In 2021, the Keystone XL pipeline, which threatened Indigenous burial and archeological sites, was officially canceled. Canada celebrated its first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honor the lost children and survivors of residential schools on September 30. And the Yukon Tribe received the green light to reestablish California condors, a critically endangered species of cultural and ecological importance, in the Pacific Northwest for the first time in over a century. Indigenous activists fought hard for each of these wins.
It’s time to forget colonial and reductionist narratives about what year Columbus sailed west. Instead, let’s celebrate the abundance of works by talented Native writers being published in 2021: explore characters who go undercover in FBI investigations, delve into a parent’s difficult past, reclaim their land and reframe their history for the better. These 10 new books from Native authors are dissimilar from one another in many ways—they span from fiction to nonfiction, genre to literary pieces, and are set everywhere from Oklahoma to Michigan—but each narrative proves propulsive. Discover who the villains are, whether they are cast as simply as capitalist drug dealers or as complexly as systemic racism. Explore the works of highly decorated fiction writers and those making scorching debuts.
Seamlessly blending Cherokee folklore and generational trauma, Brandon Hobson’s second novel builds on the themes that earned him a National Book Award nomination in 2018. Told from multiple perspectives, the novel follows the Echota family as they prepare for their annual bonfire commemorating the loss of their middle child, killed by a white police officer 15 years before the story opens. When Maria Echota, the family matriarch, agrees to foster a 12-year-old Cherokee boy navigating his own trauma, the family’s emotional scars—visible and unseen—are given new light. The Removed is a haunting blurring of past and present, grief and hope, purgatory and Earth.
The death of Geller’s mother, following a period of homelessness and substance abuse, serves as the impetus for the author’s journey into the past. In the assured prose of a creative writing instructor, Geller’s memoir traces her mother’s departure from the Navajo reservation at 19 and catalogs her life thereafter in letters, photographs, diaries, and personal items. As Geller reconstructs her mother’s story, she is forced to confront her own. This memoir is a moving examination of Navajo identity, family relationships, and the power of history.
In a dystopian universe, only a precious few—the Indigenous people of North America—retain the ability to dream. In residential “schools” across a disaster-scarred landscape, the government imprisons Native people and harvests their bone marrow to treat non-dreamers. The novel, DiMaline’s second installment in her young adult series, picks up where The Marrow Thieves left off: 17-year-old Frenchie wakes up in a dark room while his found family of dreamers searches for him on the outside. Hunting by Stars is a page-turning adventure that pairs a diverse cast with high stakes.
Rosalie Iron Wing spends the first 12 years of her life in communion with the land. Her Native father raises her in the tradition of the Dakota people with a deep respect for her roots. But when he dies, Rosalie’s ties to her history are abruptly severed. After six years in a white foster care family, she marries a white farmer, becomes a mother, and makes a life on land stolen from her ancestors. The story opens 28 years later when a widowed Rosalie finally returns to her home to reclaim her past. Told in narratives layered with the voices of Rosalie and her female ancestors, Diane Wilson’s debut is a meditation on generational loss and a people’s profound connection to the land.
It’s 1926 and Two Feathers, a young Cherokee woman, is determined to succeed as a horse diver for the Glendale Park Zoo, an amusement park in segregated Nashville. But when a sinkhole opens up during a performance, Two Feathers’ injuries sideline her act and strange things begin happening at the Park. Blending historical fiction and magical realism, Margaret Verble’s eclectic cast of characters offer readers a lens on race and social class against the backdrop of a dangerous and outlandish landscape.
Savannah Johnston’s debut is a post-colonial collection of stories about the everyday lives of Indigenous people in Oklahoma. The characters in Rites are flawed and complex, many of them trapped in cycles of intergenerational harm; indeed, some of them actively perpetuate cycles of despair. Johnston’s stories give an unflinching look into the modern-day Indigenous experience.
In this YA thriller, 18-year-old Daunis Fontaine struggles to find belonging, whether it is with her paternal Anishinaabe side on the Ojibwe reservation, or her white maternal side in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Daunis witnesses a murder and finds herself undercover in an FBI investigation regarding a hallucinogenic form of meth with an ever-increasing body count. In this debut, Boulley has crafted a robust lead who navigates familial struggles and sacrifices, fake romance and secrets, hockey and chemistry, and grief and racism with nuance and heart.
Kyle R. Mays, a Black Saginaw Chippewa writer and historian, explores anti-Blackness and settler colonialism alongside one another in order to reframe our understanding of American history. Mays’ work is novel in that it acknowledges the intersectional nature of Black and indigenous struggles for freedom, both historically and in the present moment.
As part of Beacon Press’s ReVisioning American History series, the book explores everything from The Declaration of Independence and sacred Native texts to the Civil Rights Movement and modern-day conversations about cultural appropriation. In tackling the origins of the riffs between Indigenous and Black communities and the shared harm that capitalism and colonialism have inflicted on both, the potential for Afro-Indigenous solidarity is presented as a powerful tool in combating white supremacy.
Jade escapes the parts of her life she doesn’t like to think about—like living with her abusive, alcoholic father or that fact that she doesn’t speak to her mom—by delving instead into the gore and drama of slasher films. Her encyclopedic knowledge of Halloween films becomes more than a lighthearted obsession though, when she becomes convinced that her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho is under the grasp of a very real serial killer. Graham Jones doesn’t shy away from graphic descriptions of bodies or characters battling with the darkest realms of human experience, spanning everything from gentrification to child abuse. But the creepiness and gore is not just decoration and instead serves the emotional heart of the story: a young, part-Indian girl trying to make sense of her trauma, to survive.
It’s just bookseller Tookie’s bad luck that when Flora—the most annoying customer at the independent Minneapolis bookstore where she works—dies in November 2019, she decides to stick around as a ghost. In a story that spans the following historic year, particularly for Minneapolitans, the death of this acquaintance and the murder of George Floyd work alongside one another on personal and political planes to interrogate the ways in which we are haunted, by histories of violence, our own pasts, and all that we cannot change.
With complicated relationships taking center stage (or perhaps bookstore aisle, in this case), we discover that “Indigenous wannabe” Flora considers Tookie her best friend and that Tookie, who is Ojibwe, ends up married to the tribal cop who arrested her before her ten-year stint in prison. In a book that is as funny as it is poignant, Pulitzer prize-winner Erdich grapples with this contemporary moment of grief, violence against Black and Indigenous bodies, and national unrest, without forgetting the weight of history and how it continues to shape the present day — a specter not always seen but intimately felt.
Her name was Felicity; she had called herself Fliss as a small child, and it had stuck. The children in her reception class at Holly Grove School called her Miss Fliss, affectionately. She had been a pretty child and was a pretty woman, with tightly curling golden hair and pale blue eyes. Her classroom was full of invention, knitted dinosaurs, an embroidered snake coiling round three walls. She loved the children—almost all of them—and they loved her. They gave her things—a hedgehog, newts, tadpoles in a jar, bunches of daffodils. She did not love them as though they were her own children: she loved them because they were not. She taught bush-haired boys to do cross-stitch, and shy girls to splash out with big paintbrushes and tubs of vivid reds and blues and yellows.
She wondered often if she was odd, though she did not know what she meant by “odd.” One thing that was odd, perhaps, was that she had reached the age of thirty without having loved, or felt close, to anyone in particular. She made friends carefully—people must have friends, she knew—and went to the cinema, or cooked suppers, and could hear them saying how nice she was. She knew she was nice, but she also knew she was pretending to be nice. She lived alone in a little red brick terraced house she had inherited from an aunt. She had two spare rooms, one of which she let out, from time to time, to new teachers who were looking for something more permanent, or to passing students. The house was not at all odd, except for the dolls.
She did not collect dolls. She had over a hundred, sitting in cosy groups on sofas, perching on shelves, stretched and sleeping on the chest of drawers in her bedroom. Rag dolls, china dolls, rubber dolls, celluloid dolls. Old dolls, new dolls, twin dolls (one pair conjoined). Black dolls, blond dolls, baby dolls, chubby little boys, ethereal fairy dolls. Dolls with painted surprised eyes, dolls with eyes that clicked open and closed, dolls with pretty china teeth, between pretty parted lips. Pouting dolls, grinning dolls. Even dolls with trembling tongues.
The nucleus of the group had been inherited from her mother and grandmother, both of whom had loved and cared for them. There were four: a tall ladylike doll in a magenta velvet cloak, a tiny china doll in a frilly dress with forget-me-not painted eyes, a realistic baby doll with a cream silk bonnet, closing eyes and articulated joints, and a stiff wooden doll, rigid and unsmiling in a black stuff gown.
Because she had those dolls—who sat in state in a basket chair— other dolls accumulated. People gave her their old dolls—“we know you’ll care for her.” Friends thinking of Christmas or birthday presents found unusual dolls in jumble sales or antique shops.
The ladylike doll was Miss Martha. The tiny china doll was Arabel. The baby doll was Polly. The rigid doll was Sarah Jane. She had an apron over her gown and might once have been a domestic servant doll.
Selected children, invited to tea and cake, asked if she played with the dolls. She did not, she replied, though she moved them round the house, giving them new seats and different company.
It would have been odd to have played with the dolls. She made them clothes, sometimes, or took one or two to school for the children to tell stories about.
She knew, but never said, that some of them were alive in some way, and some of them were only cloth and stuffing and moulded heads. You could even distinguish, two with identical heads under different wigs and bonnets, of whom one might be alive—Penelope with black pigtails—and one inert, though she had a name, Camilla, out of fairness.
There was a new teacher, that autumn, a late appointment because Miss Bury had had a leg amputated as a result of an infection caught on a boating holiday on an African river. The new teacher was Miss Coley. Carole Coley. The head teacher asked Fliss if she could put her up for a few weeks, and Fliss said she would gladly do so. They were introduced to each other at a teaparty for incoming teachers.
Carole Coley had strange eyes; this was the first thing Fliss noticed. They were large and rounded, dark and gleaming like black treacle. She had very black hair and very black eyelashes. She wore the hair, which was long, looped upwards in the nape of her neck, under a black hairslide. She wore lipstick and nail varnish in a rich plum colour. She had a trim but female body and wore a trouser suit, also plum. And glittering glass rings, quite large, on slender fingers. Fliss was intimidated, but also intrigued. She offered hospitality— the big attic bedroom, shared bath and kitchen. Carole Coley said she might prove to be an impossible guest. She had two things which always came with her:
“My own big bed with my support mattress. And Cross-Patch.”
Fliss considered. The bed would be a problem but one that could be solved. Who was Cross-Patch?
Cross-Patch turned out to be a young Border collie, with a rackety eye-patch in black on a white face. Fliss had no pets, though she occasionally housed the classroom mice and tortoises in the holidays. Carole Coley said in a take it or leave it voice, that Cross-Patch was very well trained.
“I’m sure she is” said Fliss, and so it was settled. She did not feel it necessary to warn Carole about the dolls. They were inanimate, if numerous.
Carole arrived with Cross-Patch, who was sleek and slinky. They stood with Fliss in the little sitting room whilst the removal men took Fliss’s spare bed into storage, and mounted with Carole’s much larger one. Carole was startled by the dolls. She went from cluster to cluster, picking them up, looking at their faces, putting them back precisely where they came from. Cross-Patch clung to her shapely calves and made a low throaty sound.
“I wouldn’t have put you down as a collector.”
“I’m not. They just seem to find their way here. I haven’t bought a single one. I get given them, and people see them, and give me more.”
“They’re a bit alarming. So much staring. So still.”
“I know. I’m used to them. Sometimes I move them round.”
Cross-Patch made a growly attempt to advance on the sofa. Carole raised a firm finger. “No, Cross-Patch. Sit. Stay. These are not your toys.”
Cross-Patch, it turned out, had her own stuffed toys—a bunny rabbit, a hedgehog—with which she played snarly, shaking games in the evenings. Fliss was impressed by Carole’s authority over the animal. She herself was afraid of it, and knew that it sensed her fear.
