Nigeria Jones is a youngster. She’s a warrior princess. She’s a sister. She’s a stand-in mom. She’s a queen. She’s a pupil. Within the Movement, the Black separatist utopian group based in West Philadelphia by her dad and mom, Kofi Sankofa and Natalie Pierre, Nigeria is all of these items and none of them. Alongside the Movement’s members, whom Nigeria is aware of as aunties and uncles, sisters and brothers, Nigeria has spent her life being home-schooled and studying about Blackness—its traditions, its histories, its struggles, its triumphs. The Movement isolates itself from the world, divesting from white supremacist techniques, all in service of a imaginative and prescient for the long run by which Black communities can thrive, impartial from oppressive forces.
But Nigeria’s mom has left, disappeared, and with out the lady underneath whose care and a focus the Movement thrived, Nigeria is floundering and full of doubt. She has internalized her father’s teachings, from his loving, community-oriented management to his ire towards all techniques, together with training, company capitalism and well being care. Then Nigeria discovers that her mom secured a spot for her at a rich personal faculty, and he or she begins attending lessons there. As Nigeria embarks on a journey of self-discovery, she additionally learns in regards to the world outdoors the Movement and meets different teenagers, some Black, some not. As Nigeria strikes farther from all the things she’s ever recognized, she’s compelled to ask: Who is Nigeria Jones?
The finest phrase to explain acclaimed writer Ibi Zoboi’s Nigeria Jones is heavy. The novel depicts the horrors of generational trauma whereas additionally putting the non-public traumas of one woman, one household and one group inside a nationwide and even world context. All the whereas, Zoboi (Pride, Punching the Air) strikes a fragile stability with the story’s political subjects, by no means moralizing or searching for to offer solutions but in addition not leaving issues so open-ended as to seem ambivalent. Through Nigeria and her friends’ interactions with the complicated, nuanced topics they encounter, Zoboi affords a flawless depiction of Generation Z’s activist relationship to such subjects.
Nigeria’s upbringing and experiences are distinctive, and her interior world, her ideas and reactions, feels exceptionally true to life. Zoboi tells a singular story of a singular woman, and Nigeria Jones opens broad and welcoming arms.
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