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The Confession of Copeland Cane
“Keenan Norris is simply one of the most talented young writers around.” – Victor LaValleCopeland Cane V, the child who fell outta Colored People Time and into America, is a fugitive…He is also just a regular teenager coming up in a terrifying world. A slightly eccentric, flip-phone loving kid with analog tendencies and a sideline hustling sneakers, the boundaries of Copeland’s life are demarcated from the jump by urban toxicity, an educational apparatus with confounding intentions, and a police state that has merged with media conglomerates—the highly-rated Insurgency Alert Desk that surveils and harasses his neighborhood in the name of anti-terrorism.Recruited by the nearby private school even as he and his folks face eviction, Copeland is doing his damnedest to do right by himself, for himself. And yet the forces at play entrap him in a reality that chews up his past and obscures his future. Copeland’s wry awareness of the absurd keeps life passable, as do his friends and their surprising array of survival skills. And yet in the aftermath of a protest rally against police violence, everything changes, and Copeland finds himself caught in the flood of history. Set in East Oakland, California in a very near future, The Confession of Copeland Cane introduces us to a prescient and contemporary voice, one whose take on coming of age in America becomes a startling reflection of our present moment.
298 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 15, 2021
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September 14, 2022This novel relies almost entirely on its distinct and exuberant first-person voice to carry it forward and in this way it reminded me of both the glories and the pitfalls of those big novels of Saul Bellow, who (before he slandered the Papuans and thus became the symbol of all that is wrong about dominant white male literary culture) was at the start of his career a Jewish outsider from Chicago trying to prove himself to the New York white male literary culture, and who single-handedly invented the maximalist barbaric yawpish style of a young boy growing up as an outsider, in his novel The Adventures of Augie March. It's a storytelling style that has reinvented itself over and over again ever since, including here, in the voice of Copeland Cane, where I can see here in this novel the throughline stretching back to the audacious exuberant declaration "I am an American, Chicago-born" that begins Bellow's first big novel.
January 2, 2022
A convincing and nightmarishly compelling look at a near-future dystopian America not too dissimilar from our own - a racist, fascist police/militia state that takes marching orders from a Fox News-like media conglomerate called Soclear Broadcasting. Copeland's "confession" is framed as a series of audio files he is able to covertly send to his friend and crush, budding journalist Jacqueline. Cope and his friends are forced to deal with lots of familiar issues facing Black people, especially young Black men: overly aggressive policing, racist judges and juries, and socio-economic hurdles. Through it all, there are lots of thought-provoking observations and direct parallels to our past and present.
What really impressed me about this novel is this: it is a triumph of voice. I listened to the audio and was blown away by it. Conversational, often laugh out loud funny, and always gripping. One could quibble with a few editing choices, or wish that Jacqueline was more fully fleshed out, but overall this is a powerful novel. I'm grateful to the Tournament of Books' putting this on my radar as I'd not heard of it previously, and I'll be looking for future work from this author.
What really impressed me about this novel is this: it is a triumph of voice. I listened to the audio and was blown away by it. Conversational, often laugh out loud funny, and always gripping. One could quibble with a few editing choices, or wish that Jacqueline was more fully fleshed out, but overall this is a powerful novel. I'm grateful to the Tournament of Books' putting this on my radar as I'd not heard of it previously, and I'll be looking for future work from this author.
November 30, 2021
This is a coming-of-age story of a black boy living on the east side of Oakland, California, during the 2010s and 2020s. The bulk of the novel is narrated by that boy, Copeland Cane V, with the story beginning when he is in second grade and continuing through his senior year of high school. As a young child, he is a nerdy kid with his head always in a book, who makes his first closest friends DeMichael, Keisha, "Free," and Trey when they choose him to run a race against them during elementary school. They all live in the Rockwood housing development. Through a series of events of the type that stymie many a young black boy in America, Cope gets suspended and sent to an alternative school, and then to juvenile detention where he becomes friends with Miguel. Back home after his release, he hustles to earn whatever money he can and, almost serendipitously in the course of one of those endeavors, he encounters a man on a train who recommends him to attend the prestigious Piedmontaigne prep school in the cloistered community wholly surrounded by the city of Oakland. Cope tries his hand with some success on the school's newspaper staff in his first year and switches in his senior year to running the 400m and 800m on the track team. As the book foreshadows from the very start, Cope's life all comes crashing down, literally as the Rockwood development is razed to be replaced by gentrifying shimmering Redwood lofts and tragically in the inevitable unjustifiable shooting of one more unarmed and defenseless young man of color by overzealous law enforcement.
