This book broke me. So I've kind of put off reviewing this book for a bit over two weeks now, I know I know shame on me I know. But I did have my reasons (somewhat) and I think I just needed this story to sit in my brain for a while. It needed some time to marinate..... you know like a steak.... but a book steak? ..................Good one Clarissa, good one. Now that I've confused even myself I'll just quit referring to books as meat products and move on. Review Noughts & Crosses is a difficult book to review and the reason for that lies largely from the fact that it deals with an incredibly important and sensitive topic - racism. Plot : The bare bones of this plot are not difficult to understand. It's a store about two kids Callum and Sephy that come from two different spheres of society. Callum is a nought, a colourless member of society and Sephy is a cross, a member of the hierarchy black society. As one can guess for themselves from the synopsis, Callum and Sephy fall in love, which in this society is something scandalous, unheard of and up roaring. There are several other issues revolving around in this book such as rebellions and political dramas, but as I said at its core it is a tale about racism and the horrifying consequences that such prejudice within society will spark. If you were to compare Noughts & Crosses to our own history of real life society, it very much parallels the issues of racial segregation and discrimination in America during much of the 20th century. There is however a role reversal that takes place, that being the "whites"(Noughts) are the discriminated race and the "blacks" (Crosses) are the ruling members of society. While I'm sure that this isn't a unique idea and that this role reversal has been seen in text and theatre before, Malorie Blackman's execution and take of the idea is done brilliantly. The Society Because I have the memory of a chipmunk (do chipmunks even have bad memories? idek) or Dory the fish I can't remember if the actual year this book is set in is ever mentioned, but I can hazard a guess to say that it is close to present day (2000s esque). There are telephones, TVs, internet and all the jazz that we modern day kids can't live without, however the backdrop and history of this society is vastly different. In this society racial prejudice is the main pressing issue very similarly to as it was during the 50s/60s time period in our own society. In this book's reality, the government has only just abolished Nought Slavery and only now are a select Nought children being allowed education in Cross schools.I like to think that in current society we have advanced and grown so much since the 20th century in terms of our acceptance and belief of racial equality, but in this book - equality is something completely unheard of. This society is so deep rooted in hatred of the other race and it's seriously gut wrenching to think of the way that it paralleled our own history of violences and disregards of basic human rights. I can see why Malorie Blackman might have been hesitant to write this book and I completely applaud her for doing so because she completely throws the sins of society past and present back in our face. As humans it is part of our nature to avoid the uncomfortable situations and put our mistakes in a tiny box in the back of our minds never to be opened again. To the audience of readers, Malorie Black opens that box, drowns you in it's contents, and finally forces you to face the facts. The Characters Callum and Sephy have been best friends for all their lives. Callum's mother was a valued employee of Sephy's families household and so they grew up together despite the fact that Callum was a Nought and Sephy was Cross. Callum is a few years older than Sephy and so he faces the bleak reality of their situation much quicker than she does. Sephy is like a beacon of hope in this book's society - she never understood why she was expected to hate the Noughts, for how could she after growing up with a friend like Callum? She is the one who throughout the course of the novel is constantly questioning why? Why are things like this and what is stopping us from changing them? Those around her view it as naiveté and stupidity, when in reality it is a testament to her character and desire for change. The Love : I can't even put into words how beautiful the love story between Callum and Sephy is. Like I said it probably isn't the "first" relationship of it's kind, but it just develops so beautifully. They go through so much pain, separation and heartache, but their love for each other is so strong and pure. I have no qualms about the romance in this novel, none. It was just the right amount, never cheesy and never overpowered other elements of the book. Bravo Miss Blackman, bravo. In addition to Callum and Sephy there is a great cast of secondary characters. We honestly get to see from all points of view of society : The Noughts fighting for change against their oppressors as well as the Crosses so firm in their beliefs that they are the harbingers of cruelty against what in their eyes is the "lesser race". The Message I don't want to say in one simple statement that the message of this book is "blah, blah, blah." I don't think that Malorie Blackman wrote such a story with the goal of completely eradicating racism from the minds of readers all around the world or preaching a certain lesson to us. Rather I think what this book does beautifully is act as a reminder of the mistakes that have already happen in the past, and acts as a caution for the future. Acts of violence, malice and hatred have dire, dire consequences as we have seen and unfortunately, unless there is change, will continue to see in the course of our world. As has been said before change can start with a single person, and I think this book again serves as a reminder that we as a collective and as individuals are responsible for our actions and only we have the power to decide how we treat those around us. Final Thoughts I whole heartedly loved this book. The themes and story within it are so powerful and still relevant in today's society, even though we have progressed from the past to now. It is a beautifully written love story and a powerful examination of issues of equality and it is a novel that will not disappear from my heart and my mind for a long, long time. Callum and Sephy's story has forever left it's mark on my heart. I can't recommend this enough and it's something that I think anyone can take something of value from reading. Side Note At the time I had no clue that this book was going to be a series. To be quite honest even though the ending shattered me, I do like the way it wrapped up the story. I'll probably read the rest of the books at some point (just to see if and how the issues within the society go about being resolved), but I wouldn't say that I'm rushing out to get to them this second.
