“No Right Way to Be Free”: Black Survival in Phillip B. Williams’ “Ours” https://ift.tt/b3oezT0
Poet Phillip B. Williams’ Ours, his debut novel, is an expansive, multigenerational tale that examines the confines and meaning of freedom and its place against a backdrop of American slavery and Black survival. Williams takes us through the conception and growth of a fictional town named “Ours,” located just north of St. Louis, created in 1834 under the hand of the mysterious conjure woman Saint and her cultivation of a community of ex-enslaved people protected under the confines of her conjure. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that the freedom that she offers the people of Ours is inextricable from the darkness that constantly seeks to invade them.
Ours boasts a sprawling cast of characters, each as vivid as the next, and their stories spiral together with themes such as misunderstood love, the hauntings of memory, belonging and disbelonging, fear, grief, and finding peace. While Saint exists at the heart of this piece and its town, the novel lacks any central main character and instead floats between the stories of those who live in Ours, called the Ouhmey, allowing Williams to explore each character with equal unflinching vulnerability and thoughtfulness. There is, of course, Saint, who is far from a loving matriarch and instead holds the community at arms’ length, alternating between caring for and harming them. Drawn into Ours long after its creation is Frances, a character to whom “neither ‘he’ nor ‘she’ made…much difference,” who harbors a strange mutual connection to Saint that neither seems to understand fully. Frances’ arrival in Ours forces Saint to confront not only the limitations of her powers but also an anguished past locked deep inside her.
Scattered around these two enigmatic characters and their potent conjure abilities are a myriad of other characters, each struggling to find what freedom means to them personally and how they interact with other Ouhmey. Joy, a young woman with a violent past who struggles with “the dense hunger of her need to kill,” accompanies Frances into Ours and promptly shuts herself off from everyone there save Aba, an isolated former friend of Saint, who bears warnings about the destruction of her conjure and the future of the town. The novel often manifests itself in pairs of characters, whether in friendship, romance, or bonds that greatly exceed either. For instance, there are Luther-Philip and Justice, two boys whose intense friendship forces them to grapple with themselves and each other over the ache of devotion, past grief, and persistent scars. Then, there are Selah and Naima, a pair of twins that Saint takes in less as daughters than as wards who are “more like the ghosts of children than living children” and are naturally gifted in conjure, the former able to heal people and the latter able to bring only sickness. In choosing to inhabit the lives, minds, and conflicts of so many characters, Williams risks relegating them to static side characters but deftly avoids this pitfall. He treats these characters with the same dignity that any living, breathing human demands and never lets them fall into cliché, instead granting each with vivid personal histories and flaws that evolve as the characters confront the demons housed within them.
At the core of these characters’ struggles is the task of reclaiming themselves, a theme that William delves into with empathy and stunning poeticism. During the early days of Ours, Saint leads its people to the waterside in an effort to give them the space to wash away the horrors of slavery and enter into a new life: “their entire bodies cleansed in the running water, the water taking with it all that wasn’t theirs to carry: their bruises, their traumas, their hardened melancholy.” After this communal catharsis, each member of Ours is free to either keep their old name or choose a new one for themself. While this rebirth is symbolic of the new life that the characters will embark on, it is far from over as each member of the Ouhmey finds themselves on personal journeys. They are often surrounded by metaphorical as well as physical ghosts, especially as they struggle with both unresolved and generational trauma from the violence and dehumanization of slavery. “Stagnant air filled with folklore as each house in Ours bore whispers of the dead,” Ours reads, “their murmurs in chorus with leaf rustle and the subtle scratch of mice.”
Throughout the course of the novel, the characters must learn to confront these lingering spirits, whether through laying the dead properly to rest or confronting their inner traumas and selves. Through each character, Williams presents a different type of rebirth, showing that freedom, and the choices and baggage that come with it, hold no singular meaning. As Williams writes through the voice of Justice, “No right way to be free. That’s why it’s called free. You make all the right and wrong with it as you want. Just be mindful how much of each.”
FICTION Ours
By Phillip B. Williams
Viking Press
Published February 20, 2024
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