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This week’s story, “ Between the Shadow and the Soul ,” is about a fifty-year-old woman named Eliza who has
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The illustration shows the frightened-looking figure of a woman looking over her shoulder in front of a large house surrounded by hills and palm trees and other expansive homes. The color scheme is pink and blue and black. You’re reading the Race/Related newsletter Join a deep and provocative exploration of race, identity and society with New York Times journalists. ONE OF OUR KIND, by Nicola Yoon The new novel “One of Our Kind,” by Nicola Yoon, opens with a cozy description of an all-Black Los Angeles suburb called Liberty. There’s a Black History Museum with Roman columns and a grand staircase. A sculpture garden with statues of historic Black figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and M.L.K. Expansive homes on both sides of a picturesque hill. And on that hill, a gleaming spa called the Wellness Center. Liberty is an all-Black utopia, a place where residents can relax among people like themselves. After surviving a frightening traffic stop on the way home from an Easter brunch, Jasmyn Williams and her husband, Kingston, King for short, move to Liberty with their 6-year-old boy, Kamau, looking for “a place surrounded by like-minded, thriving Black people. A place with wide, quiet streets where their son could ride his bike, carefree, with other little Black boys. A place where both King and Kamau would be safe walking around at night.” All novels are a product of their era. Yoon, an accomplished young adult novelist (author of “Everything, Everything” and “The Sun Is Also a Star”), has dropped her adult debut into a time when the idea that Black people might one day be free from systemic racism seems farther away than ever. Just a few years ago, a burst of police reform and corporate diversity initiatives followed protests against George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis police. But the Black Lives Matter signs have come down. The marches have ended. Affirmative action is dead. Voting rights have been rolled back even further . And a movement against equity and inclusion is trying to make Black people unwelcome at colleges and […]
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This week’s story, “ Between the Shadow and the Soul ,” is about a fifty-year-old woman named Eliza who has
The British realist director Mike Leigh loves the term “character actor,” which he uses often and with zeal. To him,