Norris' novel tells that coming-of-age story, but it wraps it in an outer layer. The first and final chapters of the book are told by Jacqueline, a girl whom Cope met at Rockwood where she lived with her dad on some weekends and who also attended Piedmontaigne prep. As Jacqueline explains, she is relating the story (in a heavily edited version) as it was told to her by Copeland while he is on the run from the law.
It takes a moment as a reader to situate yourself in time and place, because the story is set in a near-future & near-America -- the pandemic is treated as something that happened in the past with only occasional resurgences and some vestigial behaviors, law enforcement agencies are largely privatized as a double-edged result from the past *8:46 protests of police killings of unarmed people of color, and the media and law enforcement and national security are merged under a corporation known as SoClear.
I never want to object to a book for it being what the author wrote rather than what I wish the author had written, yet it felt to me that the extra layers of the somewhat futuristic setting and the Jacqueline chapters did not add to and in many ways detracted from the Copeland narrative. Still, Copeland Cane gives voice to a young black boy struggling to make sense of his place in his family, his community, and his country in a way I cannot recall having ever read before and that I suspect will stay with me for a very long time.
Norris' novel tells that coming-of-age story, but it wraps it in an outer layer. The first and final chapters of the book are told by Jacqueline, a girl whom Cope met at Rockwood where she lived with her dad on some weekends and who also attended Piedmontaigne prep. As Jacqueline explains, she is relating the story (in a heavily edited version) as it was told to her by Copeland while he is on the run from the law.
It takes a moment as a reader to situate yourself in time and place, because the story is set in a near-future & near-America -- the pandemic is treated as something that happened in the past with only occasional resurgences and some vestigial behaviors, law enforcement agencies are largely privatized as a double-edged result from the past *8:46 protests of police killings of unarmed people of color, and the media and law enforcement and national security are merged under a corporation known as SoClear.
I never want to object to a book for it being what the author wrote rather than what I wish the author had written, yet it felt to me that the extra layers of the somewhat futuristic setting and the Jacqueline chapters did not add to and in many ways detracted from the Copeland narrative. Still, Copeland Cane gives voice to a young black boy struggling to make sense of his place in his family, his community, and his country in a way I cannot recall having ever read before and that I suspect will stay with me for a very long time.
January 18, 2022
3.5 stars rounding up. Part of the 2022 Tournament of Books. A nice addition to the shelf of fiction centered in East Oakland, in this case giving us a first-person account of a young Black man’s childhood and adolescence. Copeland’s voice is the novel’s outstanding achievement, and I enjoyed the time I spent listening to the audio version. The setting is the near future, but the feel is contemporary and believable.
couldn-t-get-through-it
December 15, 2021Sadly, a DNF. If ever a book could have used a muscular editor, it was this one for me. I liked the homeboy voice, the plot, basically everything about it except the glacial pacing, which is exactly the opposite of what a book like this needs. Even though it's a Tournament of Books player, I just couldn't stick with it.
September 26, 2022
Set in a near-future Oakland, California this is the story of Copeland Cane V, the most recent in a long line of brown bodies to be buffeted by the winds of America and its racist past, present (and future?). He relates his story from continuation school to juvenile hall to hustling sneakers to attending a local prep school as the token black, to his status as a fugitive. His confession is punctuated by broadcasts from the only news media left in the U.S., Soclear and the blog posts of a white supremist.
I combo listened and read this title and the audio is very well done. I highly recommend it. However, the content didn’t wow me in the same way. The premise is that the book is a transcript of an audio file from teenage Copeland to his former classmate Jaqueline. But it drags on and on with no clue as to why Copeland is confessing or why he is on the run. The novel felt to me more like a construct around which the author inserted certain American ills that he wanted to address: institutionalized racism, police violence against people of color, gentrification, the prison system, right wing political movements, etc. A list of things for Copeland to encounter so they could be exemplified. But it felt more like a very long list rather than an organic narrative. A lot of the individual set pieces were great and the voice came across as authentic, but it didn’t hold up as a story for me.
I combo listened and read this title and the audio is very well done. I highly recommend it. However, the content didn’t wow me in the same way. The premise is that the book is a transcript of an audio file from teenage Copeland to his former classmate Jaqueline. But it drags on and on with no clue as to why Copeland is confessing or why he is on the run. The novel felt to me more like a construct around which the author inserted certain American ills that he wanted to address: institutionalized racism, police violence against people of color, gentrification, the prison system, right wing political movements, etc. A list of things for Copeland to encounter so they could be exemplified. But it felt more like a very long list rather than an organic narrative. A lot of the individual set pieces were great and the voice came across as authentic, but it didn’t hold up as a story for me.
June 13, 2021
Review forthcoming from Fiction Writers Review.
February 12, 2022
An Oakland ghetto, post-pandemic, David Copperfield adolescent story.