I've tried to write this review a few times, with articulate choice of words, a structure, intelligent observations and supporting facts to back me up. But I found voicing my feelings about this book difficult. So I gave up. And now I'm just gonna wing it.First thing's first - Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses absolutely broke me in all ways a reader can be broken. I was walking around trying to enjoy my time in the ever spectacular show that is Times Square but found my mind retreating back to my hotel room yearning for Callum and Sephy. I sympathized with them at the Met, I cried for them at Central Park and I hoped with them in all the places in between...now I understand why you should only read happy books while on vacation. Serious.This is the story of Callum and Sephy. Callum is white and a nought. Sephy is black and a Cross. Noughts are second-rate citizens. Crosses are the ruling class. There is a very strict, very clear divide between the two groups. But Callum and Sephy are in love and they try to fight against the enduring tide that is race and prejudice. Justice and oppression. What we feel is rightfully ours and what society say is rightfully ours. Self-conviction and the labels that are thrusted upon us. The need to make ourselves heard and the danger of speaking up. But the battles they face are not only of politics but also within themselves. Callum wants to make something of himself. He believes he is capable of more than what the Crosses give him chances for. He's angered and insulted by the Cross government's "attempt" at "integration." He wants equality but struggles to find the right course. He can't join the Liberation Militia because they're brutal and believe that the "end justifies the means", even if victory means leaving devastation and death at its wake. And how does he reconcile all that with the feelings he has for Sephy when she is a member of the people who oppress him? Not only that but her father is instrumental in the mistreatment of his kind. To love Sephy means to to love the source of all his pain, hatred, anger. To Callum, it is like defeat and failure; as if he were giving in to them. He hates himself for loving her. And yet, Sephy isn't like them at all. Sephy sees the injustice and her inner struggle stems from her shame of being a Cross. Her people's inability to see their crime and her desire to fight for Callum's rights becomes a full time job. Unceasingly she persuades correct perspective to Crosses but is brushed off as ignorant. She continually tries to extend her hand to the noughts but is denied when her sympathy is falsely taken for pity and mockery. Callum himself is tired for always being in her debt. There are so many things working against their happiness that there is tension even when they try to help each other.What I really appreciated in this book is that while the concept (of black and white reversed) is not new, Blackman spins a unique twist in her presentation. The novel is based at the present time (I safely assume as there is the internet) but the atmosphere, the feeling in the book, is primitive. When we begin the book, it has been a while since the abolition of slavery so noughts are free but only barely. They still suffer severe discrimination that which surpasses our own time's condition on racism. Noughts are only now being allowed to enter all-Cross educational institutions. There are only a handful of noughts with professions worth boasting about. There are still public executions. And the idea of a nought and a Cross being together is unthinkable. All these events have taken place but our progress has moved along much more gradually than Blackman's fictional society. Its like a really clever history lesson in the guise of a young adult novel.Blackman tore my heart out. I related to Callum's sense of unfairness; how he wanted to do some many things but is never given the opportunity or the resources. I also related to Sephy in how she sometimes felt guilty for being a member of the elite, how she had so much when so many had so little. Contradictory, I know but we're all in the same position. We all want more than what we have but then we turn on the television and see images of death, suffering, corruption, famine. That's why I loved the way Blackman presented her characters. We can side with both. We root for Callum and Sephy as one.Blackman's point on the absurdity of racism is stark and jolting. By reversing the situation of black and white, where white is bad and black is good, Blackman is appealing to our psychological tendencies and unhinges the false principles we are subconsciously conducive to. To watch a black man racially subjugate a white man is more unusual to digest than if it was the other way around. It fights against all that we know. The image of a black man suffering because of his color is accepted because of what