Nalo Hopkinson’s “Blackheart Man”
Language and worldbuilding to drown in, and a cracking novel besides.
I’m offline until mid-September, but you can catch me in person at BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I’m giving a talk called “DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!” at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I’m doing a “Talking Caterpillar” Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).
In Blackheart Man, the new Nalo Hopkinson novel out today from Simon & Schuster, we get a tour-de-force from an author in full control of her prodigious powers: a story that will make you drunk on language, on worldbuilding, and on its roaring, relentless plot:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Blackheart-Man/Nalo-Hopkinson/9781668005101
The action is set on Chynchin, a fantastic Caribbean island(or maybe Caribbeanesque — it’s never clear whether this is some magical, imaginary world, or some distant future of our own). Chynchin is a multiracial, creole land with a richly realized gift economy that Hopkinson deftly rounds out with a cuisine, languages, and familial arrangements. Blackheart Man boasts some of the finest “in-cluing” (Jo Walton’s marvelous term for the way that sf/f writers can assemble a world in their readers’ minds with subtle clues that act as a made-to-be-solved puzzle the reader delights in assembling) you could ask for, and before you know it, you’ve completely internalized this world, with its racial politics, its cultural institutions (like the colloquium, where every scholar is also a musician and getting your doctorate requires scoring a book to be sung — and thus memorized and preserved by a choir of your fellow students), and its relationships (the stable configuration is a thruple, with most women married to two co-husbands).
Chynchin was founded through a slave rebellion, in which the press-ganged soldiers of the iron-fisted Ymisen empire were defeated by three witches who caused them to be engulfed in tar that they magicked into a liquid state just long enough to entomb them, then magicked back into solidity. For generations, the Ymisen have tolerated Chynchin’s self-rule, but as the story opens, a Ymisen armada sails into Chynchin’s port and a “trade envoy” announces that it’s time for the Chynchin to “voluntarily” re-establish trade with the Ymisen.
The story that unfolds is a staple of sf and fantasy: the scrappy resistance mounted against the evil empire, and this familiar backdrop is a sturdy scaffold to support Hopkinson’s dizzying, phantasmagoric tale of psychedelic magic, possessed children, military intrigue, musicianship and sexual entanglements.
Hopkinson’s protagonist Veycosi is the kind of flawed hero whom you want to give a hug to half the time, and whose neck you want to wring. An aspiring scholar, Veycosi has the brash certainty of youth, convinced that he’s the smartest (and sexiest) man in any room, and he’s right just often enough to encourage him in a series of self-inflicted catastrophes that build to a terrible crescendo that sets up one of the most satisfying endings you could ask for.
Hopkinson — a SFWA Grand Master and Macarthur Genius Grant awardee — is justly famed as one of the field’s great afrofuturist pioneers. Her prodigious talent has been obvious since her debut novel, Brown Girl In the Ring, and her career is an unbroken string of literary feats that went from strength to strength. I’ve known her since we were both teenagers working at the same library in suburban Toronto, and I never cease to be dazzled by her talent, her wit, and her warmth. But even by those high standards, Blackheart Man is a triumph.
On September 24th, I’ll be speaking in person at the Boston Public Library!
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
