A book charting the lives of two children as they reach young adulthood, Callum and Sephy. They live in a racially segregated society echoing American society in the early to mid 1900s, however the power is switched; black people govern the country and white people are subject to discrimination. The book substitutes the known racial and racist terms with ‘noughts’ and ‘crosses’ to define white and black people respectively.
The novel draws heavily on the civil rights movement, and explores the tension between peaceful and violent protest, there are references to social figures named ‘Alex Luther’ and ‘the General’, symbolic of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Other scenes, such as the first noughts attending the cross school are reminiscent of the the likes of Governer Ross Barnett. Though the novel is more than civil rights allegory; Blackman moves the action to the new millennium and the era of global terrorism.
The theme of young, and forbidden love is also strong, and there are several allusions to Romeo and Juliet, including a letter that arrives too late.
Blackman’s exploration of familiar themes with a twist to the balance of power isn’t simply a case of trying to draw empathy from the reader. The novel is concerned with human frailty, ‘people are people. We’ll always find a way to mess up’. The success of the novel lies in the shape of the characters, they are not simply black and white, Blackman shows that were prejudice exists, so does misunderstanding and hate, for both the oppressors and oppressed, nowhere is this clear than in the transformations of the idealistic young characters and their story arcs and character development.
PGCE thoughts & things 