chantel nouseforaname's Reviews > Sky Full of Elephants

2.5 rounded up, and that pains me!

Honestly, the book is crazy - in the best way up until 75%. After reading Chapter 10 I was actually tripping out because of the mentally damaged people brutalized by the constant racism that were left behind to struggle and grasp at how much their lives had changed. That was heavy. That really stood out to me. Cebo Campbell touched upon so many topics, so many issues within the community surrounding identity, loss, despair, mental health that were just so necessary. The mental health conversation are actually the parts of this book that I thought were done well. It was painful, believable, sometimes absurd, but the ways that racial battle fatigue and race-aligned mental health issues can show up some times can be devastating and at times surreal.

I found the premise of this book infinitely intriguing. I was like: yo he could go anywhere with this. ANYWHERE... and he did. However, it couldn't stick the landing, and that kills me because it had so much potential! The ambition? Impeccable. Thought-provoking? Absolutely. But exactly at the 75% mark, it began to fall apart in spectacular fashion. And the funny thing is, that last 25% made me look back and realize the flaws I’d been letting slide all along.

(view spoiler)[The flaws—oh, where to begin! This book flirts with being a hotep masterpiece. It’s like the sauce dried out of the pan before it could simmer. I feel like there was a level of reduction here, that he let go crazy at the end. That shit burnt the fuck out. Some folks got abandoned, punctuated with the open-ended endings that I have a love-hate relationship with. I have a lot of thoughts. There’s a little bit of Jonathan Majoring going on here, and I feel like Dr. Umar might want a word. I also think there's multiple stories that didn't need to be connected because they stood so strong on their own. Cebo Campbell gave some plot points too much water! Pun intended. You can see the parallel stories and it just felt like - you're trying to say something but you're letting what you're trying to say about one very important topic, get in the way of another very important topic. For example: mass incarceration being tantamount to lynching, men stepping outside the community and its impact in both communities, relationship struggles that arise from poor father-daughter relationships, the struggle for Black men to just be, to live free, to have non-transactional relationships with their brothers, to engage in community, there's a lot here. We need all the stories, but the conjoining of those stories waters down each one. (hide spoiler)]

Anyway, I'm getting in the weeds. I think men, especially the brothers, will vibe with this novel much more than I did. It was written for them. I ain't mad at that at all! In fact, I love it. We need all of them. We need all the novels written by the Brothers - we need the new ones, the old ones, the future ones. I think the fact that my edition has a blurb from Mateo Askaripour is fitting. Especially considering the hoopla over Black Buck. Despite what I think about some of the missteps in Sky Full of Elephants; I will read whatever work Cebo Campbell puts out next. I think he's got a lot more to give and he's got a vision, even if it's tied up with some messy realities that need exorcising.