A review by jackelz
Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi

dark
Imagine it. It’s year 20XX. You have to walk around wearing a mask because the air is radioactive/carcinogenic. All the white rich people have f*cked off to space.  It doesn’t seem so far off from our current reality. 

Goliath critically engages with racism (including environmental racism), police violence, gentrification, the prison system, and climate crisis as those still living on Earth suffer from resource scarcity and illnesses caused by pollution.

Jonathan and his lover, David, return from space and find a place they want to fix up for themselves, inevitably participating in a post-apocalyptic form of gentrification, as more folks start taking over the houses of Black people.

Linc, a Black worker, earns a living by salvaging from old houses and stacking the bricks that will be sent to the space colony. 

The narrative moves from one point of view to another, from the white returnees to the Black workers, weaving in stories of their pasts. About halfway through, though, it completely switches to two other perspectives and it threw me off at first. One is a sort of interview that details a man’s life up to the 2050’s, mixed with current (to us) events and situations he finds himself in. The other is told from the perspective of a white supremacist neo-confederate soldier on the run from a U.S. Marshall. 

This book was definitely a journey, and one that I appreciated. Take your time with this one.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings