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22 Cosmology of ^ Black Arnencas
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ISSN 0306-4964258

Gregory Rutledge is a second-year PhD candidate in English literature at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison; he is a graduate of Emory (Atlanta) and the
University of Florida College of Law at Gainesville. His dissertation is going to be on
Black futuristic fiction and fantasy writers and the cosmology of freedom to be found
in their works.
Nalo Hopkinsons Urban
Jungle and the Cosmology
of Freedom: How Capitalism
Underdeveloped the
Black Americas and Left a
Brown Girl in the Ring
Gregory Rutledge
The citadel of world capitalism, the United States, has never liked to
admit that millions of its citizens are poor. Yet the hub of international
financial markets. Wall Street, is only blocks from some of the worst
urban slums in the world. Atlanta's Omni and glittering convention
center is walking distance from dilapidated shanties that are mirror
images of eighteenth and nineteenth century slave quarters. The White
House and the posh residential district of Georgetown are respectively
less than twenty city blocks from rat infested, crime filled squalor...
Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America
(1983), p. 53.
The extremes of wealth that capitalism creates in the United States, which
Manning Marable describes,! ig a situation that exists throughout the Americas.
Particularly susceptible to its forces are Blacks, many of whom reside within the
harsh confines of the inner city. As difficult as living in inner-city blight is for
most Blacks, it could be especially challenging to a second- or third-generation
Black Caribbean woman who lives in a jungle filled with imposing skyscrapers,
fierce streets, and violent residents that threaten her well-being and that of her
newborn, her heritage, and the future of her family. The struggle any young woman
Foundation 81 (Spring 2001), pp. 22-39
must face in such an environment is how to use the freedoms and lessons her
cultural legacy provides when she lives in an alien culture valorising a new ethos,
much of it at odds with the old ways. Such is the story that the most recent female
Black futurist fiction and fantasy (hereafter referred to as "FFF") novelist, Nalo
Hopkinson, tells in Brown Girl in the Ring (Warner/Aspect: New York, 1998).
Brawn Girl relates the story of Ti-Jeanne, a young Afro-Caribbean w o m ^ whose
family is trapped in the iimer city of a western metropolis. Hopkinson s novel is
not situated in the inner city of the past or present, but a fictional twenty-first
century; the plot unfolds in the burned-out shell of Toronto, a city whose politico-
economic infrastructure has crumbled because the White flight toward suburbia
and exurbia, the middle-class residential zone even farther away than the suburbs,
caused a devastating drain of resources.2 The exodus forces the city into bank
ruptcy and creates a Third World that the rest of Canada actively seeks to keep
out. The economic problems of Miami and Detroit, both US metropolises with
predominantly or significantly non-White populations in the city proper, suggest
Hopkinson's novel is not as fantastic as it would seem. 3 Indeed, one reviewer
"found it [Hopkinson's Toronto] to be disturbingly reminiscent of what
Johannesburg was like when I visited there several years ago, before the end of
apartheid (taken to extremes, of course)."^ Thus, Brown Girl is more than escapist
speculative fiction, as reviewer Valerie Smith notes:
[RJeaders should not be too quick to dismiss this book as popular genre
fiction. Brown Girl is as much a cautionary tale about the social
consequences of gang violence, substance abuse and the abandonment of
North American cities, as it is about the power of new technologies...
[The] novel enacts the spiritual consequences of postmodern urban
blight.5
Considering the potent message contained within its pages. Brown Girl moves we
beyond normative fictional discourse to grapple with issues sociologists, political
scientists, and economists study. Two of the more noted intellectuals whose
theories lend themselves to discussion in the context of Brown Girl are politica
scientist Manning Marable and theologian-philosopher Robert Cummings Neville.
Marable's How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America canvasses the
dangers to Blacks in Ti-Jeanne's socioeconomic stratum, and some of the specific
challenges to young Black females like Ti-Jeanne. These challenges, which are
obstacles to freedom, impinge on what Neville calls, in a book of that titie (1976,
1995), the cosmology of freedom. As Neville notes, freedom involves an infinitely
complex cosmology of personal and social rights that may overlap, interpose,
directly and indirectly relate, and even conflict.^ Personal freedom, in Neville s
estimation, is comprised of those activities supporting human autonomy: external
liberty, freedom of intentional action, freedom of choice, and freedom of creativity,
roughly speaking, the personal freedoms correspond to physical freedom, mental
freedom, the freedom to put one's will into effect, and, finally, the freedom to engage
23

in complex behaviour and thought. Each of the personal freedoms complements one
another, thus ensuring that the most fundamental aspect of freedom physica
e x L n J liberty - has meaning. Neville defines social freedoms as the freedoms
individuals possess because they participate in social groups. Social freedo
like personal freedom, contains four complementary dimei^ions: freedom of
opportunity, freedom of social pluralism, freedom of an integral social life, and *
freedom of a participatory democracy. The first of the social freedoms - the
freedom of opportunity - relates to the possibilities valued by the individual an
sustained by the social structure because of their importance.8 Opportunities, as
Neville defines them, fit into either the subcategories of the freedom of culture or
the freedom to participate in an organised society. The freedom of opportuni y,
especially in the form of the freedom of culture and freedom to appreciate culture,
fieures significantly in Brown Girl. ,, ,.u
Brown Girl fits directly into the cosmology of freedom both internally via the
protagonist's growth, and externally, through the readers' edifrcahon Ti-Jeanne s
own dilemma implicates the freedoms to participate in the (economic) media an
her cultural heritage. For many readers, the fusion of Afro-Canbbean culture o
FFF gives them the freedom to appreciate culture. Furthermore, Hopkinson uses the
freedom which speculative fiction provides for her storytelling technique, and the
characterisation of Ti-Jeanne, to bridge cultures in- and outside of the C aribto ^
The competent movement between cultures is consistent with what orfe rmght te
culture of intelligence, which describes the extent to which the understanding
individuals have of the benefits and dangers of culture enables them to escape rnos
of its insidious effects, such as discrimination, illegal behaviour, and the i e^
Thus by the conclusion of Brown Girl, Ti-Jeanne moves from her cultural myopia
classism, consumerism, and a complete disdain for her family traditions to realise
that justice and fairness are often obscured by culture. At the June, she
develops a greater appreciation of the beneficial aspects of culture, which she uses
to attack rZre invidious cultural limitations represented by the antagonist. But
before Ti-Jeanne and readers of Brown Girl can reach the apogee of freedom - the
culture of intelligence - they must proceed through the urban decay of Ti-Jeanne
Toronto, a North American city, Marable would argue, that capitalism
A^mding to Marable, capitalism was the ideology driving the transatlanhc
slave trade, which the Europeans spread throughout the Caribbean and the
Americas. The ascent of the West since the sixteenth century has been a process o
capital accumulation driven by a desire to control world human and materia
resources. Thus, he states, African Americans have been part of the mos
paradoxical amassing of capital in human history in that they are necessary and
yet circumscribed victim[sj" in a system where each gain by European Americans
means more enslavement for them. The result is that European-American wealth
coexists with African-American poverty. Contra the cries by other politicians and
24
intellectuals that African-Americans have been the victims of exclusivity an
discriminatory policies in violation of democratic principles, Marable believes
that democracy and free enterprise "are structured to deliberately and specifically
maximise Black oppression. Capitalist development has occurred not m spite of the
exclusion of Blacks, but because of the brutal exploitation of Blacks as workers
arid consumers." These socioeconomic and political forces led to the phenomenon
known as the inner city, a problem whose historical antecedents Marable and
others trace back to the end of Reconstruction. ,c
The African-American working class has its roots in the rura - ou o
urban-North exodus of the 1920s - the Great Migration - when African Americ
ans assumed the most dangerous and least paid industrial jobs often with very
little or no union support. Despite the de facto discrimination of the North, this
massive migration of African Americans out of the South enabled many of them to
acquire some political and economic clout and become middle class. Hence, even
more African Americans moved to major metropolises and, consequently, mto the
suburbs. By 1996, more than6% of all African Americans lived in metropolitan
areas; 54% of African Americans lived in central cities. Despite the opportunity
it affords, many Blacks have found the city to be a place where substandar
housing and living conditions were normative. This problem worsened signific
antly with Reaganomics, the economic depression in the 1980s, and the dram o
resources caused by "White flight" and affirmative action. These forces created
ghettoes with weak socioeconomic infrastructures, poor health care, high morta -
ity, and a host of other problems plaguing the residents of these urban jungles.
This situation requires impoverished African-Americans to survive on very
limited means in bleak circumstances. According to Marable, the urban poor must
learn survival strategies at any cost, or perish, but at a high price. Extrerne
conditions of this nature force Blacks into inevitable decisions that tend to
dehumanize and destroy many of their efforts to create social stability or
collective political integrity." The result of a system forcing children into gangs,
drug-trafficking, and an assortment of illegal activities, is a hyper-individualistic
ethos in which inner-city residents place self-gratification above the needs of the
elderly, the young, their families, and women.
For women, especially Black women like Ti-Jeanne, their gender compounds
the formidable obstacles facing them. By emphasising the injustices perpetuated
against Black men, who were lynched, executed, and forced to work m penal
institutions in vast numbers. Black historians, according to Marable, have over-
' looked the important fact that capitalism in the United States was and is bo
profoundly racist and sexist. Marable summarises the problem facing Black
women as follows: "Demographically, Black poor are distinguished from poor
Whites by certain social characteristics: they are largely more female, younger,
and usually reside in the urban ghetto. At all ages. Black women are much more
likely to be poor than white females, white males, or Black males".i Moreover,
25
 the decline of the Black family and growing Black unemployment has fuelled
divisiveness between Black men and women.l As if the urban blight was not
enough of a problem, the crumbling of state and city budgets forces metropolises
like Miami and Detroit to take desperate measures to remain solvent and provide
standard municipal services to their inner-city residents.
In Brown Girl, Hopkinson extrapolates from Marable's description of the
inner city by creating a scenario in which a metropolis actually fails, leaving a
twenty-first-century Toronto called, appropriately, the Bum. Hopkinson hints at
the horrific nature of the Burn on the very first page: a government functionary
wearing a "bulletproof" to protect him from attack meets a man whose "ostentat
ious lack of protection against attack" indicates his dangerousness. The govern
ment official is fortunate, because he has the protection of his bullet-proof and a
security detail. But the Third-World environment of the Bum presents a number of
challenges for its residents, most of whom do not possess these protections. For
many of them, basic freedoms and rights like voting, public education, and travel
are secondary or even tertiary to mere survival, as Hopkinson's description of the
Bum suggests:
Imagine a cartwheel half-mired in muddy water, its hub just clearing
the surface. The spokes are the satellite cities that form Metropolitan
Toronto: Etobicoke and York to the west; North York in the north;
Scarborough and East York to the east. The Toronto city core is the hub.
The mud itself is vast Lake Ontario, which cuts Toronto off at its
southern border. In fact, when water-rich Toronto was founded, it was
nicknamed Muddy York, evoking the condition of its unpaved streets in
springtime. Now imagine the hub of that wheel as being rusted through
and through. When Toronto's economic base collapsed, investors,
commerce, and government withdrew into the suburb cities, leaving the
rotten core to decay. Those who stayed were the ones who couldn't or
wouldn't leave. The street people. The poor people. The ones who didn't
see the writing on the wall, or who were too stubborn to give up their
homes. Or who saw the decline of authority as an opportunity. As the
police left, it sparked large-scale chaos in the city core: the Riots. The
satellite cities quickly raised roadblocks at their borders to keep
Toronto out. The only unguarded exit from the city core was now over
water, by boat or prop plane from the Toronto Island mini-airport to the
American side of Niagara Falls. In the twelve years since the Riots,
repeated efforts to reclaim and rebuild the core were failing: fear of
vandalism and violence was keeping 'burb people out (pp. 3-4).
This burned-out urban jungle includes the residential districts with "elegant tree-
lined streets of large heritage homes, all stone walls, stained glass, and deep,
wooden-banistered porches" (p. 106). For Ti-Jeanne, a young, unwed mother
whose family is from the Caribbean and living in the Burn, a place where wild
26
children mn the streets fending for themselves and the police of the five satellite
cities around Toronto enforce a perimeter to keep Toronto in, any elegance the
Bum now has is an imagined space. Indeed, the social turmoil has wrought havoc
on her family and loved ones. Like too many young Black women, her relationship
with Tony, the father of her newborn, reinforces the paradigm of the single mother
and the no-count father. Moreover, Ti-Jeanne's own mother, Mi-Jeanne,20 is
absent (presumed dead), and her grandmother, Mami Gros-Jeane, is an unmarried
woman "who runs a trade in Caribbean herbal medicine that is vital to the
disenfranchised of the Bum",2i but has limited income. Fortunately for Ti-Jearme,
Mami is a healer who is very spiritually attuned, as indicated by her placement of
blue glass in their front yard (p. 27), a talismanic protection used by many
diasporic Africans. Unfortunately, Ti-Jeanne wants to avoid her heritage, which
includes her nascent abilities as a healer and mystic.
Consistent with Marable's description of the inner-city psyche, the hyper-
individualistic ethos runs deeply among Ti-Jeanne and most of the characters
influential in her life. Hopkinson's protagonist is a young and immature first-time
mother who thinks primarily of her independence, which runs counter to the
interdependence her grandmother epitomises. The generational conflict is an issue
of special significance to Afro-Caribbeans who migrate to the Americas and find
themselves confronted with a larger social milieu that gradually erodes their root
language, history, religion, and political affiliations.^^ The tensions between the
Afro-Caribbean and Canadian cultures Hopkinson incorporates into her charact
ers, which both Ti-Jeanne and her grandmother exhibit in their ability to code
switch between their Caribbean dialect and standard English, is one source of the
generational conflict. Ti-Jeanne has assimilated to the point where she cannot
understand the necessity behind their religious tradition (p. 47). Thus, Mami's
insistence on teaching Ti-Jeanne about the Afro-Caribbean gods is grudgingly
obeyed by Ti-Jeanne, whom Mami affectionately calls "doux-doux" (p. 126).23
Brown Girl and Octavia E. Butler's Kindred (1979) overlap significantly in this
regard. Both reproach modern African Americans whose comfortable lives
jeopardise the future because these individuals lack an understanding of the
significance of the past. As an individual even more culturally alienated than
Edana Franklin of Butler's Kindred, Ti-Jeanne eschews the significance of her
history, which includes a spiritual attunement providing her with second sight
and a connection to her loa, or presiding spirit. 24 Ti-Jeanne wants to deny her
cultural heritage, especially her connection to her Afro-Caribbean gods, whose
existence she half disbelieves at the outset of the novel. As reviewer Sheree
Thomas notes, because she is
Resentful of their intrusions on her lonely but orderly world, Ti-Jeanne
believes that the Jab-Jab, the Soucouyant, La Diablesse, Papa Osain, and
all of the African Pantheon of spirits and gods should have no role in the
lives of sane and practical people... Unaware of the ominous legacy that
27
 threatens her family, Ti-Jeanne struggles to assert her independence from
her loving but overbearing grandmother.25
Like Butler, Hopkinson suggests the importance of exercising the freedom of one's
cultural heritage to prevent future calamities. In Kindred, the "ominous legacy"
presented the threat of total oblivion for Edana Franklin. Similarly, Brown Girl
situates the responsibility for protecting "four generations of her family and the
fate of a city" on Ti-Jearme's willingness to embrace her heritage.26
The generational differences between Ti-Jeanne and her grandmother are not
limited to culture. Although she herself is a mother, Ti-Jeanne loathes the street
children because of their condition, an egoistic perspective her grandmother does
not share. Ti-Jeanne's selfishness demonstrates a moderate version of the hyper-
individualistic ethos Marable attributes to many inner-city residents. An individ
ual from the inner city who is even more egoistic than Ti-Jeanne is Tony. In
addition to Ti-Jeanne and Mami's other cross-generational disagreements, Mami
Gros-Jeanne also dislikes Ti-Jeanne's continued attraction for Tony, a drug
trafficker and user of buff with whom she is still very much in love. Tony is the
prototypical "child" whose nature Marable ascribes to the dehumanising
influence of the irmer city. Quoting from a study of young men conduced following
the Watts riots, Marable's description of the characteristics of the typical inner-
city male is equally applicable to Tony:
They were jobless and lacked salable skills and opportunities to get
them; they had been rejected and labelled as social problems by the police,
the schools, the employment and welfare agencies, they were victims of
the new camouflaged racism.
Detached from the broader white society, even largely from the
seemingly complacent working Blacks around them, they drank, gambled,
fought a little, but mostly just generally "hung out."... They try to keep
body and soul together and maintain a job, but they remain immobile, part
of the static poor. Others who could make this adaptation fail to do so,
often preferring to remain unemployed rather than accept a job that
demands their involvement for the greater part of each day but provides
only the barest minimum of financial reward. They seek other options for
economic survival ranging from private entrepreneurial schemes to
working the welfare system. Hustling, quasi-legitimate schemes, and
outright deviant activity are also alternatives to work.27
Tony is largely a product of this social cauldron, which his extensive criminal
history as a gang member and drug trafficker and user indicates, his training as a
nurse notwithstanding. Worse, although Ti-Jeanne at least believes in the Afro-
Caribbean gods, Tony is too hyper-individualistic to believe in anything or
anyone. He is debased and single-minded enough that he elevates the pursuit of his
self-interest above all else, which results in his agreement to kill Mami, his child's
grandmother. Because he disavows any connection to his cultural heritage, Tony
is almost entirely a slave to the inner-city ethos qua culture. Tony's cultural
enslavement threatens the freedoms of Ti-Jeanne and those cormected to her like
Mami.
Although he murders Mami, Tony is not the greatest threat to the cosmology of
freedom for Ti-Jeanne and those she loves. The ultimate antagonist, and the one
who foisted the murder of Mami upon Tony and caused so much strife for
Ti-Jeanne, is Rudy. Rudy is the obeaK^^ warlock and gang leader whom Ti-Jeanne
discovers to be her grandmother's estranged husband and Mi-Jearme's father.
Rudy, the arch-criminal supported by his posse (a Jamaican gang), took the soul -
the duppi/2^ - of Mi-Jeanne, and later attempted to steal Ti-Jeanne's (pp. 160,205).
Whereas Tony believes in nothing, Rudy uses his obeah knowledge, which his
guiding spirit gave him reluctantly, as an obeah who steals duppies to force them to
do his bidding. In addition to his evil magic, Rudy also has an history of drug
dependency and domestic abuse. Because "he felt powerless as a new immigrant
dealing with an unfamiliar type of racism", he physically abused Mami before
they separated (p. 131).30
These aspects of Hopkinson's novel, at some level or another, are nothing new
to many inner-city residents, sociologists, and social activists, among others. The
problems of generational conflict, drug addiction, gangs, economic adversity, and
identity conflict confront many of the irmer-city residents daily. These problems
are especially keen for families who have immigrated from other countries to find
themselves part of the minority population against which discrimination is levied
in many forms. Although Brown Girl presents the worst-case scenario of economic
blight by transforming the iimer city of a major western metropolis into a Third
World battle zone, Hopkinson provides a path to freedom. One of the most evident
of these freedoms, the absence of which undergirds Marable's polemic in How
Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, is Neville's concept of the freedom to
participate in the (economic) media.
According to Neville, the freedom to participate in the media involves three
media: publishing, educational, and financial. A community has this freedom, he
holds, when it can exercise proportional influence over and receive proportionate
benefits from each of these media. Among the ranks of federal and state prefects, the
freedom of diasporic Africans to participate in the media often receives little
discussion, or when it does it is often quickly dismissed for various reasons. This
freedom has been sought and demanded both before and after emancipation by
newspaper publishers like John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish, entrepreneurs
like Paul Cuffee and Henry Bibb, political leaders like Booker T. Washington, and
labour leaders like A. Philip Randolph, inter aliaA^ Poets and novelists have
likewise incorporated this freedom into their belletristic efforts. Hopkinson's
novel joins this literary continuum which, in the inner-city context, includes the
right to be influential in the economic media and the ability to proportionately
affect it to achieve one's rightful place in society. The consequences of denying
29
 diasporic Africans the freedom to participate in financial media is, Marable
cogently indicates, disempowerment and marginalisation: a bumed-out existence,
in short, where short-term hyper-individualism creates urban obeah-women and
-men like Rudy who would even kill family members if it contributed to their
self-gratification. Instead of the hyper-independence, warns Marable, and
Hopkinson through her cautionary tale, government for Blacks and Whites would
function more equitably and effectively if a purer form of communal living
informed the standard capitalistic system. The communal government in which the
community assures the welfare of all is a philosophy West Africans have
exercised and have maintained in some form or another since the Middle Ages.32
Marable also promotes a commimal approach as the logical means of best ensuring
this freedom.33 Hopkinson likewise supports this ideology by portraying the very
dangerous consequences to the entire community if any one member becomes so
disconnected as to elevate her or his interests above that of the community. At
various junctures in Brown Girl, Ti-Jeanne, Rudy, and Tony all threaten to tear
asunder the community that has Mami as its hub. Mami's insistence that Ti-Jeanne
abide by tradition makes sense from this perspective, for the survival of the group
necessitates promoting an interdependent mode of living.
The freedom to participate in the media also includes a right to participate in
news dissemination and other forms of print media, which would be necessary in
any information-driven society. As individuals like C.J. Cherryh-have recognised,
Hopkinson promotes this freedom through the very existence of Brawn Girl, which
introduces Caribbean culture to the FFF publishing industry. 34 The freedom to
participate in the (print) media is evident when Hopkinson admits to being
motivated to write because of the pressing need to provide a presence for voices
often alienated in the FFF universe:
I use Afro-Caribbean spirituality, oral history, culture and language in
my stories, but place my characters within the idioms and settings of
contemporary science fiction/fantasy. I see it as subverting the genre,
which speaks of so much about the experience of being alienated, but
contains so little writing by alienated people themselves .35
By winning a first-novel contest,36 Hopkinson has gained enough prominence to
encourage other African Canadians, Afro-Caribbeans, and African Americans to
broaden the FFF genre and provide greater freedom for all writers in the Black
diaspora. Hopkinson's accomplishment is important because it shows how, as
Neville indicated, the various freedoms complement one another. The freedom to
participate in the (print) media in this instance dovetails into the freedoms of
cultural heritage and appreciation of culture.
Hopkinson's novel enables her Afro-Caribbean readers to enjoy a freedom of
cultural heritage not existing until her novel expanded the FFF horizons. The first
overtures toward expanding this freedom exists in several works of the Father of
Black FFF, Samuel R. Delany, Jr. Several characters in his novels - e.g., Lome of
30
Babel-17 (1966) and Lorq Von Ray and several characters in Nova (1968) -
f exhibit an Afro-Caribbean idiolect. However, most of Delany's Caribbean
f nominalisations are lost in his ingeniously creative and complex speculative
fiction. But Brown Girl is exceptional in this regard, for Afro-Caribbean culture is
profoundly embedded in the dialect and idiosyncrasies of some of the characters,
especially Mami, who fumes over her granddaughter's "stupidness" on more than
one occasion. The very richness of the Caribbean cultural heritage and its
demystification through exposure may help to eradicate the intra-racial tension
between Caribbean and non-Caribbean Blacks, which the publication of Rudolf
Fisher's 1925 short story, "The City of Refuge", proves to be decades-old.
Just as importantly, and as demonstrated by Butler's Kindred and Charles R.
Saunders's sword-and-sorcery novel, Imaro (1981),37 the freedom of cultural
heritage discussed here has a corollary: the freedom to appreciate culture. Hopkin
son's FFF allows non-Caribbean readers - including non-Caribbean Blacks - the
freedom of appreciating Afro-Caribbean culture. The denial of the freedom to
appreciate culture underlies Hopkinson's argument when she speaks of the alien
ation of minority voices in FFF. She cites literary scholar Uppinder Mehan for the
proposition that the reason there are so few Black FFF writers is the lack of
"cultural intimacy" between Black FFF writers and their non-Black readership.
Thus, Hopkinson theorises, Trinidadian terms like "soucouyant," which is an
entity somewhat like a succubus or a vampire but is not exactly either, would
confuse many readers. 38 Reviewer and FFF writer Charles De Lint had a similar
problem in appreciating the culture Brown Girl presents. Although he knew the
I
novel was praised for "the unique voice of its author, as well as for the Caribbean
culture from which the story and characters are drawn," De Lint thought the first
part of Brown Girl had lackluster characters and found the "use of dialect in her
dialogue somewhat of a distraction" .39 But then, suddenly, the dialect became
clear and the characters acquired depth for him:
<
And the story. I became enthralled with the tidbits of Caribbean culture,
the Voudoun ceremonies, the mix of old world and new world sensibil
ities. The plot took on an intensity that literally propelled me through the
pages. I struggled over the first fifty or so, but read the next two hundred
in one sitting. When I closed the book, the patois of its voices went on
speaking in my head for days.40
Although her novel is culturally challenging, Hopkinson enables her protagonist
i
and her reader to obtain greater insight. She accomplishes this by using the motif of
cultural fluidity in Brown Girl, and the novel's cross-cultural methodology, to
advance the culture of intelligence ethos.
Hopkinson herself knows well the fluidity of culture. This fluidity enables
her to construct a culture of intelligence in her plot that reflects the legacy of her
birth to a Jamaican mother and Guyanese father. In Brown Girl, Hopkinson is
"showing the back and forth movement between cultures - that people do come
31
 from a hybridized environment... [She recalls her mother] making links mainly
between the big three - Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago.''^! The path
for Ti-Jeanne involves mastering her sometimes disparate reality. But at first
Ti-Jeanne denies her hybridisation. Unwed, apathetic, selfish, and unwilling to
listen to her grandmother, Ti-Jeanne demonstrated no affinity for her native
culture, which she found to be a pass6 encumbrance. Instead, she preferred the
more West-oriented philosophy of independence prevailing in her adopted land,
Canada. As a result, whereas Mami could see the destructiveness her association
with Tony would cause, Ti-Jeanne could not. Like too many young minority
women throughout the Americas, she was blind to the necessity and value of using
her native culture to balance her new culture. For her, the culture of romance,
upward mobility, and middle-class existence, all of which stress individual as
opposed to communal development, were to be preferred. Beginning with her
visions, which were followed by the discovery that Rudy is her grandfather and
the murder of Mami by Tony, Ti-Jeanne is forced beyond culture qua culture to see
the necessity of embracing her own Trinidadian ancestry. She balances the old
culture, which is new to her, and her modern culture, to defeat Rudy and prevent
him from destroying her and her family. Furthermore, as she matures into the
culture of intelligence, Ti-Jeanne casts off the disdain she had directed toward the
street urchirrs. They in turn save her life at a moment when it and Tony's are most
imperiled by Rudy and his duppy (p. 182). ' fantasy and Caribbean mysticism to personify the Afro-Caribbean gods. Unlike
Ti-Jeanne's movement into the culture of intelligence continues when she
accepts her religion and calls on the Jamaican gods in the CN Tower (p. 221). This
link to the Afro-Caribbean deities finally reconnects Ti-Jeanne to her spirituality.
Spirituality, which Hopkinson seems to indicate is necessary for any person to be
physically and mentally sound, allows Ti-Jeanne to defeat her grandfather, Rudy.
Rudy's antagonism to Mami and Ti-Jeanne have far broader significance than the
merely personal dislike of family relations gone wrong. Indeed, as Caribbean
religion scholar Ivor Morrish argues, "obeah is concerned with the individual
and his appetite as opposed to the total good and welfare of the group, tribe or
society."42 Thus, the independence and self-gratification Rudy embodies become
the opposition to interdependence and communal well-being represented by Mami.
Once Ti-Jeanne foils Rudy and his'culture of selfishness, which is devoted to a
form of self-satisfaction and domination representing the worst of the traditional
and urban cultures, she is much closer to accepting her role as a healer. Though she
still lives inside the Burn with her mother, both Ti-Jearme and Mi-Jeanne are far
more free than ever they were before.
The reader, also receives exposure to the culture of intelligence in a second
manner related to Hopkinson's methodology. Hopkinson's diverse background
provides a methodological platform enabling her to explore the cosmology of
freedom beyond the "black experience" while not dismissing it, a point made by
Donna Bailey Nurse:
32
Though the words "Toronto" and "riots" recall the melee over the
Rodney King riots, and though "posse" is a favorite buzz word for those
who link Jamaicans with crime, and though a significant portion of the
remaining Toronto [injhabitants possess Caribbean heritage, race in no
way defines the world of the novel.43
Hopkinson's hybridised methodology is reminiscent of Saunders's methodology in
Imaro, in which he combined African and European literary methods and themes.
Instead of a sword-and-sorcery fantasy, though, and an African-American or even
a male protagonist, Hopkinson's hybridised novel results in a protagonist and
story truly unique. According to Gerald Jonas of the New York Times,
[Hopkinson] treats spirit-calling the way other science fiction writers
f
treat nanotechnology or virtual reality: like the spirits themselves, the
4i spirit-callers follow rules as clear to them (if not always to the reader)
V as the equations of motion or thermodynamics are to scientists and
engineers.44
To accomplish this, Hopkinson roots herself in an ancient oral tradition in which
the traditional West African gods and the Greco-Roman gods, among many others,
I walked the land, sometimes in mortal guise. Frequently, the gods foisted cshaos and
Y
t hardship on humankind, which was subject to their sometimes benevolent,
sometimes selfish, japes and manipulations. Hence, Hopkinson uses theology-based
the Greek myths where the gods favoured special human beings, often because they
t
were offspring, all individuals have their own spirit guides, or loas, in Vodoun
theology.45 Hopkinson's Afro-Caribbean cast of characters is similarly privileg
ed, although the mystical aptitudes of Ti-Jeanne and her female relatives provide
them greater access to their loas. Mami's father-sprit is Osain, the god of healing
whom she calls "Papa Osain" (p. 91). Mami's abilittes evidence the link Hopkin
son crafted between theology and fantasy, for Mami can render people invisible
by sending them halfway to Guinea Land, which she explains to Ti-Jeanne and an
incredulous Tony as the place where African souls go when they die (pp. 59,104).
Ti-Jeanne's father spirit is Eshu, "the Prince of Cemetery and of Life" (p. 99).
Eshu's link to Ti-Jeanne is not established until after she has had several visions.
The first is a frightening vision concerning death (p. 16), the second involves Tony
(p. 17), and the third, the worst of all, is another apocalyptic vision Ti-Jeanne
V describes using her Caribbean dialect:
The back of Ti-Jeanne's neck prickled at what she saw:
A fireball whirl in through the window glass like if the glass ain't
even there. It settle down on the floor and turn into a old, old woman, body
twist-up and dry like a chew-up piece a sugar cane. She flesh red and wet
and oozing all over, like she aint have no skin. Blue flames running over she
body, up she arms, down the two cleft hooves she have for legs, but it look
like she ain't even self feeling the fire. She ol'-lady dugs dripping blood
33
 instead of milk. She looking at me and laughing kya-kya like Mami does do
when something sweet she, but I ain't want to know what could sweet a
Soucouyant so. The thing movin' towards me now, klonk-klonk with its goat
feet. It saying something, and I could see the pointy teeth in she mouth, and
the drool running down them:
"Move aside, sweetheart, move aside." She voice licking like flame
inside my head. Is the baby I want. You don't want he, ain't it? So give him
to me, nuh, doux-doux? I hungry. I want to suck the eyeballs from he head
like chennette fruit. I want to drink the blood from out he veins, sweet like
red sorrel drink. Stand aside, Ti-]eanne" (p. 44)46
Given the horrific nature of these visions, one would understand why a young
woman of any ethnic background would wish to disassociate herself from her
culture if the removal would end the visions. Ti-Jeanne's mother, however,
assumed a similar attitude, and was lost as a result. The same or worse could
happen to her, too, Mami warns Ti-Jeanne, for if she does not learn to channel her
"gift", it will use her (p. 47). As the crisis unfolds and Ti-Jeanne begins to see the
inevitability and necessity of embracing her cultural heritage, she calls upon the
gods to help in her struggle against Rudy. The climax collapses theology, fantasy,
magic realism, horror, and speculative fiction together. Her duppy (soul) nearly
stolen, Ti-Jeanne's "jab-jab" appears just then to encourage her to call upon the
gods and to resist the obeah magic, which would place her unddr the total control
of evil grandfather. Ti-Jeanne listens to her jab-jab and succeeds in invoking the
full pantheon of Afro-Caribbean gods, a visit taking place, oddly enough, in the
eighteen-hundred foot CN Tower, which is the ladder to the spiritual world:
Ti-Jeanne was facing one of the windows that ringed the
observation deck, so it was she who saw the flash of white light flower
in the night sky, zigzag down, and strike the glass. The building flashed
into the negative against her abused retinas. Black flared to blinding
white, colour to dead black. The structure of the tower creaked. Outside
in the miles-high air, Shango Lord Thunder drummed his rhythm while
Oya of the storm flashed and shattered the air like knives. Ti-Jearme had
an impression of an ecstatic woman's features, silver dreadlocks tossing
wildly as she danced around a hugely muscled, graceful man who clasped
a tall drum between his knees. The lightning flashes crawled, whipping
around the length of the tower. The first of the Oldest Ones had arrived.
Rain pelted down like boulders. The lightning cracked fissures into
the tower's structure, and water began to leak in, buckets of it. The water
traced forms along the wall, and two majestic Black women stepped out
from its current: graceful Oshun and beautiful Emanjah, water goddesses
both, anger terrible on their unearthly faces (pp. 221- 22).47
Hopkinson concludes the climax in a fashion akin to Saunders's conclusion of the
story of the Mizungus in Intaro, for once Ruby is defeated and the imprisoned
duppies liberated, they all attack him and dismember his body in toto (p. 226).
Although Hopkinson's Ti-Jeanne, unlike Saunders' Imaro, does not express rage
over the freedoms stolen or crushed by the Atlantic Slave Trade, Hopkinson
nevertheless uses the freedom impulse to establish her own cosmology of freedom.
Thus, in Hopkinson's cosmology, the obeah warlock, Rudy, is the synecdochical
representation of the imprisonment of the many facets of the cosmology of freedom
conceptualised by Robert Cummings Neville and the specific socioeconomic
restraints Manning Marable canvassed. Himself the victim of the hyper-individ
ualistic ethos capitalism fosters, Rudy becomes the source denying various levels
of freedom to an entire community: economic opportunities to his family and
community, a cultural heritage to Ti-Jeanne because he stole her mother's presence
and influence, the freedom of association Ti-Jeanne might enjoy with the father of
her child, the freedom of physical liberty he enjoys, and even the freedom of bodily
integrity, which Rudy violates by farming the organs - and duppies - of the Bum's
residents. In short, Rudy is an obeah-mogul, one whose rapacious habits for
socioeconomic empowerment nm unchecked and counter to the salutary influences
of a healthy, vibrant community.
This story is not a new one, for Charles Dickens's novels such as Bleak House
(1853), Hard Times (1854), and Great Expectations (1860-61), poems like William
Wordsworth's "In London" and "Michael", and classic American novels such as
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of
Wrath (1939), have dramatised various aspects of self-aggrandisement and capital
accumulation that almost become a form of capitalistic mysticism individuals like
Tony desperately seek to master. What is new is the watershed manner in which
Hopkinson's fecund imagination has united these concerns with questions of
racial and ethnic identity in a story unlike one Dickens, Wordsworth, Fitzgerald,
Steinbeck, or any author or poet who is not Afro-Caribbean-Canadian could tell.
Brown Girl creates a radically unique way of envisioning and describing the
world, the cosmos, and the freedoms contained within them. In other words. Brown
Girl moves beyond cultural parameters into a culture of intelligence for its
characters, readers, and author. Continuing in the footsteps of her Black FFF
forebears, the cosmology of freedom Hopkinson's novel creates prepares the way
for other Black FFF authors of the new millennium to reach backward and
forward to achieve the greatest freedoms for everyone.
Notes
1. Although African Americans have continued to make significant progress since the
publication of Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America:
Problems in Race, Political Economy and Society (Boston: South End Press, 1983), many of
the problems caused by racial discrimination still exist. These problems are discussed in
Lucius J. Barker, Mack H. Jones, and Katherine Tate, African Americans and the
American Political System (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999).
2. Will Anderson, "City Without Limits; Way Beyond the 'Burbs", Atlanta Journal and
Constitution Online, 16 June 1997, p. 07E.
3. In addition to the severe economic woes of cities like Detroit and Miami, Bridgeport
35
 (Connecticut), is a city that actually sought bankruptcy protection. Bruce Frankel,
'"We are not crying wolf//Connecticut city files for bankruptcy", USA Today Online,
11 June 1991, final ed., p. 3A; Debbie Howlett, "Mother Nature's Dumping on
Detroit," USA Today Online, 18 Jan. 1999, first ed., p. 2A; "Mayors Warn More Cities
Could Fall in Bankruptcy," Los Angeles Times Online, 17 June 1991, San Diego county
ed., p. A17; Cameron McWhirter, "Cost of Storm: Cleanup drains Detroit snow
removal budget: $1.5 million goes quickly for overtime, leasing trucks and buying salt to
clear more than 600 miles of road", Detroit News Online, 13 Jan. 1999, p. A3; Eleborah
Sharp, "Miami to get board to oversee finances; Governor opts against bailout,
bankruptcy", USA Today Online, 4 Dec. 1996, final ed., p. 3A. The similarities of the
problems Detroit faces, which are milder forms of the woes befalling Hopkinson's
fictional Toronto, are not coincidental. "In fact," according to Hopkinson, "Detroit
was my model in writing this novel. Toronto will be 50% non-white by the year 2000;
many of us here are of African origin from all over the world, including Canada":
Hopkinson, Note to the author, August 1999.
4. Neil Walsh, Rev. of Brown Girl in the R ing, by Nalo Hopkinson, SF Site Featured Review
July (1998), online, 28 July 1998.
5. Valerie Smith, "Cautionary Tale of a Dark Future", Rev. of Brown Girl in the Ring, by
Nalo Hopkinson, Emerge, July/August (1998), p. 71.
6. Robert Cummings Neville, The Cosmology o f Freedom (Albany, New York: State Univ. of
New York Press, 1995), p. ix.
7. Neville, op. cit., pp. 4,6,7.
8. Neville, op. cit., p. 12.
9. Marable's discussion of capitalism and Black America relates to the conditions of
diasporic Africans in the United States. Canadian cities obviously have some
differences to those in the United States, the number of diasporic Africans being just
one of the factors. The number of Black Canadians was just over 214,000 in 1991, and
the 1996 Canadian census found 305,000 and 137,315 Canadians tabe of Caribbean
and African origin, respectively. The total population of Canada according to the 1996
census is 285 million. Canada, Dissemination Division, Statistics Canada, Canada Year
Book 1997 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1996), p. 88; Canada, Dissemination Division,
Statistics Canada, Canada Year Book 1999 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1998), p. 98. In
the USA, there are approximately 15 million African Americans. Canada, of course,
was slavery-free in the nineteenth century after 1833, but adheres significantly to the
capitalist ethos of the Americas, particularly the United States. Everett Jenkins,
Pan-African Chronology: A Comprehensive Reference to the Black Quest fo r Freedom in Africa,
the Americas, Europe, and Asia, 1400-1865 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1996), p.
278. The United States has been one of its major trading partners since 1920, and the
primary trading partner since World War II. "International Trade", Encyclopedia
Canadiana, 5 vols. (Toronto: Grolier, 1972), p. 314. Now, the industrialised economies of
the United States and Canada are very similar, and are both fundamentally based on
Adam Smith's laissez-faire model. Hopkinson strongly implies the similarity of the
modem metropolis, whether in Canada or the United States, by setting Brown Girl in
Toronto, Canada. Likewise, numerous scholarly articles and newspaper reports have
documented the capitalist economies of Canada and the United States and the
similarities of the inequities they are causing.
10. Marable, op. cit., p. 3.
11. Marable, op. cit., p. 2.
12. Marable, op. cit., pp. 2,3. By "development", Marable means "having several political
parties, high literacy, a high standard of living, large circulation of books and
periodicals, consensus on the fundamentals of government". White population,
secularized politics, decentralised political activity, widespread Western values, a
constitutional government, a civilian militia, and a free market economy, among other
things: Marable, op. cit., p. 2.
13. Marable, op. cit., pp. 33-37.
14. The massive movement of African Americcins has resulted in a number of political
gains. For example. Barker, Jones, and Tate report that in 1970 there were seven
36
metropolises with majority Black populations; four of these cities had Black mayors. By
1980, there were seventeen such metropolises with thirteen Black mayors. By 1990, all
seventeen cities had Black mayors. Barker, Jones, and Tate, op. cit., pp. 22.
15. Marable, op. cit., pp. 136,217-18.
16. Marable, op. cit., p. 62.
17. Marable, op. cit., p. 64.
18. Marable, op. cit., p. 58.
19. The number of Black families with no husbands increased from 21.70% in 1960 to
34.6% in 1973; the percentage of Black children who lived with both parents declined
from 75% in 1960 to 54% by 1975; single female-parent households within ; le Black
community became younger as 42% of such homes had female heads bclvveen the
ages of 14 and 34 in 1975. Marable, op. cit., p. 95.
20. Ti-Jeanne's mother, Mi-Jeanne, who unbeknownst to her is the blind woman. Crazy
Betty, represents part of the social statement Hopkinson makes. The character
reminds Hopkinson of the works of her father, Slade Hopkinson, who was a Guyanese
writer who worked with Derek Walcott. One of his most famous poems in the
Caribbean is "Madwoman of Papine: Two Cartoons With Captions", a story about a
bag woman who once lived in Kingston, Jamaica, who "wore the same dress year in,
year out, and would have screaming fights in the air." "Nalo Hopkinson", W arner
A sp e ct, online, Netscape, 2 Dec. 1998. In the poem, Hopkinson notes, her father
indicates that the "'high' art of poetry" will chide him for critiquing social systems.
"My Published Short Stories", W arner A spect, online, Netscape, 2 Dec. 1998.
Hopkinson, who quoted from her father's poem in Brotvn Girl, finds it ironic that
although counselled not to take up social causes as a poet, she has ventured into
sjjeculative fiction, which is "'a literature known for its critiques of social systems'".
21. "Warner Aspect Announces First Novel Contest Winner", Warner A spect, online,
Netscape, 2 Dec. 1998.
22. This dilemma of ethnic identity among second-generation Caribbean immigrants, who
must chose between becoming, for example, African American or remaining
Afro-Caribbean, has been documented by sociologists. See, e.g., Mary C. Water,
"Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second-Generation Black Immigrants in New York
City", International Migration Review 28 (1994), pp. 795-820.
23. Ti-Jeanne, like Mi-Jeanne, also has an artistic precursor. Hopkinson admits to
referencing "Ti-Jean and His Brothers", a work by Derek Walcott, one of the most
reknown Caribbean writers ever. "Nalo Hopkinson", 1998, op. cit.
24. Paul Di Filippo, "On Books: The Black Gods in Searcn of Their Girl", review of Brown
Girl in the R ing, b y Nalo Hopkinson, Asim ov's Science Fiction Magazine Dec. 1998, pp.
