Christine's Reviews > The Blueprint

[Copy provided by publisher]

READ IF YOU LIKE...
• The Handmaid's Tale, Vox
• Toxic relationships
• Exploring Black womenhood

I THOUGHT IT WAS...
A chilling and poignant work of speculative fiction about white dominance over Black bodies. After Civil War II, a new government is created wherein Black women who are descendants of slavery are assigned to white men at 15. When Solenne, originally assigned to a well-meaning gay man, crosses paths with one of the most powerful men in the government, her entire life becomes subsumed into him.

Rashad has done just enough world building to make this terrifying government system feel believable and suffocating. And while both Black men and women suffer from it, it's women that the system is carefully built to control, a necessity that we even hear one of the government men say. For men to be able to do anything they want, they need take away anything that could give a women, regardless of their race, agency and make it into law.

At the heart of this struggle for control is Solenne and Bastien. Their relationship is dark and twisted. You want to scream for its wrongness, even as you can understand how Solenne, young and impressionable, willingly folded herself into Bastien's arms.

As Solenne struggles against Bastien, so too did her slave ancestor against her master. There's something like a conversation that occurs between these two women throughout the book that I loved. It's the inclusion of her ancestor's story that reminds us that men's presumed ownership still persists, just manifested differently. But it also reminds us how we can draw strength and wisdom from our past, from the torturous paths our ancestors had to carve for us.