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Women in Horror Month: Of One Blood: The Hidden Self by Pauline Hopkins, edited by Eric J. Guignard and Leslie Klinger, introduction by Nisi Shawl

cover art of Of One Blood: The Hidden Self by Pauline Hopkins

Of One Blood: The Hidden Self  (Haunted Library Horror Classics) by Pauline Hopkins, edited by Eric J. Guignard and Leslie S. Klinger, introduction by Nisi Shawl

Poisoned Pen Press, 2021

ISBN-13 : 978-1464215063

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

This new edition of Of One Blood is part of a series published by Poisoned Pen Press in partnership with the Horror Writers of America.  Author Pauline Hopkins was an African-American writer of the early 20th century,  and Nisi Shawl introduces the book, originally published in chapters as a serial in The Colored American magazine during 1902-1903, as an early speculative fiction novel combining the popular genre of “society novels” with a “lost world” narrative. revolutionary because the “lost world” is an advanced society consisting entirely of Black individuals, and promoting the thesis, novel at the time, that Africa is where the arts and technology have their origins.

Set in Boston in 1891 (my best guess based on the footnotes), Reuel Briggs is an impoverished medical student passing as white who is obsessed with the hidden forces of the supernatural and how to control them enough to reanimate the recently dead (shades of Victor Frankenstein). He is given the opportunity to put his theories into practice when the beautiful African-American singer Dianthe Lusk is killed in a car accident. While he is successful at bringing her back to life, she has lost her memory, and Reuel, his wealthy friend Aubrey, and Aubrey’s fiance Molly, set out to rebuild her into a new person. Molly becomes close friends with Dianthe, and Dianthe and Reuel fall in love and marry. To support her, he appeals to Aubrey for help in finding work. Aubrey, secretly in love with Dianthe, gets Reuel to sign on to a two year expedition to Africa to get him out of the way so he can marry Dianthe himself.

As Reuel journeys through Africa he sees its greatness, vividly described by Hopkins. The white men he is traveling with are surprised and at first dismayed to realize that African civilizations and peoples are the cradle of culture, as they have always believed that Africans were lesser than white people. Through Aubrey’s machinations, Reuel and Dianthe receive letters informing them that the other is dead, but while Reuel’s supernatural and mystical powers grow,  Dianthe feels more and more lost and traumatized, especially as she learns more about her tangled family tree.

There are many books now that deal with the intergenerational trauma, tangled family trees, and family separation caused by slavery, including Octavia Butler’s speculative novel Kindred,  Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, and Maisy Card’s These Ghosts Are Family.  In Of One Blood, we see a fantastical, awe-inspiring world, that contrasts the glories of African civilization rising again with the results of  the terrible treatment, taken for granted, of African-Americans. Dianthe in particular goes through unbelievable trauma: she is killed, re-animated, separated from everything she knows, nearly drowned, grieving a friend and a husband, and under tremendous pressure from Aubrey already, when the additional information about her family comes to light. In her case, it only takes one generation to destabilize her and poison her interactions with her environment. Shawl described this novel as science fiction, but to me it seems more to combine the “lost world”  utopian narrative Reuel experiences in Africa with the Gothic horror experienced by Dianthe.

Occasional footnotes are helpful in dating the time period of the book and understanding vocabulary and literary references. A brief but detailed biographical note about the author,  discussion questions, and a wide-ranging list of recommended further reading follow the story.

This is a good choice for readers interested in the beginnings of Afrofuturism and African-American speculative fiction and horror, Gothic horror, lost world and utopian narratives, and early 20th century African-American and women writers. In addition, Of One Blood would be a unique choice for the increasing number of book clubs focusing on anti-racist titles, which, in my experience, generally avoid genre fiction. Highly recommended.

Contains: incest

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

 

 

 

Posted on February 15, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

cover art for The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin   (   Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com  )

Orbit, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0316509848

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

 

The City We Became is the first book in a trilogy based on a short story by N.K. Jemisin titled “The City Born Great”, which focused on a young homeless Black man who becomes the avatar for New York City as it literally comes alive, and successfully battles a cosmic attack aimed at killing the city at great expense to himself.

The book begins after the events of the story, and if you haven’t read the story the beginning may be a little disorienting. The exhausted avatar of New York City, who sustained significant damage to himself, is hidden away and sleeping. It turns out that one person is not enough to sustain the life of an entire city. The five boroughs of New York, each with a distinct character, each have an avatar come alive that can defend their borough, and when they come together, they will be able to find and wake the avatar for New York City with their combined strength. They just have to find each other, choose to take on the responsibility of being their city as well as themselves, and overcome the “Woman in White,” a powerful representative from a cosmic force in an alternate reality. With one exception they are a colorful, multiracial, and argumentative group, but when push comes to shove, they are all New Yorkers who stand together. Manhattan is a younger, gay man who developed amnesia when he entered the city, but who obviously had a background steeped in violence.  He has come to New York to work on a graduate degree in political science. Brooklyn is an older Black woman who was a rap artist in the early years of rap music but is now a mother and member of the city council. The Bronx is a no-nonsense part-Lenape feminist lesbian professor of fine arts who directs a nonprofit arts center for marginalized artists and members of the community. Queens is an undocumented Indian student with a gift for math who is interning on Wall Street in hopes of gaining a path to citizenship.

