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Yonder

Published by TIME
March 11, 2022

Jabari Asim's mesmerizing novel Yonder is an elegiac exploration of love, intimacy, and friendship among enslaved African-Americans in the mid-19th century that poetically reorients how we think about slavery. Unlike other creative works on people living in slavery that center on their social inferiority and the violence they endured, Yonder captures the entirety and, more significantly, the humanity of enslaved peoples by chronicling their wants and desires, skills and abilities, love and affection, and, above all, their faith. As author Margot Livesy said, "Asim's story is utterly absorbing. His people have wings; let them transport you." —Jenna Caldwell