133-34, at p. 133; Tom Easton, "The Reference Library", review of Brown Girl in the
Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson, Analog, Dec. 1998, pp. 132-37, at p. 134; Doima Bailey Nurse,
"Brown Girl in the Ring", review of Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson, Quill b
Q u ire , May 1998, p. 22; Neil Walsh, review of Brown Girl in the R ing, by Nalo
Hopkinson, SF Site Featured Review, July 1998, Online, 28 July 1998.
25. Sheree R. Thomas, "Brown Girl in the Ring", review of Brown Girl in the R ing, by Nalo
Hopkinson, African American Literature Book Club, online, 16 July 1998.
26. Fredd Cleaver, "Urban decay. Zombie horrors in a future Toronto", review of Brown
Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson, Denver Post 28 June 1998, Sunday ed, p. H-02.
27. Marable, op. cit., p. 63. Marable is quoting verbatim from a description of the Black
"underclass" or "ghettoclass" made in Douglas G. Glasgow's The Black Underclass:
Poverty, Unemployment, and Entrapment o f Ghetto Youth (New York: Vintage Books:
1981). Glasgow studied Los Angeles (Watts) inner-city males ages eighteen to
thirty-four.
28. "Obeah is essentially a magical means whereby an individual may obtain his personal
desires, eradicate ill-health, procure good fortune in life and business, turn the
affections of the objects of his love or lust towards himself, evince retribution or
revenge upon his enemies, and generally manipulate the spiritual forces of the cosmos
in order to obtain his will."Ivor Morrish, Obeah, Christ, and Rastaman: Jamaica and Its
Religion (Cambridge: J. Clarke, 1982), pp. 40-41. Obeah-men and -women have long
37
7
been influential in Jamaica, especially in the slave community where Jamaicans
generally knew who they were while Whites often had difficulty in obtaining such
information (Morrish, op. cit., pp. 40-41). Comprised of two strains, one more
Judeo-Christian in origin and the other steeped in African animatism, the practice of
obeah is a criminal offence in Jamaica. Even though publicly condemned, Morrish says
obeah is nevertheless firmly entrenched in Jamaican society (Morrish, op. cit., pp.
41-43).
29. More specifically, a "duppy" (a Jamaican word whose orthography is also duppie or
duppe) is a ghost in its traditional denotation. In Jamaica, they are considered the
causes of evil and wrongdoing in society. Linked with mushrooms, duppies are
putatively unpredictable and mischievous. Much of obeah involves the belief in
duppies and the ability of the obeah-man, or "shadow-catcher", to capture a person's
"shadow": Morrish, op. cit., pp. 43-44. In the context of Hopkinson's novel, it seems to
be the equivalent of a displaced or stolen soul forced into evil deeds.
30. Nalo Hopkinson, Note to the author, August 1999.
31. John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish founded the first African-American periodical.
Freedom's Journal, in 1827; Paul Cuffee, a wealthy merchant and humanitarian from
Massachusetts, was the first Black owner of a maritime business; and, Henry Bibb
strove to found an economic cooperative to challenge the slavocracy by selling better
and cheaper goods from Canada, respectively. Roger H. Hite, "Voice of a Fugitive:
Henry Bibb and Ante-bellum Black Separatism", Journal o f Black Studies 4 (March
1974), pp. 269-84. Booker T. Washington, who founded Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute, championed self-education Blacks and Whites working together.
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (New York: Doubleday & Page, 1906), pp.
217-25. Washington's college, now known as Tuskegee University, first opened its
doors to African-American students on July 4,1881. Finally, A. Philip Randolph sought
to obtain labour support for African Americans in the twentieth-century. A. Philip
Randolph, "Why Should We March?", in William L. Van Deburg, ed.. Modern Black
Nationalism: From Marcus Garvext to Louis Farrakhan (New York: New York UP, 1997),
pp. 74-76.
32. Du Bois believed that all of the great thinkers of the Modern era have advanced a
communal form of government. W.E.B. Du Bois, The World and Africa: A n Inquiry Into
the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History (New York: International Publishers,
1996), p. 160.
33. Marable, op. cit., p. 16.
34. "Warner Aspect", 1998, op. cit.
35. "Warner Aspect", 1998, op. cit.
36. Brown Girl has also won the Locus Award in the First Novel Category, and the John
W. Campbell Award for best new writer.
37. A long-time Canadian immigrant like Nalo Hopkinson, Saunders wrote Imaro, the first
sword-and-sorcery fantasy novel of note to feature an African protagonist.
38. "SF Writers of Colour", Warner A spect, online, Netscape, 2 Dec. 1998. Uppinder
Mehan's article is "The Domestication of Technology in Indian Science Fiction Short
Stories," Foundation, Autumn 74 (1998), pp. 54-66. Fortunately for Hopkinson, her
Black FFF precursors have allowed her the freedom to craft works such as Brown Girl,
even if she has to expurgate herself. For Delany, the FFF industry's antagonism to a
pro-Black racial ideology was openly hostile in the 1960s and 1970s. During those years,
the artistic freedom of Delany was circumscribed. In a recent essay, Delany recounted
his experience with racial prejudice in the FFF industry, from incidents in the 1960s
when two of the notable figures in the field questioned the quality and significance of
his fiction, to the well-intended and coincidental racism from then till now in which
the industry traditionally and- systematically group him with Octavia E. Bulter and
Nalo Hopkinson without respect for thier non-racial inclinations and interests: Samuel
R. Delany, "Racism and Science Fiction", in Sheree R. Thomas, ed.. Dark Matter: A
C entuy o f Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (New York: Warner-Aspoect,
2000), pp. 382-97 at 386-87.
39. Charles De Lint, "Books to Look for". Rev. of Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson,
38
Magazine o f Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1998, pp. 26-27, at p. 26.
40. De Lint, op. cit., p. 27.
41. William Doyle-Marshall, "Jamaican posse rule 'Brown Girl' Toronto", Weekly Star Apr.
23-29,1998, p. 17.
42. Morrish, op. cit., p. 41.
43. Nurse, op. cit., p. 22.
44. Gerald Jonas, "Science Fiction", New York Times Online, 12 Jul. 1998, late ed., p. 26.
45. George Eaton Simpson, Religious Cults o f the Caribbean: Trinidad, Jamaica, and Haiti (Rio
Piedras, Puerto Rico: U of Puerto Rico, 1970), pp. 245-46.
46. Chennette is a type of fruit grown in Trinidad. Sorrel is a popular drink made from
"an infusion of flowers from the sorrel bush ([it is] not the same as the Western flora of
the same name)". Hopkinson, "Note", 1999.
47. Moments like this in the novel support a favourable comparison between the specul
ative fiction of Brown Girl and magical realism. This passage is particularly reminiscent
of Charles Johnson's haunting description, in Middle Passage (1991), of the Allmuseri
tribe's invocation of the oceanic wrath of their West African gods during their Middle
Passage. Hopkinson admits to using elements of fantasy and magic realism in Brown
Girl. "Warner Aspect", 1998. Others have likewise praised Brown Girl for achieving a
masterful blend of a host of genres. Cleaver, op. cit., p. H-02; Charles Saunders, "Sci-fi
minus alien worlds". Rev. of Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson, Daily N ew s, 12
July 1998, online, 6 Nov. 1998. Though this does not in and of itself substantiate any
link between fantasy, speculative fiction, and magic realism, it nevertheless lends
itself to a viewpoint favouring the coextensiveness of the two genres.
The Foundation Essay Prize
250 will be awarded to the best unpublished graduate essay in
Science Fiction criticism. The winning essay will be published in
Foundation. The judges reserve the right to with-hold the award.
Judges: John Qute, Gwyneth Jones, Tom Moylan
Eligibility: entrants must be registered for a higher degree.
Submission requirements: two copies, one anonymous, 5-8,000 words.
Submissions to be sent to Dr Farah Mendlesohn,
The Science Fiction Foimdation,
Middlesex University, White H art Lane,
London N178HR.
All submissions will also be considered for publication in
Foundation: the International Review of Science Fiction.
Deadline: 31 January 2002 Award: 30 April 2002
39
 Nalo Hopkittson is the author of the novels Brown Girl in the Ring and Midnight
Robber, and editor o/Whispers From the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist
Fiction. She has won, among her numerous awards, the Warner Aspect First Novel
Contest and the John W.Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Every time she
writes a novel, she tears more hair out. Luckily, she has a lot of it. She's currently
working on Griffonne, a novel about sex, slavery, and the nature of deity.
Elisabeth Vonarburg has lived in Chicoutimi, Quebec since immigration from
France in 1973. She has four short story collections published in French, one
forthcoming in English fThe Slow Engines of Time, Tesseract Books, Canada). She
has won numerous awards in France, Canada, and Quebec, and a Philip K. Dick
Special Award in the US (for her novel In the Mothers' Land, 1993, which was also
shortlisted for the Tiptree Award). She has eight novels published in French (most
recently a five-book series, Tyranael, 1996-97, which won several awards in
Canada).
