Category 9: A book of colonial or postcolonial literature
Brown Girl in the Ring
Author: Nalo Hopkinson
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: July 1 1998 (first published January 1 1998)
Page count: 250
Genres: dystopian, mythology
Page count: 250
Genres: dystopian, mythology
Date read: December 4, 2018
Number of times read: 1
Format: paperbackSource: Laurier Library
Summary
"She's a powerful writer with an imagination that most of us would kill for. I have read everything she has written and am in awe of her many gifts. And her protagonists are unforgettable--formidable haunted women drawn with an almost unbearable honesty." --Junot Diaz
BROWN GIRL IN THE RING
The rich and privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways--farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother.
She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends. -- via Goodreads
"She's a powerful writer with an imagination that most of us would kill for. I have read everything she has written and am in awe of her many gifts. And her protagonists are unforgettable--formidable haunted women drawn with an almost unbearable honesty." --Junot Diaz
BROWN GIRL IN THE RING
The rich and privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways--farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother.
She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends. -- via Goodreads
Review
For most of the year, I was having a really hard time with this category. You may remember my tirade from the other day where I railed against 'classic' literature. I'm not particularly fond of the colonial or post-colonial periods of writing. So for a good chunk of the year I had Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes down as my pick as a post-colonial book. But I really wasn't psyched about it and could never bring myself to actually pick it up. Then in November, I was determined to find a way to finish the Read Harder Challenge, so I went to the discussion group on Goodreads to look for suggestions and someone had asked whether or not Octavia E. Butler's stuff could be considered post-colonial. Which led into a bit of a discussion about Afrofuturism. Some of the people in the Book Riot group felt that Afrofuturism is post-colonial and some didn't. So I did some research because I've had Brown Girl in the Ring on my shelf for ages waiting for me to get to it, I found one review where the reviewer wrote that Hopkinson's work in Brown Girl is a "post-colonial redemption story." Well, that was good enough for me, so I selected it for my challenge.
I did a little more research while I was reading the book, I got The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction out from work so that I could read De Witt Douglas Kilgore's essay on Afrofuturism. And it revealed a couple of more things about the relationship between Afrofuturism and post-colonialism. Hopkinson herself is quoted in the article as pointing out that the reason she included both black and white authors in her anthology Mojo : Conjure Stories is because by including both she could curate a dialogue with white people about the effects of colonialism. (Kilgore, 564) Kilgore goes on to discuss the Afofrutirst works that came out of the anticolonial and Civil Rights movements (Kilgore, 565) which I think also classifies Afrofuturism as firmly being postcolonial. Kodwo Eshun really hammers that point home when he writes that Afrofuturism is a process of continual renewal that involves shedding the sticky past of colonialism and slavery. (Kilgore, 567) The final overt reference in the essay to Afrofuturism being postcolonial comes from Hopkinson again and her co-editor of the anthology So Long Been Dreaming. Mehan the co-Editor stated that post-colonial futures are a necessity that allows the descendants of racial and colonial oppression to see "how life might be otherwise"; this in direct response to Hopkinson's statement that Science fiction makes it possible to think about new ways of doing things that demolish racial hierarchies and use languages and cultural references other than English and those from the European tradition. (Kilgore, 570)
How that I've written my own mini-essay about why I chose this book, let's get into my actual review of the book. One of the first things that struck me is that this is so very similar to Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale not in content or style or anything like that. In terms of how prophetic they both are in a very scary way. It's been pointed out by a lot of people, and it was something eerie I noticed in my reading too, Atwood's Gilead seems closer than ever in the US. Well, this book is scarily similar in regards to Toronto. Hopkinson wrote this in 1998 well ahead of anyone even thinking they would have to worry about Doug Ford being the Premier of Ontario. But here we are, and here he is cutting the city of Toronto's city council in half so that they're completely underpresented. This is poignant because in Brown Girl in the Ring we're in a dystopian Toronto, but ONLY Toronto, which has been abandoned by the Government and left to its out devices as people and companies fled outward from the core and into the surrounding boroughs (incidentally, it's in the boroughs of Toronto that I grew up.).
This leaves a vacuum of power in the core that is quickly filled by a posse. People in the core are left to fend for themselves with whatever they can find and whatever wits they have. Our protagonist Ti-Jeanne and her grandmother have made themselves a homestead on Riverdale Farm (a popular school trip excursion for Toronto school children) where Mami Gros-Jeanne has gone back to her Caribbean roots to eke them out a living. She uses her herbal medicine knowledge to heal people and barter for goods that she and Ti-Jeanne need. I was really impressed with that aspect of the story and the way that culture played into it. Growing up in Toronto I was always fascinated by Caribbana but never really actually knew much about it or about the culture it was tied to.
I also am not very familiar at all with Afro-Caribbean mythology, this book was really one of my first exposures to a proper look at the topic. I've of course seen voodoo misrepresented in other media over the years. Who could forget Baron Samedi showing up in the first Roger Moore James Bond film? This was a really well-done representation of the religion though and it made for an incredibly page-turning story. I sailed through it because I just had to know what was going to happen and how. This is another story that I've read recently which changes up the chosen one trope in a way. Ti-Jeanne is a single mum who worries about whether or not she actually loves her baby. She's been having disturbing dreams. She keeps finding herself drawn bay to Baby's father Tony which gets her inadvertently mixed up with what he's gotten himself mixed up in. Tony, a former nurse when the city was still a city, has gotten himself mixed up in a human organ trafficking operation with the Posse. The Premier of Ontario needs a heart and she wants it to be a human heart instead of a pig heart to win herself some votes. So she hires the Posse to find her a "donor" in Toronto, and the Posse puts Tony on the job.