It's one of those "and then" books where, rather than a story that is shaped like a long narrative arch, something happens, and then the next thing happens, and then the next thing, and then the next, and then, and then, and then...
Like life, every event leads to the next but you don't feel any as more significant than any other in the midst of it. Like life, it feels rambling and pointless at times. And at only 288 pages it feels like it was almost a bit too long.
But I loved the setting, the voice, and the characters. And I loved Norris' interpretation of what the 2030's might look like in densely urban settings where the "ghetto flu" still rages, misinformation is widely spread through social media, and police brutality ramps up with the advent of private police forces.
It's one of those "and then" books where, rather than a story that is shaped like a long narrative arch, something happens, and then the next thing happens, and then the next thing, and then the next, and then, and then, and then...
Like life, every event leads to the next but you don't feel any as more significant than any other in the midst of it. Like life, it feels rambling and pointless at times. And at only 288 pages it feels like it was almost a bit too long.
But I loved the setting, the voice, and the characters. And I loved Norris' interpretation of what the 2030's might look like in densely urban settings where the "ghetto flu" still rages, misinformation is widely spread through social media, and police brutality ramps up with the advent of private police forces.
December 21, 2021
Real mixed bag, this one. I loved the voice, and there are tons of great lines and insights all the way through, but whew, the execution here is messy. It reads like one big ramble, interrupted along the way by footnotes that are confusing and hard to navigate (though maybe that was a quirk of the e-book I was reading- I haven't seen a hard copy). It also takes until, no kidding, about 85% of the way through the book to get to the heart of the story- the rest is all backstory, rumination, and social commentary. I don't necessarily mind novels that are less plot-focused, but in this case, I wished for something a bit tighter.
February 19, 2022
I love Copeland and his voice! Copeland is taping his "confessions" which isn't really revealed until the end - otherwise, it's a coming-of-age story of whatever formed Copeland. Quite ambly, but at one point there is a certain thing that is mentioned that explains why it is ambly and really, the entire point really is that it's hard to see someone clearly without hearing about what formed a life from the beginning. Otherwise, without that history, a fugitive on the run might not get a jury of their peers. Living slightly in a future Oakland, where the repercussions of the "flu of 2020" still haunts, and police have "learned" from 2020. I loved all the mentions of important classics of literature, my personal favorite -- Paul Beatty's 'The Sellout'. Future classic right there! This is one of those books that you can't tell if it's satire or not because America is so bizarre at this point that it hits too close to home. Overall, I loved spending time with Copeland, but I would have also liked to see more of some of the secondary characters. But it would have needed a little something more to make it a perfect book like 'The Sellout' is in my opinion. But I'm glad this exists and that I read it. And DAMN it's a skill that Norris was able to publish this in June 2021. Speedy writing according to what is mentioned in this book! I'd add this to the shelf next to T. Geronimo Johnson's 'Welcome to Braggsville', Maurice Carlos Ruffin's 'We Cast A Shadow', and Tommy Orange's 'There There'.
*Book #122/304 I have read of the shortlisted Morning News Tournament of Books competitors
*Book #122/304 I have read of the shortlisted Morning News Tournament of Books competitors
March 3, 2022
I am not sure if some of the insightful writing I found was actually insightful or accidental because it never seemed to be followed up on. Instead, this book is a meandering story leading up to something that felt incredibly anti-climactic because for all that leading up, the actual impact was very much understated. And, a bit funny, at one point it is said that the version being offered is a much condensed version. As though there was a lot more rambling the reader missed out on. So, rambling aside, and ridiculous eye-rolling inducing eulogy aside, this was an interesting book about how it felt a kid went from being a kid to being considered a wanted criminal without any real effort or action on his part. I also wonder how this story would be viewed from someone of a similar background to Cope. As a middle class middle age white woman, I have not experienced any of the situations Cope was faced with. And again, this takes me back to the intent of the writing. Did I read things in to the story on my own? Were there things there that I missed? It feels like it was somewhere in the middle and that is a hard place to be as a reader.
January 14, 2022
That’s just a story you tell yourself, Cope. Not every story you tell yourself is true.
This can be thought of as a cautionary tale of what would (will?) happen to the USA if we continue on the trajectory we were on in 2019/2020: racial profiling is on the rise, the police go after young Black men with extreme violence, people continue to protest violence against Black people (here the movement is called "*8:46," after George Floyd) the media spins the "facts" whichever way it wants, the environment is in bad shape, and various Covid-type viruses sweep through the country.
I really wanted to love this book, but it was not meant to be. This was just too damned long and convoluted. I hoped that the ending would make it all worth it, but .. nah.
