A powerful tale of liberation, love and legacy
Award-winning American poet Phillip B Williams has made a foray into fiction with his debut novel Ours, a 600-page doorstopper that releases on February 22, coinciding with Black History Month in the US.
African-American literature has a long tradition of interrogating the nature of freedom, examining its complexities, contradictions, and the struggle for liberation within the context of American history and society.
In a similar vein to Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Ours explores freedom not just as a political or legal status but as a deeply personal, psychological and existential condition, reflecting on how historical and existing systems of oppression shape the understanding and experience of freedom for Black Americans.
Set in the mid-1800s in the antebellum South, Ours is a sweeping, emancipatory tale with a supernatural twist. Through a complex blend of fantasy, mythology and multigenerational history, Williams tells the story of a powerful free black woman named Saint who travels the south, “listening” for those who want to be freed.
Her mission is to kill slavery. She brings death and destruction to southern plantations all over Arkansas, killing the “so-called masters” and liberating the enslaved through bloody, purposeful violence and powerful magic. She’s also bought a town near St Louis and renamed it Ours, turning it into a magically hidden haven — shielded from outsiders by mysterious boundary markers — for freed slaves and their loved ones.
Invisible to the outside world, Ours is safe from prying eyes, slave catchers and other white predators. The enigmatic Saint seeks to heal the minds of her people and protect them and, at first, the town and its people thrive. Strangers become friends and lovers. They build homes together; they raise each other’s children; they share their happiness and their sorrows.
But Ours is no Utopia. Conflict arises between the townsfolk and, as Williams writes, “Freedom didn’t mean safety” and “if there’s anything more shockingly unpredictable than freedom, it’s love ”— not just romantic love, but familial love between parents and children, and the love Saint has for the people she has liberated from bondage.
These relationships are tested over the course of four decades as conflicting and threatening alliances form between the inhabitants. When a group of conjurors — led by Frances, a formidable character who “[moves] between ‘he’ and ‘she’ without care”, along with the enigmatic Joy — arrives from New Orleans determined to join the insular community, they upset the balance even further.
How did they cross the invisible border, the people of Ours want to know. The town’s cohesiveness is threatened, arousing suspicion and doubt among the townsfolk.
Then it emerges that Saint and Frances have a mysterious, unbreakable connection encompassing their past and present. What comes to light will either save Ours or expose the town to a malevolent world bent on its destruction.
RESILIENCE
Blending the supernatural, the mystical and the allegorical with the lived experiences and cultural heritage of black Americans, Williams’ epic delves into alternate realities and symbolic narratives to express the complex identities, historical trauma, resilience and hope of the people of Ours.
His rich characters transcend the limitations of the physical world as he critiques social injustices, and connects them to their ancestors, communities and inner selves.
Kirkus Reviews describes Ours as “a multilayered,
THE TOWN’S COHESIVENESS IS THREATENED, AROUSING SUSPICION AND DOUBT AMONG THE TOWNSFOLK
enrapturing chronicle of freedom that interrogates the nature of freedom itself.”
“A vast and rapturous feat of fabulism ... created with both a vivacious enthusiasm for folkloric traditions and a deep contemplation of what it means to be freed from the violent machine of slavery in the US,” writes Shelf Awareness.
“Williams has a voice that soars across each page, breathing life into his dazzling array of characters ... a novel worth savouring”.
Ours is an enrapturing novel written in the startling, stunning prose of one of America’s most exciting contemporary poets. An intimate story about the damage wrought by slavery, whose narrative delivers profound insights into the quest for freedom, the weight of history and the multifaceted experiences of oppression and liberation.