Nalo Hopkinson: Sister Mine

Nalo Hopkinson's Sister Mine is a marvellous story, full of magic, and music, and mystery, and focuses on formerly conjoined half-celestial twins Makeda and Abby and their relationships with each other, their family (a pantheon of unusual deities drawn from Afro-Caribbean roots), and their mojo, or magical power. The root of the dysfunctional relationship between the sisters is that when Makeda and Abby were separated as infants, neither child came through the experience whole - Abby is lame, and Makeda has no mojo, a serious disability for the child of a god. As the novel unfolds, we learn that the question of Makeda's missing mojo is both complicated and potentially dangerous for several members of her immortal family - and what threatens the gods, may threaten humans as well.

The novel, like several other books by Hopkinson, is set in Toronto, which makes me happy, because, hometown. And how can you resist a story in which one of the characters was once Jimi Hendrix's guitar?

Some readers may find certain aspects of the relationship between the sisters (and some of their relatives, for that matter) a bit difficult, but it's important to remember that these women are not only twins who were born physically joined, but they are partly divine, and in most pantheons around the world, one thing that the gods and their children rarely do is follow the sexual mores of mere mortals.

One aspect of Hopkinson's work that has always been a gift to me is the way that her novels all, in one way or another, broaden my understanding of race - as identity, as construct, as one if the grounds in which we perceive sine people as Other. This book is no exception. As Jessica Langer, in the Los Angeles Review of Books, notes:

Finally, it is important to note, I think, the treatment of race in Sister Mine, because it is so matter-of-fact and so powerful in its matter-of-factness. Race is not the point of the novel; it is important, rather, because of its effect on the characters and their relationships with the world around them. In Anansi Boys, Gaiman dealt with race by very deliberately never mentioning it; Hopkinson takes a different and more effective tack here. Nearly all of the characters are black, and they live in the world as black men and women; their experiences are informed by their relationships with their own blackness and with others’ reactions to it.

The ubiquitous background racism of Toronto simmers constantly, occasionally bubbling up into the foreground, as when a woman with her daughter sees Makeda’s battle with her haint and says with disdain, “Those people are always brawling in the street, liks dogs. It’s a disgrace,” or when an argument between Makeda and Lars (the aforementioned guitar) causes others to avoid them, because “nothing cleared a room faster than a black man and woman arguing.” When Makeda and Abby are making their way in the dark to the shore of Lake Ontario late in the novel, Makeda shouts at her sister to turn off the flashlight; her primary concern is not that she will trip and fall, but rather that the flashlight is “like a beacon to the cops.” For all Toronto’s reputation on the world stage as a happily multicultural metropolis, and for all the Canadian government’s lip service to the value of diversity, Sister Mine speaks truth, real truth, about the quotidian prejudice with which black Torontonians live. (Aunt Suze’s excoriation of what is often called “hipster racism,” the semi-ironic appropriation by others of black slang, makes one want to stand up and cheer.) (http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/dysfunctional-fabulist-families-nalo-hopkinsons-sister-mine)

Addendum: I wandered across this interview with Hopkinson at Strange Horizons, in which the author talks about Sister Mine, Toronto, and other interesting things: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2013/20130225/SamatarNH-a.shtml.

Karen Lord: The Best of All Possible Worlds

Karen Lord's second novel, The Best of All Possible Worlds, is almost completely unlike her first novel, the fantasy Redemption in Blue which was based on a Senegalese folk tale; the most important similarity is that both are amazingly captivating, entertaining and subtly thought-provoking.

The Best of All Possible Worlds is a science fiction novel that explores such diverse issues as interspecies and intercultural relations, loss, mourning and healing, the limits of cultural relativism, the paradoxes of time travel, and recovering from abuse. The novel begins with the destruction of the planet Sadira, and follows a small group of male survivors as they search for a new home where they can preserve their culture on Cygnus Beta, where several expatriate communities of Sadiri exist.

What follows is a picaresque novel in which the travelling Sadiri refugees discover how these communities have changed Sadiri traditions; both the structure of the novel and the title suggest that Lord intends a reference to Voltaire's satirical masterpiece Candide, but the tone here is less of a satire and more of a meditation on how different cultures and peoples can live together, and how to balance cultural relativism with human rights.

Isabel Allende: Zorro

Isabel Allende's Zorro is a fun read - an attempt to flesh out an origin story for the iconic swashbuckling hero, taking bits and pieces from a variety of versions to create something that's both enjoyable reading and internally consistent. And it explains just how Diego de la Vega learned all those neat skills, and how he came to be a defender of the poor and disenfranchised while the others of his class were not.

It's not, on the surface, what one might expect from a writer with the reputation of someone like Allende. But it's easy to see she had fun with it. In a review of the book for The Guardian, Ian Sansom writes:

The story goes that Isabel Allende was sitting at home one day when a bunch of people arrived on her doorstep, saying they owned the copyright to the character of Zorro and would she like to write a new novel about the masked avenger? Allende initially turned down the offer, considering such work beneath her, but then she started thinking about all that juicy historical detail - Spanish America in the late 18th century, the American war of independence, the power struggle between Old Europe and the New World, corrupt governors, the fight for justice on behalf of the oppressed - and she also started to imagine Antonio Banderas playing the role of Zorro in the film of the book, and thus was born Zorro: The Novel. All fired up and full of vigour and vim, she wrote the book, apparently, in three months. (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jun/04/isabelallende.fiction)

Allende's Zorro - whose real name is Diego de la Vega - is the son of an aristocratic Spanish landowner and a native American Shoshone warrior; raised in part among his mother's people, he is already on his way to becoming a formidable warrior when he is sent by his father to study swordfighting in Spain. On his journey, he is accompanied by his childhood friend (and servant/sidekick) Bernardo, another child of mixed heritage, who was struck mute in childhood after witnessing the rape and murder of his mother. In Spain, Diego and Bernardo have many adventures, and Diego begins in earnest the long path towards becoming Zorro, the sword of justice, the defender of the weak.

I enjoyed the depth and background Allende gave to the story of the man in the mask.