This book is not for the impatient reader. It's got a bit of a slow start, and I came close to just quitting at first, but I stuck with it. Copeland Cane is an engaging character. He gives no hint of where he's going with his story, however, it really starts to wander. This kid goes through as many trials as Hercules, in as many different places. What is this leading up to?? I kept wondering. The middle of the book really sags under its own weight, when Cope’s teacher gives him a bunch of articles to read about racism, and he reads them, and so we read them (his interpretation of them), and then the class has a long, detailed, philosophical discussion about whether free will exists, and holy cow isn’t there a better way to include this in a novel instead of all this bloated exposition?? I mean …
… the intellect is imbricated by the ideologies that surround and overlay it and that, in a sense, have brought it into being. If you’ve learned to speak by mimicking your parents and babysitters, the fundamental means by which you articulate the world around you is already predetermined by their ideologies. You don’t know what a boy or a girl is, you know what they are called. That’s why when someone transitions from one gender to another, they enter a second space that people don’t quite understand because there are so few names for it (not for them, you see, but for their social role; we are our social roles). For that matter, you do not know yourself, you don’t know who you are except in the context of how you are known by the social world around you. You know your role, or, put another way, you know only how you are hailed.
I let my fingers do a bit of speedy walking for a while through the pages, skipped the footnotes, and finally got to The Incident. I don't know why it's danced around so much that you don't even know what Cane has been accused of doing. Not even a spoiler:
It took me a while to realize that this is set in our near future. Copeland Cane, who is in some kind of trouble, and telling the story of his life, was in first grade NOW,
The media conglomerate "SoClear" seems like a combination of Fox News and the former Clear Channel media company. The casual mentions of insurrections and racists in the White House hit home hard.
The same po-lice who had welcomed white terrorists into the White House and the Capitol Building on live TV would shoot black people dead for talkin’ outta turn to them, or staying silent when told to speak, or standing still in a suburb, or moving too much while being beat down. Wadn’t none of these protests finna change none of that.
The footnotes were confusing. I listened to the audiobook, and I had to download the ebook to see what the heck was happening with these footnotes. The ebook didn't clear things up much for me, except to let me see these are footnotes. Footnotes to what? that part I couldn't quite figure out. This book needed a better structure. Maybe it's clearer in the hardcopy version.
The audiobook is read by a full cast. Roberto Antonio Martin handles the bulk of it, and he is FANTASTIC. Pete Cross reads the footnotes. Adenrele Ojo reads Jacqueline's parts, and I wasn't crazy about her style, she adopted that perpetually-shaking voice, with overly emphasized pauses between words, as if on the edge of tears all the time; I'm glad her portions were small, because that style of reading exhausts me. Keenan Norris is also credited as a reader, but I didn't figure out what it was he read - perhaps an author's note at the end.
February 28, 2022
Not sure how to assess this book. I found it confusing and tiresome at first and had a really hard time getting into it -- but it grew on me. Finishing it made me a ToB completist! and I'm not sure, but of the three play-ins I'm surprised to say that if I had a vote, I'd probably vote for it -- even against the Erdrich, and I love Erdrich. I just felt this was not her strongest book.
Anyway, it reminded me of a lot of other books, including that Kiese Laymon book we read for the ToB some years ago. But there was a lot in it.
Anyway, it reminded me of a lot of other books, including that Kiese Laymon book we read for the ToB some years ago. But there was a lot in it.
July 19, 2021
THE CONFESSION OF COPELAND CANE by Keenan Norris is a great novel! In this book Copeland Cane tells his life story about growing up in East Oakland, California in the very near future and how he became a fugitive.
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I found the writing took some getting used to as it’s told in African American Vernacular English but it really felt like Copeland’s own voice. I really enjoyed the format to the writing and how all was revealed. Copeland went through so much in his high school years. This novel brings up the issues of racism, police brutality, education disparity, and coming of age as a minority in America.
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This is a book I took my time with and read slowly which is rare. It’s thought provoking and I won’t forget it.
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Thank you to Unnamed Press for my advance reading copy!
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I found the writing took some getting used to as it’s told in African American Vernacular English but it really felt like Copeland’s own voice. I really enjoyed the format to the writing and how all was revealed. Copeland went through so much in his high school years. This novel brings up the issues of racism, police brutality, education disparity, and coming of age as a minority in America.
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This is a book I took my time with and read slowly which is rare. It’s thought provoking and I won’t forget it.
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Thank you to Unnamed Press for my advance reading copy!
April 27, 2022
This was a fantastic book, tied as my favorite for this year so far. The narrator for the audiobook is great! 5 stars. Highly recommended.
March 4, 2022
A really good story of a kid growing up in the near future in the hood of Oakland. Some really really funny moments and a very sad ending. I loved the dialogue and the voice acting on the audio book. Especially D'Michael.
