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A Novel
by Nicola Yoon
Book Reviewed by:Thrilling with insightful social commentary, One of Our Kind explores the ways in which freedom is complicated by the presumptions we make about ourselves and each other.
Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California hoping to find a community of like-minded people, a place where their growing family can thrive.
King settles in at once, embracing the Liberty ethos, including the luxe wellness center at the top of the hill, which proves to be the heart of the community. But Jasmyn struggles to find her place. She expected to find liberals and social justice activists striving for racial equality, but Liberty residents seem more focused on booking spa treatments and ignoring the world's troubles.
Jasmyn's only friends in the community are equally perplexed and frustrated by most residents' outlook. Then Jasmyn discovers a terrible secret about Liberty and its founders. Frustration turns to dread as their loved ones start embracing the Liberty way of life.
Will the truth destroy her world in ways she never could have imagined?
Excerpt
One Of Our Kind
It really is beautiful here," Jasmyn says, looking out of the passenger- side window. Here is the Black history museum with its massive roman columns and grand staircase. Next door, the manicured sculpture garden is populated with statues of W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and, of course, Mar- tin Luther King Jr. A block later the Liberty Theater, with its ornate rococo stylings, comes into view. Enormous posters announce the dates for December's Nutcracker performance. Beautiful Black ballerinas star in every role from the Rat King to the Sugar Plum fairy.
Her husband, Kingston—everyone calls him King—takes a hand off the steering wheel and squeezes her knee. "Been a long time coming," he says.
Jasmyn smiles at his profile and rests her hand atop his. God knows he'd worked hard enough to get them to here. Here being Liberty, California, a small suburb on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
She turns her eager gaze back to the ...
Almost as soon as the Williamses move in, Jasmyn detects something a bit...off about Liberty. The neighbors are friendly enough, but they seem decidedly uninterested in getting involved with social justice movements like Black Lives Matter, or in protesting the recent police shooting of an unarmed Black man and his young daughter. Reading Nicola Yoon's adult debut, One of Our Kind, in many ways mirrors Jasmyn's experiences. Like Jasmyn, readers will feel initially uneasy, and then increasingly unsettled...and eventually real dread kicks in. This is a horror novel, but not the type that features blood and gore—instead, the horror is both more subtle and more chilling, getting under one's skin in multiple ways. Excerpts from news reports, court cases, online chatrooms, and other documents are interspersed throughout the narrative and give astute readers clues about what's really happening in Liberty...continued
Full Review
(622 words)
(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
Ashley C. Ford, New York Times best-selling author of Somebody's Daughter
Nicola Yoon can write about any subject beautifully, but what she's done in One of Our Kind is as thrilling as it is lusciously written. I can't remember the last time a book kept me turning the pages so quickly, or kept me up so late. One of Our Kind is for readers who want to be taken to the edge of expectation, and solidly dropped into the middle of a new nightmare. I still have goosebumps. Jodi Picoult, number one New York Times best-selling author of Wish You Were Here
Brilliant, provocative, seminal — there aren't enough adjectives to describe how much food for thought Yoon's novel provided. When cultural identity is shaped by trauma, can you even imagine who you are when that trauma is excised? What is the difference between equality and equity? And how deep into the magma of racism does implicit bias go? Your book club will be discussing this one for DAYS. John Green, New York Times best-selling author of Turtles All the Way Down
With haunting and powerful prose, Nicola Yoon brilliantly imagines a world with much to tell us about our own.As Jasmyn Williams and her husband King arrive in the fictional Black utopian suburb of Liberty, California in Nicola Yoon's One of Our Kind, Jasmyn reminds her husband "that Black utopias ha[ve] been tried with little success before." She names two examples of real-world short-lived utopian experiments: Allensworth and Soul City. While there have been many other historic Black communities, these two cities were intentionally utopian in ambition and design.
.jpg "Lt. Colonel Allen Allensworth")
Allensworth, California: Allensworth was founded in 1908 in California's Central Valley by Lt. Colonel Allen Allensworth, with the aim of creating a place where, as Brennon Dixson writes for the Los Angeles Times, "Black residents could prosper free from racist ideologies." ...
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