For several years I have been following a blogger who calls himself Son of Baldwin. I was instantly drawn to his blog having been a fan of James Baldwin since the 1960s in high school. The blogger’s name is Robert Jones, Jr. He says that as a student, discovering James Baldwin was a revelation for him. Novelist, essayist, and playwright James Baldwin was a prominent Black activist during my youth and the first gay Black writer I ever read. Son of Baldwin is a literary descendant of James Baldwin’s queer Black perspective. Jones speaks out for Black lives and Black queers with a progressive voice. He calls his Son of Baldwin Facebook page a social justice community. [He retired his blog in 2022]
Son of Baldwin may be the most conscientious writer I’ve encountered on social media. He is a passionate commentator who is willing to admit when he’s wrong and to be corrected. He always warns readers about disturbing content when he posts about regular acts of violence against Black and Trans persons. When he posts images, Son of Baldwin always describes them in text for his fans who are blind and who rely on text readers. And I see him as a feminist. He rails against patriarchy. It was Son of Baldwin who introduced me to the term ‘misogynoir’—hateful attitudes faced by Black women and Black Trans women. Robert Jones, Jr. has a way with words.
So it was with great anticipation that I read The Prophets, Jones’s first novel, published this year [2021]. He is 50 years old and has been working on this book for 14 years. It takes place on a slave plantation in Mississippi in the early 1800s. The Prophets is breath-taking in its lyricism, yet it is not an easy book to read. Jones examines the brutality of slavery on the body, the spirit, and the community. Each chapter focuses on one person who has their own style of speaking, whether enslaved or oppressor or ancestor. Have you ever had the experience of reading a perfectly crafted sentence and stopping momentarily to admire its profound beauty? This happened to me many times as I read Jones’s words. (I also recommend the audiobook which really brings the story alive; talented narrator Karen Chilton renders Jones’s words as music.)
Among the authors Jones admires most is Toni Morrison, whom he seems to be channeling at times in his novel. He credits her with inspiring him to write The Prophets when she said: “If there’s a book that you want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Jones could find very few representations of gay Black relationships in literature before Baldwin and just one or two from pre-colonial Africa recounted from oral tradition. This is not because gay Black relationships didn’t exist, but because they were stigmatized and suppressed. They weren’t allowed to be acknowledged or written about.
The central story in The Prophets is about Samuel and Isaiah, enslaved lovers. Part of their forced labour is to tend the horses, and they live in the barn away from the other slave quarters. But they find sanctuary there. Samuel smolders. Isaiah nurtures. Maggie, Essie, Be Auntie, Puah, and Sarah—the Black women characters in the story—carry the narrative forward and are the backbone and soul of plantation existence. They are different ages and temperaments, but each has endured a lifetime of abuse by men. They admire, or at least tolerate, Samuel and Isaiah’s unhidden attachment to each other.
Amos, an older enslaved man, tries to curry favour with the plantation owner and asks permission to preach the gospel. It was Amos who carried the infant Isaiah, ripped from his mother’s arms, as the wagonful of human chattel was transported in chains to Empty (the name given the plantation). Amos watched Isaiah’s relationship with Samuel develop and become sexual. Now it threatens a particularly horrendous aspect of slavery—how people were treated as livestock and bred to produce the next generation of slave labour. Amos feels compelled by his religion to make Samuel and Isaiah into sires. His evangelism drives a wedge between the lovers and the others.
Jones weaves in a second story thread—the lives of ancestors Elewa and Kosii, male lovers celebrated in their matriarchal village in pre-colonial Africa. They are betrayed by the same supremacist religion that unravels the lives of Samuel and Isaiah. Missionaries destroy their world and rationalize the slave trade, then later absolve its cruelties. The Ancestors Elewa and Kosii cast long shadows across the pages of this book.
For Jones, the roots of racism, misogyny, and homophobia intertwine. None can be eliminated without a deep weeding-out of all three. In the 1980s James Baldwin said that the gay movement was really about white people who lost their white privilege petitioning to get it back; that white gay people are still about their whiteness. Forty years later, I doubt that Jones would disagree. He says he is tired of hearing frequent conversations about why Black people are so homophobic, but very few about why white gay people are so racist. His blog is a testament to the need to change the conversation.
In a 2014 interview about Son of Baldwin, Jones said that people of all races and creeds have to give up their addiction to whiteness, and people of all genders and sexualities have to give up their addiction to narrow-minded views of masculinity, femininity, gender identity, and sex. The problem, he said, is convincing people to give up the things that define their current comforts. He asks people to be willing to be uncomfortable in order to change. Jones’s dream for his Son of Baldwin blog is that it serves as a place to have those uncomfortable conversations about social justice issues without dehumanizing one another.
I’ve been following Jones, the novelist, through various interviews as he does a virtual book tour. I even attended a live Zoom event with him at the New York Public Library. What an experience—in a time of COVID to be online in real time with this charming author. The Prophets is receiving well-deserved attention and praise. It is a significant contribution to queer Black literature and queer Black history.