Carole was a good lodger. She was helpful and unobtrusive. Everything interested her—Fliss’s embroidery silks, her saved children’s books from when she was young, her mother’s receipts, a bizarre Clarice Cliffe tea-set with a conical sugar-shaker. She made Fliss feel that she was interesting—a feeling Fliss almost never had, and would have said she didn’t want to have. It was odd being looked at, appreciatively, for long moments. Carole asked her questions, but she could not think up any questions to ask in return. A few facts about Carole’s life did come to light. She had travelled and worked in India. She had been very ill and nearly died. She went to evening classes on classical Greece and asked Fliss to come too, but Fliss said no. When Carole went out, Fliss sat and watched the television, and Cross-Patch lay watchfully in a corner, guarding her toys. When Carole returned, the dog leaped up to embrace her as though she was going for her throat. She slept upstairs with her owner in the big bed. Their six feet went past Fliss’s bedroom door, pattering, dancing.
Carole said the dolls were beginning to fascinate her. So many different characters, so much love had gone into their making and clothing. “Almost loved to bits, some of them,” said Carole, her treacle eyes glittering. Fliss heard herself offer to lend a few of them, and was immediately horrified. What on earth would Carole want to borrow dolls for? The offer was odd. But Carole smiled widely and said she would love to have one or two to sit on the end of her big bed, or on the chest of drawers. Fliss was overcome with nervous anxiety, then, in case Cross-Patch might take against the selected dolls, or think they were toys. She looked sidelong at Cross-Patch, and Cross-Patch looked sidelong at her, and wrinkled her lip in a collie grin. Carole said
“You needn’t worry about her, my dear. She is completely well-trained. She hasn’t offered to touch any doll. Has she?”
“No,” said Fliss, still troubled by whether the dog would see matters differently in the bedroom.
When they went to bed they said good-night on the first floor landing and Carole went up to the next floor. She borrowed a big rag doll with long blond woollen plaits and a Swiss sort of apron. This doll was called Priddy, and was not, as far as Fliss knew, alive. She also borrowed—surprisingly—the rigid Sarah Jane, who certainly was alive. I love her disapproving expression, said Carole. She’s seen a thing or two, in her time. She had painted eyes, that didn’t close.
She did not collect dolls. She had over a hundred, sitting in cosy groups on sofas, perching on shelves, stretched and sleeping on the chest of drawers in her bedroom.
Other dolls took turns to go up the stairs. Fliss noticed, without formulating the idea, that they were always grown-up or big girl dolls, and they never had sleeping eyes.
Little noises came down the stairs. A cut-off laugh, an excited whisper, a creak of springs. Also a red light spread from the door over the sage-green staircarpet.
One night, when she couldn’t sleep, Fliss went down to the kitchen and made Horlicks for herself. She then took it into her head to go up the stairs to the spare room; she saw the pool of red light and knew Carole was not asleep. She meant to offer her Horlicks.
The door was half open. “Come in” called Carole, before Fliss could tap. She had put squares of crimson silk, weighted down with china beads, over the bedside lamps. She sat on the middle of her big bed, in a pleated sea-green nightdress, with sleeves and a high neck. Her long hair was down, and brushed into a fan, prickling with an electric life of its own. Cross-Patch was curled at the foot of the bed.
“Come and sit down,” said Carole. Fliss was wearing a baby blue nightie in a fine jersey fabric, under a fawn woolly dressing-gown.
“Take that off, make yourself comfortable.”
“I was—I was going to—I couldn’t sleep . . . .”
“Come here,” said Carole. “You’re all tense. I’ll massage your neck.”
They sat in the centre of the white quilt, made ruddy by light, and Carole pushed long fingers into all the sensitive bits of Fliss’s neck and shoulders, and released the nerves and muscles. Fliss began to cry.
“Shall I stop?”
“Oh no, don’t stop, don’t stop. I—
“This is terrible. Terrible. I love you.”
“And what’s terrible about that?” asked Carole, and put her arms around Fliss, and kissed her on the mouth.
Fliss was about to explain that she had never felt love and didn’t exactly like it, when they were distracted by fierce snarling from Cross-Patch.
“Now then, bitch,” said Carole. “Get out. If you’re going to be like that, get out.”
And Cross-Patch slid off the bed, and slunk out of the door. Carole kissed Fliss again, and pushed her gently down on the pillows and held her close. Fliss knew for the first time that terror that all lovers know, that the thing now begun must have an ending. Carole said “My dear, my darling.” No one had said that to her.
They sat side by side at breakfast, touching hands, from time to time. Cross-Patch uttered petulant low growls and then padded away, her nails rattling on the lino. Carole said they would tell each other everything, they would know each other. Fliss said with a light little laugh that there was nothing to know about her. But nevertheless she did more of the talking, described her childhood in a village, her estranged sister, her dead mother, the grandmother who had given them the dolls.
Cross-Patch burst back into the room. She was carrying something, worrying it, shaking it from side to side, making a chuckling noise, tossing it, as she would have tossed a rabbit to break its neck. It was the baby doll, Polly, in her frilled silk bonnet and trailing embroidered gown. Her feet in their knitted bootees protruded at angles. She rattled.
Carole rose up in splendid wrath. In a rich firm voice she ordered the dog to put the doll down, and Cross-Patch spat out the silky creature, slimed with saliva, and cowered whimpering on the ground, her ears flat to her head. Masterfully Carole took her by the collar and hit her face, from side to side, with the flat of her hands. “Bad dog,” she said, “bad dog,” and beat her. And beat her.
The rattling noise was Polly’s eyes, which had been shaken free of their weighted mechanism, and were rolling round inside her bisque skull. Where they had been were black holes. She had a rather severe little face, like some real babies. Eyeless it was ghastly.
“My darling, I am so sorry,” said Carole. “Can I have a look?”
Fliss did not want to relinquish the doll. But did. Carole shook her vigorously. The invisible eyes rolled.
“We could take her apart and try to fit them back.”
She began to pull at Polly’s neck.
“No, don’t, don’t. We can take her to the dolls’ hospital at the Ouse Bridge. There’s a man in there—Mr. Copple—who can mend almost anything.”
“Her pretty dress is torn. There’s a toothmark on her face.”
“You’ll be surprised what Mr. Copple can fix,” said Fliss, without complete certainty. Carole kissed her and said she was a generous creature.
Mr. Copple’s shop was old and narrow-fronted, and its back jutted out over the river. It had old window-panes, with leaded lights, and was a tiny cavern inside, lit with strings of fairy-lights, all different colours. From the ceiling, like sausages in a butcher’s shop, hung arms, legs, torsos, wigs, the cages of crinolines. On his glass counter were bowls of eyeballs, blue, black, brown, green, paperweight eyes, eyes without whites, all iris. And there were other bowls and boxes with all sorts of little wire joints and couplings, useful elastics and squeaking voice boxes.
Mr. Copple had, of course, large tortoiseshell glasses, wispy white hair and a bad, greyish skin. His fingers were yellow with tobacco.
“Ah,” he said, “Miss Weekes, always a pleasure. Who is it this time?”
Carole replied. “It was my very bad dog. She shook her. She has never done anything like this before.”
The two teachers had tied Polly up into a brown paper parcel. They did not want to see her vacant stare. Fliss handed it over. Mr. Copple cut the string.
“Ah,” he said again. “Excuse me.”
He produced a kind of prodding screwdriver, skilfully decapitated Polly, and shook her eyes out into his hand.
“She needs a new juncture, a new balance. Not very difficult.” “There’s a bite mark,” said Carole gloomily. “When you come back for her, you won’t know where it was.
And I’ll put a stitch or two into these pretty clothes and wash them out in soapsuds. She’s a Million Dollar Baby. A Bye-Lo baby. Designed by an American, made in Germany. In the 1920s.”
“Valuable?” asked Carole casually.
“Not so very. There were a large number of them. This one has the original clothes and real human hair. That puts her price up. She is meant to look like a real newborn baby.”
“You can see that,” said Carole.
He put the pieces of Polly into a silky blue bag and attached a label on a string. Miss Weekes’s Polly.
They collected her the next week and Mr. Copple had been as good as his word. Polly was Polly again, only fresher and smarter. She rolled her eyes at them again, and they laughed, and when they got her home, kissed her and each other.
One of the most interesting things about Polly was that her look was sometimes composed and babylike, but, in some lights, from some angles, could appear angry.
Fliss thought day and night about what she would do when Carole left. How it would happen. How she would bear it. Although, perhaps because, she was a novice in love, she knew that the fiercer the passion, the swifter and the harsher the ending. There was no way they two would settle into elderly domestic comfort. She became jealous and made desperate attempts not to show it. It was horrible when Carole went out for the evening. It was despicable to think of listening in to Carole’s private calls, though she thought Carole listened to her own, which were of no real interest. The school year went on, and Carole began to receive glossy brochures in the post, with pictures of golden sands and shining white temples. She sat looking at them in the evenings, across the hearth from Fliss, surrounded by dolls. Fliss wanted to say “Shall we go together?” and was given no breath of space to do so. Fliss had always spent her holidays in Bath, making excursions into the countryside. She made no arrangements. Great rifts and gaps of silence spread into the texture of their lives together. Then Carole said
“I am going away for a month or so. On Sunday. I’ll arrange for the rent to be paid while I’m away.”
“Where,” said Fliss. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure. I always do go away.”
Can I come? could not be said.
So Fliss said, “Will you come back?”
“Why shouldn’t I? Everyone needs a bit of space and time to herself, now and then. I’ve always found that. I shall miss the dolls.”
“Would you like to take one?” Fliss heard herself say. “I’ve never given one away, never. But you can take one—”
Carole kissed her and held her close.
“Then we shall both want to come back—to the charmed circle. Which doll are you letting me have?”
“Any of them,” cried Fliss, full of love and grief. “Take anyone at all. I want you to have the one you want.”
She did not expect, she thought later, that Carole would take one of the original four. Still less, that of those four, she would choose Polly, the baby, since her taste had always been for grown girls. But Carole chose Polly, and watched Fliss try to put a brave face on it, with an enigmatic smile. Then she packed and left, without saying where she was going.
Before she left, in secret, Fliss kissed Polly and told her “Come back. Bring her back.”
Cross-Patch went with them. The big empty bed remained, a hostage of a sort.
Fliss did not go to Bath. She sat at home, in what turned out to be a dismal summer, and watched the television. She watched the Antiques Roadshow, and its younger offshoot, Flog It!, in which people brought things they did not want to be valued by experts and auctioned in front of the cameras. Fliss and Carole had watched it together. They both admitted to a secret love for the presenter, the beautiful Paul Martin, whose energy never flagged. Nor, Fliss thought, did his kindness and courtesy, no matter what human oddities presented themselves. She loved him because he was reliable, which beautiful people, usually, were not.
And so it came about that Fliss, looking up idly at the screen from the tray of soup and salad on her knee, saw Polly staring out at her in close-up, sitting on the Flog It! valuing table. It must be a complete lookalike, Fliss thought. The bisque face, with its narrow eyes and tight mouth appeared to her to have a desperate or enraged expression. One of the most interesting things about Polly was that her look was sometimes composed and babylike, but, in some lights, from some angles, could appear angry.
The valuer, a woman in her forties, sweetly blond but sharp-eyed, picked up Polly and declared she was one of the most exciting finds she had met on Flog It! She was, said the purring lady, a real Bye-Lo Baby, and dressed in her original clothes. “May I look?” she asked sweetly, and upended Polly, throwing her silk robe over her head, exposing her woollen bootees, her sweet silk panties, the German stamps on her chubby back, to millions of viewers. Her fingernails were pointed, and painted scarlet. She pulled down the panties and ran her nails round Polly’s hip-joints. Bye-Lo Babies were rarer, and earlier, if they had jointed composition bodies than if they had cloth ones, with celluloid hands sewn on. She took off Polly’s frilled ivory silk bonnet, and exclaimed over her hair—“which, I must tell you, I am 90% sure is real human hair which adds to her value.” She pushed the hair over Polly’s suspended head and said “Ah, yes, as though we needed to see it.” The camera closed in on the nape of Polly’s neck. “Copr. By Grace S Putnam// MADE IN GERMANY.”
“Do you know the story of Grace S Putnam and the baby doll?” scarlet-nails asked the hopeful seller and there was Carole, in a smart Art Deco summer shirt in black and white, smiling politely and following the movements of the scarlet nails with her own smooth mulberry ones.
“No,” said Carole into Fliss’s sitting room, “I don’t know much about dolls.”
Her face was briefly screen-size. Her lipstick shone, her teeth glistened. Fliss’s knees began to knock, and she put down her tray on the floor.
Grace Story Putnam, the valuing lady said, had wanted to make a real baby doll, a doll that looked like a real baby, perhaps three days old. Not like a Disney puppet. So this formidable person had haunted maternity wards, sketching, painting, analysing. And never could she find the perfect face with all the requisite qualities.
She leaned forwards, her blond hair brushing Carole’s raven folds.
“I don’t know if I should tell you this.”
“Well, now you’ve started, I think you should,” said Carole, always Carole.
“It is rumoured that in the end she saw the perfect child being carried past, wrapped in a shawl. And she said, wait, this is the one. But that baby had just died. Nevertheless, the story goes, the determined Mrs. Putnam drew the little face, and this is what we have here.”
“Ghoulish,” said Carole, with gusto. The camera went back to Polly’s face, which looked distinctly malevolent. Fliss knew her expression must be unchanging, but it did not seem like that. Her stare was fixed. Fliss said “Oh, Polly—”
“And is this your own dolly?” asked the TV lady. “Inherited perhaps from your mother or grandmother. Won’t you find it very hard to part with her?”
“I didn’t inherit her. She’s nothing to do with me, personally. A friend gave her to me, a friend with a lot of dolls.”
“But maybe she didn’t know how valuable this little gift was? The Bye-Los were made in great numbers—even millions—but early ones like this, and with all their clothes, and real human hair, can be expected to fetch anywhere between £800 and well over £1,000— even well over, if two or more collectors are in the room. And of course she may have her photo in the catalogue or on the website . . .”
“That does surprise me,” said Carole, but not as though it really did.
“And do you think your friend will be happy for you to sell her doll?”
“I’m sure she would. She is very fond of me, and very generous-hearted.”
“And what will you do with the money if we sell Dolly, as I am sure we shall—”
“I have booked a holiday on a rather luxurious cruise in the Greek islands. I am interested in classical temples. This sort of money will really help.”
There is always a gap between the valuation of an item and the showing of its auction. Fliss stared unseeing at the valuation of a hideous green pottery dog, a group of World War I medals, an album of naughty seaside postcards. Then came Polly’s moment. The auctioneer held her aloft, his gentlemanly hand tight round her pudgy waist, her woolly feet protruding. Briefly, briefly, Fliss looked for the last time at Polly’s sweet face, now, she was quite sure, both baleful and miserable.
“Polly,” she said aloud. “Get her. Get her.”
She did not know what she wanted Polly to do. But she saw Polly as capable of doing something. And they were—as they had always been—on the same side, she and Polly.
She thought, as the bidding flew along, a numbered card flying up, a head nodding, a row of concentrated listeners with mobile phones, waiting, and then raising peremptory fingers, that she herself had betrayed Polly, but that she had done so out of love and goodwill. “Oh, Polly,” she said, “Get her,” as Carole might have said to Cross-Patch.
Carole was standing, composed and beautiful, next to Paul Martin, as the tens turned into hundreds and the hundreds to thousands. He liked sellers to show excitement or amazement, and Carole— Fliss understood her—showed just enough of both to keep the cameras happy, but was actually rigid inside, like a stone pillar of willpower and certainty. Polly went for £2,000, but it was not customary to show the sold object again, only the happy face of the seller, so, for Fliss, there was no moment of good-bye. And you were not told where sold objects were going.
All the other dolls were staring, as usual. She turned them over, or laid them to sleep, murmuring madly, get her, get her.
She did not suppose Carole would come back, and wondered if she should get rid of the bed. The headmistress at the school was slightly surprised when Fliss asked her if Carole was coming back—“do you know something I don’t?” Then she showed Fliss a postcard from Crete, and one from Lemnos. “I go off on my own with my beach towel and a book and lie on the silver sand by the wine-dark sea, and feel perfectly happy.” Fliss asked the headmistress if she knew where Cross-Patch was, and the headmistress said she had assumed Fliss was in charge of her, but if not, presumably, she must be in kennels.
A week later, the head told Fliss that Carole was in hospital. She had had a kind of accident. She had been unconscious for some time, but it was clear, from the state of her nervous system, and from filaments and threads found on her swimsuit and in her hair, that she had swum, or floated, into a swarm of minute stinging jellyfish— there are millions out there, this summer, people are warned, but she liked to go off on her own.
Fliss didn’t ask for more news, but got told anyway. Carole’s eyes were permanently damaged. She would probably never see again; at best, vestigially.
She would not, naturally, be coming back.
The headmistress looked at Fliss, to see how she took this. Fliss contrived an expression of conventional, distant shock, and said several times, how awful, how very awful.
The headmistress said “That dog of hers. Do you think anyone knows where it is? Do you think we should get it out of the kennels? Would you yourself like to have it, perhaps—you all became so close?”
“No,” said Fliss. “I’m afraid I never liked it really. I did my best as I hope I always shall. I’m sure someone can be found. It has a very uncertain temper.”
She went home and told the dolls what had happened. She thought of Polly’s closed, absent little face. The dolls made an inaudible rustling, like distant birds settling. They knew, Fliss thought, and then unthought that thought, which could be said to be odd.
The highest compliment I’ve ever received came to me on the University of Chicago campus. Late for a panel at a graduate conference, I was rushing around in a long floral dress and big wool coat, tote bag of books swinging at my side. My hair was frizzy and my makeup almost certainly smudged in the light autumn rain. In my hurry, I nearly ran into an undergrad, who turned around to fix me with a searching look. I assumed he would say something rude—tell me to watch where I was going—but instead he said, “You look just like Meg Ryan,” and walked away.
I don’t really look like Meg Ryan, aside from being blonde, but I love Meg Ryan. So all weekend long I thought about that compliment, which made my frazzled state feel sort of special. Meg Ryan is the original disheveled-chic romantic comedy heroine, the patron saint of the high maintenance white woman. And: she’s impeccably dressed. After all, who is a bigger icon of fall fashion than Meg Ryan as Sally Albright in When Harry Met Sally? Against the background of orange leaves in Central Park, it’s widely acknowledged that Meg-as-Sally is a blueprint for fall fashion: bowler hats and chunky sweaters, mom jeans and plaid blazers.
Would I ever spend my autumns in a big city, wandering around and having witty conversations with my friends?
And I love When Harry Met Sally—it was the first R-rated movie I ever watched. It’s a clear memory in my sheltered Midwestern childhood: at a middle school sleepover with my sister and our best friend, someone (no one can remember who) picked it off the DVD shelf and shockingly, no one stopped us from pushing play. Sally’s fake orgasm in Katz’s Deli was the dirtiest movie scene I knew, and like a women’s magazine in the checkout line, I was fascinated by the question of whether men and women could ever be friends. But more than that, the film painted a picture of a life I wanted. Would I ever spend my autumns in a big city, wandering around and having witty conversations with my friends? To me, When Harry Met Sally isn’t about fall at all—it’s not even about whether men and women can be platonic friends. When Harry Met Sally is really about what adults do over the weekend.
This question has haunted me for years: what do adults do all weekend? I grew up in a house where Saturdays were for chores and Sundays were for church. Weekends were a time for productivity, time to get ahead on all the housework and small projects that went neglected through the work week, time to sit through hours of my sibling’s soccer games. Then I went to college, where my weekends were for parties, for long late night talks with a guy from philosophy class, for piles of homework saved just for Sunday. Weekends were easy in my youth—other people told me what to do and I did it. The influence of my parents felt much like the influence of my college roommates and friend groups: they told me what we were up to over the weekend and we did it, together. Party with a theme, pregame, party with no theme, homework, go see a friend in her play, get up early and do homework in the library. Rinse and repeat.
I watched TV and read voraciously, often waiting until Monday and its predictable routine to roll around.
The predictability of my weekends meant that I had no real thoughts about them. Weekends happened to me—I exercised little agency in putting them together. But then I graduated college. I moved to Budapest, Hungary with one close friend, a city where I had almost no other friends. I missed the predictability of my friend group, the easy role I had, the plans other people made for me. In Budapest, I was a primary school English teacher—a job that I loved but didn’t require all of my free time like being a student had. I worked barely 30 hours a week, an amount that my fellow teachers considered quite busy. “You shouldn’t have to work over the weekend at all,” they’d tell me. “Go enjoy your free time!”
But I couldn’t enjoy my free time. What the hell was I supposed to do with it?! Weekends were amorphous and depressing. I felt that I should do things that would be productive—laundry, grocery shopping, or jogging—but I couldn’t bring myself to do them. I wanted to have weekends that appeared wildly fun and full of European adventure, but at the same time, I wanted weekends that felt restful. Should I make plans? Should I relax? The only times I ever left the apartment were times my roommate Kate came up with plans for us, bringing me to wine bars and art festivals. Left to my own devices, I barely left my bed. I watched TV and read voraciously, often waiting until Monday and its predictable routine to roll around. When I got to school on Monday morning, other teachers would ask me what I did all weekend. What kind of young person mischief did I get up to? Had I visited any new restaurants? Did I go to any clubs? “No,” I’d always say. “I really just stayed around here.”
Weekends might be the background for the film, but they’re also what makes the relationship possible.
It was colored by these questions—by my depressive and depressing weekends—that I rewatched When Harry Met Sally for the first time in years. On a particularly gray November Sunday night, Kate found it on Netflix and suggested that we watch it together; the perfect fall movie. And as we watched, I realized that When Harry Met Sally was as preoccupied with the wide, free, and lightly depressing expanse of weekends as I was.
After all, once they reconnect, Harry and Sally spend most of their friendship hanging out in broad daylight. These scenes are not work lunches, happy hours, or dinners in the middle of the week. They spend very few nights out together. When Harry and Sally are together, time stretches on in scenes full of a wide slant of sunlight, never the rush that comes with meeting up during the workday. No—their friendship is one that takes place over the weekend, one of strolling and chatting, never hurrying. And Harry and Sally do the kinds of activities that adults in a city do on the weekend. They do cultural activities, wandering through the Met. They go out to lunch, help their friends move, go shopping, run errands. They catch up.
Weekends might be the background for the film, but they’re also what makes the relationship possible. Sure, When Harry Met Sally wants us to think that a scene at the Met is important because it’s the first time Harry asks Sally out. But if we can look past the plot of the film, we’ll see a relationship that unfolds over weekends. With Harry and Sally, weekends are an opportunity for connection, for catching up. I realized, in my tiny apartment in Budapest, holed up and lonely without the crush of schoolwork, that When Harry Met Sally was just as concerned with how to fill free time as I was. What would be a worthwhile way to spend a Saturday and Sunday was always changing for both Harry and Sally: after all, in the Met, their midday moment is the highlight of Harry’s weekend. But for Sally, it’s merely a quick stop on the way to bigger things. She has a date that night—and Harry spent their whole afternoon together trying to ask her out. They both leave that afternoon feeling differently.
There’s no formula for a meaningful weekend. It’s just a feeling—sometimes you can catch it, and sometimes you can’t.
There’s no formula for a meaningful weekend. It’s just a feeling—sometimes you can catch it, and sometimes you can’t.
That year in Budapest, When Harry Met Sally gave me a framework for how to spend weekends, for getting out of my own head. What the film suggests is that it doesn’t matter what you do, really—it doesn’t even matter how good your fall fashion is. What can make your weekend meaningful is who you’re with. It’s not that Harry and Sally are models of how to spend a weekend, though their activities sometimes ring true with my plans. Rather, they let weekends happen—together. I find it oddly comforting that even movie characters look at the weekend and spend time coming up with plans that look awfully similar to mine.
