Black Cherokee a Good Debut, But Leaves Too Much Unexamined

 

 

 

 

Black Cherokee (Releasing August 3, 2025)

By Antonio Michael Downing

Simon and Schuster, 272 pages.

★★★

 

Is there an American conundrum any more vexing than race? Black Cherokee shows just how complicated it is. It is easy to say that race is a matter of self-identity, but that’s too pat. Do we define it by physical characteristics? Nope. That won’t work either. Is it a status conferred by others? To some degree it is, though Mark Twain demonstrated its overall artificiality in his 1894 novel Pudd’nhead Wilson. Is it cultural? Maybe, but which culture does the labeling?

 

The central dilemma in the debut novel of Antonio Michael Downing is embedded in its title. Historians have known for quite some time that some Native Americans owned Black slaves. Perhaps you associate the Cherokee with the Trail of Tears. That’s right, but only to a point. The Cherokee were once primarily a “Western” tribe, but in the early days of the American Republic that meant the highlands of the Appalachians and beyond. Yet, shortly after the United States became independent, many Cherokee had begun a transformation into one of the so-called “Five Civilized Nations.” Many had converted to Christianity, developed a written language, embraced a settled agricultural life, and had a central government. In the South, another marker of being “civilized” was acceptance of slavery. About 60,000 Cherokee were sent to the future Oklahoma as a result of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, but quite a few managed to stay and even fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War. There was an added level of tragedy in that before the American Revolution, Natives gave refuge to enslaved peoples who escaped bondage. They were the so-called Black Cherokee, as were those freed before and after the war who settled among Native Americans.

 

Downing’s fictionalized account of this begins in 1992, when his protagonist, Ophelia Blue Rivers is six years old. She is an orphan being raised by her activist grandmother Blue who has been fighting a local corporation polluting Etsi, South Carolina, for quite some time. Ophelia sees herself as Cherokee, has played with Cherokee children, and is largely ignorant of her Black heritage except when others insist she’s not Cherokee. As she grows older, more and more Natives insist that she’s “Black” and mean it in a disparaging way. Part of the reason is that Etsi is in crisis; it has been deregistered as a reservation which, among other things, alters the region’s economic base. Ophelia is rejected though Blue is acknowledged as a Black Cherokee Freedman because she was married to Etsi’s last chief.

 

This coming-of-age tale of sadness, defiance, place, poverty, and identity takes Ophelia to unexpected places, beginning with her move to be with her flamboyant and assertive Aunt Oba. She’s something of an enigmatic character who on one hand helps Ophelia embrace her Blackness, though it’s not entirely clear if this is out of pride, or simply that she doesn’t care what people think.

 

Ophelia is brighter than most of the other kids in her mostly White schools, but there’s nothing like high school to make you uncertain of who you are or what you want to be. Sizeism plays a part in the novel, as does Downing’s dig at Southern piety. Ophelia immerses herself in an evangelical youth group led by a charismatic (in both senses of the word) minister. Suffice it to say that the church and minister are filled more with raging hormones and hypocrisy than with the Holy Spirit. Later she will meet a free-spirited White boy who tells her that she is beautiful. They have a torrid affair and he seems akin to a grunge devotee crossed with a 70s throwback hippie. Or is he just slumming it? Does he care about Ophelia or just want easy sex?

 

The book comes around full circle and returns to Grandmother Blue. In many ways, she’s the most interesting character in the novel. She is certainly the most self-actualized. Ophelia’s encounters with White culture disappoint because it’s too easy to see what Ophelia does not and Downing plays too close to formula. Nonetheless, Blue and Ophelia are both well-developed and likable. I wonder if the book’s cultural issues could have been equally well-developed had Downing written a slightly longer book.

 

It's a very good debut, though, and I anticipate hearing more in the future from Downing. Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for an advance copy of this book.

 

Rob Weir