THE PROPHETS Book Club Kit

• book club kit •

DEAR READER, There is often a sense in writers that their work is never good enough, can never be good enough. But we continue to write because it is beyond our control. I didn’t know if the story of The Prophets could be told. Or rather, I didn’t know if I could be the one to tell it. Not only was the subject matter too uncharted but the psychic weight of it felt too heavy to dredge up.

But I kept hearing whispers.

In my dreams and in my waking: calls not just from somewhere, but from some time,, beckoning, laughing, scolding, demanding to be heard. It was the singing, howtime ever, that I heard most clearly. And in the event that I decided to ignore the pleas of the dead, they spoke to me through living words, in the voices of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and others telling me to ask the question because then I must write down the answer and share it.

As a Black queer person who has felt so cut off from my lineage, the question I wanted to ask: Did Black queer people exist in the distant past? Of course they did, but it’s often the way of a traumatized people to erase the past, shun excavation of it, deny it ever existed, or pretend that it looked some other erroneous but glorious way. This is understandable. Who would want to explain the horrors of yesteryear with no way of stopping the pain from returning?

Terrified that I might discover the answer, I went searching. I read every book about the pre-colonial African societies and the American antebellum period that I could get my hands on. In pre-colonial African historical data, queerness was often presented clinically, as convenience in the absence of the opposite sex, as custom or ritual. In the antebellum period queerness was mentioned briefly at most, and almost always as something despicable or synonymous with rape. This prompted another question: What about love?

Love, in all of its permutations, is the discovery at the heart of The Prophets: Prophets: hard or soft; withheld or freely given; healing or wounding, but always revealing.

Love is also why I wrote this book: for the ancestors who were wiped from the record, who spoke to me when I almost didn’t listen. To give me a line to walk back to and a tree to lean against and shake when the mood strikes. Sometimes, I don’t even think of The Prophets as a book but as a prayer, a testimony, maybe even a witnessing.

It’s my sincerest hope that you risk bearing witness with me.

With gratitude,

ROBERT JONES, JR. thewriterobert@gmail.com

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1.

The Prophets is told from the perspective of slaver and enslaved alike. How did the shift in voice impact your experience reading the novel? Were there any viewpoints that surprised you the most?

2.

Before Amos’s teachings, Isaiah and Samuel were not an aberration—nor was their relationship the result of trauma.

Talk about the representation of queer love in The Prophets. How is it contextualized within the novel, as well as within the larger canon of Black literature?

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6.

Women play a pivotal role in this novel.

How do women—such as Maggie, Essie, Be Auntie, Sarah, and Puah—impact the larger community of the plantation? Discuss how femininity and female strength are represented. How do women relate to one another and to themselves?

The voices of distant ancestors are heard throughout the novel. How do the whispers of the ancestors guide the characters? How do they guide the reader?

Differences in class are ever present on the plantations. How does class create tension and distinction between individuals—for example, between white members like Paul and James? Does James’s lower class impact his relationship to the enslaved? If so, in what ways?

Names play an important role in this novel. For example: neither Isaiah nor Samuel are birth names; the plantation is referred to as both Elizabeth and Empty. How does a name impose significance in The Prophets? How does it attribute or strip one of their identity?

7.

Part of The Prophets focuses on King Akusa and the colonization of the African continent. How does this story of the enslavement of native African tribes connect to the enslavement of those on Empty? Did the juxtaposition of the two narratives impact the way you thought about Empty, and the intergenerational experience of slavery?

8.

It is all but confirmed that Adam is a Halifax. How does his biracial heritage influence his sense of identity and his role at Empty? In what way do his feelings of belonging, or lack thereof, help him understand and relate to Isaiah and Samuel?

9.

How is physical space utilized in the novel?

In what ways are distinct places—the barn, the Big House, the river—used to represent places of refuge, danger, or opportunity? How do the characters relate to and inhabit these spaces?

10.

Why do you think Timothy becomes fixated on Isaiah and Samuel? How does Timothy’s experience in the North impact his view of the plantation, and of the two men? Do you think this makes him more sympathetic, or perhaps a more dangerous evil?

11.

After Amos betrays Isaiah and Samuel to Paul, the story takes an explosive turn.

What tensions do you think led to this point? Do you think the rebellion was inevitable?

12.

Discuss Isaiah’s final vision of Samuel.

What do you think happens to Isaiah in the end?

. . . ACCORDING TO ROBERT JONES , JR. MOST INFLUENTIAL AUTHORS James Baldwin Toni Morrison Gloria Naylor Alice Walker Octavia Butler Wallace Thurman Zora Neale Hurston Chinua Achebe Kola Boof Kiese Laymon

MOST INFLUENTIAL WORKS Go Tell It on the Mountain

by James Baldwin Beloved

by Toni Morrison Mama Day

by Gloria Naylor The Color Purple

by Alice Walker Kindred

by Octavia Butler

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston Things Fall Apart

by Chinua Achebe Flesh and the Devil

by Kola Boof Long Division

by Kiese Laymon

The Blacker the Berry

by Wallace Thurman

ADDITIONAL INFLUENTIAL WORKS Chronicle of a Death Foretold

by Gabriel García Márquez

Wide Sargasso Sea

by Jean Rhys

Washington Square

by Henry James

Mama

by Terry McMillan

Autobiography of Red

by Anne Carson

Disgrace

by J. M. Coetzee

Invisible Life

by E. Lynn Harris

“Benito Cereno”

by Herman Melville

“Greenleaf ”

by Flannery O’Connor