The Confession of Copeland Cane

Starred review from April 26, 2021
Norris (Brother and the Dancer) delivers a powerful treatise on the double consciousness of a young Black man in this dystopian look at police oppression and surveillance in the 2030s. Coming of age in East Oakland amid racial terror in the form of televised police brutality and the “Ghetto Flu” (alternately defined as a deadly flu similar to Covid-19 and the myriad challenges faced “due to living in the hood”) 18-year-old Cope Cane becomes a fugitive after his role in a protest that turned violent. Beloved by his swap meet queen mother and unemployed father, Cope, who previously landed a private school scholarship, now chronicles his transformation into a societal threat to freshman journalism student Jacqueline. In alternate chapters, Cope and Jacqueline unpack the complexities of miseducation, poverty, and policing, and give a nightmarish view of media-security empire Soclear Broadcasting. Cope’s persuasive and irresistible “confession” to Jacqueline emerges in nonsequential strands, circling around the crime he’s suspected of having committed while outlining the economic, legal, and social disparities faced by a dark-complected person in a politically divided country ravaged by a global pandemic. In Cope, Norris has created a voice that cannot be ignored.

June 1, 2021
Norris follows his debut coming-of-age novel, Brother and the Dancer (2013), with a story of a fugitive teenage boy in the form of his written testimony. Set in East Oakland, California, a decade in the future, this tale feels like it's plucked from real-life events with depictions of the lingering COVID pandemic and protests against police brutality. It begins with a correspondence between Copeland and his friend, Jacqueline, about how his delinquency started and why he has disappeared. He recounts, in street vernacular, a spate of brash decisions and bad timing that gets him shuffled between detention centers due to arson, his participation in a prison riot, and, eventually, the act that sparks a manhunt for him. Interspersed throughout Copeland's confession, in the form of scattered footnotes, is running commentary on his transgressions and inflammatory news alerts from a right-wing media and national security presence called SoClear. Readers will appreciate the provocative story and Norris' trenchant insights into the corruption of the press and government and the many ways African Americans and other minorities bear the brunt of racial injustice in America.

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