Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
Feb. 22nd, 2009 08:18 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
were-duck.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
50books_pocThis has been on my reading list for quite a while, and I finally got around to it yesterday. I read it in one morning and loved it.
The story is set in a future inner-city Toronto which is sealed off from the rest of Canada. The people who live in the closed off section, "The Burn", practice urban subsistence and are pretty much ignored by the rest of the country. There's a mean boss named Rudy who takes what he likes and rules the Burn through fear, murder, and intimidation with his army of goons and his seriously scary duppy--a hungry spirit bound to do his bidding, which requires human blood to maintain.
The protagonist, Ti-Jeanne, is a new mother who lives with her grandmother, Mami, and is grappling with her feelings for her son's father, Tony, who's gotten mixed up with street drugs and working for Rudy. Mami is an herbalist who trades medicine and health care for a variety of necessities. Ti-Jeanne has begun having disturbing visions and dreams, and fears she'll go the way of her mother, who went mad with them and ran away during the Riots that caused the Burn to eventually get cut off from the rest of Canada. The plot thickens when Tony comes to Ti-Jeanne for help in escaping the Burn, and Mami shows her how to commune with the spirits and ask them for magical concealment. Eventually Ti-Jeanne uses this knowledge to challenge Rudy's supremacy.
This novel shone in its characterization, and the calm, nuanced attention it paid to familial connections. Each member of Ti-Jeanne's family has done something bad, and the novel doesn't shy away from negotiating forgiveness and punishment as Ti-Jeanne seeks to forge a new family and community in which her child can be safe. Nobody gets off the hook for the bad things they did that were under their control, but there's a great deal of forgiveness for those who are forced to do bad things. I really liked that Ti-Jeanne was already a single mother at the beginning of the novel, and that her relationship to her child's father is neither romanticized nor demonized--her difficulty in making decisions about how much and whether to have Tony in her life rang very true for me, and I appreciated that the novel never condemned her for being a single mother nor put her in victim status. Ti-Jeanne is a heroine of unusual caliber, and I have a great deal of respect for her. Hopkinson deserves the heaping praise she gets--this book was a pitch-perfect blend of the happy and the horrible.
The characters felt real, and the magical/supernatural elements of the story went into bolstering the story's committment to its characters, instead of simply servicing the plot as is too often the case with urban fantasy. The Carribbean culture was evocative, and even Mami, who could easily become a stereotypical "voodoo woman" felt like a fully-realized personality, with very human traits. The supporting cast was well-done, and incidental characters like the surgeon and some of the kid gang were gay or lesbian without being stereotypical or offensive (Thanks, Nalo! After Alan Moore, you are a breath of sweet fresh air!). The language was lyrical and felt genuine, and in the end there was nothing I didn't love about this book.
The story is set in a future inner-city Toronto which is sealed off from the rest of Canada. The people who live in the closed off section, "The Burn", practice urban subsistence and are pretty much ignored by the rest of the country. There's a mean boss named Rudy who takes what he likes and rules the Burn through fear, murder, and intimidation with his army of goons and his seriously scary duppy--a hungry spirit bound to do his bidding, which requires human blood to maintain.
The protagonist, Ti-Jeanne, is a new mother who lives with her grandmother, Mami, and is grappling with her feelings for her son's father, Tony, who's gotten mixed up with street drugs and working for Rudy. Mami is an herbalist who trades medicine and health care for a variety of necessities. Ti-Jeanne has begun having disturbing visions and dreams, and fears she'll go the way of her mother, who went mad with them and ran away during the Riots that caused the Burn to eventually get cut off from the rest of Canada. The plot thickens when Tony comes to Ti-Jeanne for help in escaping the Burn, and Mami shows her how to commune with the spirits and ask them for magical concealment. Eventually Ti-Jeanne uses this knowledge to challenge Rudy's supremacy.
This novel shone in its characterization, and the calm, nuanced attention it paid to familial connections. Each member of Ti-Jeanne's family has done something bad, and the novel doesn't shy away from negotiating forgiveness and punishment as Ti-Jeanne seeks to forge a new family and community in which her child can be safe. Nobody gets off the hook for the bad things they did that were under their control, but there's a great deal of forgiveness for those who are forced to do bad things. I really liked that Ti-Jeanne was already a single mother at the beginning of the novel, and that her relationship to her child's father is neither romanticized nor demonized--her difficulty in making decisions about how much and whether to have Tony in her life rang very true for me, and I appreciated that the novel never condemned her for being a single mother nor put her in victim status. Ti-Jeanne is a heroine of unusual caliber, and I have a great deal of respect for her. Hopkinson deserves the heaping praise she gets--this book was a pitch-perfect blend of the happy and the horrible.
The characters felt real, and the magical/supernatural elements of the story went into bolstering the story's committment to its characters, instead of simply servicing the plot as is too often the case with urban fantasy. The Carribbean culture was evocative, and even Mami, who could easily become a stereotypical "voodoo woman" felt like a fully-realized personality, with very human traits. The supporting cast was well-done, and incidental characters like the surgeon and some of the kid gang were gay or lesbian without being stereotypical or offensive (Thanks, Nalo! After Alan Moore, you are a breath of sweet fresh air!). The language was lyrical and felt genuine, and in the end there was nothing I didn't love about this book.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}