Book Review: The Black Queen by Jumata Emill

Lovett High School is allegedly racially integrated, but everyone knows the reason all the white kids are in the Advanced Placement curriculum while most of the Black kids are in the standard curriculum has little to do with academic achievement. In an attempt to paper over this de facto segregation, the administration decides to alternate the selection of the much coveted position of Homecoming Queen from either standard or AP curriculum students. Pretty, popular Nova Albright seems like a shoo-in for the title, to the chagrin of Tinsley McArthur, who feels duty-bound to continue in the tradition of her grandmother, mother, and sister—all former Lovett High Homecoming Queens. Tinsley isn’t above attempting intimidation, blackmail and even bribery to get Nova to step aside. 

Nova refuses to back down, so Tinsley spends Homecoming getting wasted on the beach instead of celebrating at the school. After getting into a fight with some of her supposed friends, Tinsley drives drunkenly home. The next morning, she’s just as shocked as anyone to learn that Nova has been murdered. Worse, someone surreptitiously recorded and posted to social media a video of her wildly threatening to kill Nova the night before, in a manner eerily reminiscent of how the newly dead Homecoming Queen was found the very next day.

Tinsley knows she’s a terrible person, but she would never actually kill someone over a high school title. The court of public opinion, however, has other ideas, as her one-time hangers-on abandon her left and right:

Whatever I say, whatever I do, these assholes are going to make me the villain. And why not? It’s not like I got popular being America’s sweetheart, like my sister. I’ve always known my social status was forged by money and fear. It was never threatened, because I knew how to leverage other people’s secrets and insecurities. Something my mother taught me how to do.

 

For the first time, other people at this school have the power to take away everything I’ve built my identity on.

Tinsley didn’t claw her way to the top by not believing in herself though. If no one else is going to look into who killed Nova, then she’s going to have to figure it out by herself. In this she finds an unlikely ally: Duchess Simmons, Nova’s best friend. Duchess hates Tinsley’s guts for a variety of reasons, but her love for Nova and her desire for justice supersede all. Everyone else is happy to pin the blame on Tinsley, but Duchess can’t ignore the fact that there’s no evidence, or the fact that Tinsley is awfully busy throwing herself into the police investigation, something guilty suspects don’t ordinarily do. As the two girls reluctantly join forces, they begin to uncover the awful secrets hidden behind both Nova’s and Lovett’s tranquil exteriors. Will they be able to bring Nova’s killer to justice, or will more people have to die before the truth will be revealed?

Jumata Emill’s debut novel is a masterful allegory of race relations in the United States. Told from the points of view of both Tinsley and Duchess, it’s unsparing in its examination of how systemic racism corrodes people’s characters, and how people on both sides of the divide must fight harder than necessary to uphold what’s right. Duchess, especially, has to contend with the dilemma of believing in her father and his work as one of Lovett’s first Black police officers—a Captain, no less—despite her frustration with the way police justice is unfairly applied based on race. It doesn’t help that her classmates and even her girlfriend Evelyn aren’t shy about condemning police failures:

“When is the justice system going to work for us? When are the boys in blue gonna stop incarcerating and killing us and do better jobs trying to protect us?”

 

My heart twists into a knot.

 

My father is one of the “boys” she’s talking about. Even though she didn’t name him specifically, what she said cuts. Not because I’m offended; I agree, but have been conditioned to never say it to anyone. Not when Pops is one of the only Black police officers on the force. He’s in a supervisory position he’s afraid of losing for any slight infraction–which includes anything I might publicly say or do.

Even as it thoroughly explores modern issues of racism in the US, The Black Queen is a non-stop thrill ride that feels TV-series ready, like a Veronica Mars for the 2020s, with a Black sleuth overcoming her own prejudices to help an awful but innocent white girl find out who’s willing to let the latter take the fall for killing their classmate. The ending felt realistically messy, as I rooted for the girls to show up for each other in their ongoing quest for the truth. Mr Emill has hinted at sequels featuring both of our heroines, and I cannot wait to read those books, too.