Yonder: A Novel
Written by Jabari Asim
Narrated by Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Lamarr Gulley, JD Jackson and
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
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 weren’t 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 plantation’s quarry by day, a beating by night, or the sale of a loved one at any moment. It’s that cruel practice—the wanton destruction of love, the belief that Black people aren’t even capable of loving—that 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 things—when to dine, when to begin and end work—as 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 America’s 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?
Editor's Note
Searing novel…
Asim, a novelist and cultural critic, offers a story of survival told through slaves in the antebellum South. It speaks to the divide between their rich inner culture and what their white slave owners believed them capable of. This searing novel reveals storytelling’s ability to give hope to those who are suffering.
Jabari Asim
Jabari Asim is the author of the critically acclaimed The N Word. He is editor-in-chief of The Crisis—the magazine of the NAACP—and former editor at and frequent contributor to the Washington Post, and his writing has appeared on Salon and in Essence, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. He divides his time between Maryland and Illinois with his wife and five children.
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Reviews for Yonder
35 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5So moving and original. The voices of the characters reveal layers of a world that has too often fallen into stereotypical patterns. Let them soak your soul with remembering the past and future. Bravo!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A touching but brutal story about a found family fi ding their way to freedom