Book review: The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr

“Did Black queer people exist in the distant past?”

That’s the question Robert Jones Jr asked himself 13 years ago, the answer to which is this harrowing, lyrical, and searingly hopeful historical debut about Samuel and Isaiah, two Black boys growing into love together on a slave plantation in the deep south.

This character-driven book is a force to be reckoned with; it’s as much an exploration of the tenderness that can and did exist between people - queer or otherwise - as it is a nod to and celebration of those ancestral ties between the past and the present that cannot be severed, no matter distance or time.

Presented in a fragmented narrative style that jumps between characters, times, and continents, The Prophets chronicles the lives of the many different people living on the Halifax plantation, aptly named Empty, in the deep south, as well as the life of an ancient tribe on the brink of colonisation somewhere in Africa.

The narrative parallel that’s drawn between the two is spearheaded by Samuel and Isaiah, two boys enslaved on the plantation, and Elewa and Kosii, two warriors in the tribal Kosongo territory. Their relationships are treated very differently, and it is this difference that wedges itself in the chasm between present and past, white and black, “civilised” and tribal. It is this difference that provides a framework for Jones to explore the necessity of tending to those ancestral ties, of honouring those that came before, and of understanding how this gap may be the shining beacon that lights a path going into the future.

The Prophets has many characters, each fleshed out with care and devotion to the particulars of what makes them who they are - their private pleasures as well as the spaces where they store all the hurt and suffering they’ve been inflicted with. And of those latter, there is a lot.

The focal points of the book, Samuel and Isaiah, are so wonderfully encapsulated by Jones that I could see them - one smiling, one seething. Along all other characters, their struggles and stolen, small victories pour out the pages and into the reader - so when the whip comes down on them, you are the one wincing.

This book is brutal, but it isn’t - what it portrays rings true and unjust and unbearably painful, but its parts are woven in beautiful, poetic threads that find their way around each other and join in to spell out a bigger picture. This bigger picture is governed by ancestral spirits, and it might be harsh, but it is hopeful - it is the snake swallowing its own tail, shown to Isaiah at the very end of everything. Because what The Prophets boils down to, really, is the power of love. That love doesn’t have to be defined, but it must be protected at all costs - so that even when the ending isn’t hopeful, it is.

The Prophets isn’t easy, but it’s worth it; it isn’t straightforward, but it’s sweet work; its message isn’t pretty, but it needs hearing. And the call to action at the end speaks out from the depth of the book and transcends its boundaries - it speaks to me, to you, to us.

Reading this was an eye-opening, painful, strange ride. I loved every minute of it.