And now I remember the talk of the shooting. The talk of some kid somewhere who caught the wrong end of a bullet. The talk of the police. The talk of excessive force. The talk of Black lives mattering, and Blue Lives mattering, and All Lives mattering. Now I remember the pundits and politicians. The talk show hosts and celebrities. The presence of this always. Now I remember all the screaming, and crying, and rallying, and arguing, and the memes and the thoughts and prayers, and the talks of regulation and investigation, and the bumper stickers, and gun rights laws. Now I remember it all.
The narrator of the book is not identified by name. He comes to be known simply as the Author and the conceit of the novel is that it is his account of being on a book tour taking him across several states. Throughout the narrative is a recurring reference to a police shooting of a black youth. No matter where his tour takes him, this controversial incident dominates news coverage and has sparked protests. The novel was published almost 14 months to the day after the killing of George Floyd had sparked a similar reaction over the course of the summer of 2020, bringing to painfully obvious reality what had long been dismissed by much of white America as an overreaction to unusual cases involving law enforcement racism rather than being an iconic demonstration of systemic racism among police. That the Author has somehow managed to be immune to the incessant coverage is perhaps a commentary by the author on how entire social groups can almost willfully create an aversion to exposing themselves to things they don’t want to know about.
I turn to find a kid standing beside my table. I peg him at about ten years old. A little gangly, meek, and nerdy-looking, you might say. Like the kind of kid who’s spent too much time in books and not enough time grabbing life by the short and curlies. Sometimes you see kids and you just know. You can just see their entire future in their eyes. That’s who this kid is: he’s his entire future seen at a glance.
This kid will prove to be the co-protagonist of the story. The book becomes half as much about him as about the Author. At first he will be simply known as the Kid, but eventually a nickname that reflects the pigmentation of his skin is introduced: Soot. The Kid is not fond of that nickname. Also, the Kid may or may not actually be real. At this first appearance, the tells the Author that he’s not a fan looking for an autograph, but that he sidles up for his surprise appearance because he just wanted the Author to see him. Maybe he really is invisible to everyone else or maybe he has just been convinced he has the ability to be invisible or maybe the invisibility is entirely metaphorical. In the end, it really doesn’t matter because it al amounts to the same thing.
I know why your mom taught you to be invisible. She wanted to protect you. Being who we are . . . it’s hard. We get shot or put in jail. It’s all we see. It’s all we know. Our whole story is about pain and loss, slavery and oppression. It defines us. It seeps into our skin. We bleed it even as we’re covered by it. All we want is to be something other than the pain that we have been born into. All we want is to be known for something else. We want the great history we see in others. And all we’re ever given is the story of being in pain and being forced to overcome.
This quote is addressed to the Kid, but it is contained within quotation marks. It might be an actual conversation or maybe it is just an imaginary discourse inside the head of the Author. Whatever the case, this is why it doesn’t matter whether the Kid is really invisible or not. Literal or figurative, it is all about metaphor based upon literal necessities. If the Kid thinks he has learned how to become invisible, it is because his parents have told him he can. And although most readers will have figured out why long before this point, it is at this point that everything becomes manifestly clear: invisibility in black society is dual-edged sword that can be protect and do self-harm. The persistent prevalence in the background about the police killing of the black youth is makes a tangible connection to what happens when the protective aspect of invisibility is lost.
