Review: BLACKOUT by A Lot Of People

I am so glad I picked Blackout for my book club.

Let’s step back.

As a member of the Kindred team at Pima County Public Library, I’m in charge of the Read Black Book Club, a monthly (Zoom) gathering where we read a book by a Black author and discuss the story, themes, and anything else we can think of. We read some heavy stuff, like The 1619 Project, and things that are a little more fun, like A Deadly Inside Scoop, the first book in a cozy mystery series centered around an ice cream shop. We try to cover different styles, genres, and age groups, and I will confess that I very often select books from my own TBR. (Whoops.) But I wanted to make sure there was a YA novel involved, and what better experience than to read Blackout, which takes place in the dead of summer, in July?

(Also, I really needed a reason to read it, since I had both the hardcover and the paperback, some kind of way.)

I read it in two days and loved every minute of it (even if I did accidentally take a nap in the middle of “Made to Fit”).

And then, we talked about it in Read Black today, and everyone had so many amazing things to say. And that just got me thinking and reflecting, and I love it even more now that I’ve talked about it with some incredibly insightful people.

So. Blackout.

Blackout is a book that lives somewhere between an ensemble novel and a short story anthology, with stories by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon. When New York City goes dark, six teens are at a crucial moment in their lives, whether personal or professional. Tammi, the narrator of “The Long Walk,” is all ready to start an internship of sorts before heading off early to Clark Atlanta after a break-up, but there’s a mix-up at The Apollo…and her ex is the cause. Jacorey “JJ” Harding, the narrator of “Mask Off,” is heading to Brooklyn on the Subway when the lights go out, and a school acquaintance might be having a panic attack. In “Made to Fit,” we meet Nella as she’s literally stomping out a fire caused by a playing card at her grandfather’s senior living home. “All the Great Love Stories…And Dust,” on the other hand, brings us into the thoughts of Lana, who is trying to use the closed public library to help her tell her best friend something very important. “No Sleep ’Til Brooklyn” features Kay, who is stuck between two boys, and finally “Seymour and Grace” get us to the party that everybody has been talking about. The stories are separate, but linked through shared connections and a final destination to take away the blackout blues. And each author uses their own voice to offer us not just a love story, but one of coming-of-age and self-actualization (or however much one can do that at seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen).

When the lights go out, everyone is put out. Some are anxious, for various reasons, while others take it in stride. They run into people they don’t expect to see, and often have to have Big Conversations about their experiences, their lives, and their desires for the future. Not every story ends in a grand HEA or even a HFN in the romance sense, but they each have emotionally satisfying endings that are even more built out in Nicola Yoon’s finale, which gathers all of the characters, whether by name or reputation.

I have to say: it was nice to read a quiet, joyful book. Especially for this book club, where we have gotten down to some hard topics and had to figure our way out of it. But if we hadn’t read this book and talked about it, I might have handed it off as something other than what it was — which is something extraordinary and revolutionary.

To Black kids everywhere:

your stories, your joy, your love, and your lives matter.

You are a light in the dark.

Starting out with that did not make me cry, okay?

(I’m totally lying, but seriously.)

Black kids deserve to have the big romantic moments, the awkward declarations, the personal realizations, and the loving embrace as the (imaginary) music swells. They deserve to have complicated relationships and be terrible at communicating with their romantic partners and to not be sure what they want out of life. They deserve to run out of gas and be afraid of heights and learn the stories of their elders. And they deserve love. For always or for right now.

(They also deserve bomb ass block parties.)

When I look at the YA section of my keeper shelf, there are two kinds of books by Black authors: Issue Books (police shooting; anti-trans actions; police shooting; immigration) and SFF (dystopia; high fantasy; dystopia). Sure, both of those book types can have a story about kids finding themselves and falling in love, but it’s not the center of their story. Those stories are not about the characters, internally. Those stories are about the social justice action that they have to take, or the society that they have to take down. (Or both, why not both?)

So when I read this dedication, even knowing that the authors involved usually like to stomp on us and rip us to pieces, I felt safe. I felt like I was going to be introduced to this characters with love and with care, and that these weren’t going to be stories designed to harm — not the characters, and not the reader. I was introduced to characters that I immediately fell in love with as people, and got to watch them go through situations that every teenager could find themselves in. I got to watch a couple of them get into some trouble, and others walk each other back from the edge.

I keep mentioning little bits and pieces instead of straight storylines because these stories all ran together in the best way; not like a short story collection at all, but like one of those Black ensemble films from my youth, where every story matters, and they all come together at the end. This person’s cousin is that person’s ex. That couple you see is looking for that girl’s grandmother’s friend. So much happens, and yet, it’s all chill. It all works out in the end — maybe not the way anybody planned, but in a way that works.

And y’all, I never asked where anybody’s parents were.

(Black folks stay communicating intergenerationally, amirite?)

One thing that did stand out was that since this was basically a Writer Friend Project, we were limited in who contributed (I, obviously, do not know who Dhonielle reached out to beyond her five co-authors and who might have said no). While there was a love story between two boys, the author of that section isn’t a man. There also isn’t anyone that I know of who might be dealing with gender stuff on top of being a Black teenager in New York. If there’s a book beyond Whiteout (which indeed is coming this winter), I’d love to see maybe a bonus story or something by someone who doesn’t share the six authors’ gender identity. (I can’t believe I’m saying this about a project by all Black women, but in the romance community we talk a lot about Black men being able to write their experience when it comes to m/m romance.) But that doesn’t take away from the experience; it would just expand it, I think.

Finally: I need this on film. I need a six- or eight-part series breaking everything down, saying every word and showing every move, with lots of good music and sweet looks. I know it’s been optioned by the Obamas or whatever, but I need them to get moving. This book just screams cinematic, and we need Black folks to join the YA adaptation renaissance Netflix, Hulu, and the Three Ps are building for us. And I don’t want them to add any more Race Stuff than what’s presented in the book. We just want our own version of Dash and Lily, not poor Kareem getting a gun pulled on him in Times Square or whatever.

We all deserve it, don’t you think?

…Anyway. Read Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon.