![]() What is unprecedented in this novel is its presentation of the two gay male slaves, each endowed with his own personality, which never merges with a stereotype. The main women on the plantation-Be Auntie, Sarah, Puah, Essie-have their own clearly delineated identities and complex psychologies. Jones’s women are all sharply delineated, starting with the “king” of a tribe in Africa, a woman-warrior who lives with her several wives. ![]() With astonishingly real details, Jones creates a convincing picture of slave life, everything from transportation in ships (where those captives who had died from hunger or wounds or disease were just thrown overboard) to the arrival, in this case, at a vast cotton plantation, where they are branded, forced with whipping to work harder and faster, insulted, mocked and, if they’re female, raped. This is a love story of two gay enslaved men, Isaiah and Samuel (not their original African names), who’ve been assigned to look after the horses and who work together in perfect harmony in the barn. It is an antebellum story of a flourishing Mississippi plantation some people refer to as “Nothing” and others call “Elizabeth,” the name of the owner’s mother. This is a first novel, but I hope it took years and years to write since it is so powerful and beautiful. ![]()
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