'Sky Full of Elephants' unforgettable, beautifully written

“Young black boys, Charlie thought, the most marvelous beings in the universe. How effortlessly they rounded the shape of the earth with their swagger and illuminated its days with their creativity. Their hope offered even the bleakest parts of our planet a second sun.”

— “Sky Full of Elephants,”

by Cebo Campbell

“They killed themselves. All of them. All at once.” This is the opening line of “Sky Full of Elephants,” the debut book by Cebo Campbell.

I’ve been drawn to this book for a year and finally had the opportunity to read this incredible story.

So, who killed themselves? One day, all white Americans mysteriously walk into the nearest body of water in an act of mass suicide.

Now, before readers start panicking, there are plenty of books out there that highlight a society without men or women. “Sky Full of Elephants” has a different perspective, and the premise of the story is captivating and invites plenty of discussion.

As a New Mexican, I can hear what other New Mexican readers are thinking: there’s no way we can kill ourselves in a day, as there is no body of water near for us to do this. The more “realistic” scenario for us would be that we are more likely to disappear via alien abduction rather than death by drowning. Nonetheless, I didn’t lose my focus and happily jumped into reading this book.

Readers who love speculative fiction might think that this is a dystopian read, but it isn’t.

Campbell writes of a utopia where Black men and women strive to find themselves in this new world where there are no constraints, or fears.

The main character’s name is Charlie who is a Howard professor teaching electronics and electrical systems. On the day of the incident, Charlie was in jail, where he spent 20 years after being wrongfully imprisoned for rape. Charlie and the other prisoners walk out of their prison to a life where they get to experience their newfound freedom. Charlie strives for freedom, but he remains imprisoned by the societal constructs that are embedded into his psyche.

After a year of teaching at Howard, Charlie gets a phone call from his estranged daughter, Sidney. She never knew about her father’s wrongful conviction at the hands of her mother and mother’s brother, and was told that she and her mother were abandoned by Charlie. On the day of the mass suicide, Sidney witnessed her parents and brother walk to their demise into a lake located in their backyard. After a year of living alone in her family home, she heard that there were some people who colonized a town in the South and that there may be some people who survived. She decided she needed to get there to find missing family members, so she called Charlie.

Charlie and his resentful daughter Sidney take this journey to this colony. While on their way, they stop in Mobile, Alabama. The city is run by a Black King and Queen whose only objectives are to provide healing, rediscovery for Black people in this new world, and the knowledge of incredible, historical contributions that Black people have made to this world throughout human history.

This unforgettable book is written beautifully. It forces all of us who are white to walk in another person’s shoes, all the while making readers understand what effect oppression has on the oppressed.

“On the rare occasion that he spoke to someone about the event, most of them would lower their eyes, say how big a shame it all was, but go on to soberly acknowledge how free they felt.

Free to walk alone at night. Free to climb a tree. Free to fall asleep somewhere in the sun.

Freedom that inspired them to change their names, calling themselves after plants and animals, looking to reclaim something true about themselves that now they could.”