But here’s my disclaimer: I still kind of hate weekends. As a graduate student and writing instructor, it’s so easy to let my weekends fill to the brim with grading papers, revising my own work, meeting with students, prepping my classes for the next week. It’s comforting to be busy, to cross items off a to-do list instead of making plans. After all, there’s less to feel when you’re crushed with work. There’s predictability in not letting yourself decide. But contrast is what makes our lives—and work—meaningful. When Harry Met Sally looks at weekends and their long hours that are still somehow too short and wonders, just like I do, how to take a break and whom to take it with.
Those were the words running through my head the first time I ever smoked weed. Wait, no … those were the words running through my head the first time I ever got stoned. The first time I ever smoked weed, I didn’t actually get stoned, which I understand is a common occurrence (or is it a common non-occurrence?). But the very next night, while sitting on a patio under a starless sky with a dozen or so friends at a café in Amsterdam, the glow of red lights somewhere nearby, I toked my second joint and almost immediately got stoned. And it was then that I realized that every person who had been imposed upon me as an authority figure during my adolescence had lied to me.
I thought back to the countless pastors who told the youth group at weeknight gatherings that marijuana would lead us down a path of sin and bacchanalian debauchery. Lie. (It wasn’t the weed that did that.)
I thought back to the overly-friendly police officer who visited my 5th-grade class every two weeks and dared us not to smoke pot because it was a “gateway” drug. Lie. (Well-intentioned as it may have been at the time.) He also told us that someone would try to give us weed for free to hook us for life. “The first one’s always free, that’s how they get ya,” he would say. Also a lie. (Nobody ever offered me free weed in middle school.)
I thought back to my somewhat confused high school Health teacher who, as I recall, at one point told us not to “inject” marijuana. (Well, actually, that one’s a truth—don’t do that.)
I thought back to all the times during college when I could have passed the dutchie with friends and enjoyed myself—cut loose a bit—but instead opted to abstain because I had believed all the lies. (I was a late bloomer. Oh well … all’s well that ends well, I suppose.)
What’s the point of this story, you ask? The point is that I needed a brief introduction to the shameless self-promotion of my forthcoming novel before giving you the clickbait you came here for. Now on with the self-promotion!
Twelve or so years after sitting outside that Amsterdam café, as I was writing what would become my debut novel, Ill Behavior, I reflected back on that very first body buzz and, with some inspiration from my 2nd-grade teacher (a story for another time), I memorialized the experience with the following passage:
“He brings the flame to the tip of the pipe and takes a hit to the dome, holding the smoke in his lungs before letting it out slow. Tiny THC soldiers deployed from the cerebellum march on Fort Limbs, conquering flesh and leaving the battlefield euphoric and numb. HQ radios for reinforcements and once more [he] deploys the troops who forge into battle with arrogant gusto, their eyes having seen the glory of the coming of the Lord and that place where the grapes of wrath are stored. Truth marches on. Glory fucking halleluiah.”
Who is the “he” in that passage, you ask? He is SOBR, a notorious Los Angeles graffiti writer who is wanted for a murder he did not commit, and so he sets out to clear his graffiti name of the murder with the help of his friend in the LAPD. You can follow him on his short odyssey now! Ill Behavior is being published by the extraordinary indie lit press CLASH Books, and is currently available for purchase on their website (ClashBooks.com), the Capitalist Rain Forest Website, and other places where books are sold.
And now, the main event! 7 lesser-known stoner novels with suggested pairings (legal states only, please).
The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle
This book was given to me by one of the folks in attendance at that Amsterdam café so many years ago, and it was my first foray into the lesser-known counterculture lit of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Nearly everyone reading this list has read Hunter S. Thompson or Thomas Pynchon, Richard Brautigan or Tom Robbins. But have you read Kotzwinkle? I hardly ever hear his name mentioned along with the others, and I never see The Fan Man on lists of this sort.
The story follows Horse Badorties, a befuddled garbage hoarder, on a farcical adventure as he moves from pad to pad and acquires junk on the streets of New York circa 1970. A picaresque in the vein of its famous forebears (e.g., Don Quixote and Candide), the story is not remotely politically correct, nor is it for the faint of heart (or the clean-freaks). But as an installment of Fool’s Literature, is there something we can learn about the mid-20th century from Kotzwinkle’s satire? Honestly, I don’t know—it’s been many years since I first read it, so I’ll have to revisit it again to answer that question. But the reason it’s a stoner novel, man, is due to the unique, sometimes jarring prose in the form of first-person stream-of-consciousness hippie-speak that resides in the mind of Mr. Badorties (who often refers to himself in the third person). It’s a style of writing that pushed the boundaries of literature for its time, and a style that stuck with me ever since I first turned its pages. And as I’ve just discovered that it was re-released in 2015 with an introduction by T.C. Boyle, l will indeed be revisiting this one again very soon. When I do, I’ll be pairing it with something of the indica or indica-dominant variety—Platinum OG or Girl Scout Cookies. And I think you should, too, man. Pack a bowl, take a rip, and enjoy the weird journey of The Fan Man, man.
This is certainly not a lesser-known novel, not at all. I mean, it won the Booker Prize (then called the Man Booker Prize) in 2016 for fuck’s sake. However, I like to think of it as a lesser-known stoner novel. Why? Well, for starters, in the prologue (Oh, you skip the prologue? Don’t. Don’t ever do that again.), we meet our protagonist who is standing trial in the United States Supreme Court. As he sits there, waiting for the pomp and circumstance to begin, he takes “the most glorious toke ever taken in the history of pot smoking,” right there on the floor of the U.S. Supreme Court, “getting high in the highest court of the land.”
But it’s not just that this book opens up with an epic indo-indulging scene that makes it a stoner novel. It’s the entire spirit of the book—irreverent, absurd, enlightening. It’s written with the tone and humor that makes for a good stoner comedy flick. It tackles social issues with supersonic satire. And the writing is something special. Nearly each passage has something to chew on, be it the message or the comedy, the word choices or the flow of the sentences. And about that flow… wow! The prose is often rhythmic and urgent—like reading a hip-hop verse, or listening to slam poetry, which makes sense given Beatty’s background (1990 Grand Poetry Slam Champion). And, apparently, this book is not for squares—a quick glance at the reviews on Capitalist Rain Forrest Website will show you that it doesn’t resonate with everyone. I certainly don’t think you have to be a stoner to enjoy The Sellout, but I think most stoners will dig it.
So, go buy this book, then get your hands on a sativa-dominant hybrid. Personally, I’d stuff my pipe with something like Pineapple Express or Jack Herer. Light up starting on the first page (of the prologue!) and let the high-speed writing take you on a memorable ride.
I list this book as a stoner novel, but not in the traditional sense. Some of the hallmarks of a stoner novel are certainly present here—a character living on the fringe of society, stream-of-consciousness life-questioning internal monologue, dark/absurdist humor, etc. But what pushes this book into non-traditional stoner novel territory is that the reader might actually need to be stoned to understand it. The plot, if one exists, is vague at best. Many scenes leave the sober mind wondering if a greater meaning, or some obvious symbolism, has been missed (or maybe I’m just dumb as shit). Each page makes you reflect on the author’s intent—in that, was there any intent at all? Maybe, maybe not … I have no clue. Perhaps when Beckett wrote Molloy it was simply an exercise in letting his subconscious flow out onto the page without inhibition—the only intent being that the end result was something avant-garde? Or perhaps meaning abounds within its pages and I was too repressed, too literal in my reading to understand it?
Reasonable minds may disagree on the book’s meaning (or lack of meaning), but two things are certain: 1. Molloy is a work of art, written at the hands of a master of his craft, and 2. as with all art, it can be thoroughly enjoyed (and possibly deciphered) while stoned. To tackle Molloy, which is a tough read, you’re gonna need to be focused and engaged, so we’re going full sativa for this one. Grab some Sour Diesel or Green Crack, load up your vape pen, and suck until you get thoroughly stoned… then maybe you’ll come to understand the stone-sucking sequence in the book (and if you do, please DM me).
Honestly, I’m not sure if this is such a well-known novel that I need to characterize it as a lesser-known stoner novel. It might be extremely popular (maybe even essential reading) on the other side of the pond and I’m just not aware of it. I mean, it did inspire a BBC series… with a soundtrack by David Bowie… so I have to think it has some presence among the Brits. But I think I can safely say it’s not a popular novel on the Yankee side of the pond… I’ve never seen it on any of these esteemed listicles… and I don’t recall having seen it referenced in any posts in the r/Books subreddit (longtime lurker here). I first picked up The Buddha of Suburbia just a few years ago when I randomly came across it on the shelves of my favorite used bookstore (an autographed copy, to boot!). And boy am I glad I did!
We meet the protagonist, Karim Amir, as a late-teens/early-20s youth growing up in the 1970s suburbs of London and, eventually, the city itself (with a stint in Yankee-town, USA). His Indian father has become something of a mystic guru to the seekers of their boring suburb, which ultimately leads to the breakup of their family and sets Karim on the path to discovering himself.
Throughout Karim’s journey, Kureishi navigates heavy themes—religion, racism, immigration, sexuality, class, identity—with wit and empathy. Reportedly inspired by his own life, Kureishi’s portrait of what it was like for a mixed-race teenager living in 1970s suburban London, written through the lens of the 1980s, unfortunately rings all too familiar in the 2020s (on both sides of the pond, I’m sure). But Kureishi deftly captures that feeling of late-teen/young adulthood angst, and the journey of self-discovery and reinvention, of both the 1970s and the 1980s (and somehow also the 1990s)… which I proclaim in as much as I can imagine being a teen in the 1970s… I wasn’t alive yet (but I’ve seen Almost Famous!)… and I also wasn’t a teen in the 1980s (but I’ve seen all the John Hughes movies!). Maybe it’s just that the teenage/young-adult mode captured by Kureishi was similar for us Westerners raised between the inventions of the television and the smartphone.
This book is hilarious, irreverent, insightful and deliciously subversive—the hallmarks of a great stoner novel. Oh, and very early on in the story, Karim has a grand revelation while using the loo after toking a joint. Ah, and our cast of characters partake of the legendary Thai sticks a few times throughout the story (more on those below). It’s just an added bonus that the title of the book contains a synonym for weed.
I highly recommend you read this book—highly. Pair this one with your favorite edible—dosage of your choosing, but low enough so you don’t get lost on the page. Maybe throw on that Bowie soundtrack in the background, and prepare yourself to be amused by this delightful book that I’m so happy to have stumbled upon.
Of all the books on this list, I think Steppenwolf most deserves the “stoner novel” moniker. The protagonist, Harry Haller (yes, you guessed it, a loner in the midst of an existential crisis who wanders around the city pondering life’s questions and his place in society), is contemplating suicide when he encounters a man on the street holding a sign advertising a night of “Anarchist Evening Entertainment” at a magic theater (groovy, baby!). The man gives Harry a treatise that inexplicably seems to be written about Harry’s very life. As the morose, uptight, disillusioned Harry seeks out more information on the magic theater, he meets Hermine, a woman who would ultimately save his life by getting him to loosen up a bit (a lot, actually). Hermine teaches Harry how to dance, introduces him to jazz and casual drug use, and gets him laid. More importantly, she convinces him that each of these conventions is a worthy endeavor in living a fulfilling life—that one must lighten up and not take things so seriously. In other words, “eat, drink and be merry” as someone famous once said (Dave Matthews?). When Harry finally makes it to The Magic Theater (not a spoiler), the ticket proclaims “For Madmen Only—Price of Admittance Your Mind” (hey MedMen, I think you’re missing out on some sort of marketing opportunity here) and that’s when the trippy stuff happens.
This novel was clearly written under the fluorescent light of a lava lamp, inspired by the counterculture movement of the 1960s, right?
Wrong.
