book talk: the water dancer

My favorite piece by Ta Nehisi-Coates, Between the World and Me, was raw and intimate. Coates describes the world, which his son is now inheriting, with such detail and proximity that all readers, white readers too, could feel the weight on Coates’ shoulder to survive as a black man and protect and raise a young black son. It was non-fiction as hell. So when I saw Coates’ The Water Dancer in the fiction section of Barnes & Noble, I had to see how his words fit into this genre.

The Water Dancer is from the first-person perspective of Hiram (“Hi”), an enslaved boy in Virginia. The entire novel is Hiram telling his story from a retrospective narrative, giving the reader a fascinating insight. Hi remembers everything. He has what we call today an eidetic memory. This is an important detail in the novel.

Hiram lives on a plantation called “Lockless” (I think Coates did something with the name there). The master of Lockless, Howell, is also Hi’s father. His mother, Rose, an enslaved woman, was the best dancer at Lockless, but Hi can't seem to remember her. We don’t really know what happened to her but we know it was violent and traumatic and Hi was without a mother from a young age.

Hi seems to obtain the power of “conduction” which means by remembering, he can move through water (like Moses). For pretty much the whole novel, Hi narrates the path of familiarizing himself with the power of conduction, and in the end, how he used it for good.

The first thing I noticed, and my favorite aspect of the novel, is that Hiram was surrounded by strong and supportive black women who weren’t his mother. He even mentions to the reader, that he wouldn’t be where he is without the women in his life. Even more moving, Hiram wasn’t lusting after all of them. Too often, authors of historical fiction novels insert women into the novel to simply be the source of the main character’s lust. Coates carefully and intentionally created female characters who enriched and guided the main character’s path; it is clear to the reader that the main character would not have made it without their insight. The last thing I’ll say about this aspect of the novel is that while Hiram does fall in love with a woman, Sophia, his lust for her isn’t from her appearance. Hiram tells the reader he falls in love with Sophia because of her mind, her outlook on life, her tenacity (which he didn’t have a lot of), and other non-physical characteristics. That’s a character trait you don’t see very often. My favorite line in the whole book comes from Sophia– she says to Hiram, “but what you must get is that for me to be yours, I must never be yours.” Brilliant. 

A theme that I was particularly interested in was morality. Pause, I know that sounds like a very frequent theme–especially in a book about slavery. But this theme of morality is really different from what’s in most books. Hiram says that those who are enslaved are “blessed, for we do not bear the weight of pretending pure.” Hiram doesn’t just believe whites are immoral for owning slaves, but also because they put the face makeup on, the fancy dresses, the best suits, and exotic dishes–they paint a fictitious picture of purity which those who don’t have the privilege of painting, can see right through. Read that again.

I think this novel stands alone in historical fiction. I don’t think there are very many authors who can weave the most human emotions and experiences into characters whose humanity is taken like Coates can. Not to mention, the creativity to give an enslaved man a special power when he has no power as an enslaved man. Read that one again too.

Quotes that I read twice:

“The sharp smell of her was still in our room, on our bed, and I tried to follow that scent down the alleys of my mind, but while all the twists and turns that marked my short life were before me, my mother appeared only as fog and smoke.” Page 13.

“I now rise when I want and I sleep well when it is my will. My name is Parks because I said so. I  pulled the name from nothing–conjured it as a gift to my son. It got no meaning except this–I chose it. Its meaning is in the doing.” Page 59.

“And I think of all that beauty sometimes, how it withered in them chains…” Page 60.

“The light of freedom had been reduced to embers, but it was still shining in me, and borne up by the winds of fear, I kept running, bent, loping, locked, but running all the same, with my whole chest aflame.” Page 144.

“There is this moment in the stormy lives of a few blessed colored people, a moment of revelation, when the sky opens up, the clouds part, and a streak of sun cuts through, conveying some infinite wisdom from above, and this moment comes not from Christian religion, but from the sight of a colored man addressing a white one as Raymond White now did…” Page 200

“It occurred to me that an examination of the Task revealed not just those evils particular to Virginia, to my old world, but the great need for a new one entirely. Slavery was the root of all struggle. For it was said that the factories enslaved the hands of children, and that the child-bearing enslaved the bodies of women, and that rum enslvaed the souls of men.” Pages 251-252.

book talk: tender is the flesh

After the “animal virus” deems all animals inedible, humans take it upon themselves to erase them. In replacement, humans are bred and slaughtered for meat, just as they once did a cow or a pig. The government legalizes cannibalism, and slaughterhouses refine their practices to produce the highest quality of what is now referred to as, “special meat.” I won't get into all the disturbing practices, but what struck me the most is the “special meat” have their vocal cords removed so they can't scream or communicate with each other. 

The main character, Marcos, is a thinker. He reads people by the words they choose to say. Marcos is still hurting from the sudden death of his child and it doesn't help that his wife leaving him, and his father’s health is dwindling. 

Marcos works at the processing plant, where the “head” is prepared for consumption. He is the owner’s right-hand man. Marcos hates everything about his line of work, but it allows him to live comfortably, and it keeps his father in the most expensive nursing home where he can receive the best care. 

While this book makes me a bit queasy and I definitely lose my appetite after reading it, I still eagerly flip to the next page.

The dystopian society Bazterrica writes of doesn't seem too far-fetched. We haven't even fully handled COVID and now we have monkeypox. Who’s to say we won't start eating each other within the next couple of years?

I think that makes me the most uneasy. The world I am living in today is in close proximity to the fictional world Bazterrica creates.

On the theme of words: Bazterrica makes it clear that words are a central theme by spending the first page explaining Marcos and his relationship with words. She ends the page by writing, “his brain warns him that there are words that cover up the world.” Throughout the novel, Bazterrica narrates Marcos’ internal battle with what things really are, and what we call them (or what we are forced to call them). This got me thinking about our names, labels, and categories. As a society, we are slowly questioning the impact words have. The efforts of vocal individuals has pushed to turn “illegal immigrant” into “undocumented,” “victim” to “survivor,” “The Washington Redskins” to “The Washington Football Team,” “Beaners” to “Wussow’s Concert Cafe.” Tender is the Flesh shows what happens when we stop questioning words. Horror. Terror. The ugliest world.

Bazterrica is also saying something about masculinity with this novel. Marcos is deeply bothered that no one gave him condolences after his son passed, all the thoughts and prayers were given to his wife. This left a hole in his heart that grew and actually manifested into how he treated the breeding female he owns. I won’t spoil it for you. 

Quotes that I read twice:

“No one can call them humans because that would mean giving them an identity. They call them product, or meat, or food. Except for him; he would prefer not to have to call them by any name.” Page 8.

“He knows she’s serious. And that this conversation is prohibited, that these words could cause major problems for them. But he needs someone to say what no one does.” Page 38.

“She had the human look of a domesticated animal.” Last sentence on the last page in the book.

About the author:

“Agustina Bazterrica is an Argentine novelist and short story writer. She has received several awards for her writing, most notably the prestigious Clarín Novela Prize for her second novel, Tender is the Flesh, which has been translated into nine languages and optioned for television.”