lisa the worm's Reviews > The Blueprint

This book was incredibly painful. Obviously, the blatant consequences of racism and patriarchy on the Black woman, the Black child, is a prominent theme and a terrible one. The legacy of slavery looking at Black women by a Black woman is shouted to the rooftops here but the look at abusive relationships, male privilege, and the loss of Black girl innocence at the behest of misogynoir was so incredibly heartbreaking. Reading Solenne grapple with an abusive man who does nothing but take, take, fucking take from her? My soul is pierced; the author left no stone overturned when it came to her mission to showcase the pain and vitriol that Black women are told is their legacy and cross to bear. There were some elements that were just so hard to read when I thought about my mind and soul during my first relationship, and how hard it took me to realize what was love and what was not. Sometimes I was so irritated at Solenne for just not SEEING who Bastien was but she knew no better, just like I did, not when we tell so many Black girls and women to not EXPECT anything better. You learn to be quiet and docile for so long you don’t even notice the chains on your wrists. It’s such an unbearable cross to be given and it’s one I live to reject each day that I am still afforded breath.

Sally Hemmings is a prominent figure in the book, seeing as Solenne plays Sally to Bastien’s Thomas Jefferson, and seeing how Solenne ends her story, it makes me wonder how we regard the different ways we regard women who wield power in a society that tried to stifle every shred of their autonomy. Is the conclusion of this book unfair? Absolutely. But I think this book courageously bears sympathy for women who are groomed into cycles of abuse, and displaying how the sacrifices that Black women have made for their descendants presents itself in so many different ways. This book just stirs up so many conversations about Black trauma and love and the stolen lives of female enslaved people and finding a sliver of agency in a world that turns its back on women (Black women, in particular) and the intricacies, the NUANCES of Black motherhood. It’s a book that’s going to live in my mind for a very long time.

The only critique that really stood out for me was the lack of world building that would have explained the dystopian setup of the book - we know this is an alternate history and the US has fallen into what is now “the Order,” an incredibly racist and patriarchal society (that, don’t get me wrong, is not that hard to imagine considering America’s climate) that was rose after the events of a second Civil War. All understandable but I still wanted a more realized history and understanding of this world. We get details here and there (like how revisionist chauvinists tried to argue away the real reason for the second Civil War, why Louisiana was picked as the unincorporated state) but I needed more. Honestly, Solenne’s story could have been made in a present day setting and would have still made waves, so if we were going to have this speculative alternate history, I would’ve wanted a bit more details and context as to what this new world is. Other than that, this was such an impactful debut. 🖤