There is a distinctly different manner about spirituality between precolonial African societies and Western societies, in that the goal is in punishment. These are not angry, giant sky daddies who hold lightning in their palm and wish to do you harm if you don’t do everything, as they say, precisely, as they say, hidden under the superficial cover of choice. These are people that you have already loved that have loved you, who cannot wait to embrace you again, to sit you down at the table and, and, and break bread. “What I realized about the pre-colonial spiritual ideas is that they were closely tied to family, that these godlike figures, for lack of a better term, were not hovering over these pre-colonial Africans in a way that Jehovah hovers over modern day. It was necessary that they had something to dream about.” That they can have a kind of beauty and a respite from it, a reprieve and something to dream about. It is to allow the characters flights of fancy so that they can become fuller, more realized characters outside of the violence. The way that myth often functions in this book is to give you a reprieve from the brutal reality of it. As tensions build and the weight of centuries-of ancestors and future generations to come-culminate in a climactic reckoning, The Prophets masterfully reveals the pain and suffering of inheritance, but is also shot through with hope, beauty, and truth, portraying the enormous, heroic power of love.“I’m certain that Morrison’s influence and even the influence of Marquez plays a role in some of how I decided to write this, how I decided to combine myth and reality.

fiercely summons the voices of slaver and the enslaved alike to tell the story of these two men from Amos the preacher to the calculating slave-master himself to the long line of women that surround them, women who have carried the soul of the plantation on their shoulders. With a lyricism reminiscent of Toni Morrison, Robert Jones, Jr.

Isaiah and Samuel’s love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation’s harmony. But when an older man-a fellow slave-seeks to gain favor by preaching the master’s gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. Isaiah was Samuel’s and Samuel was Isaiah’s.

The prophets jones