Steppenwolf was written in the 1920s. It was the counterculture movement of the 1960s (and beyond) that was inspired by Steppenwolf, and there’s no denying its influence. The Magic Theater Company founded in Berkeley in 1967, and the Steppenwolf Theater Company founded in Chicago in 1974—look them up, you’ll recognize some of the alumni. A book by Osho (I assume you saw that documentary?) entitled “For Madmen Only: Price of Admission, Your Mind” published in 1979. Oh, and the band Steppenwolf formed in 1967—ever heard of ‘em?
Steppenwolf is one of my favorite novels. If you haven’t read it, I hope you’ll consider doing so. If you’ve already read it, I hope you’ll consider reading it again… stoned. Get psychedelic with it. Pull up that MedMen app (guys, I’m trying real hard for you here—call me for other promotional opportunities) and order an eighth of OG Kush, maybe some 707, or LSD by Barney’s Farm. Tip your delivery person well. Then grind up that sticky icky icky, roll it in a blunt and dip it in the kief that’s been sitting at the bottom of your grinder for god-knows-how-long (this is what you’ve been saving it for!). Or, you know, do some dabs… if that’s your thing (it’s not mine).
Much like Molloy, this novel doesn’t quite fit this list in the traditional sense. It would probably be better suited for a “Top 7 Lesser-Known Tweaker Novels” list, or a list of “What To Read While Sipping Purple Drank”, but I don’t think they let you write those lists (or maybe they do … Buzzfeed, hit me up). However, I’m including it here as a sort of challenge for the daring stoner.
A little bit about the novel: Hobo vampire junkies. That’s all you really need to know. Hobo vampire junkies, who look and smell like crusty gutter punks, roam the Pacific Northwest knocking over pharmacies to score behind-the-counter drugs. To compare it to a few films, think Drugstore Cowboy gives Twilight a Sucker Punch (the asylum scenes, not the fantasy scenes)… and Edward or whoever-the-fuck never shows up to protect you. As I remember it, The Orange Eats Creeps starts off with a fairly normal, linear plotline, but it soon breaks down into the non-linear madness of a drug-addled fever dream where the story has been highjacked and all that remains are the unreliable fragmented thoughts of our teenage narrator who’s lost her grip on reality as she tries to escape the clutches of a serial killer.
Now, you’re probably wondering “Why is this a stoner novel? It doesn’t sound funny. And it doesn’t sound enlightening.”
Well, you’re right… it’s not.
And it’s not.
But it is a trip. And it is a stunning work of literary art… just as Beckett accomplished with Molloy… and others will draw comparisons to William S. Burroughs. With The Orange Eats Creeps, Krilanovich created a surreal experience that’s unique to her voice and worthy of high praise.
Here’s how I think you should treat this book as a stoner novel: Go out and get that strain of weed you absolutely hate because of how paranoid it makes you. If it’s a BOGO at your local dispensary, then you’re in luck! More to enhance the experience! Pack that bong and rip it as you’ve never ripped before. Then do it again. And again. Smoke all that BOGO and get to reading. Let the language sink into you. Let the foreboding sense of doom crawl into your bloodstream. Get lost on the page. Give in to the paranoia and see what comes out on the flip side… if you dare.
OK, so this is a non-fiction book, not a novel. Sue me. If you’re reading this online, it’s literally free for you to read, and if you’re reading it in print (omg, I’m in print?!) then you’re probably sitting in the lobby of your doctor’s office and you didn’t pay for this magazine/journal anyway. [Editor’s note: Electric Literature ended our print run a decade ago, so you will not be perusing our stories at your local dentist’s chair.]
As responsible, conscientious stoners, I think it’s important for us to be aware of the history of the marijuana trade. The authors of Thai Stick have stitched together an incredible history of the Southern California/Southeast Asia pot trade of the ‘60s and ‘70s, which was largely carried out by globetrotting surfers and fearless watermen. For those who don’t know (I didn’t), a Thai stick was a popular form of weed packaging for shipment and distribution out of Thailand—buds were skewered on bamboo sticks and wrapped tightly with a stringy fiber from the plant (sort of like weed kebabs).
Primarily based on oral histories, this book is as fantastical as any fictional stoner novel. It’s an adventure on the high seas like you couldn’t imagine, and an eye-opening portrait of the SoCal drug culture, particularly that of my birthplace, Orange County, California (apparently the OC wasn’t always just religious teetotalers … who knew?). Fair warning: A harrowing and sobering story about an encounter with the Khmer Rouge, replete with eerie photo evidence, will haunt you. But don’t fear, good times abound within. As with any good gangster story, you’ll root for the guys doing the crimes and you’ll bemoan their failures and ultimate capture. And when I first read the introduction to Thai Stick (introductions are like prologues—read them!), I felt like Peter Maguire had been channeling The Good Doctor himself when he wrote it. That alone was worth the price of admission, but it also set the tone for a riveting and, I dare say, important read. We must know our history and pay homage to those hidden heroes who helped shape an entire generation—those surfers in search of endless summers who happened upon the untamed business of pot to finance their utopian dream.
And what should you pair this book with? Nothing. Read it stone-cold sober … out of respect for those who paved the way for you to get stoned today, many of them casualties in the futile, senseless, never-ending War on Drugs.
Just kidding. They wouldn’t want that.
Pick your favorite bud, or grab whatever flower you happen to have at the moment, and toke up! As for me, I’m going in search of that very first body buzz I experienced while sitting outside a café in Amsterdam. I think it was Great White Shark … I can’t be certain, but I’ll soon find out.
In 2020, the world welcomed The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, a rollicking wuxia novella that turns history (and the laws of gravity) on its head. Just a year later, we getBlack Water Sister, an intricate family drama disguised as a spooky, supernatural romp across Penang, Malaysia. And, soon after, an expanded reissue of Spirits Abroad, a 2014 blockbuster story collection featuring tales of uneasy coexistence between spirits, humans and everything in between, as well as the Hugo Award-winning novelette, If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again.
Cho sets her stories in a variety of backdrops, blending small, domestic magics with a distinctly Southeast Asian flavor. Humming underneath her fantastical worlds is Cho’s deft skill with weaving complex human relationships and her characters’ pursuits to become more themselves. In “First Witch of Damansara,” the opening story in SpiritsAbroad, the main character with a “mind like a high-tech blender” comes to terms with her lesser inheritance in a magical family.
Frequently, characters in her books hover on the margins, falling short of what is expected of them: humans tumble into love with the uncanny, girls are isolated by cruel uncles and long-dead aunts, an immigrant is caught between her past and future, while a would-be dragon grapples with its failure to ascend.
Often, those who fail uncover a new way of being, while others succumb to the seductive lure of magic’s potential to repair, as in “The Fishbowl,” where a girl makes a bad bargain with a carnivorous fish. But magic in Cho’s fantasies is very rarely the solution—usually, it’s the problem—which is why so many of her characters struggle with the knowledge that fitting in has a personal cost.
Over video call, we discuss her books Black Water Sister and Spirits Abroad, the domestic mundanity of the magical worlds she’s built, why she doesn’t believe in ghosts (though they almost definitely believe in her), and choosing who you want to be.
Samantha Cheh: When I first read the first version of your Spirits Abroad collection years ago, the magical elements were what drew me in. Looking back at them now, I’m struck by how domestic these stories are.
Zen Cho: Partly why Spirits Abroad has got such a domestic focus is that I basically used to draw quite a lot from my own life and experience. I was writing this in my mid-20s, and I would say I had a very sheltered childhood, but part of it is also that I’ve just always been interested in domestic stories: small scale, set amongst a particular community with their own dynamics and tensions.
I’ve just always been interested in domestic stories: small scale, set amongst a particular community with their own dynamics and tensions.
Then there’s the fantasy elements of the genres I grew up reading. I was inspired quite a lot by these great British children’s fantasists like Edith Nesbit, Diana Wynne Jones. Their children’s books tended to have a domestic setting —it’s mundane fantasy that’s very rooted in the everyday world. That was the kind of fantasy I like reading, so it was the kind of fantasy I was writing
You know, with the stories of Spirits Abroad, I found my voice. I see it as almost a lifelong project to combine the books that I loved growing up—mostly British books, with some Americans and Canadians—and my own experiences growing up in Malaysia, and our local culture. In Spirits Abroad, you can almost pick them off: that’s my orang bunian story, that’s my orang minyak story, that’s my pontianak story. I was going through all these local myths and folklore, thinking what can I do with that? It’s interesting because I think Black Water Sister is really the first time that I’ve been able to kind of express very similar themes, but in a novel form.
SC: A lot of your work is actually very literary—I know we make a lot of bones about this term, but it’s pretty clear that most genre fiction relies on plot for a backbone. But something like Black Water Sister, if you just take out the fact that Jess is being possessed by her dead grandmother, what you would essentially get is a family drama.
ZC: One very depressing reading of Black Water Sister could be that she’s just imagining all of it. I think it’s actually written in such a way that you could just about take that interpretation. Although I do read literary fiction and often enjoy it, one reason why I’m not a literary fiction writer is that I quite like a happy ending. Literary fiction writers can say what they want, but it is a genre convention that those books don’t have happy endings. If it does have a happy ending, that’s unusual.
Commercial and genre fiction are different. Obviously, there are books with sad endings, but ultimately, commercial fiction is all about delivering a pleasurable experience, which is what I’m more interested in as a writer and a reader. It’s quite hard for me to say precisely what it is that fantasy gives me, but one way of thinking about it is that it unlocks my imagination. It gives me a sense of freedom to explore the ideas that I want to explore.
I think it’s that distance from reality that I’m often seeking, maybe because my idea of literature, my idea of books, was something that was completely removed from real life. For me, there was a really big gap between my real life and what I was reading in books, and my work tries to kind of reconcile and bring them together.
At the same time, I really like the sense that this is a world that’s completely separate from ours. Genre often helps create that distance, whether it’s fantasy, historical, or romance. Romance takes place in a different emotional world, even if its plot takes place in what’s purportedly our world. To some extent, this is true of all literature: it’s kind of all in its own created world, but that distance just kind of feels right to me in a way.
SC: In both Black Water Sister and The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, there is a sense of the characters being very in tune with the magical world, and living close with the supernatural to the point of mundanity. Is that quality connected to your love for the work of British fantasists like Jones and Nesbit?
ZC: I’ve never consciously drawn that link between those British fantasists and what I think inspires my more mundane books, but I think of Black Water Sister and Spirits Abroad as drawing on a Malaysian—or I guess to be specific, Chinese Malaysian—culture, where there’s very much a sense of the supernatural being just part of everyday life.
SC: Just out of curiosity, do you believe in ghosts and all that?
ZC: No, not really no. Maybe that’s why I find it quite interesting, quite charming. I’m very easily scared of horror films, not necessarily because I think it’s gonna happen, but there’s a space of doubt. I always say that my attitude to spirits is I don’t believe in them, but I’m just a bit worried they don’t care whether I believe in them or not. There’s just like that tiny, tiny doubt.
SC: Living in Southeast Asia, that doubt feels pretty inescapable, I’d say. This sense that there is always something kind of hovering just beyond your periphery.
ZC: I would say most of my family and friends from Malaysia believe in spirits. My best friend was really shocked to find out relatively recently that I don’t. How can you write that stuff if you don’t believe? I said I can only write that stuff cause I don’t believe, because if I believe I’d be too scared, right?
SC: Correct, cause then you’ll summon dunno what, right?
ZC: Right, right, correct!
SC: In Black Water Sister, you encounter the supernatural in the form of Datuk Kongs and possessive spirits, but you also depict things like trances, which are considered religious practices. When you witness them in real life, it can be quite shocking and it becomes easy to feel how close the supernatural feels to us. I think for Western readers, there’s a sense that these things are just fictional, but as someone who grew up here, these are things that are actually very familiar or I’ve encountered in my actual life.
ZC: With Black Water Sister, I actually watched YouTube videos of mediums going into trances for research, and I have to say that stuff is pretty spooky. When I told a lot of my Asian friends I was doing this, one of them was like eh, you’re not scared if you’re watching you’ll get possessed? I was like, well I wasn’t scared until now! [laughs] Obviously, on some level, I don’t really believe it’s going to happen, otherwise, I wouldn’t do it!
That said, writing stories that don’t include that magical element feels fake in a way. It’s like pretending there’s a world that doesn’t have these kinds of beliefs and occurrences in them. I do sometimes actually say in interviews that my work gets categorized as fantasy, but I’m very conscious that a lot of the time, I am writing about things that people actually believe in. Of course, I give it my own twist, but ultimately, if you’re writing about things that people believe in as though they are true, is that really fantasy? I don’t know.
I think it’s absolutely fine to write about like Chinese gods or whatever in this very mythological way, as a pure story, but at the same time, I always want it to kind of come off as something that is potentially real, even if you’re a skeptic. It’s partly a matter of respect, but it’s more a kind of realism. Being true to the emotional reality of living in Southeast Asia and living in that culture and having that kind of mindset.
SC: Your stories seem to look for a balance between the realistic and the fantastic, each varying by degrees. Do you see your stories as needing more realism with magic kind of thrown in, or are they more magical stories with big doses of realism?
ZC: I think the thing is that when I start writing something, there’s not a clear line for me between real and unreal. Obviously, in real life there is, but in fiction there isn’t, really. It feels very natural to me to kind of go from a mode of fantastical to less fantastical, or whatever. I don’t really understand writers who don’t do that, because it’s just how my brain works.
What interests me is the extent to which fantasy can literalize emotion. In that recent Harry Potter film, Fantastic Beasts, I remember a scene towards the end when the magicians go in to fix everything destroyed in New York. Narratively, that’s a complete cheat because magic should always make things more complicated, but what struck me about it was that it was such a great visual representation of the power of fantasy. This idea of repair made concrete.
I can see how it comes out in my work. There’s the wish fulfillment fantasy of having a direct connection with the past and the ability to communicate seamlessly with your forebears. It feels quite significant to me, for example, that in the “House of Aunts” (in Spirits Abroad), one of the aunts is actually Ah Lee’s great grandmother who she would never have known in her life, and Jess in Black Water Sister was estranged from Ah Mah until she starts talking to her in her head. My parents brought us up speaking English, which meant I couldn’t really communicate with my grandparents because they spoke dialect. In a way, it’s quite a personal fantasy that you can have this kind of connection with the older generation through magic.
SC: What was really interesting is that though a lot of your characters are slightly displaced from their worlds, they retain this very strong awareness of what their place in it should be. They’re characters in limbo, Jess especially, but also the protagonists in “Odette” and “The Fishbowl.” They are keenly aware of their place in the world, of where they’re supposed to exist, but they cannot quite seem to inhabit those kinds of spaces properly.
ZC: If you grew up in Malaysia, you can kind of have that experience even if you never leave the country. I grew up in an English-speaking family—that already makes you kind of unusual, because the majority of the Chinese Malaysian population primarily speaks dialect or Mandarin. If you’re English speaking, then you’re a minority in the media you consume. And then in Malaysia, you’re also like a minority but like a different kind of minority, right? At the same time, you can live in neighborhoods that are majority Chinese, you can go to schools that are majority Chinese, you can end up working in a workplace that is majority Chinese. Then you also have this awareness of a wider world— I’m thinking of Hong Kong, China, Taiwan—where you are a dominant group but not the dominant group, right?
In Malaysia, there’s such strong pressures and ideas around what it means to be Chinese.
Mentally, I’ve always had this sense of displacement or disjunction, and a kind of clarity about what I should be but just wasn’t. I spent a lot of my time living in fictional worlds as a child, that’s something that’s always been kind of part of my own self-conception.
But also, I guess, my background and life experiences all contributed to that because I moved around a lot as a kid. We lived in America for a couple of years then came back to Malaysia, but then my parents decided to send me to Chinese vernacular school because they thought it would be challenging for me. I didn’t speak any Mandarin okay! It was one of the worst experiences of my life. No shade on my classmates or whatever, but it’s just not a friendly experience.
SC: Oh, it’s horrible.
ZC: Yeah, the pedagogical approach is not nurturing, let’s put it that way.
SC:Recently, I found out that in one of the schools, they label the classes as literally hao (good), zhong (middle) and chor (bad), and I was just like, are you serious?
Zen Cho: Straight up! It makes sense to me. My first day in Chinese school, I was sitting there and the teacher who taught English asked me: Can you speak Mandarin? No. Oh, well can you speak Malay? No. She’s like, What are you doing here then? Then I was thinking, I’m eight years old. I don’t get to choose where I go!
It’s interesting because, in Malaysia, there’s such strong pressures and ideas around what it means to be Chinese. There’s a lot of language shaming—if you speak English, you’re not really Chinese, I got quite a lot of that from the adults in my life. There’s this kind of specific insecurity that comes from being Chinese in Malaysia, which pushed me to engage with the idea of who I should be? Who am I? Who am I not? The kinds of ways in which you fall short of that ideal of whatever it is you’re supposed to be, and being able to reconcile with it.
My attitude is I choose to be who I am, and this is just the way I am. So if I’m banana, I’m banana!… Like, whose idea of Chineseness am I living up to?
My attitude is I choose to be who I am, and this is just the way I am. So if I’m banana, I’m banana! I don’t have space in my life to get better at Mandarin right now. Like, whose idea of Chineseness am I living up to? Actually if you think about it, Mandarin was not the first language of any of my grandparents, they all would have spoken dialect as their first language. My maternal grandmother was Peranakan as well, so all her brothers went to English school. A lot of that experience has fed into my thinking about identity and having quite a strong sense of that.
SC: I think you definitely see it a lot with Jess in Black Water Sister, and to some extent, Byam in your novelette “If You First You Don’t Succeed.” These characters don’t quite live on the margins, but they’re constantly narrating to themselves: I am supposed to do this, and this is what is expected of me but because of whatever is wrong or off about me.
ZC: One thing that I’ve noticed as well in my work is that I have this sense that it’s fine to be that way. If you think of the imugi Byam in “If At First You Don’t Succeed,” it lives as something that it is not, and there is something wrong with that state because they should be a dragon. Byam doesn’t use a proper name or pronouns either because it doesn’t necessarily think of itself as a full kind of being. In a later sequel, when Byam has ascended, I use the pronoun “they” because now that they’re a dragon, they get to use a human pronoun. They obviously merited a human pronoun before, but that’s just kind of how they felt about themselves—that this was as good as it was gonna get and all they deserved.
I do write characters where ultimately you get to choose who you are. In True Queen, for example, Muna, the main character, accidentally gets split up from her other half, but she ends up choosing to stay who she is. Quite a lot of my characters have multiple names, and they get to kind of choose who they are that’s legitimate.
As a child, I never understood why forty years in the desert was God’s punishment for his chosen people. A three-hour hike through Joshua trees changed me. Everything here wants to kill you, he said. I like that. Desert lavender, dry riverbeds, jumbo rock piles. They don’t need us. The yuccas, the pancake pear cactus, the aggressive honeybees just want their water, and they don’t need much of it. Truth is, the desert has more plants than we thought. We sail the ocean tomorrow, to see the sun sink directly into the waters of the Pacific, to feel ocean wind on bare skin, to smell salt. These are different ways of saying the same thing. Every ship gets to be a submarine once.
The Waterer
It’s a short slip
into the tsunami of the past.
Past the wishing wells
and the restaurants and the church formulas
that never quite added up to release.
I would protect the fig tree outside of my first school.
A galaxy of sharp branches
and honey-like liqueur from fruit
that has begun to leak from its base.
Honestly, I’m happy to sacrifice
the space necessary
for such a memory, especially when most are catch and release.
Incandescent glow on my brother’s lips
as he raised a fig to a cry of no tomorrow!
and was grown and underway with the U.S. Navy,
sailing the world in a submarine that operated
on caffeine and epinephrine,
before the cataracts of goodbye
blinded us to the water.
[And the fig he had held between his thumb and forefinger
Like a stupid cigar dropped to the ground.]
To the weight of the water.
To the idea that Adam and Eve
were seduced by figs, not apples.
To water a fig tree is the best armor
for the past, and if you know
what you’re doing, sometimes, a plastic watering can will hold an ocean.
Africa is an amazing continent with a rich history. So much of that history exists in the oral traditions and local customs of people on the continent; though much of Africa’s history is understood by many in the West from the gaze of colonization. In order to reckon with the complexities of this very important continent—a continent that is the cradle of humanity—we must understand Africa from a post-colonial vantage point. In using the term post-colonial, I am referring to the effects and legacy that colonialism had on the African continent. This legacy is what many works of fiction explore in their examination of African life in the 20th and 21st centuries.
I attempted to write a postcolonial novel in my debut God of Mercy. In the novel, there is a village called Ichulu that has completely evaded the influences of modernity and colonization. Ichulu has remained the same: no traditions have been broken; no customs have been changed; everything is as it has always been remembered to be. That is until the protagonist, Ijeọma, begins to fly and the very foundations of the village become uprooted. In God of Mercy, the postcolonial state of flux is in rapid motion and characters have to choose which side they belong to: that of tradition, that of modernity, or that of obscurity.
The following novels are pieces of art that delve into the postcolonial vis-à-vis Africa and are truly wonderful reads:
This beautiful novel is set in 1940s Bulawayo (a city in then Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe) and follows the story of Phephelaphi Dube, a young woman who falls in love and ends up in troubling relationship. This novel is written in verse with most of its lines feeling like works of poetry. This book explores the nature of city life during Zimbabwe’s colonial era and is unrelenting in its exposition of the main characters.
So most people know Chinua Achebe for his debut novel Things Fall Apart, but there is another novel that is filled with robust storytelling about postcolonial Africa. Arrow of God follows the life of Ezeulu, the chief priest of the village of Umuaro. Ezeulu is in conflict with the colonial officer Mr. T.K. Winterbottom who arrests him for turning down a position with the colonial establishment. The consequence is that Ezeulu cannot perform his duties as chief priest for the New Yam Festival and the village cannot eat the harvested yam. This novel is rich in its exploration of belief and explores the limits of traditionalism in the colonial landscape.
House of Stone is an exhilarating novel that explores modern life in Zimbabwe through the eyes of Abednego, Agnes, Bukhosi, and Zamani. Bukhosi goes missing and the other characters struggle to find him—though not without Zamani taking advantage of Agnes and Abednego. This is a story that explores the history of Zimbabwe from its historical beginnings as Rhodesia into the present day. It’s a novel that explores Africa’s history beyond its colonist past by interrogating the complex lives of its amazing characters.
This story is one to remember. Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods Inc is about Ike, a cab driver from Nigeria who lives in New York City. Ikey has attended an elite university in the United States, but things don’t pan out for him and he is unable to land a fitting job. In order to make money, Ike plans to return to his Igbo village and steal his village deity so as to sell the statue to art collectors in New York. This novel is harrowing in its treatment of Ike and says much about the treatment of African artifacts in the postcolonial world. It is an extraordinary read and will delight any reader seeking to learn more about the lives of African people in diaspora.
The Fishermen is an extraordinary debut by Igbo writer Chigozie Obioma. The novel follows the life of Ben and his three brothers: Ikenna, Boja, and Obembe. It also focuses on a river that was once deified but due to the village’s conversion to Christianity, the river is now believed to be evil. This story is about vengeance, losing loved ones, and the love of family. It grapples with the postcolonial because it discusses the ways in which Christianity has disrupted the traditions of the village and has caused its inhabitants to forge new beliefs about their world with some characters resisting that change like the madman Abulu. This novel is an extraordinary read and is highly recommended to readers looking to explore the tragedies of family life in postcolonial Africa.
This is my third novel coming out of Zimbabwe. What can I say? I love my Zim writers! We Need New Names is a fantastic novel that follows the life of Darling, a young girl living in Zimbabwe. She spends most of her time hanging out with friends and taking care of her father who is sick with AIDS. After living in Zimbabwe, she moves to Michigan and has to learn to adapt to American life. I love this novel because it explores two vastly different settings through the eyes of a child––one that embodies postcolonial Africa through her modern sensibilities. We Need New Names is for any reader looking to explore the hardships of postcolonial life in Africa.
This brilliant story takes place in a fictitious African country after independence has been achieved. Wizard of the Crow follows the life of the leader of the Free Republic of Abuiria: a man who is ruling for personal gain and in a corrupt manner, hurting the common citizen of his nation. This novel serves as an allegory for many of the real African countries that suffered at the hands of despots during the early days of post-colonialism and reminds its reader of the many dangers of a corrupt government leader. Wizard of the Crow is for the reader seeking to learn about the growing pains that Africa experienced early on in its post-colonial days.
When you were younger, how did you handle your family’s secrets? Did you share them with others or keep them to yourself? Did you revel in acknowledging how much privilege you had with this information or did you hold them over the ones you loved?
While reading Bisi Adjapon’s debut novel, The Teller of Secrets, I found myself asking these questions and reflecting on my own sensibilities from childhood. I remember snooping through my sisters’ text messages with their friends and listening in on my parents’ conversations about our close relatives. I was a reticent child growing up, yet I craved the idea of knowing and keeping secrets that were only reserved for a handful of ears; I wanted to understand why people made the decisions they did.
Naturally, I related to Adjapon’s fierce and percipient protagonist, Esi Agyekum. Not because we are both children of Ghanaian descent, but because Esi, when we first meet her, is a child full of questions. Throughout this novel, she tries to parse together her father’s infidelity, her stepmother’s rigidness, and her own ever-changing identity whether she’s at home or at school. Esi’s prudence only grows as she gets older and this journey—with the background of Ghana’s political upheaval—brings to light what it means to move through the world as someone who is unapologetically vocal, hungry for knowledge, and a woman. However, Esi soon learns that burgeoning into womanhood doesn’t come without a price.
The Teller of Secrets is a profound testament to Adjapon’s ability to write a sharp, feminist narrative with a deftly crafted woman at the heart of its pages. I had the opportunity to speak to Bisi Adjapon about the way society’s double standard continues to relegate women to such unfathomable expectations, even today.
Kukuwa Ashun: The protagonist of this novel, Esi, is such a keen and vibrant young girl from the first moment we see her—which is when she’s witnessing her father’s infidelity from a hotel room in Accra. As Esi navigates life at school and home, we see the way her mindset towards family, love, and womanhood shift as she grows older. Can you tell me what it meant for you to explore these themes in Esi’s story as a coming-of-age narrative?
Bisi Adjapon: I’ve always been fascinated by the way women are treated in Ghana. If you’ve been around any Ghanaian family, when there are guests around, the women are in the kitchen bustling around while the men relax in the sitting room just waiting to be served. For me, as somebody who had big sisters and brothers who grew up in a different generation, they used to tell me, “You have no idea how lucky you are. When we were young, this is how life was for us.” But even then, I saw this big gap between how boys were raised and how girls were raised. Girls are trained to be good wives because there’s always this thing hanging over your head, that you must aspire to get married. When you do have a husband, the success of the marriage depends on you. The man is like this ultimate prize, the glory that you have to win. Not only do you do everything to win him, but you must do everything you can to keep him. That didn’t sit well with me. If the man is something to achieve, if the husband is the glory to acquire, then that suggests that you, as a woman, are inferior; you’re less of a human being.
I’m a parent myself, so I’ve had to think about what it means to raise a girl. When boys are growing up, does anybody tell them that they better learn how to do xyz, or their wives will leave them? Every child should be trained to be worthy of being kept, regardless of gender. That’s something that I was interested in. I thought I would set Esi on a journey by marking all the different ages in her life. Obviously, the formative years are more important. I spent a lot more time in Esi’s early years because that is when ideas are introduced without the child’s awareness. When clay is soft, you can mold it, so you start to see all the different traumas that help Esi transform into the woman she ultimately becomes. Somewhere along the line, she hits a crossroad and has to decide where to go from there. Her father, her family, society—they are all part of shaping and molding Esi into who she becomes.
KA: Do you think this double standard has shifted in recent years?
BA: A little, but not enough. People still have those expectations, no doubt about it. I remember sitting at a table with a group of friends when Megan Markle got married. Everybody talked about how lucky she was that a whole prince married a woman who was older and divorced. Had it been the man who was older and divorced, there would be no problem with it! Recently, I attended a traditional marriage where the officiant said, “If you’re a woman and you’re still not married, don’t be worried, it will happen to you.” She literally said, “Your glory is coming.” Then she started singing this gospel song that goes, I’m trading my shame for the glory of the Lord. Lord almighty!
KA: In the novel, Esi attends three different schools before going to University. Can you talk about your decision in portraying these institutions across these different stages of her life?
BA: The honest truth is that these are schools I became familiar with, and I was fascinated by their differences. You’ve got this mixed elementary school where children interact freely with one another, but then you get to the middle school which is a boarding school. The minute you leave elementary school, teachers make sure you are molded into society’s ideal woman. Usually these boarding schools are not mixed. I guess it’s easier to plan a curriculum for the whole school where they have all girls learning how to sew, bake pineapple upside-down cakes, how to weed—all different things. I was fascinated by this.
I had a big sister who went to a middle school, and the minute she entered, it was baking, cooking, and all that. Not that there is anything wrong with it per se, because food is great, and everybody should learn how to cook. But these activities superseded academics, unlike in the secondary school. Wesley Girls was different. I went there, and it was a wonderful experience, so I wanted to show a different side. Yes, Wesley Girls had the obligatory cooking and sewing classes, but the greater emphasis was on academics. They were studying to be engineers, pilots, doctors, writers, and lawyers. I wanted to show that.
KA: And it seems like Esi also has more freedom when she’s in boarding school. There’s also a deeper intimacy between her classmates since they all live there.
If the man is something to achieve, if the husband is the glory to acquire, then that suggests that you, as a woman, are inferior; you’re less of a human being.
BA: Absolutely. Being in an all-girls school is such a great thing for girls—for me, personally. When I was in the U. S., I taught in Christian and public high schools. But especially in the private, Christian schools, I noticed that the girls were more reluctant to raise their hands and answer questions. These same girls in elementary school were bright, high achievers, ready to take over the class. However, the minute their hormones kicked in, many girls became instantly coy. They thought they were supposed to be demure, and they were unwilling to raise their hands or appear overly intelligent. They wanted to be cool, and that was a shame. I liked the idea of a school that allowed these students to just explore anything that they wanted to. In Wesley Girls, there were students learning to play the cello, the piano, or the flute. They were doing athletics. They were involved in science competitions and beating the boys. For years––even now––they pride themselves on being one of the best academic schools. I really like that.
KA: Speaking of community, in Esi’s home life, she’s around these women who contribute to her growth in different ways. I think about the differences between her family in Ghana and her family in Nigeria. I’d love to hear more about how you wanted to explore her growth through the women she grew up around.
BA: I don’t know that I thought consciously about it, but I observe life around me. I’m half Nigerian, and I used to travel a lot to Nigeria. I had Nigerian relatives and I saw how they were. I must say that there are just as many feisty women in Ghana as in Nigeria. There is the belief, for instance, that Asante women are professionally independent. Even illiterate women are out there on the street or in the market, hustling, trading, selling food, doing their utmost to earn a living. I just chose to place Esi in a Ghanaian family where the stepmother was rather subservient and didn’t have a voice.
I patterned her Nigerian aunties after the feisty Nigerian women that I knew—who were actually a lot like Asante women of Ghana. So it’s not that Ghanaian women are not strong. Esi had to have two distinct families. I wanted her to be able to see what was possible. If her sisters and her stepmother were subjugated, I wanted to show that there were different types of women who were, while married, pursuing their own career. There’s the auntie who’s a businesswoman and another that’s going to university. It’s possible to have both and I thought it’d be fun to do it in two different countries.
KA: Something that’s prevalent in literature is the bond between mother and daughter, but here it feels like the focus centers on the father-daughter relationship and expectations. What drew you to writing about the nuances in Esi’s relationship to Papa?
BA: I think that father-daughter relationship, and the relationship between mother and son, are very important. The father, or the mother, serves almost as a model for what you’re going to encounter later in life. And there is always this yearning to please one’s parent.
Politics is all around us and it affects how we view ourselves, how the course of our lives changes.
For some reason, girls tend to adore their fathers and sons tend to adore their mothers. There’s a lot of tenderness between fathers and daughters. When you have a father who is like a model for a man, when that father is telling you to go for your dreams, and then start to switch when puberty hits, it can be heartbreaking. Parenting is tough. You enjoy your daughter and then one day you blink and you think, wait a minute, what happened to my little girl? Oh my God, she’s a woman. Men are going to notice her. So, do I lock her up and keep her safe? How do I protect her? Fathers want to protect their daughters. In that protection, the father is now shifting and looking at things not from his point of view, but from society’s point of view. How are people going to receive my daughter? Not all parents do this, but Esi’s father represents a lot of fathers whose perspectives shift.
My own father, for instance, was very supportive and always willing to let me try anything. But I think that for most men, the minute the daughter becomes a woman, fear sets. You want to also make sure your daughter fits in and is loved. And actually, it’s detrimental. If you do everything in your power to be liked, you end up destroying yourself. The good thing is that Esi manages somehow to find her own way. But it’s not easy.
KA: I noticed how flawlessly you inserted these moments of political unrest that happen not only in Ghana but in Nigeria, too. How important was it to blend Esi’s Nigerian and Ghanaian roots, along with these political moments, throughout the novel?
BA: Everything is political, right? Certain life decisions are made because of politics. For instance, Esi decides to go to Nigeria but has to go through Togo because there is dispute between Ghana and Togo. Why is there a dispute between Ghana and Togo? Because of the coup. So politics is all around us and it affects how we view ourselves, how the course of our lives changes. In childhood, Esi clings to her father. Is he going to disappear like the fathers who disappeared during the Nkrumah regime?
Initially, I resisted politics because I resent the fact that when Africans write books, it’s almost as if you have to write about politics. I was not in the least interested in politics, but a lot of stuff came out through my research. For instance, it came as a shock to me when I stumbled onto the fact that women were blamed for shortages in Ghana during the military regime. I thought, wait a minute, women traders were at the bottom of the supply chain! Since I was writing a feminist novel, I decided to weave it in. To do that, I had to tackle how politics affected women. Politics gave context.
Candyman is based on many influences, the first being Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden,” featured in the fifth volume of his Books of Blood horror story collection. Set in Liverpool, England, Candyman is a superintendent for low-income housing. The protagonist, Helen Lyle, encounters him while conducting research on urban folklore. The second influence is the urban legend of the hook hand, and the third influence is another urban legend in which one says “Bloody Mary” five times into a mirror. But how can we forget the most infamous of influences, the real life death of Ruthie Mae McCoy, a mentally ill Black woman living alone in South Side Chicago in the ABLA Housing Project?
Aged 52, McCoy called the cops to report an attempted home invasion that resulted in a damaged medicine cabinet. The police were dispatched under the less urgent “disturbance with a neighbor” report, as opposed to robbery, which might explain why no officers had arrived by 9:05 p.m. By then, two more calls had been placed in reference to McCoy’s apartment—this time reporting the sound of gunshots. Four police officers arrived around 9:10 p.m. They called McCoy; there was no answer. They borrowed a key from the project office, but it did not work. Neighbors said that McCoy always answered her door. Unable to access the apartment, the police left. Over the next two days, officials debated when and how to enter the apartment. McCoy was found when the lock was finally drilled off of her door. Ruthie Mae McCoy was a victim of institutional violence and police brutality—via neglect.
Ruthie Mae McCoy was a victim of institutional violence and police brutality—via neglect.
