Book Review: Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell
Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: September 10, 2024
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
In a world without white people, what does it mean to be Black?
One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served his time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old left behind by her white mother and step-family.
Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search for answers. But neither of them are prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.
Heading south toward what is now called the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, this book is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.
In Sky Full of Elephants, society was changed when a year ago all of the white people walked into the nearest body of water and drowned. Now the world is adjusting to the after effects of that event. Sydney, a bi-racial teenager, is left behind when her white mother and stepfamily walk into the water. She’s been holed up in her house, afraid of the new world. She’s heard that there is a civilization in Alabama and asks her estranged father to help her get there. She’s never met him and holds a lot of anger towards him for leaving her mother. She plays on his guilt to convince him to take her there even though the journey will be dangerous. Raised by white people, Sydney has internalized racism that she doesn’t recognize but those around her do. She doesn’t say it outright, but it’s clear that she’s hoping the settlement she and her father are traveling to has white people living there.
Sky Full of Elephants was very thought provoking. A world without white people is different than I imagined when I first heard about this book. It’s almost like a zombie apocalypse without the zombies. White people control so much in the United States that when they are gone, a lot of things cease to exist – like the government, utilities, and public transportation. Other consequences are good. For instance, all of the prisoners were set free, instantly solving the mass incarceration of Black people problem. The stress of living in a racist society has been lifted for people left, making the negative aspects worth it.
I loved this book. The concept was unlike anything I’ve read before and executed perfectly. Weeks after reading it, I’m still thinking about it. Highly, highly recommended.
