Who Are The Elephants ?

Sky Full of Elephants Book Review

So I really did not know what to expect when I first started reading this book, but may I say expectations were beyond fulfilled.

The author, Cebo Campbell, really outdid himself with this one. When I say from beginning to end, you cannot anticipate what will happen next in the story, from the characters Charlie to his daughter Sidney, the chain of events is unexpectedly contagious.

Just to give a quick background, we see a world where white people no longer exist, that alone causes the reader to tap into a frequency of freedom, and this is what we see all throughout the novel. A New World without racial systems, without trauma, without bondage, a world that we only imagined. The storyline would make someone of white skin color uncomfortable and I believe that is what the author set out to do to make us all uncomfortable if we do not have a sense of our true identity. Everything that the main characters, even some of the other characters, thought they knew about themselves, we see it is turned upside down. It has heart, it has humor, and it’s a story that sparks real discussion about the power of community in connection, also about healing in self-actualization. This novel is truly a reckoning. What is it like to be Black in America, knowing who you are, even on the side of not knowing who you are?

My favorite and most profound idea from this author is that White is not a race but it is an idea. Even though this idea is made prominent in our country, it has never stopped the joy of Black people in this novel. We get to experience a world created just for us and see us live like royalty.

The realization I came to after reading this book is that it will always “be a they and an us” and that there will be an us that is trying to be something that they aren’t meant to be. And because we don’t truly know who we are, we will always try to become the best version of what they want us to be. The question is, who are we, and when will we learn that we can be anything we want to be?

This was not another Black trauma book, but it really spoke on Black resilience in that we together can stand and rise and do what we do no matter the pressure or circumstance; we always rise above it. Now that is what our history has always been and will continue to be.

“No one was fighting for our bodies. And it went on like that for so long. I think we all started to believe that was just the way life was supposed to be.” Pg 192

This quote toward the end of the book caused me to pause and think for two days. Still, no one is fighting for our bodies, but there are those in our communities that also know this and are trying, and we have to discover a new way to believe that we are supposed to be protected. Dismantle how life used to just be and create capacities where we are able to be and live.

Lastly, to the idea behind the title, I will leave you this quote from the book.

“I’ve always thought of it like a sky full of elephants. It’s up there, been up there, heavy too. All wisdom and memory. Sorrow. A weight so heavy it would damn us all if it came down. But you can’t see it till you see it. No matter how many times I tell you they’re up there, you can’t see ‘em until you see ‘em.”