A review by heyleigh05
The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.25

 Robert Jones Jr. has really done something with this book. I have so many thoughts about this book just on my first read but there’s still so much that I missed. I will definitely be re-reading this book! The Prophets is a work of literary fiction that is filled with symbolism, imagery, and allusions. The Prophets tells the story of Samuel and Isaiah, two enslaved men who are lovers. Their romance and their relationship are simple and organic. Its uncomplicated and wholesome. Their relationship is something that’s known but goes unspoken and uninterrupted until an older slave decides to teach the Gospel to the other slaves. Isaiah and Samuel’s relationship goes from being accepted to being scorned and other slaves turn against them. This causes problems for them and subsequently leads to a spiral of events. 

Jones’ writing is very lyrical and meticulous. You can tell that he wrote this novel with such intention, care, and vision. There are interludes throughout the novel told from the perspective of spirits and those sections are melodic and ominous in their tone. Samuel and Isaiah are the focus of this story, but the novel has a broader premise that tells the story of legacy and generational trauma. Jones chronicles how the invasion of white colonizers in Africa have direct impact and consequences for enslaved people and their descendants. A recurring theme throughout the novel is the dichotomy between old and new. Characters frequently mention “the old ways” referring to life in Africa  before the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Jones illustrates how colonization destroys culture, language, and traditions in preference of assimilation and subjugation. Slaves are not allowed to speak their old language and they aren’t allowed to practice their traditions. Of course, some do hold to the old ways with the hope of passing them down to their children. The maintenance of “the old ways” is important because it establishes legacy and identity. It connects new generations to old generations and to their ancestral home, so that they’ll always know where they come from. This is their birthright. But their birthright was ripped away from them and we see the consequences of that even today amongst Black Americans. The old ways also play a critical role in the plot of the story. Jones uses magical realism to convey the old ways’ prevalence and importance in the story. Circles are also a recurring motif in this novel, and I think they are also connected to the idea of legacy and ancestry. Connection to the old ways will always link you back to your ancestral home and will therefore keep culture and tradition alive. Your cultural legacy will be infinite, like a circle. I think the circle motif is also a reference to the circle of life; we are born, and we return to dust, but in between all of that there is always someone to pass down that legacy before you leave. I could say a lot more about the dichotomy between old and new, but I’ll save that for my re-read. 

The entire novel is interwoven with allusions to the Bible. It makes we wish that I attended Bible study as a kid. Each chapter is named after a Biblical character, place, or chapter and the characters have Biblical names. I think that each chapter might be analogous to events that happen in the Bible. Some of the references are easier to recognize than others. For example (small spoiler ahead), there’s are chapter called the “Balm in Gilead”. In the Bible, there’s the balm of Gilead which refers to an herb for medicinal use that grows in Gilead. In Jones’ chapter, the characters are looking for certain herbs that they will use for healing. One of the characters, Maggie, might be parallel to Mary Magdalene. There are so many Bible references that I couldn’t figure out during the first read but for the second I intend to do a lot more research. 

There are many descriptions of nature in this novel and I think that nature itself plays in important role in the story while also being symbolic. The characters frequently remark about the beauty of the plantation’s landscape from its flowers to its willowy trees, to the setting sun. However, the irony of the beautiful landscape is that it bears witness and even covers up the atrocities taking place. How could something on such beauty also be the site of such pain and suffering? There’s a moment when Ruth talks about how she had flowers planted so they could cover the scent of toil and death. She wanted the fragrance of the flowers, known for their beauty and delicacy, to mask the stench of slaves performing bone-breaking labor and suffering. This irony was very interesting to me. However, we also see how slaves reclaimed nature for nature was integrated into the old ways long before white people began to manipulate it. 

I’ll get into the characters next. The Prophets has multiple perspectives and explores their lives in detail. We get a look into their past and we see how that influences their present. Although, there are multiple perspectives, at the center of all of them is Samuel and Isaiah. Samuel and Isaiah are who connect all these characters together which further illustrates the circle motif. Each character has a different perspective of Isaiah and Samuel’s relationship from unfettered support to distaste to indifference. While I appreciate that Jones gave us multiple perspectives, I wish that more time were spent focusing on Samuel and Isaiah’s perspectives. I wanted more background on their relationship and wanted more moments to establish the foundation of their relationship, and what continues to draw them to each other. It’s like they are at the center of the story while also not being the center of the story. Rather, they as individuals are subsumed by everyone else’s conception of them. And maybe this was Jones’ intention. Maybe his intention was for everyone around Isaiah and Samuel to have a voyeuristic (and even parasitic) part in their relationship. It’s like everyone has a piece of them and they even exploit it, but Isaiah and Samuel don’t have control over their privacy let alone their freedom. Everyone has expectations for them and their relationship, but they aren’t allowed to love freely and have jurisdiction over the circumstances of their own relationship. Maybe Jones was trying to illustrate the exploitative system they are in. Anyways, I wish there were more focus on the main couples’ perspectives. My favorite characters were Maggie and Sarah. They stood out to me as formidable women with so much depth and complexity. It’s the women in this story who really hold everything together. For me, Jones illustrated how women are so vital to legacy and survival, but they are so woefully undervalued, especially Black women. The novel also illustrated for me how Black women bear the responsibility of being saviors, child bearers, mothers, nurturers, and laborers and they get nothing in return. Maggie and Sarah are most in-tuned with the old ways and they have the most important roles in the story. 

Now let’s talk about the white supremacists. Paul, the slave owner, is the obvious racist, pious slave owner that you would expect of a cis-white man. If anything, Paul’s racism and white supremacist ideology is simple and easy to understand, but still obviously oppressive. You see the typical rhetoric that you do in slave stories: slaves aren’t human but animals, they have no morals, they have no soul, no intelligence, etc. However, Ruth… Ruth, Paul’s wife, she’s pure evil. Ruth represents a more insidious racism and how it manifests. Ruth also illustrates everything that is wrong with white feminism. White feminism is reductive and lacks nuance. Ruth sees things purely as a man vs. women dichotomy which is overly simplistic. Ruth is one of those white women who weaponizes her whiteness to criminalize Black people (this is the essential definition of a “Karen”, but “Karen” has become so used and abused in mainstream discourse that it’s no longer enough to describe this phenomenon), and Black men, in particular. (Spoiler ahead) She accuses Samuel and Isaiah of “looking at her wrong”, and they get punished for it even though she lied. This is because white supremacist ideologies have constructed a damsel in distress narrative around white women. White women are seen as fragile, delicate, and worthy of protection. We see this juxtaposition often in the novel: the delicate, frail white women vs the wide, durable black women (who aren’t even seen as women, but animals). 

There is so much more that I could say about this novel, but I’ll save it for my second read. The Prophets is truly a work of art that requires thought and discussion. I wish that I could have a discussion with Robert Jones Jr and pick his brain about the process of writing this novel. I have so many questions and thoughts about the symbolism and what things might mean. This novel is definitely worth the read and I highly recommend it!