We have contemporary examples of Black women falling victim to police violence, many of whom run the full gamut of mental health. Deborah Danner was 66 when she was shot by the NYPD in 2018. Shukri Ali Said was 36 when she died of injuries from police contact in 2018 in Seattle. Charleena Lyles was 30 years old when she was shot in Seattle by police in 2017. Aura Rosser was 40 years old when she was shot by police in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2014. Pamela Turner was 44 when she was shot in Texas by police in 2019. Muhlaysia Booker was murdered at age 23 in 2019. Devin-Norelle reported in them.Magazine in 2020 the deaths of six Black trans women in nine days. We, hopefully, know and remember the names Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor.
In both the Candyman of 1992 and the Candyman of 2021, the narrative presence of Black women seems more a functional reality than a portrayal with deep investment, in spite of Ruthie Mae McCoy’s very real death, for instance, a fact upon which both films’ lineage depends. But what of the one dimensional rendering of Black women and femmes in these very same films? In the Candyman of 2021, Black women experience the violence of losing Black men, but intimate human bonds between these women are never given proper representation.
The forgettable relationship that America has with Black women is in Candyman itself, but there is a particular scene that truly made me shift uncomfortably in my seat as a viewer, one that made an acute imprint, long as a finger, on my heart. Anthony McCoy’s (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) eyes gleam like an oiled razor edge as he realizes that the mysterious serial murders that have taken place in the upscale Chicago art gallery during an exhibition in which his art is included will bring exposure to that floundering artwork. An uncanny smile pops onto McCoy’s face as he utters, “Say his name.” I sat there, gob-smacked by the blatant erasure of Black women and femme experiences at the intersection of state and intimate partner violence. Jordan Peele and Nia Da Costa abducted a specific phrase meant to highlight and address the violences experienced by Black women and femmes, SAY HER NAME, and repurposed it, erasing a real political call that we continue to yell in the protracted wake of zero charges for the state-sanctioned murder of Breonna Taylor.
I sat there gob-smacked by the blatant erasure of Black women and femme experiences at the intersection of state and intimate partner violence.
The 1992 Candyman reintroduces the white woman character, Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen), from Barker’s short story and refashions her as a PhD student in Chicago, working with her African American fellow PhD student and friend Bernadette Walsh (Kasi Lemmons), on research into urban legends. When Lyle hears from an African American custodial worker, Kitty Culver (Sarina C. Grant), about the urban legend of Candyman circulating in the Cabrini-Greene projects, she convinces Walsh—who consistently tries to persuade her not to visit “the ghetto”—to conduct research in the housing project. The project is rendered as a hot bed of delinquency and crime, rife with predatory Black men and besieged by, predatory, if not equally, Black women. Lyle meets and interviews Anne-Marie McCoy (Vanessa Williams) as she cares for her infant, Anthony (Lanesha Martin). As Lyle investigates the suspicious murder based on the Ruthie Mae McCoy story, she encounters the Candyman, brought to life by Tony Todd.
Candyman’s origin story goes like this: Robitaille, an African American portraitist from the late 19th century, fell in love with a rich white businessman’s daughter whom he was commissioned to paint. Upon the business man learning that Robitaille had impregnated his daughter, he and a white mob chopped Robitaille’s dominant hand from his body, allowing bees to sting him to death on the land where the Cabrini-Greene projects will be built. In an ill-defined romantic and horror-driven connection, Robitaille aka Candyman dispatches everyone in Lyle’s world. Lyle is blamed for the murders and the disappearance of Anthony McCoy, who by the end of the film, she saves for his Black mother. She drags him out of a bonfire in which Candyman has entrapped the child.
In 2021, the film attempts to correct some of the more controversial aspects of the original movie. Anthony McCoy is now grown, working as a career visual artist while living with his curator partner Brianna Cartwright in new condos built over a portion of the former Cabrini-Greene projects. The film begins with McCoy and Cartwright enjoying their upwardly mobile lifestyle. In this continuance of the story, we do not see the project housing outside of the memories of William Burke (Colman Domingo), we do not see Black women as custodial workers who only appear to move the plot along and then disappear, undifferentiated, back into the ghetto. As McCoy learns of Candyman from Burke, he ventures into the dilapidated and abandoned projects hoping to take photographs that will inspire work for an upcoming group show at Cartwright’s gallery. The subsequent work is received poorly by a critic, the same critic that McCoy later confronts during a private meeting, the same meeting where he says “Say his name.”
Brianna Cartwright is written to be the opposite of McCoy’s mother. Their dichotomy portrays a scale of Black womanhood along respectability signaling. She is educated, well-spoken, upper middle class, white collar, straight, not a mother. She suffers from the specter of her father’s suicide. Aside from Brianna’s relationship with Black men, she does not have the backstory that McCoy is afforded. Her existence via Freudian heterosexism clips her ability to have a more pronounced stake in the film.
Aside from Brianna’s relationship with Black men, she does not have the backstory that McCoy is afforded.
Anne-Marie McCoy, Anthony McCoy’s mother who appears in Candyman (1992), is reprised in a solitary scene between mother and son where an unspoken conflict manages to take center stage. From the beginning of the movie, McCoy has a strained relationship with his mother, represented only through missed phone calls. Her crime? Not having told him that he’s the baby rescued from Candyman. The other Black women necessary to the Candyman urban legend (Kasi Lemmons as Bernadette “Bernie” Walsh; Barbara Alston as Henrietta; Sarina C. Grant as Kitty Culver) only appear on the recording that McCoy finds in library archives belonging to Helen Lyle.
Even the presence of Brianna’s brother, Troy Cartwright, falls flat. Cartwright and his partner Grady Smith (Kyle Kaminsky) provide comic levity, but do not seem attached to any community of their own. Troy’s most engaging scene is when he accompanies Brianna to gather her things after McCoy has gone off the rails with his impending possession. It’s a moment of sibling solidarity, and momentarily reveals a rich dynamic between them. It is this mirroring construct—the attempt to respond by only representing the opposite—that revives restricted depictions of Black women (and Black people in general): either trapped in the ghetto or successful capitalists; either failed mothers or mothers not at all; either in opposition to white heteropatriarchal standards, or fitting into those standards and being targets for brutality anyway.
The movie ends with Brianna Cartwright cowering in the abandoned projects, holding Anthony McCoy—whose possession by Candyman is almost complete. The cops arrive, storming their location, shooting immediately. The next scene shows McCoy’s body across the room and Brianna unscathed, a confusing narrative choice that further misrepresents Black women’s encounters with state institutions.
While we don’t know the specific aspects of how this new script was produced, or what sorts of edits were made, or what pressures Nia DaCosta, the film’s director, may have been under, we do know that the tendency to render the Black woman invisible is common for Jordan Peele. In Get Out, there is not one nuanced representation of a Black woman. Chris Washington’s (Daniel Kaluuya) mother is never physically embodied, save for his dreams where she is represented as a deer; she is also a drug addict, one of the only intimate details we learn about her. Washington’s mother never appears in the film to represent herself; she is an ill-defined specter that is mostly defined by her drug abuse. Georgina (Betty Gabriel) is locked in her psychologically possessed state, no agency, no motivation outside of fear; Chris Washington hits her with his car in an effort to escape. Detective LaToya (Erika Alexander) refuses to believe Chris and his friend Rod Williams (Lil Rel Howey), leaving them to their fates. In Us, Red/Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) shoulders the near entirety of the destruction of the world she occupies, while being characterized by the same respectability that defines Brianna Cartwright. Peele seems incapable of writing a genuine, humanized Black woman, and this flaw remains a cornerstone of his work. If the writers, producers, and director were looking to build an accurate vision of violence against Black men, it’s impossible to do so without a nuanced and complicated portrayal of state violence against Black women, femmes, and queer people. They deserve a more substantial tie-in than just romantic relationships.
Peele seems incapable of writing a genuine, humanized Black woman, and this flaw remains a cornerstone of his work.
The logics of race and binary gender are not challenged or broken down, they are reinforced. The extremes of respectable or not, of man or woman, of white or Black, accomplished or not (by late capitalist standards) are held firmly in place. Black representation is restricted, most of all for the Black women/femme characters represented in the movie. By now the works of Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, Barbara Smith, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Saidiya Hartman, Hortense Spillers, Katherine McKittrick, Kara Keeling, Riley C. Snorton, Sylvia Wynter, and so many others have given us viable blueprints and words so that collectively, our society can understand and express Black women’s realities while also challenging their present and gathering the tools to build a new future.
In the end, I am left with what ifs: What if Anne-Marie McCoy was the protagonist? What if Brianna became Candyman? What if the niece of Bernadette Walsh had become an artist? What if the gay couple played by Nathan Stewart Jarrett and Kyle Kaminsky were not an ancillary diversity couple, entirely unnecessary to the plot? What if the Black women from the original Candyman were purposefully reprised and we began with Black women? Surely, beginning with us can also do the political and social work that the 2021 Candyman aspired to do. There is an audience out there—myself among them—of Black women collectively calling for help; Black women of all experiences just walking home, defending themselves from institutional and intimate violence; Black women of all experiences wanting to be themselves, wanting to be safe, wanting to be seen. Some would argue that the lack of attention to state and intimate violence and death in the lives of Black women and femmes is because of their low percentage compared to the deaths of Black men due to police brutality. But those same deaths are often preceded by serial violences and invisibilities that are perpetrated or exacerbated by state and intimate violence. This erodes stability for the people Black women and femmes often care for, and injects further vulnerability into communities that Black women and femmes hold up. In the case of 2021’s Candyman, the material risk of our lives—our narrow representation, our invisibility—becomes reinforced in our imaginations, along with everyone else’s. The shape of the film is made by the negative space manifested in dropped storylines that could have centered Black women, rather than erasing our struggles with state and intimate violence.
Literary translators are the often overlooked heroes of literature. As an Egyptian who is not as fluent in Arabic as I am in English, there are novels written about my homeland that I wouldn’t have been able to read and finish if they had not been translated into English, not least of which are the works of the great Naguib Mahfouz.
Though I read translated novels frequently, as a result of globalization, there’s an increasing number of novels written in English about cultures from around the world, most of them penned by a bilingual local author. Such novels are different from literary translations, but they are a joy of their own. For one, the reader gets to witness the author doing a sort of translation themself: translating the local language, dialogue, culture into English despite the sometimes quite limited reach of the language. This is something I did with my own novel, Cairo Circles. The English is also oftentimes different from the English of native speakers, not in terms of quality, but diction, cadence, and even sentence structure, which is a thing to celebrate. As Chinua Achebe wrote in The African Writer and the English language: “Can [the African writer] ever learn to use English like a native speaker? I should say, I hope not. It is neither necessary nor desirable for him to do so.”
I seek out such novels and enjoy reading them just as I do with translated works, so here are eight novels from around the world written in English.
Set in a present-day Iran prison, Arian’s first novel in English is a brilliant portrait of the way injustice, oppression, and dictatorship can be so brutal and merciless that it causes us to turn on ourselves.
While Cha’s debut novel offers a grim and disturbing look into the inequality, consumerism, and impossible beauty standards that four women in modern South Korea are subject to, it has just as much to say about the importance of friendship and love in the face of such forces.
Hage’s novel follows a young man’s experience of Lebanon’s civil war (1975-1990) with writing that is so intimate and honest—it leaves you regretting the war yourself, though you had nothing to do with it.
Mengiste’s debut novel is a brilliant exploration of the way family, love, and friendship can be challenged, tested, and forever changed by political upheaval and instability.
Set during the waning years of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, Alvarez’s novel follows the story of four revolutionary sisters whose courage comes at great expense, though you never get the sense that it wasn’t worth it.
This incredibly imaginative debut novel follows Mukta, the child of a prostitute in Mumbai, and Tara, a young woman who’s never known poverty. It forces the reader to reconsider the romanticized notions we have about destiny and points them to all the ways it can be used to justify injustice.
This dreamy and magical novel follows several generations of a Cuban family divided by the Cuban revolution. Though it leaves the reader nostalgic and lamenting what might have been, it does well in capturing the nuance and beauty of 20th-century Cuba.
Set in modern-day Nigeria, this debut presents the most delicious, entertaining, and deeply human portrait of polygamy in the developing world that I’ve ever come across—and I’ve consumed my fair share.
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