"As you will soon see, finding freedom is only the first part. Living free is a whole other."
"And freedom mean the right of a man to do as he please, not as we supposed. And if you have not been as we supposed, you have been as you were supposed to be."
Ta-Nehisi Coates took a decade to write his debut novel, and "The Water Dancer" appears to be the marriage of painstaking research and an emphasis on the supernatural. The result is a novel that tries to blend history and surrealism, to mostly positive effect.
"Bored whites were barbarian whites. While they played at aristocrats, we were their well-appointed and stoic attendants. But when they tired of dignity, the bottom fell out. New games were anointed and we were but pieces on the board. It was terrifying."
Hiram Walker is the protagonist, charged with balancing the Tasked (slaves) and the Quality (slavemasters) by having feet and blood in both worlds. Hi is imbued with special powers that he doesn't fully understand and struggles with the dichotomy of having a photographic memory yet no recollection of the loss of his mother.
"I didn't get to say farewell. I have so rarely been afforded the right of farewell."
As he joins "the Underground," he encounters characters both fictional and real and both fully realized and one-dimensional. The tale challenges the reader to find a personal balance between what to understand as reality and myth -- and how closely the two lived to one another in the era depicted.
An abrupt ending robs the story of some impact, but "The Water Dancer" overcomes all challenges with a unique, powerful, and important depiction of love, hate, and identity in the dying days of the antebellum South.
"My part has been to tell the story of the slave. The story of the master never wanted for narrators."
~Frederick Douglass
No comments:
Post a Comment