Het blauwste oog

There’s something about reading a novel free from the white gaze, even when the story is tragic and meant to indict me, pushing me to examine my role in my community. There’s so much to unpack, but what stuck with me most was the use of soil as a metaphor for society—how a hostile, racist, and indifferent environment fails to nurture Black children, especially Black girls. The soil is poisoned, and it has been from the moment the first Europeans arrived in the United States. Which raises the question: is there freedom for Black people on this soil? Can the soil be transformed? And if not, what does that say about the prospects of Black folk in the US of ever being materially and psychologically free from the confines of a white patriarchal capitalist imperialist society?

When the book is so good, you finish it and instantly want to read it again.