January 4, 2022
I love Copeland Cane. I swear, this book is custom written for us Oaklanders. It captures the essence of the Town and the issues citizens struggle with; systemic racism, gentrification and displacement, police brutality, BLM (here called *8:46), incarceration, the "hustle". I assume the book speaks to a larger audience than those from the Bay, but I'm not sure it can hit the same.
I read the book (not audio version) and I could hear Cope's voice clearly. The language is accurate: tryna, hella, finna, etc. The code switching was interesting too; one language when Cope was talking to Jacq, another when Jacq was addressing the audience. I agree that it felt like Norris was trying to fit in all the issues rather than writing a tight plot, but I think this was a valid choice to make. This book is the place to talk about all the issues you can fit in; it's not like a young black boy gets to choose what he's got to deal with in a given day. Life isn't a straight-forward thing.
The meeting in the church was hysterical and oh so accurate; everyone talking, some schooling others about the issues, some crying with the newly realized unfairness of it all, and everyone vowing to change but not a single mention of how to help the actual victim in the here and now. I'm dying.
There were many details specific to Oakland and I wonder if they went over the heads of other readers (example below). This also makes me wonder how much I miss when I read a book set in Brooklyn or Chicago, for example.
From page 179 Kindle version: "Half the apartments vacant. A fire in the western quadrant, might as well be the Ghost Ship over there." This one sentence conjures a very specific feeling. The Ghost Ship fire was a huge tragedy in Oakland, and you can't hear the phrase without remembering the shock and pain and loss that struck the community when it happened. The image of the vacant apartments is not just one of abandonment; it's one of tragedy and loss. I wonder if the Ghost Ship reference is global, or if to non-local readers this sentence just blended in with the rest rather than hitting like a gut punch.
Also,
I read the book (not audio version) and I could hear Cope's voice clearly. The language is accurate: tryna, hella, finna, etc. The code switching was interesting too; one language when Cope was talking to Jacq, another when Jacq was addressing the audience. I agree that it felt like Norris was trying to fit in all the issues rather than writing a tight plot, but I think this was a valid choice to make. This book is the place to talk about all the issues you can fit in; it's not like a young black boy gets to choose what he's got to deal with in a given day. Life isn't a straight-forward thing.
The meeting in the church was hysterical and oh so accurate; everyone talking, some schooling others about the issues, some crying with the newly realized unfairness of it all, and everyone vowing to change but not a single mention of how to help the actual victim in the here and now. I'm dying.
There were many details specific to Oakland and I wonder if they went over the heads of other readers (example below). This also makes me wonder how much I miss when I read a book set in Brooklyn or Chicago, for example.
From page 179 Kindle version: "Half the apartments vacant. A fire in the western quadrant, might as well be the Ghost Ship over there." This one sentence conjures a very specific feeling. The Ghost Ship fire was a huge tragedy in Oakland, and you can't hear the phrase without remembering the shock and pain and loss that struck the community when it happened. The image of the vacant apartments is not just one of abandonment; it's one of tragedy and loss. I wonder if the Ghost Ship reference is global, or if to non-local readers this sentence just blended in with the rest rather than hitting like a gut punch.
Also,
December 30, 2021
The narrator here is fantastic, and Norris' prose has uncommon energy. But I'll remember this "just barely in the future" tale more for that voice than for the story it told. My assessment here is likely warped by the fact that I read this right on the heels of Hell of a Book, which wrestles with similar issues and themes in--for me--more compelling and complex ways.
November 22, 2021
I found this book on Hoopla while searching for audiobooks from the ToB longlist. I had not heard of it, but Oakland? An author who teaches at SJSU? Yes please! And this book has a lot of Bay Area/California references (Piedmont, Antioch, Beast Mode, BART, Treasure Island, J. Kidd, Arcadia relays, Mt Sac relays, and I am so old that I was there live in person for the Gary Payton cake incident). Gentrification with names like "Redwood Shores". There is a lot of humor, sarcasm, and satire here. I am left wondering what I missed--I think the whole shoe hustling thing is much deeper than I understand. I have never understood the whole basketball shoe thing, but to each his own.
This book is also the first I have read that brings the pandemic, masks, and 2020 into fiction. (SPoiler: it's not over.)
I did enjoy this book. I also think that maybe audio was not the best choice. With the press releases and breaks within chapters, it was a little confusing. Despite the different narrators I often did not know what/where the book had gone. I also really needed the name spellings for clues (I was hours in before I realized that Jack and Jacqueline were the same person--it might have been obvious on the page).
I think Norris did a believable job with his near-future dystopia. The public/private police dichotomy with their yes/no body cams, the tearing down affordable housing to build condos, the media (owned by Stephen Miller)/police merger and press releases, the even more extreme policing of PoC by private police forces, walled Piedmont (aka Piedmontane), Treasure Island being home to a polluted continuation school used by the court system. It's all so believable--since some of this is already happening. Is more already happening that I don't even know about?
