OKOYE TO THE PEOPLE

In the latest Black Panther novel, Zoboi takes the reader to the U.S. with the Dora Milaje.

Okoye, a Dora Milaje warrior and protector of Wakandan King T’Chaka, goes on a special diplomatic and humanitarian assignment, accompanying the king and Capt. Aneka to New York. King T’Chaka is invited as a guest of Stella Adams, a wealthy, powerful real estate mogul and leader of an organization called No Nation Left Behind. Though ostensibly friendly, Adams seems sinister, raising Okoye’s alarm bells. Later Okoye meets councilwoman Lucinda Tate, who represents Brownsville, a district of Brooklyn whose population is primarily poor people of color. Tate warns her about Adams and invites King T’Chaka to the opening of the Brownsville community center. Infested with a drug called PyroBliss that is imported by Adams and NNLB, the Brownsville community is under constant assault after users take the drug and set fires that burn the community down, and gentrification pushes residents out. Okoye makes it her personal mission to help the young people in Brownsville rid their community of PyroBliss—and Adams. Multiple social problems plaguing Black and urban spaces are consolidated into this one blond villainess. Rather than being an action-packed superhero story, this novel explores problems rooted in inequities in race, power, and economics and forces readers to confront real and complex social constructs in a semi-imagined world.

Thoughtfully takes on issues facing real Black communities.