Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - The Prophets

The story that is contained in this book is powerful and moving. I enjoyed the historical interludes and the short chapters that were the voices of the ancestors reaching out to talk to the diaspora. I loved Isaiah and Samuel. There was so much potential here.

The words describing that story are an overwritten, purple prose mess that is almost impossible to parse even as a native English speaker. I had to reread passages multiple times to glean their meaning. Every sentence and paragraph is layered with endless metaphor and a description of the minutiae that do nothing to aid one’s understanding of the text. And because every chapter is from someone else’s point of view, we never get what ultimately I was looking for: the focus on Isaiah and Samuel and their love for each other, not how other people responded to it.

Content Warnings

babeinlibrary's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

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peachmoni's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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mackenzienoelle's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

The audiobook narrator was incredible. It’s hard for me to judge how fast or slow this book was just because audiobooks go really fast for me. Strong strong content warnings on this one but it was so beautiful and important to me.

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burnourhistory's review against another edition

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dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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amandalorianxo's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This was drenched in sadness but using metaphor and purple prose ish ~ poetic language, it doesn’t fully hit you until certain scenes. The depiction of the events of life in a plantation in Mississippi were uncomfortable at times - content / trigger warning include - rape (not just done by the father but by the son as well) abuse (physical / verbal and emotional) as well as other incidences of belittling the slaves. Isaiah and Samuel are supposed to be the center of this story but we get very little in their pov. Instead we receive other viewpoints, and it turns out the head of the plantation is upset that Isaiah and Samuel aren’t producing children to supplement the “growth” So Amos, an older slave, tries to get the people to go against the duo in exchange for no harm to go to Essie ( even though Amos is unfaithful to her) it’s not homosexuality that Amos / Paul is against but the preaching of homophobia. Case in point, Tim (slave master’s son) is aware he too isn’t straight and tries to experiment with Isaiah and Samuel. If we didn’t get so many POV’s (despite the short chapters)my feelings might have changed.

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yvespiders's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad

5.0

Though this is an emotional and challenging read, I love how Robert Jones, Jr. crafted this painful yet tender love story. He also seems to make references to things we see today, yet manages to maintain the authenticity of this historical fiction's time period. I fell in love with the female characters and was moved to tears by the two main characters' genuine love for each other.

This book is a reminder not only of the trauma of white supremacy and slavery, but also of how hateful, colonial religious indoctrination feeds into the already existing greed of oppressors, and sadly can make us fight against our natural tendencies to love ourselves and others.

Like I said, this is not an easy book to read, so you might want to consider looking at the content warnings.

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