I have a feeling this book will not work well in translation--it is so American and so Bay Area I'm not even sure it will work well for people not familiar with the Bay Area. Or, maybe all of the references are really just Easter eggs and the story is fine without them?
This book is also the first I have read that brings the pandemic, masks, and 2020 into fiction. (SPoiler: it's not over.)
I did enjoy this book. I also think that maybe audio was not the best choice. With the press releases and breaks within chapters, it was a little confusing. Despite the different narrators I often did not know what/where the book had gone. I also really needed the name spellings for clues (I was hours in before I realized that Jack and Jacqueline were the same person--it might have been obvious on the page).
I think Norris did a believable job with his near-future dystopia. The public/private police dichotomy with their yes/no body cams, the tearing down affordable housing to build condos, the media (owned by Stephen Miller)/police merger and press releases, the even more extreme policing of PoC by private police forces, walled Piedmont (aka Piedmontane), Treasure Island being home to a polluted continuation school used by the court system. It's all so believable--since some of this is already happening. Is more already happening that I don't even know about?
I have a feeling this book will not work well in translation--it is so American and so Bay Area I'm not even sure it will work well for people not familiar with the Bay Area. Or, maybe all of the references are really just Easter eggs and the story is fine without them?
August 19, 2023
Copeland Cane is his own beautiful person, acting and speaking freely despite powerful forces trying to make him only a product of his environment. He is also a modern-day Lauren Olamina. While Parable of the Sower was written in the 90s and eerily on point about the future it warns of around 30 years later, this book written during the pandemic (on the same coast of the US as Parable of the Sower), is eerily on point in the future it warns of around 7 years later. This story gives those who will never be in Copeland Cane's shoes (and if so, only through buying a pair of them) a real window into the violence that racial injustice has inflicted upon entire communities, from a environmental injustice, wealth inequality, carceral, and gentrification lens. It also offers a cautionary prediction of where the fusion of our surveillance state, privatization, and history-erasing fascism is leading us. At the same time that the story is raw, it offered glimpses of hope in exile in the same way that Assata Shakur's autobiography did. Another favorite book for me.
From a personal lens as someone who loves to write but continually questions the value of working to get my work out in the world, I also appreciated the grappling that Copeland, and to some extent, Jacq, sit with around writing's power to change minds and/or change people's conditions for the better. Given the possibility of author Keenan Norris conveying his own internal dilemma through his characters' reflections, I am interested all the more in what's to come from author Keenan Norris's future works.
From a personal lens as someone who loves to write but continually questions the value of working to get my work out in the world, I also appreciated the grappling that Copeland, and to some extent, Jacq, sit with around writing's power to change minds and/or change people's conditions for the better. Given the possibility of author Keenan Norris conveying his own internal dilemma through his characters' reflections, I am interested all the more in what's to come from author Keenan Norris's future works.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 9, 2022
Another of the play in books for the first round of The Tournament of Books today. Again, I liked it very much, but I wanted The Sentence to win. This book reminded me of another book I just read, Riot Baby. Dystopic fiction of the coming Black Lives Matter war. It's a very pessimistic genre of books - there is no hope of black people getting equal treatment in this country is there? So, this book is in the form of a confession of Cope to his friend, Jacqueline, telling his history. He grew up poor in Oakland, CA, got arrested for the first time very young on a bogus charge. He spent a year in prison, then was recruited to be a student at a prestigious prep school. Of course, it's a trick. They want the diversity points, but Cope can't afford the bus fare to get to the school. He starts a sneaker scam and gets busted. There's more tragedy and he ends up on the run.
August 25, 2021
Good storyline but a slow read for me.
February 8, 2022
You have to get past the set-up of this one, which never really comes off, to instead appreciate the voice that's telling the story. Copeland is a bit of a loner awkward smart-ass kid whose growing up as a black boy in the Oakland ghetto is being told from the not-too-distant point of his eighteen year old self. It's a meandering tale as he serially butts up against his environment - almost accidentally burning down his neighborhood, going to reform school built on a garbage dump in the bay, hustling sneakers, being drafted into an elite prep school for their PR purposes, discovering a talent for track. There's nothing particular to make the reader go "wow" or anything, but it works if you go with the flow, and it occasionally sparkles:
It's a story that could be told in the current day but instead has been advanced forward a decade or so and things made just a little worse than they are now, so it can be called a future dystopia I guess, but that's not really what it is and that whole thing could be dropped and I'd probably say the book made better for it. The efforts to add footnotes to the story from the white nationalist point of view of someone with the unsubtle username of andrewjacksonslaststand010621 (but then hey these guys aren't known for their subtlety are they!) particularly didn't work for me.
