“Oh, the sound of that calabash finally cracking was a world exploding, a heart breaking twice. Flying to join its body, the soul ember took comfort that the union would bring forgetfulness. The still-growing brain wouldn’t have room for the memories.”

One of the many reasons I love writing this blog is that it forces me to read outside of my comfort zone. Although I’m sure that on the way, I’ll find a few books that I won’t enjoy, whenever I read something that I would have never read, and I love it, it’s really an extraordinary feeling.

Brown Girl in the Ring is a speculative fiction book that happens in a near-future dystopic Toronto; the Canadian government stopped funding the city which led to lack of services and eventually to riots that destroyed it. People that could leave left to the suburbs and the rest stay trapped (since the government had to close the access to the city to control the riots) in a decadent place with no services, few resources, a barter-driven economy and a drug epidemic.

In the first chapter a man is asking another man -that one soon realizes is some sort of mobster that controls the few medical services in the city- to find him a heart for the Canadian prime minister that urgently needs a transplant. Rudy, the mobster has the perfect man for the job, Tony, a former nurse that now works for him and owns him some favors. Afterwards, Tony appears at the door of his ex-girlfriend, Ti-Jeanne, who lives at her grandmother’s with her newborn, asking for the help of the grandmother, Gros-Jeanne, the local healer, whom uses traditional Caribbean/West-Indian medicine to help the people in the community. Tony needs her to help him leave the city since he’s not capable of killing a healthy person to get the heart. It turns out that the grandmother is not just a traditional healer, but that she can talk to the spirits and ask them for help. This setting is the start of a journey in which Ti-Jeanne, that has started seeing spirits and is avoiding dealing with it, with the help of her grandmother, will have to deal with her heritage, her family history and personal fights to help the people she loves.

Although the plot sounds complicated and spirits-meet-dystopic fiction might be too much for some, believe me, Brown Girl in the Ring is a great book. Hopkinson doesn’t allow the plot to take over the human aspect of the novel; there’s love, desire, humor and human flaws, which make the characters completely believable, even when they talk to evil spirits. One of my favorite things of the book was that the characters speak in Caribbean English (switching to Canadian English when they were talking to a non-Caribbean person), giving them an incredible authenticity. I also enjoyed the focus on the importance of oral tradition and the knowledge of the elderly to mantain the cultural heritage.

What’s most striking is the ease in which Hopkinson succeeds at submerging the reader in a completely unknown topic (at least for me); the West-Indian mythology. She writes masterfully making it easy to visualize these creepy creatures and their world merged with an already weird dystopic world. The book is dark, violent and sinister, to the point where at night, I had to stop reading mid-chapter because I was sure I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I kept reading. Still, I cannot wait for many other sleepless nights reading Hopinkson.

Side note: I loved the epigraphs, here’s my favorite!

Give the Devil a child for dinner!

One!

—Derek Walcott, Ti-Jean and His Brothers

About Autora Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson was born in Kingston, Jamaica. She grew up in Guyana and at 16 she moved to Canada.  Her mother was a library technician and her father a Guyanese poet, playwright and actor. Currently she lives and teaches in Riverside, California. She suffered a serious illness that prevented her from working, which led to financial difficulties and ultimately homelessness for two years prior to being hired by UC Riverside.

Other books written by Jamaican women:

We just recommend books we’ve read

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Jamaican initiatives and projects that support and empower girls and women

SISTREN Theather Collective

SISTREN Theatre Collective is an independent women’s organization that through theater, based on real experiences affecting women, confronts the public with problems facing both genders, and brings pressure to bear on the society to change negative perceptions and attitudes towards women. SISTREN operates a multi-faceted popular education program that aims to analyze the situation of women in Jamaica, increase the awareness of gender issues, assist in the building of regional networks, encourage grassroots cultural expressions, and equip other grassroots agencies to effectively campaign for social change.