But Staten Island stands back from the rest of the city. She is a young white woman living in a conventional family with a father who is an abusive, xenophobic, racist cop and a mother who is a passive alcoholic housewife. She barely qualifies to work at the library, and has been cautioned about the awful people in the city and the terrible things that could happen to her there.  When someone encourages her to read Lovecraft, his work confirms for her what “those people” are like (anyone who has ever said “it’s just fiction, not life” please take note). Despite the awful things that have happened to her within the walls of her own home (ranging from smashed self-esteen to attempted rape), she is more concerned with keeping others out than escaping it herself. As a white woman, it was heartbreaking for me to see her ignorance and obvious complicity with not just human but cosmic evil. I’m not familiar with Staten Island, but I really hope the portrayal here is not totally congruent with reality,

In The City We Became, extradimensional evil has grown more complex: better at planning in a way that, when cities begin to come alive, groundwork to kill it is already in place. The art gallery is attacked online by alt-right “artists” funded by a clearly sinister foundation led by the “Woman in White”, resulting in the staff getting doxxed and recieving death threats, and the building nearly burned down (this part of the book is terrifying). Brooklyn and her family are evicted from property they own outright by the same foundation, in the name of gentrification. Every chain store that replaced a community institution and changed the character of the boroughs and the city is killing it. Will Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens be able to revive the avatar of New York and save the city without the help of Staten Island, or will the city die, to be replaced with something more sinister and destructive?

While The City We Became touched on a lot of important issues (gentrification being a big one) it is also a love letter to New York City and its boroughs. Seeing the people Jemisin imagined as being these cities brought a new vividness into the way I think about the city and I loved meeting her main characters. I do feel like this book left a lot of loose ends. Who is Manhattan, really? Will we see more of his roommate? Where will the homeless avatar for New York go next? What finally happens to Staten Island? How do things change for the avatars when they go back to their daily lives? This is the first book in a trilogy, so I hope we’ll find out shortly.  Recommended.

 

Contains: attempted rape, domestic abuse, violence, racism, body horror, tentacles

 

Posted on September 29, 2020 by , Reply

Book List: Black Authors of Speculative Fiction

This is not so much a book list as a list that will lead you to books.

 

I like to browse at the library (a pastime, unfortunately, that is on hold for the time being) and have discovered a lot of interesting authors that way. The new books section there is how I discovered Nnedi Okorafor, Rivers Solomon, and C.L. Polk. While I was encountering these authors for the first time, there was also a push for readers to deliberately work on including more diverse writers in their reading material.  Both then and now there’s an argument made that readers should just read what they want, without considering the race of the author.  It is valid to read just what you want to read, or to read the same kind of thing (or the same book) over and over– as Ranganathan says, every reader his book. But why not push your boundaries a little? If what you’re looking for is a good story, there are a lot of good stories you might miss out on if you aren’t deliberately seeking out Black authors. There is frequently a different aesthetic to their books, and the stories can catch you in ways you don’t expect. This difference leads to looking at speculative fiction genres through a new lens. In the case of Black people in the African diaspora, that aesthetic is generally referred to as Afrofuturism, a term first coined by Mark Dery. Nigerian writer Nnedi Okorafor recently differentiated that from the writing of Black Africans, which she identifies as Africanfuturism (you can read about that on her website, which I’ve linked to below, just scroll down to her name). Definitely, not everything Black writers come out with falls into this aesthetic. Considered althogether, Black speculative fiction covers a broad range of approaches to science fiction, fantasy, folkloric, and fluid fiction (a term coined by literary theorist Kinitra Brooks).  If you haven’t tried it,  look up some of these authors. I think you’ll find something you like.

I’m going to note that these are extremely brief and incomplete summaries, and it is a far from complete list. To learn more about these authors and their books click on the links. Enjoy!

 

Steven Barnes (Goodreads):  Barnes writes alternative history, science fiction. horror, nonfiction, sometimes with Tannarive Due or other co-authors.

Tannarive Due (author website) : Due writes horror and nonfiction, sometimes with Steven Barnes. Due is an academic who teaches and writes about Black speculative fiction, particularly horror.

Jewelle Gomez (author website) : Jewelle Gomez is best known as the author of The Gilda Stories, about a black lesbian vampire. She has written poetry, plays, and essays.

