see my review on Reading Rumpus ( )

A poignant, realistic story with supernatural elements set in an AIDS-ravaged South Africa shantytown. A beautifully written, honest, engrossing story that provides a window into a fascinating world. ( )

This Thing Called the Future by J.L. Powers is a powerful and moving coming-of-age story about Khosi, a fourteen-year-old girl living in a modern South African shantytown. It seems like someone is dying all the time, and billboards hang everywhere, warning people about AIDS. Many people believe that it is a curse. As a young adolescent, Khosi finds herself attracting unwanted attention by men interested in her body, especially one particular drunk who seems to have taken an unpleasant interest in her. There is also the witch on the hill who claims that she’ll come for Khosi one day.
Khosi is just like any other teenage girl. She only wants to find the right guy, someone her age—someone like Little Man Ncobo who seems to be developing a mutual interest in her. She wants to get an education, but her wishes don’t seem possible considering how poor her family is. Then her family’s next-door neighbor claims that Khosi’s mama stole from her, and Khosi’s mama comes home sick one day.

I love how J.L. Powers tackles the issue of the reconciliation of traditional belief with modern ideals. Khosi is caught between Gogo (her grandmother), who believes in both God and the traditional ways, and Mama, who believes in God and science. She loves her biology class, but she always believes in her ancestors. There’s also Little Man, who doesn’t know how to feel about Khosi’s supernatural beliefs.

Powers brings Khosi’s character to life through her desires to protect her family and to be accepted along with her beliefs in God, science, and her people’s traditions. At the same time, Khosi begins receiving dreams from her ancestors that her about danger coming to the family, and she must learn to wield the powers of her ancestors and herself in order to stand up for herself and her family. So she can be the person who she wants to be: strong and independent, like her mama.

This Thing Called the Future is a story filled with culture that teaches you to appreciate family, love, and faith. You learn that not everything is what it seems to be and that your strongest support will always come from your family, both dead and living, and that you must believe in your own powers. Even with her family and Little Man to back her, Khosi must learn to trust in herself and strengthen her heart as she decides whether or not she possesses the power not only to forget her anger and forgive both the living and the dead. ( )