It's a really interesting story, filled with really interesting characters and I love the way that Hopkinson so seamlessly wove the magic of the Afro-Caribbean religion into the story. I'll be seeking out more of her work in the future for sure.
If you're interested in a dystopia that uses Afro-Caribbean mythology, this novel is for you. If you're curious about learning more about Afrofuturism in the wake of Black Panther I highly recommend this book. It's a fantastic example of Canadian content.
For most of the year, I was having a really hard time with this category. You may remember my tirade from the other day where I railed against 'classic' literature. I'm not particularly fond of the colonial or post-colonial periods of writing. So for a good chunk of the year I had Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes down as my pick as a post-colonial book. But I really wasn't psyched about it and could never bring myself to actually pick it up. Then in November, I was determined to find a way to finish the Read Harder Challenge, so I went to the discussion group on Goodreads to look for suggestions and someone had asked whether or not Octavia E. Butler's stuff could be considered post-colonial. Which led into a bit of a discussion about Afrofuturism. Some of the people in the Book Riot group felt that Afrofuturism is post-colonial and some didn't. So I did some research because I've had Brown Girl in the Ring on my shelf for ages waiting for me to get to it, I found one review where the reviewer wrote that Hopkinson's work in Brown Girl is a "post-colonial redemption story." Well, that was good enough for me, so I selected it for my challenge.
I did a little more research while I was reading the book, I got The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction out from work so that I could read De Witt Douglas Kilgore's essay on Afrofuturism. And it revealed a couple of more things about the relationship between Afrofuturism and post-colonialism. Hopkinson herself is quoted in the article as pointing out that the reason she included both black and white authors in her anthology Mojo : Conjure Stories is because by including both she could curate a dialogue with white people about the effects of colonialism. (Kilgore, 564) Kilgore goes on to discuss the Afofrutirst works that came out of the anticolonial and Civil Rights movements (Kilgore, 565) which I think also classifies Afrofuturism as firmly being postcolonial. Kodwo Eshun really hammers that point home when he writes that Afrofuturism is a process of continual renewal that involves shedding the sticky past of colonialism and slavery. (Kilgore, 567) The final overt reference in the essay to Afrofuturism being postcolonial comes from Hopkinson again and her co-editor of the anthology So Long Been Dreaming. Mehan the co-Editor stated that post-colonial futures are a necessity that allows the descendants of racial and colonial oppression to see "how life might be otherwise"; this in direct response to Hopkinson's statement that Science fiction makes it possible to think about new ways of doing things that demolish racial hierarchies and use languages and cultural references other than English and those from the European tradition. (Kilgore, 570)
How that I've written my own mini-essay about why I chose this book, let's get into my actual review of the book. One of the first things that struck me is that this is so very similar to Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale not in content or style or anything like that. In terms of how prophetic they both are in a very scary way. It's been pointed out by a lot of people, and it was something eerie I noticed in my reading too, Atwood's Gilead seems closer than ever in the US. Well, this book is scarily similar in regards to Toronto. Hopkinson wrote this in 1998 well ahead of anyone even thinking they would have to worry about Doug Ford being the Premier of Ontario. But here we are, and here he is cutting the city of Toronto's city council in half so that they're completely underpresented. This is poignant because in Brown Girl in the Ring we're in a dystopian Toronto, but ONLY Toronto, which has been abandoned by the Government and left to its out devices as people and companies fled outward from the core and into the surrounding boroughs (incidentally, it's in the boroughs of Toronto that I grew up.).
This leaves a vacuum of power in the core that is quickly filled by a posse. People in the core are left to fend for themselves with whatever they can find and whatever wits they have. Our protagonist Ti-Jeanne and her grandmother have made themselves a homestead on Riverdale Farm (a popular school trip excursion for Toronto school children) where Mami Gros-Jeanne has gone back to her Caribbean roots to eke them out a living. She uses her herbal medicine knowledge to heal people and barter for goods that she and Ti-Jeanne need. I was really impressed with that aspect of the story and the way that culture played into it. Growing up in Toronto I was always fascinated by Caribbana but never really actually knew much about it or about the culture it was tied to.
I also am not very familiar at all with Afro-Caribbean mythology, this book was really one of my first exposures to a proper look at the topic. I've of course seen voodoo misrepresented in other media over the years. Who could forget Baron Samedi showing up in the first Roger Moore James Bond film? This was a really well-done representation of the religion though and it made for an incredibly page-turning story. I sailed through it because I just had to know what was going to happen and how. This is another story that I've read recently which changes up the chosen one trope in a way. Ti-Jeanne is a single mum who worries about whether or not she actually loves her baby. She's been having disturbing dreams. She keeps finding herself drawn bay to Baby's father Tony which gets her inadvertently mixed up with what he's gotten himself mixed up in. Tony, a former nurse when the city was still a city, has gotten himself mixed up in a human organ trafficking operation with the Posse. The Premier of Ontario needs a heart and she wants it to be a human heart instead of a pig heart to win herself some votes. So she hires the Posse to find her a "donor" in Toronto, and the Posse puts Tony on the job.
It's a really interesting story, filled with really interesting characters and I love the way that Hopkinson so seamlessly wove the magic of the Afro-Caribbean religion into the story. I'll be seeking out more of her work in the future for sure.
If you're interested in a dystopia that uses Afro-Caribbean mythology, this novel is for you. If you're curious about learning more about Afrofuturism in the wake of Black Panther I highly recommend this book. It's a fantastic example of Canadian content.
Overall Rating
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| 5 bolts! |
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