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A review by obsidian_blue
One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon
1.0
Honestly I’m so annoyed that I dropped my initial review from 2.5 stars to one star and completely rewrote my review which initially said "this was terrible."
“One of Our Kind” follows married couple Jasmyn and King who move with their son to an All Black town in California called Liberty. Taking place in the America of today, they think they have found utopia, but instead something horrific is going on in Liberty.
Jasmyn sucked as a main character. She spends the whole book commenting or judging how other Black people respond to trauma, wear their hair, wear clothes. FYI I didn’t even know that if I wear non bright clothes I’m denying my Blackness. Or that if I don’t have natural hair that’s an Afro that I am not really Black. The conversations on hair and skin color are skin deep and insulting. I know what Yoon was attempting to do, but it did not work at all. Also, was Yoon mocking other Black women who act like Jasmyn or not? I don't know what she was trying to do here, but it did not work at all.
The other characters aren’t developed very well outside of King. And even King, we get very little done with besides him kissing Jasmyn, going along with whatever she wants, and occasionally showing frustration because she expects him to do his job, be a husband and father, and also use his spare time to help the Black community in the ways she deems the right way.
The women and men that Jasmyn meet are either for BLM or they are traitors to the cause and Uncle Tom’s. I maybe yelped about how BLM is a rallying cry but the BS chapters we keep finding out about in real life are very much not it. I really wanted Yoon to have researched some of the things she went on about because I didn’t feel it. I felt disdain for anyone Black in this whole book and I was fed up with it because it felt very much like a story someone would write as a first draft with no care put into it. And she obviously did not know about BLM to not know that Jasmyn wanting to set up her own chapter would have had everyone looking at her side-ways cause of the said fraud that has gone on with some of those chapters. But once again, it feels like she just skimmed the wavetops of everything Black and stuck it in this book.
The plot has been done before in different ways and all I will say is that the science behind this book made no sense. I think at one point I went geez let’s move on. The book flow was terrible. I think the articles showcasing some of the incidents some of the residents of Liberty dealt with broke up the narrative, but I have a real hard time with the “solution" because once again who was this for? Militant Blacks, oblivious white people, black people in between? I don't get the audience or what she was trying to do.
I also have to say that Yoon’s whole idea about the majority black city didn’t even make sense with what Jasmyn supposedly Black scholar of every trauma in America would have moved to. The whole idea is that there’s only Black people that can buy houses, work, live in Liberty is not something that would happen in the America that we got today. It would either be burned to the ground and or everybody would be sued for freaking discrimination. And for such a book that keeps talking about black trauma, I’m really shocked that she didn’t talk about Black Wall Street, “The Tulsa Race Massacre”, all of those things that have happened to Black people when we’ve gotten together and moved together as a community and shared our wealth. There’s no way that wouldn’t have been a consideration to the supposed people living there and it feels like a missed plot point. So as a black reviewer said this book was about a puddle deep and I concur.
The flow of the book was awful. I think this had five parts and an epilogue, and the epilogue was such a letdown and just the book just goes out on a very terrible awful whimper.
The setting of Liberty just didn’t even make sense just because I got a real big question about how people are screened, how they came in, just I don’t know the whole thing just felt off and weird and like I said I don’t want to get into spoilers, but I could just pick apart this book all day if I had time.
That ending was insulting as hell and that’s all I’m gonna say about that. I think that this is Yoon’s first foray into the horror genre and hopefully this is her last. Her afterword trying to talk about how she wrote this in a place of anger and rage I just I don’t know. I really want to say to her being Black is not about trauma. Like I feel like it’s very much you know we say that being black is about not being a monolith, we all have had different experiences not just in America, but other countries. I just feel that it’s shitty and terrible to pretty much if you just don’t wanna be immersed in the day-to-day shit sometimes that’s just the day-to-day small racial aspects of being Black and the bigger shit about police brutality, it somehow makes you a terrible Black person.
“One of Our Kind” follows married couple Jasmyn and King who move with their son to an All Black town in California called Liberty. Taking place in the America of today, they think they have found utopia, but instead something horrific is going on in Liberty.
Jasmyn sucked as a main character. She spends the whole book commenting or judging how other Black people respond to trauma, wear their hair, wear clothes. FYI I didn’t even know that if I wear non bright clothes I’m denying my Blackness. Or that if I don’t have natural hair that’s an Afro that I am not really Black. The conversations on hair and skin color are skin deep and insulting. I know what Yoon was attempting to do, but it did not work at all. Also, was Yoon mocking other Black women who act like Jasmyn or not? I don't know what she was trying to do here, but it did not work at all.
The other characters aren’t developed very well outside of King. And even King, we get very little done with besides him kissing Jasmyn, going along with whatever she wants, and occasionally showing frustration because she expects him to do his job, be a husband and father, and also use his spare time to help the Black community in the ways she deems the right way.
The women and men that Jasmyn meet are either for BLM or they are traitors to the cause and Uncle Tom’s. I maybe yelped about how BLM is a rallying cry but the BS chapters we keep finding out about in real life are very much not it. I really wanted Yoon to have researched some of the things she went on about because I didn’t feel it. I felt disdain for anyone Black in this whole book and I was fed up with it because it felt very much like a story someone would write as a first draft with no care put into it. And she obviously did not know about BLM to not know that Jasmyn wanting to set up her own chapter would have had everyone looking at her side-ways cause of the said fraud that has gone on with some of those chapters. But once again, it feels like she just skimmed the wavetops of everything Black and stuck it in this book.
The plot has been done before in different ways and all I will say is that the science behind this book made no sense. I think at one point I went geez let’s move on. The book flow was terrible. I think the articles showcasing some of the incidents some of the residents of Liberty dealt with broke up the narrative, but I have a real hard time with the “solution" because once again who was this for? Militant Blacks, oblivious white people, black people in between? I don't get the audience or what she was trying to do.
I also have to say that Yoon’s whole idea about the majority black city didn’t even make sense with what Jasmyn supposedly Black scholar of every trauma in America would have moved to. The whole idea is that there’s only Black people that can buy houses, work, live in Liberty is not something that would happen in the America that we got today. It would either be burned to the ground and or everybody would be sued for freaking discrimination. And for such a book that keeps talking about black trauma, I’m really shocked that she didn’t talk about Black Wall Street, “The Tulsa Race Massacre”, all of those things that have happened to Black people when we’ve gotten together and moved together as a community and shared our wealth. There’s no way that wouldn’t have been a consideration to the supposed people living there and it feels like a missed plot point. So as a black reviewer said this book was about a puddle deep and I concur.
The flow of the book was awful. I think this had five parts and an epilogue, and the epilogue was such a letdown and just the book just goes out on a very terrible awful whimper.
The setting of Liberty just didn’t even make sense just because I got a real big question about how people are screened, how they came in, just I don’t know the whole thing just felt off and weird and like I said I don’t want to get into spoilers, but I could just pick apart this book all day if I had time.
That ending was insulting as hell and that’s all I’m gonna say about that. I think that this is Yoon’s first foray into the horror genre and hopefully this is her last. Her afterword trying to talk about how she wrote this in a place of anger and rage I just I don’t know. I really want to say to her being Black is not about trauma. Like I feel like it’s very much you know we say that being black is about not being a monolith, we all have had different experiences not just in America, but other countries. I just feel that it’s shitty and terrible to pretty much if you just don’t wanna be immersed in the day-to-day shit sometimes that’s just the day-to-day small racial aspects of being Black and the bigger shit about police brutality, it somehow makes you a terrible Black person.