Sky Full of Elephants

A dystopic novel with a unique premise that I’m surprised isn’t more common: One day all of the white people in America stop what they're doing and walk to bottom of the nearest body of water.

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Such despair wasn’t unfamiliar to Charlie, but in Mississippi the marring seemed to just go on and on, like everything America wanted to forget flowed down all the nation’s rivers to get tangled up in the Mississippi Delta.

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For most of the book, the main characters wrestle with identity, power, belonging, and coming into their wholeness.

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In the areas of America where identity has historically been formed in opposition to other people, and power has been modeled and wielded by those same people, some of the black folks crack psychologically. They take on the white robes and hats of the Klan in an effort to find power amidst their mental illness.

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In some places folks set fire to entire cities and swathes of land in an effort to wipe the slate clean for a new start. Other places make an effort to keep things moving the best they can.

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A line of people wrapped around a McDonald’s with its arches torn down, where somebody’s grandma captained the kitchen making enough cheese grits and biscuits to feed the neighborhood.

The city almost resembled life before the event—with subtle differences. There were no more homeless people. Less trash littered the shoulders, because no one mass-produced single-use plastics and containers anymore.

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Reading through all the dysfunction, I found it hard to believe that most brown and black people didn’t simply rejoice and begin getting on with the business of setting up all the needs of community like agriculture and food distribution, medical care, education, etc.

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Indeed, there is one place in America that not only didn’t fall apart, it thrived: the kingdom of Alabama. In it’s capital, the people have healed themselves of the trauma of their ancestry and are living their best lives, helping each other, making music, presenting themselves as the royalty they know themselves to be, and relishing in their blackness.

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Hers was a strength no man could deny. And yet it was vulnerable, accessible, capable of being damaged and never show it. Because real power doesn’t protect itself. Real power allows itself to be used for something greater. Wife. Mother. Guide. Grace. Protect the black woman, Charlie thought, and every bone inside him wanted to fall down in shame that he hadn’t protected them before.

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This book is like a cold glass of water after a long walk in the desert. It not only feels good, it floods the mind with how life could be. Even though I’m white, I am a woman and so can easily empathize with how it might be to experience a world in which the oppressors suddenly disappeared. Freedom!

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Time slowed down too. Sauntered like hours did in places like Chattanooga and Charleston and Savannah. A notoriously southern phenomenon now spread like honey over everything. Ask the time and folks just looked up at the sky, mumbling, “Quarter’til,” because gone was the appraiser of hours into wages.

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Everyone is given time to cultivate themselves and hone their contribution to society. Spending the night outside in a field isn’t frowned upon. People are healed of their trauma by contact with nature and with talking to people who are also struggling or who have come out of the other side. Anyone who knows something well teaches it and the doors to learning are open to everyone.

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This novel gives us a chance to think about how our civilization might look if no class, gender or color of people were oppressing anyone else. This is thought-provoking and stimulating to the imagination.

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