N.K. Jemisin (author website): N.K. Jemisin writes Afrofuturistic science fiction and fantasy. Jemisin won three consecutive Hugo awards for Best Novel for the books in her Broken Earth Trilogy.

Walter Mosely (author website): mysteries, science fiction, nonfiction.  Mosely is best known for his Easy Rawlins mystery series but has written in a variety of genres.

Samuel R. Delany (author website): science fiction, LGBTQ+ fiction, nonfiction. Delaney is the first Black person to be recognized as a modern science fiction writer.

Wrath James White (publisher website). interviews at Monster Librarian : extreme horror. Click on these links to see our reviews: Yaccub’s Curse, Succulent Prey, The Resurrectionist, Sacrifice, Sloppy Seconds,and Vicious Romantic

Sumiko Saulson (author website): horror, graphic novels, nonfiction on black women in horror. In addition to writing fiction, Saulson is the compiler of 100 Black Women in Horror (click here to see our review)and editor of the anthology Black Magic Women: Terrifying Tales by Scary Sisters. 

Octavia Butler (official website of the Octavia Butler Estate): science fiction, alternative history, dystopian fiction Butler was the first recognized black woman author of modern science fiction and an inspiration for many Afrofuturist authors. See our review of her Earthseed Trilogy, which includes Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents here.

Tomi Adeyemi (author website) : YA Africanfuturist fantasy. Adeyemi is the bestselling author of the Legacy of Orisha series.

Evan Winter (Goodreads), interview at Tor.com: Africanfuturist epic fantasy.

Nnedi Okorafor (author website), Goodreads: Okorafor is an award-winning Nigerian-American science fiction and fantasy author who defines herself as an Africanfuturist and Africanjujuist (visit her author website for her explanation)

P. Djeli Clark (author website): Clark is an academic who writes nonfiction on Black speculative fiction, as well as a writer of Black speculative fiction, including alternative history, science fiction, and fantasy.

Victor LaValle (author website): Lavalle teaches at Columbia University. He writes horror, science fiction, and fantasy. Lavalle has won the Bram Stoker Award for his novella The Ballad of Black Tom (for our review click here) and the graphic novel Victor Lavalle’s Destroyer (for our review, click here).

Nalo Hopkinson (author website): Born in Jamaica, Nalo Hopkinson describes herself as a writer of fantastical fiction. She’s written nine books, including the award-winning Brown Girl in the Ring. She’s a professor of creative writing at the Univeristy of California Riverside.

Alaya Dawn Johnson (author website): is the author of YA and adult urban fantasy and speculative fiction, including the Andre Norton award-winning Love Is the Drug at the Nebula Awards.

C.L. Polk (author website): C.L. Polk is the author of the Kingston Cycle, a fantasy which takes p;ace in a steampunk-like setting similar to Edwardian England. The first book, Witchmark, won the World Fantasy Award and was nominated for the Lambda, Nebula, Locus, and Aurora awards.

Daniel Jose Older (author website) : Daniel Jose Older’s writing includes historical fantasy for middle-graders, the award winning YA Shadowshaper series, and adult urban fantasy .

C.T. Rwizi: C.T. Rwizi is originally from Zimbabwe and Swaziland, lived in Costa Rica and the United States, and now resides in South Africa. His debut fantasy novel, Scarlet Odyssey, was just released. Read our review here.

L.L. McKinney (author website): McKinney is the author of the YA Nightmare-verse dark fantasy books, beginning with A Blade So Black.

Rivers Solomon (author website): Solomon’s first book, An Unkindness of Ghosts, was a finalist for the Lambda, Tiptree, Locus, and Hurston/Wright awards and won a Firecracker Award. Their novella, The Deep, a collaboration with the musical group Clipping (which includes Daveed Diggs, formerly of Hamilton) is an outstanding work of Black speculative fiction. Read our review here.

Valjeanne Jeffers (Goodreads), (author website): Jeffers is the author of the Immortals series. She has published fantasy, science fiction, and erotica, particularly in Afrofuturist subgenres such as steamfunk and cyberfunk

Justina Ireland (author website): Ireland is the author of the YA alternate history horror novel Dread Nation and its sequel, Deathless Divide. She has also written other YA fantasy novels and writes for the Star Wars franchise.

Nicky Drayden (author website): Drayden writes Afrofuturist science fiction and fantasy.

Andrea Hairston (author website):  Hairston is a playwright, novelist, and professor of theatre and Africana at Smith College. She is a feminist science fiction writer who has published novels, plays, and essays. Her book Redwood and Wildfire won the Tiptree and Carl Brandon Society awards.

Rebecca Roanhorse (author website): Roanhorse is an award-winning speculative fiction writer who has both Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo and African-American heritage. She has written post-apocalyptic urban fantasy and middle-grade fantasy, and writes for the Star Wars franchise.

 

 

Posted on July 13, 2020 by , Reply
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