A Dialogue on SF and
Utopian Fiction, between
Nalo Hopkinson and
Elisabeth Vonarburg
edited by Jennifer Burwell
and Nancy Johnston
We asked authors Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber) and
Elisabeth Vonarburg (The Silent City, The Maerlande Chronicles) if they would
share a dialogue over email on sf, utopia, and gender issues. Both writers had been
guest authors at our 1999 conference on Canadian sf and Fantasy. Although we
prompted the writers with a few questions and topics, they generated their new
questions and issues for speculative fiction. - The Editors
[Editors]: Nalo has said that some "writers come upon using fantastical writing as a
way of sidestepping some of the pigeonholing that tends to happen to them."
Speculative fiction allows writers a forum to deal with "complexes of ideas (gender,
sexuality, poiver, history, language, race being only a few) that can't be easily
partitioned off." Can either of you comment on what speculative writers find
liberating or challenging in fantastic writing?
NH: I said that, huh? I think this comes close to the "why do you write science
Foundation 81 (Spring 2001), pp. 40-47
fiction?" question. Whenever I answer it, I feel as though I'm lying. Or only telling
a fraction of the truth. I can't really speak to what sf writers as a class find
exciting or challenging, because it'll differ for every writer. And I guess it's true
that part of what attracted me to the genre was the notion that you could examine
some of what was fucked up about the world and say, "Hmm...maybe if we tried it
this way..."? Which I guess is that utopian impulse. But that's not the only thing I
find heady. It's a good story, and characters I can care about, and a sense that the
world is bigger than your little bungalow in the suburbs of Macoya Gardens with
the bush and the iron bars on the windows. And more besides.
Elisabeth, what do you say when people ask the "why do you write science
fiction?" question? Have you managed to come up with an elegant answer?
V: My truth has many facets too, Nalo. I never lie, of course. My answers to that
question depend on the moment of the day, month, year, my mood, the person asking
the question, the venue (is it a journalist ? How many sound bytes am I allowed ?).
One facet: I believe each writer finds and is found by a specific genre of
writing, (whether "mainstream" in its many aspects, or "les mauvais genres", the
bad genres, porno, detective noir - sf, fantasy and utopia sharing the disputable
honour of being the most remote from consensual reality).
NH: Yes, that resonates for me. And I've been found by "les mauvais. It's difficult
to explain to someone why.
6V: This specific genre of writing provides the writer with what I call "the right
distance" from her own stuff - her "real" life, her experiences, dreams, myths,
fears, taboos, whatever. I, for one, have a very quaint relationship with "reality".
Some need to be as close as possible, others need more distance, and some need, at
least for a while, to believe that what they write has nothing to do with them.
NH: I'd never thought of it that way. I do know that one of my pet peeves with
science fiction and fantasy is that so many sf writers believe that it's a way to
evade the issue of content in their writing (e.g. analogy, politics, personal passion),
whereas I disagree strongly. I think you may be right; they may need to believe that
their writing has nothing to do with them.
V: I first wrote intensely personal-adolescent poetry, until fifteen, when I
realised I preferred writing... non-poetry; in fact, although not being very aware of
it, I wanted to write stories, to have another kind of relationship with space and
time than [French] poetry allowed, and allows.
NH: Oh, I can seirse a whole other thread in here that would teach me something
about French poetry, but I shall refrain.
fiV: So I tried writing an intensely adolescent, disguised as mainstream,
autobiographical novel - the comforting kind, the exact reverse of my then abysmal
amorous life. No plan, writing away, pen-happy hours-long sessions. And it ran
away from me, begiiming with the very first sentence (the "I" telling the/my story
was a guy!). At first it was incredibly fun, however, looking at myself from such a
distance.
41
 other systems we devise for directing our lives. One of the ways we define
NH: Huh. I've never thought of my writing as fun. It often pleases me deeply to
ourselves as being different from the other animals is that we are tool-users; in
have written something, but doesn't have the effortlessness that associate with the
other words, we go to great lengths to alter our realities - to the extent that we are
word "fun". i. u *. changing the planet on which we live. And we change our views of the world, and
fiV: Fun, that one was, until I came to the last third of the thing and thought that
of how it's appropriate to act within it. (Customs, beliefs, rituals, stories, mores
perhaps I should try to think the ending over before writing it. And this story was
all being tools, I'd say). Sf & f are one way of looking at just what we're doing
not ending at all as I wanted/needed it to. The only logical issue for the "me-
with all this manipulation. When I figured that out, 1finally figured out why Chip
character" was suicide. W hat?!? Scandal. When you write at fifteen or sixteen,
Delany rails sf & f meta-fiction. We're examining the reality that we manipulate
usually, it is to get a measure of control over your life. Control I Ha! I buried the
our realities. I find that fascinating, that process of examination and interrog
thing away in a drawer and swore off mainstream lit. forever.
ation. So it's another answer to, "Why write science fiction and fantasy?"
NH: I think if Td been writing around age 15-16, all my stories would have ended
Everything can be put into the crucible, all the variables can be altered.
in suicide. I have a much more cheerful temperament nowadays, though people tell
V: Which means that it is the kind of literature to which absolutely nothing
me my work can be grim. human and non-human is alien (I am paraphrasing the Latin poet Horatius, I think:
tV i As serendipity has it, that's exactly when I met science fiction, by a tortuous
"Rien de ce qui est humain ne m'est dtranger"; hmm, I used to know it in Latin).
route I will spare you. 1 read it intensely and almost exclusively for a year (every
That's the "perverse and subversive and oppositional and revolutionary", etc.
kind of sf, ecumenically, English and French, German and ItaUan and Russian and
potential you are talking about, I believe. Mainstream lit. comes a brave but quite
Polish, in translation, all themes, all authors, all styles, all sub-genres - my big
stroke of luck). Then, as everybody else, I began writing it. I had a dream at six distant second to it.
NH: You mean. I'm not just being snobbish when I think that? I don't feel it about
teen, which I immediately turned into a sprawling planet-story saga (happening
all mimetic fiction by any means, but it does seem as though the overarching theme
over a thousand years, dozens of characters, three volumes, interlinked short
is, "life sucks, sometimes people are nice to you, usually they re shits, then you
stories or novellas, the works). And I wrote it over and over for ten years, happily
die." The cumulative effect of reading a lot of it was to leave me feeling mired,
persuaded it had nothing to do with me, myself or I (the dream was very short and
hopeless and depressed. Whereas with sf and fantasy, I can begin to unpack some
of the Jungian, enigmatic kind : 1didn't get it for a long while).
of the macro and micro reasons why life sucks and begin to think about some ways
But, of course, I got progressively wiser and when I finished the first (actually
of ameliorating its suckiness. People who don't read science fiction sometimes tell
fourth) version of those 2000 pages, in 1976,1began to suspect it had everything to
do with me. Having rewritten it a few other times, and finally published it (in me that it's because it scares them. It may be a matter of temperament, but it's the
"life sucks and then you die" fiction that scares me. Which is not to say that I
1996-97, five books), I know it has eveiything to do with me. Any writing does
believe in a programme of "better living through science fiction". But I do find it an
(and yes, even non-fiction. In fact, everything we do has - you can see the utopian,
essentially hopeful literature.
generalising impulse at work, here!).
tV : I'm thinking of another variant: I write science fiction because there is
And so I write science fiction because it is (has?) the right distance for me, in
"science" in it; at least something of the impulse to discover/understand things. I
time, space, characters, themes, what-have-you.
am irremediably curious. I hope I will die curious (which is a pretty ambitious
NH: How many re-writes? I still find the whole process so arduous, I lose patience
hope, considering). Sf allows me to slake my perverse thirst for knowledge, on one
and fall out of love with the thing so many times before Tm done. I still prefer
hand, and understanding on the other - two different things. The items of
writing short stories. I guess I rewrite a lot too, but because I write a bit and then
revise, then write a bit more and then revise, it's difficult to tell how often I've knowledge can be "real" or "imaginary", the understanding and possible wisdom
derived from them is always valuable, on one level or another - as I see it. Which
gone over a manuscript by the time I think I m done.
fiV: You know, a more academic version of this (why I write science fiction) , makes for endless debates with my more dyed-in-the-wool scientific and scientist
answer is: because science fiction allows me to create an harmonious blend of my friends.
And so, by this circuitous route, we arrive in utopia. Which is obviously,
own mythology and the mythologies of my time. It allows me to reflect upon myself,
the people around me, the culture I live in, the world I live in and the universe of obstinately, and very blatantly, a true lie of the first magnitude. The grandmother
of science fiction (the grandfather being the Imaginary Voyage - and both Greek).
which we are a part ("42"!).