Just keep your eye on Copeland's bildungsroman, relax, don't sweat finding out the details of the big thing that is suggested at the novel's very start and will finally be revealed almost at the end of the story, and you'll be in good hands.
That's right. Miguel had been hustling shoes. And not just any old shoes. You know who and what I'm talkin' about. Everybody and they momma seems to love this Negro. Hell, you probably love him your damn self. Michael Jeffrey Jordan's old unpolitical ass. If it was a championship in cigar smoking and not giving a shit, that dude woulda won all the chips.
It's a story that could be told in the current day but instead has been advanced forward a decade or so and things made just a little worse than they are now, so it can be called a future dystopia I guess, but that's not really what it is and that whole thing could be dropped and I'd probably say the book made better for it. The efforts to add footnotes to the story from the white nationalist point of view of someone with the unsubtle username of andrewjacksonslaststand010621 (but then hey these guys aren't known for their subtlety are they!) particularly didn't work for me.
Just keep your eye on Copeland's bildungsroman, relax, don't sweat finding out the details of the big thing that is suggested at the novel's very start and will finally be revealed almost at the end of the story, and you'll be in good hands.
January 7, 2023
Copeland Cane has a fairly good life growing up with his parents in Oakland in a time somewhat soon after the 2020 pandemic and deaths of Black men by police including George Floyd and the resulting protests. However in this future, those sympathetic to the alt white movements have moved into power and have turned up the systemic racism even further. The effects of being poor and minority is now called ghetto flu, science has changed and life is even more dangerous if not white and rich. Copeland, is first put into the system as a criminal at the age of 1 due to a computer error but that is clearly his fault. Then obsessed with keeping his family and community safe, he falls into the juvenile system slowly learning and understanding how the systems work. He gets a bit savvy as we learn story of his supposed childhood and that of his friends and community. There is some fabulous snark when interacting with authorities in his life and just the absurdity of how these children are at blame for being the wrong color in the wrong place leading them into a want to react.
I loved the voice of Copeland as he struggled to figure out himself and the world around him. It is mostly told in first person as the confession. There are some heart breaking moments but it a strong voice. However it did meander quite a bit. It was the longest relatively short but that I have read in a while. There were definitely some side tangents and not that much of a plot but I did enjoy getting to know Copeland Cane.
I loved the voice of Copeland as he struggled to figure out himself and the world around him. It is mostly told in first person as the confession. There are some heart breaking moments but it a strong voice. However it did meander quite a bit. It was the longest relatively short but that I have read in a while. There were definitely some side tangents and not that much of a plot but I did enjoy getting to know Copeland Cane.
February 7, 2022
"Our teachers understood why they pupils was always late, but that didn't stop them from marking us down by the minute for our tardiness, so we ran to stay enrolled, and naturally necessity became the way we played, which made sense since all our games was really just a way to get ready for the world."
"If you think everybody obeyed them restrictions it's only cuz you wadn't in the hood, where you can die a hundred different ways and folks is used to taking heaven-and-hell chances scrambling to make a living."
"I wadn't tryna learn how not to call the po-lice and I wadn't really tryna teach white people nothin'. I wanted to know what reparations would come to my brother whether a lesson got learnt or not. Mr. Henderson seemed like he was breaded up pretty good; why couldn't he just chunk Mr. America off some money? Why couldn't Deadrich, or any o f them jokers, do that, instead of teaching and learning and acting like we was in a classroom? Who were we here for, really?"
"Miguel always had weed on him. My lungs couldn't handle the shit; I knew it was terrible for my running. But I smoked with him anyway cuz smoking with your friend is about the only way two boys will let each other dream."
"People's sympathies wadn't the same as they priorities."
"It's strange how we've simply gotten used to so much horror in America."
"If you think everybody obeyed them restrictions it's only cuz you wadn't in the hood, where you can die a hundred different ways and folks is used to taking heaven-and-hell chances scrambling to make a living."
"I wadn't tryna learn how not to call the po-lice and I wadn't really tryna teach white people nothin'. I wanted to know what reparations would come to my brother whether a lesson got learnt or not. Mr. Henderson seemed like he was breaded up pretty good; why couldn't he just chunk Mr. America off some money? Why couldn't Deadrich, or any o f them jokers, do that, instead of teaching and learning and acting like we was in a classroom? Who were we here for, really?"
"Miguel always had weed on him. My lungs couldn't handle the shit; I knew it was terrible for my running. But I smoked with him anyway cuz smoking with your friend is about the only way two boys will let each other dream."
"People's sympathies wadn't the same as they priorities."
"It's strange how we've simply gotten used to so much horror in America."