history has taught us (and that in itself is heartbreaking). But every time Callum is attacked, it takes a second for us to remember he's white and they're black. And we realize how serious racism is. This is a powerful book. It has powerful writing, powerful characters and a powerful message. It is layered and things like lines and boundaries aren't always clear. Its complicated and complex with confusing emotions and that's exactly how it is in real life. I love it when characters don't always know what to do because most of the time, no one really does. I love it when they're scared, doubtful and frustrated because it makes them real and when they emerge from their darkness, their triumph seems all the more attainable, which in turn inspires and motivates the readers and isn't that what its all really about? To make us better? When you see someone just as ordinary as you achieve something, it feels possible. Better that than a character who is already right off the bat bad-ass and confident. I don't have a problem with overtly strong characters with strong personalities but true strength for me is when someone feels like they can't fight but fights anyway. The thing with this book is that it doesn't necessarily have to do with race at all. It imparts encouragement to fight for what you believe in, to be brave, to do the right thing, to be compassionate, to never judge a person before you know them, to be understanding, to be fair...In the end, I remember putting the book down, thinking (view spoiler)[Callum's dead, Callum's dead, Callum's dead (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Noughts & Crosses (2006)?
You may recall a great deal of outrage several months ago over a horrible-sounding self-published YA novel, Save the Pearls, about a future in which black people (Coals) rule and white people (Pearls) are oppressed, and also must wear blackface in order to protect themselves from the now-deadly sun. (Blackface shown in a truly ill-conceived video promotion on the author’s website.) From what I gather, the black hero grows a tail at some point. And no, I’m not going to review it, not even to mock, except to say that I read the first two chapters free, and they were pretty hilariously bad. It’s self-published, so any attention is good attention. Let it die the death of obscurity.However, it did remind me that the “racism flip” idea had been done before, and not just in slush piles. I wondered how a better writer might handle it. In Noughts and Crosses, a YA novel by a black British author, white Noughts have been oppressed ever since black Crosses colonized the world. Nought Callum has always been best friends with Cross Sephy, the daughter of the wealthy family his mother works for. Though his mother is unjustly fired and the kids are forbidden from associating, they continue to secretly meet, and eventually begin a romance. But their innocence ends when Sephy coaches Callum into passing the tests to get into her Cross school, setting into motion a series of painful reminders of just how separate and unequal their lives really are.The world is a very literal racism flip: everything is the same, except that the social positions of black and white people are reversed. (No other races are ever mentioned.) I would have preferred a real alternate history with cultural changes, but though simplistic, the raceflip does work to drive home its message: magazines only use dark-skinned models. Band-aids only come in brown. The history books never mention any white scientists or explorers or inventors. For most of its length, it’s an anvillicious but fairly well-written problem novel (problem: racism is bad) about the travails of a teenage interracial couple. Their travails do get increasingly melodramatic as the story continues, and hey, it’s obviously retelling Romeo and Juliet, but I was still not expecting the accidentally hilarious swerve into jaw-dropping melodrama that occurs near the end.(view spoiler)[In the final tenth, Callum suddenly becomes a terrorist murderer, helps his gang of terrorist murderers kidnap and beat up Sephy, then repents and has make-up sex with her before letting her go. The sex is as consensual as is possible, under the circumstances. He’s arrested! Sentenced to death! Sephy realizes that she's pregnant!And then - seriously, this is what happens - her racist politician father makes her choose between HER BABY OR HER BOYFRIEND. If she gets an abortion, her father will pull strings and get Callum freed. If she keeps the baby, Callum will die.She chooses the baby and watches Callum hang, shouting, "I LOVE YOU!" (Caps are the author's, not mine.) Then she names the baby after Callum. The end! (hide spoiler)]
—Rachel Brown
