Chocolate Chip City
Be Steadwell’s novel Chocolate Chip City is about gentrification and protest. It is also a hymn to Black love, Black queerness, and Black spirit that pulses with the joy of existence.
The Jones sisters—Ella, Jasmine, and Layla—inherited their mother Ro’s lessons: The world’s gaze does not dictate beauty, and magic isn’t supernatural but rather deeply empathetic and human. Their power comes not from fantasy but from their sisterly bond and their ability to heal, connect, and resist. They claim their bodies—short, thick, dark, and androgynous—without apology, knowing beauty is not a standard but a birthright.
Ella, a bodyworker, mends wounds with her touch, sensing pain buried beneath skin and bone. Layla, an activist, moves through the city like a conduit, drawing strength from the living and the dead. Jasmine, a baker, pours love into her food, each recipe a balm and an act of restoration. Ro, diagnosed with cancer, treats dying like a passage and an opportunity to heal generational wounds. Through her, the book sings of traditions that expand religious practices, wherein faith means embracing one’s ancestors, the elements, and timeless rhythms.
Layla’s fight against a luxury development spirals into a trip through the historical Black Broadway of Washington, DC, a once-thriving arts and business hub. Jasmine’s love story revels in queer desire, with spiritual sex scenes shifting from tender to raw and embodying connection. Jasmine’s story is also about celebrating addiction recovery and multiple gender identities. And the novel’s elders dance, joke, and live, twirling through the pages with elegance and mischief.
A vibrant, defiant tapestry of Black life in all its magic, Chocolate Chip City is a triumphant novel—a love letter to the past, present, and future.
Reviewed by
pine breaks
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