, or envy, to Samuel and Isaiah.
At the heart of the story is immense generosity of spirit; each character, slave and assailant, “mestizo” and supervisor, is richly evoked, reflecting the complexity of their desires and privations. It seems both terrible and mundane to follow Paul as he walks his plantation, reveling in the legacy his parents left him. The love story of Samuel and Isaiah sheds a revealing light on Paul’s own contradictions, namely how he refuses to see himself in his slave offspring. This contradiction manifests itself in the character of Adam, the “Negro Coach” who looks like Paul and is sometimes taken for a white man. During a drunken evening, Paul shares a brief intimate moment with Adam. Adam wonders, with a painful longing, if Paul finally recognizes him as his son.
It is therefore a novel married to its time but also to our time, exploring the pressing questions that have plagued America since its founding. He manages to be several things at once, stirring both heart and mind in an exploration of human desire and depravity. A cutting-edge study of character, it is refreshing in its portrayal of mankind’s daily negotiations under slavery, practiced by slaves and slaves alike. It’s an ode to a lasting love between two black boys.
Black queer love is the most radical here. It represents a non-utilitarian love, a love that resists degradation. He delights and rages. Through it, the human asks to be seen. In this magnificent novel, it becomes synonymous with freedom.
• House of Stone by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma is published by Atlantic. The Prophets is published by Riverrun (RRP £ 18.99). To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com
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