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Yonder
Yonder: A Novel | Jabari Asim
2 posts | 3 read | 8 to read
The Water Dancer meets The Prophets in this spare, gripping, and beautifully rendered novel exploring love and friendship among a group of enslaved Black strivers in the mid-19th century. They call themselves the Stolen. Their owners call them captives. They are taught their captors tongues and their beliefs but they have a language and rituals all their own. In a world that would be allegorical if it werent saturated in harsh truths, Cato and William meet at Placid Hall, a plantation in an unspecified part of the American South. Subject to the whims of their tyrannical and eccentric captor, Cannonball Greene, they never know what harm may befall them: inhumane physical toil in the plantations quarry by day, a beating by night, or the sale of a loved one at any moment. Its that cruel practicethe wanton destruction of love, the belief that Black people arent even capable of lovingthat hurts the most. It hurts the reserved and stubborn William, who finds himself falling for Margaret, a small but mighty woman with self-possession beyond her years. And it hurts Cato, whose first love, Iris, was sold off with no forewarning. He now finds solace in his hearty band of friends, including William, who is like a brother; Margaret; Little Zander; and Milton, a gifted artist. There is also Pandora, with thick braids and long limbs, whose beauty calls to him. Their relationships begin to fray when a visiting minister with a mysterious past starts to fill their heads with ideas about independence. He tells them that with freedom comes the right to choose the small thingswhen to dine, when to begin and end workas well as the big things, such as whom and how to love. Do they follow the preacher and pursue the unknown? Confined in a landscape marked by deceit and uncertainty, who can they trust? In an elegant work of monumental imagination that will reorient how we think of the legacy of Americas shameful past, Jabari Asim presents a beautiful, powerful, and elegiac novel that examines intimacy and longing in the quarters while asking a vital question: What would happen if an enslaved person risked everything for love?
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abookishbutterfly
Yonder: A Novel | Jabari Asim
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I love books that make you feel their words in your core as your heart plummets into your stomach. I love books that manage to make the ugliest things lyrically compelling, searching out the strength and beauty of their unsightly truths.

Yonder was all of this.

My full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4299220992

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Naj
Yonder: A Novel | Jabari Asim
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If you have to read only one book this year, let it be this masterpiece. It's rare to come across a piece of literature that says so much in perfectly measured, yet hard-hitting, evocative prose. From the writing, to the characters, to the story... everything about this book is sheer perfection. I hated having to put it down because life got in the way. This one demands to be devoured in one reading and savored long after.

5/5 ⭐

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