SHIT! What can I say? What the hell can I possibly say that could ever be good enough for this miraculous book! I'm at a loss of words and I have no clue where to start. First things first, right?I had a feeling I'd love this book as soon as I started it. And I was right, it turned out to be solely and doubtlessly THE best book I've ever read so far. When I first picked it up and started reading, I thought it was very eye opening.. to people who were oblivious and ignorant. It's so imaginatively
—Fatema Meamari
Reading this, I read about a quarter of it I suppose, I thought say it was written by someone white from the opposite point of view, that is whites are on top and pushing their agenda, and they wrote in this very 'I came top of English and joined a writing circle' kind of way, would we still praise it? Or are we being all white-liberal and this book is kind of helping us say 'mea culpa' and the author is very, very cynically playing on that? And I know it's all about we can overcome prejudice and just share the love together, but to me that is not the underlying agenda of the book at all. That's just the hook...You may have a totally different opinion and disagree with every word I have written above. I respect that, and am happy for discussions. You might even change my mind. But, don't troll me...The rest of this is about me, you might not want to bother reading it.(view spoiler)[On the island I live on, when I arrived there were about 6,000 people, not poor, nice place to live, very difficult to get to and everyone said 'hello' when you passed them on the street. It became very wealthy quite quickly and the government gave many scholarships for the bright young things who wanted to go to historically-black African-American universities in the US. Some of them were staff working before college, and they were a lovely bunch.When they got back they would come and see me from time-to-time. Mo had become a Black Muslim. He invited me to a poetry reading and said that if I heard anything against whites I shouldn't take it on, it wasn't directed at me. Maie came back and started a political party for youth representation, grew her locks and wrote in the paper about how whites need re-educating. I had tea with a friend, a UN official, and later another one of these kids passing our table, now a journalist, said to her, "I know you have to do business with them but you don't have to socialise with them to." (My friend who didn't feel like that told me). And so it goes.They were the new intelligensia, angry young blacks carrying a chip on their shoulder of all the ills that African-American society has to deal with in America. What they had forgotten was that the black man is king in his own country, and the island government was entirely black, and doing very well. They are older now. They are running the colleges, the schools, the newspapers, some are aiming for politics (not quite old enough), and they are nice to your face whilst maintaining their pernicious attitudes. They teach a form of history that is fake, they worship some of the most evil people looking only to see what their attitudes are towards white people. But always very pleasant to your face. They have me caused a lot of harm whether educationally with my kids , or giving book contracts for schools to a furniture supplier rather than to the white woman and her bookshop. So I know where this book is coming from.Do I say that Black racism is here and all the whites are innocent victims? Somewhat, nobody white has any power really. But there is plenty of white racism, very covert, it is not our society, but it exists and is often social. You don't get invited places, neither do your children. Some of them won't patronise a 'traitor's' business (mine) and speak disparagingly of you. They have caused me a lot of harm what with no contracts from their schools, social isolation for my kids and talking trash to me (those who don't know me) about blacks in general. They say things like 'when we all leave this place is going to be like Haiti again'. (It never was, it was never poor).I do see both sides. My ex is black, from a top political family. Two of my sons are black, one has locks, he's lovely and loud and very protective of me. Although I am their stepmother (for most of their lives) when people say as they still do, 'she ca'an be yu mudder, she a white woman', they will immediately say I am and none of us will say 'step', just mother, just sons.My youngest son turned out white, more or less, and as long as the whites in school didn't mix with the blacks he was invited everywhere. But then came the funeral of a Prime Minister, a brother in law and everyone knew it was my family, and the invitations stopped from most of them. At 8 my son's hair went kinky and light brown (rather than blonde). He was blamed for everything and thrown out of the white school. The black tutor I employed charged me 5 times as much as he did locals.I really know it from both sides. And I know where the author is coming from and I am disgusted. (hide spoiler)]
—Petra X
