The Ephemera Collector

DEBUT This distinctive futurist novel tells the story of Xandria Anastasia Brown, curator of African American Ephemera at the Huntington Museum in Pasadena, CA, in 2035. Readers meet her in a moment of crisis, in a confused state, suffering from memory lapses and ill health brought about by environment and heredity while battling to escape from a lockdown at the Huntington. As the victim of a life-extension experiment she didn’t consent to, Xandria lives for many centuries. Jackson’s novel is formatted as a collection of research, illustrating Xandria’s history and context within a well-imagined future. The themes of resistance against racism and race-based climate and health inequality in California are well developed as backdrops for understanding Xandria’s experiences. In the swath of the near future that Jackson presents, readers are shown the effects of a climate crisis as well as human ingenuity in learning to live under the sea as an alternative to space colonization.