Utopia invents whole societies, cultures, worlds. There is always an invented
NH: Yes, that sounds similar to the conclusion to which I finally came, too. That
world, a parallel world in sf, more or less so, the future being only one aspect of it.
science fiction and fantasy allow us to interrogate the tools, cultures, beliefs and

43
42
I am definitely in the "more so" category; I love to create whole universes, and
"parallel universes" has been a dominant theme in my fiction so far. 1like playing
Goddess. And of course. I'd like some of my worlds to be better than the one I live
in. That's the classic, arrogant utopian impulse. But I have always been bothered
by it. My father had a critical saying; "making people happier in spite of
themselves". Hmm. That was (is) bad.
NH: Yes, I see what you mean. Humans are contrary. Perhaps in this job of playing
Goddess it takes a fine hand to reduce the more common barriers to happiness -
such as hunger, poverty, lack of other resources, lack of the means to be educated,
restriction of movement - but leave people the freedom to make their own lives. But
then what do you do about the fact that we'll quite happily make each other
unhappy? Especially when we can't all agree on what is good and right and just?
6V: I've been struck very early with the parochialism of most utopias... And, of
course, their arrant totalitarianism. I'm an individualist bourgeois lefty; in fact, as
I am getting older, I think I am turning into an anarchist lefty - much worse, doctor.
So, utopias... Naaaa.
NH; Yes. Come right down to it, utopia feels either boring or restrictive. I'm going
to be teaching a course on utopia this winter, and I see from my reading list that
we'll touch briefly on the idea of utopia then run pell-mell for dystopias, which I
thiidc will be more meaty. We'll see. I'll be learning along with the students.
6V: I always wonder why "better" is so often confused'with "more" (not
Thomas...). I am so fed up with the "tomorrow will be better because we'll have
more of..." (or its evil dystopian twin, "Tomorrow will be much worse because
we'll have more of..."). I have been attracted to and have hopelessly fallen in love
with science fiction (not utopia) because it aims at something else, a third option:
'Tomorrow will be different"- or more accurately 'Tomorrow might be different
because ..." And different is way more difficult to imagine and write about that
"better" or "worse".
NH: I think that's wonderfully said, filisabeth. I remember when so many of us
were certain that the Cold War would bring about our destruction, and everything
seemed to point to certain self-destruction unless we stopped right now and
started to do good things. I could get quite frightened thinking about it. And what
happened was that we did some good things and kept doing many stupid and evil
things, and came up with some new ones besides, and now though it's still quite
possible that we'll blow ourselves up, the possibilities have multiplied and it
seems as likely that we'll find other things to do with ourselves. Tomorrow is
different. Reminds me of that disagreement you and I had with Don DeBrandt,
Spider Robinson and Rob Sawyer (actually, did Spider agree with you and me? I
can't recall now). An)rway, it was that notion that nano-technology will bring
about the end of want on Earth, because we'll be able to manufacture everything
we want. "Well, whaddya mean 'we', white man?" says Tonto. Who's going to
have access to that technology, and how will they restrict access to it? I think the
44
gentlemen's point was well taken that with one nano-replicator you could
produce others, but I also think that Octavia Butler's correct that human beings
are hierarchical. Even when we no longer need have-nots to do our work for us, I
think one of our primarily impulses will still be to create a hierarchy of haves and
have-nots. Until I can think us past that stage, I can't easily believe that nano
technology will so handily solve tKe problem of Umited resources.
fiV: Ah, the technological utopias... So touching, in a way, so naive, so...
abracadabra! That makes me think; somehow, of another answer yet to the "why
do you write sf?" is "I write sf - and not utopia - because I am a woman and a
feminist." (I suppose it is because very few women go the technological utopia
route...) That would also go under the banner "subversive, perverse, (etc...)". Only
there can I imagine how it could be different and, imagining and writing it, bring it
perhaps a little closer, one reader at a time. For the life of me I can't understand
why there are not more women reading the stuff - 1 mean, "our stuff", of course!
Each time I convert a feminist to sf, I am ecstatic - and so is she: she can now
escape from the dual teeth of (impotent) anger and (impotent) sorrow, of "what-is"
(what is endlessly, unbearably), and breathe and really think for a while. That's
what many sf works by women have done for me, and I shamelessly proselytise.
NH: Recruit! Recruit!
V: By the way, for this whole discussion of utopia, I think we should never
forget that you and I, Nalo, as women, as genre readers and as writers, live in the
post-Le Guin's "ambiguous utopia" era. I believe no-one is writing classic utopia
anymore today, and certainly no female sf and fantasy writers.
NH: Yes, I think it would be difficult to do today, to write a dyed-in-the-wool
utopia. Even the one that comes fondly to my mind whenever I think of the word
"utopia"- Kim Stanley Robinson's Pacific Edge - has the seeds of its own
breakdown in it and forever threatening. As does your own The Maerlande
Chronicles, filisabeth.
I think speculative fiction has the potential, often realised nowadays, to be
perverse and subversive and oppositional and revolutionary. Which could make it
a wonderful literature for radical and marginalised communities. But by and large
people from those communities tend to see the genres (and probably somewhat
accurately, at least historically) as literatures which just replicate and glorify
existing power imbalances. The question that black people who don't read
speculative fiction tend to ask me is, "what are you doing over there?" In other
words, why are you writing that stuff that's about white boys and their toys?
That stuff about getting in your ship and going to other places and subjugating
other races? They ask me that until they read my writing. But that writing doesn't
come out of nowhere. By no means did I invent the notion of politicising the
literature.
6V: Sf is quite a different place for writers to write political stuff, I think. What
never fails to amaze (and appall me) is how few sf writers actually use the genre's
45
possibilities in that respect. And since they don't write utopias or dystopias of the day, too ! I've heard some male writers anguish over "the end of sf", which
either... the level of actual (subversive, etc) political reflection in "our" genres is strikes me as about as likely as "The End of Science" or "The End of History"
pretty low nowadays, 1 feel. (other, that is, that by the human race destroying itself). There is a feeling like "the
NH: I'd love to talk about The Silent City, another of your books I'm just about end of an era" in the sf world today, and certainly one might see it that way : the
done reading, Elisabeth, that seems to lay some of the groundwork for The young new writers certainly do not outnumber the old pros (but did they ever?),
Ma'erlande Chronicles. There's so much Td like to ask you! readerships seem to be shrinking as people get older, too - and sf tropes and images
fiV: Yes, Silent City is the first book in a non-series (there should be a third one. have invaded our everyday life, being trivialised in the process (apparently;
Land of The Tigers - at last I have a title - some time next decade) of which another way of seeing it is: these memes are spreading like wildfire!) But I do
Maerlande is the second (no recurring characters, same universe; I want to explore believe that the imagination-of-the-different is a firebird. It will rise from what
what kind of societies and mind-sets and everything people have developed in the ever ashes it might become in the next decade. If the human animal stops imagining
Badlands during those five hundred years and more...) and speculating, it will mean humanity as we know it is dead. Mind you, we may
In my idea, Maerlande is not a utopia at all. More like the "ambiguous stUl gengeneer that ability out by accident... Ah, but that is a sf idea ! So there.
utopias" we women have begun writing after The Dispossessed, which are not NH: I'm going to quote Octavia Butler again, from her "Parable" novels: "God is
technically utopias since they are in the process of changing, caught on the wheel change". Utopia is dead; dynamic tension reigns.
of time and space and not magically out of it. It is more of a dystopia, some
colleagues have pointed out to me. But no, neither one nor the other, I answered,
since it is above all sf, bom from a thought-experiment - the basic "what-if being,
"what if there were many, many more women than men and it had been going on for
at least a thousand years?" Personally, I confess I would not like to live in that
society, even if I were a declared a Blue, sterile, at puberty - although Blue women
have it better there than Blue men... Still, in many ways, it isisetter - for most
women at least, most of the time - than our own societies.
[Editors]: When talking about the state of sf in general, you remarked that the genre
may not be shrinking" as much as "in fact it may sintply be mutating"? In what
sense is it "mutating"?
NH: An art form changes, builds on what's been done before. Not on just what's
been done, but on what has been criticised about what's been done. So, no more
utopias that are totalitarian states, we're tired of that, and our understanding of
what constitutes a good life is a little more complicated. I think the genre is also
mutating as people from different communities claim space in it. Before I
encountered the feminist sf writers, sf and fantasy was mostly escapism for me.
With the feminist writers, it began to speak to me about facets of my life. Queer
writers are beginning to claim space, and working class writers. It s still largely a
North American and European genre. I think that's because of the more limited
access that writers from other places have to getting their work work-shopped
and published. I hope fervently that that will begin to shift more noticeably, and
soon.
6V : How could SF not be mutating, especially if it is "The modern literature". (Oh,
OK, let's not quibble with mo's and porno's: "The contemporary literature")? Not
only are different writers coming to it, as you say, Nalo, but since Sf taps (and is
tapped by) the Spirit of the Time, it changes - mutates - with it, of course. Now,
whether it is a favorable or a lethal mutation I don t know depends on my mood

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