January 16, 2022
OK, the Rooster play-in round is shaping up to a real BEAST because this is the second truly fantastic book in that match so far and there’s three competing for that one spot.
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The Confession of Copeland Cane is the confession of having lived a life, of having struggled through the circumstances, of having kept going over and over again. I loved the amorphousness of its timing (sometime after 2020, but not in our current 2022; sometime after 8:46 and George Floyd and perhaps a different set of protests than happened in our real timeline and some never fully explained changes to the government, to social media, to policing that just hang somewhere in the backdrop of the boom). I loved the way Copeland creates new words and changes language to fit what he needs. I loved the intersection of academics and non academics and the pondering of book smart vs street smart that lays underneath a lot of the situations Cope deals with. This was really compelling, a hard book to put down.
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And yes I also loved the slams on Michael Jeffrey Jordan who hung back from politics as hard as he could. Heh.
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The Confession of Copeland Cane is the confession of having lived a life, of having struggled through the circumstances, of having kept going over and over again. I loved the amorphousness of its timing (sometime after 2020, but not in our current 2022; sometime after 8:46 and George Floyd and perhaps a different set of protests than happened in our real timeline and some never fully explained changes to the government, to social media, to policing that just hang somewhere in the backdrop of the boom). I loved the way Copeland creates new words and changes language to fit what he needs. I loved the intersection of academics and non academics and the pondering of book smart vs street smart that lays underneath a lot of the situations Cope deals with. This was really compelling, a hard book to put down.
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And yes I also loved the slams on Michael Jeffrey Jordan who hung back from politics as hard as he could. Heh.
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March 12, 2023
I wanted to like this, but it was tough to get through. It might have been easier as an audiobook where the non-standard English would not keep tripping me up - once I'd been reading for a while it would get easier, but only for as long as I kept reading, and the next time I picked it up I'd have to get used to it all over again. And I couldn't push myself to keep reading for all that long each time, because it goes so slowly and meanders around and takes so long to finally get to the conflict that it has clearly been building toward the whole time. It's good for giving a sense of what it is like to live in a very different environment than I do (though since it is set in the future, it's hard to know how much it describes life today, though I assume it's mostly based on real life today), and to hear a very different kind of voice. I wish it could have done that without being so hard to push myself to keep reading.
February 15, 2022
It took me quite a while to get into this book because I think the conceit of introducing us to Cope through official proceedings and the commentary of a white supremacist creates a sense of distance between the reader and Copeland Cane himself. Once Cope begins telling his own story, that changes dramatically.
This book covers a variety of topics including Cope's incarceration at a couple of juvenile facilities for crimes he didn't commit, his tokenization as the sole black kid at a fancy prep school, the gentrification of Oakland, life during a pandemic, police brutality, and so many other relevant topics. What makes it stand out though, is Cope's voice. He is a vibrant, and well-written kid. He speaks melodically, which even better demonstrated by Keenan Norris's narration on the audiobook. I enjoyed spending time with Cope and wanted to see his story turn out well.
This book covers a variety of topics including Cope's incarceration at a couple of juvenile facilities for crimes he didn't commit, his tokenization as the sole black kid at a fancy prep school, the gentrification of Oakland, life during a pandemic, police brutality, and so many other relevant topics. What makes it stand out though, is Cope's voice. He is a vibrant, and well-written kid. He speaks melodically, which even better demonstrated by Keenan Norris's narration on the audiobook. I enjoyed spending time with Cope and wanted to see his story turn out well.
April 11, 2022
Sad/realistic/snarky take on future from a black teen perspective. Author must have written this fairly quickly post-pandemic start - impressive. I’d call it dystopian, but it doesn’t seem that far from the truth.
Excellent description of ‘Urban dictionary ghetto flu’ on page 70 (told from a future perspective)
P79 “But it’s so many ways to be hurt and most of them you cain’t see. I heard the way his voice relaxed, and it was then I realized all the fear hiding in him. “
P103 “But I’m the opposite of official. My records don’t tell you a thing about me. They don’t tell you what I care about, who I love, the people that’s made me who I am.”
P200 “And peep this: What if being hella black is the same as being all-American? What if being second class, treated like trash, is the American way, it’s just don’t nobody wanna call it what it is?”
Excellent description of ‘Urban dictionary ghetto flu’ on page 70 (told from a future perspective)
P79 “But it’s so many ways to be hurt and most of them you cain’t see. I heard the way his voice relaxed, and it was then I realized all the fear hiding in him. “
P103 “But I’m the opposite of official. My records don’t tell you a thing about me. They don’t tell you what I care about, who I love, the people that’s made me who I am.”
P200 “And peep this: What if being hella black is the same as being all-American? What if being second class, treated like trash, is the American way, it’s just don’t nobody wanna call it what it is?”
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