Evidence of Things Not Seen: Fantastical Blackness in Genre Fictions 9781978818101

Citation preview

Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

Evidence of ­Things Not Seen Fantastical Blackness in Genre Fictions

RHONDA D. FREDERICK

Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Frederick, Rhonda D., 1965– author. Title: Evidence of things not seen : fantastical Blackness in genre fictions / Rhonda D. Frederick. Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021044042 | ISBN 9781978818064 (paperback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978818071 (hardback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781978818088 (epub) | ISBN 9781978818095 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978818101 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Blacks in literature. | American fiction—African American authors— History and criticism. | American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. | American fiction—21st century—History and criticism. | Blacks—Race identity. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. Classification: LCC PS374.B635 F74 2022 | DDC 813.009/352996073—dc23/eng/20220111 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021044042 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2022 by Rhonda D. Frederick All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. References to internet websites (URLs) w ­ ere accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­r utgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

 This book is a present/future rememory of what black ­people know

Contents Prologue: Revelations in Black . . . and Popular Introduction

ix 1

1

First—­Mystery: Fantastically Black Blanche White: BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam 37

2

Second—­Urban Romantica: Making Black and Jamaican Love: Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain and Romance-­ified Diaspora Identities

65

3

Third—­Fantasy: Fantastic Possibilities: Theorizing National Belonging through Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring 92

4

Fourth—­Multigenre: Seeing White: Colson Whitehead’s The Under­g round Railroad 116

5

Fifth—­Fantasy, Short Story: Fantastically Black ­Woman: Nalo Hopkinson’s “A Habit of Waste”

Epilogue

144 161

Acknowl­edgments 173 Notes 175 Index 221

vii

Prologue  Revelations in Black . . . ​and Popu­lar What good is science fiction’s thinking about the pre­sent, the f­ uture, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and d­ oing? What good is its examination of the pos­si­ble effects of science and technology, or social organ­ization and po­liti­cal direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what “every­ one” is saying, ­doing, thinking—­whoever “every­one” happens to be this year. And what good is all this to Black ­people? —­Octavia Butler, “Positive Obsession” Racism is terrible. Blackness is not. —­Imani Perry

The route that led to this proj­ect began with my discovery of the 1988 Popu­lar Library edition of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed. I came across the novel in 1991 while perusing the “science fiction” section of a chain bookstore.1 The cover mesmerized me: it is an image of a w ­ oman in profile, positioned in front of a cracked cement-­gray wall. Her head, from ear to crown, is a composite of a zebra, a cheetah, a gray crowned crane, some kind of butterfly or moth, and some variety of reptile; the collage forms a striking headdress.2 It has been almost thirty years since this cover enticed me, so dramatically that I bought the novel knowing nothing about its content or author. Wild Seed’s cover image continues to amaze me, but I am now equally enthralled by its story, by Anyanwu (the female protagonist), and by Octavia Butler and her oeuvre.3 But when I look back on my initial response to the Popu­lar Library cover, I confess that I was drawn to it ix

x • Prologue

b­ ecause it featured a black w ­ oman.4 Since Anyanwu is from the western part of the African continent, Wayne Barlowe’s artistic choice is only extraordinary ­because sci-fi publishers typically avoided cover images that featured identifiably black, brown, or yellow p­ eople as subjects, the presumption being that depictions of t­ hese sorts would alienate the genre’s archetypal young, white, male reader.5 Since this practice was de rigueur (though unevenly applied), Popu­lar Library’s decision to use Barlowe’s painting intrigues and generates a series of questions: If science fiction (and genre fictions generally)6 served a typical reader’s escapist desire, what might he be escaping to—­a nd from—by reading Wild Seed? If such a reader picked up and read this novel ­after seeing its cover, how did he perceive its pan-­A frican settings and depictions of Africans captured in trans­ atlantic slavery? What might a white and male reader imagine when encountering Anyanwu—­three hundred years old, shape-­shifter, healer—­living in the seventeenth-­century American colony as slavery evolved into an institution, specifically in light of said institution’s self-­serving definitions of “African,” “slave,” “black,” and “­woman”? And yet, I do not identify as young, white, or male, so ­these questions reflect my concerns more than ­those of sci-­fi’s presumptive reader. I must, then, reframe t­ hese interrogations: What might an unexpected reader of science fiction, specifically a (then young, now middle-­aged) black w ­ oman reader of Wild Seed, imagine about a science fiction novel that features a long-­lived, shape-­shifting western African w ­ oman? Even more profoundly, what might ­Anyanwu, visualized on the cover and narrativized in a science fiction novel, mean to a (then young, now middle-­aged) black ­woman living in and outside of Wild Seed’s pages? ­These questions are significant in light of concerns of form and audience that often occupy discussions of genre fictions, as well as the extraliterary contexts in which discourses of race and gender exist and intersect. Consider that early sci-fi and detective fictions w ­ ere said to allay anticipated readers’ apprehensions about changing po­liti­cal and social climates.7 Authors typically managed t­ hese anx­i­eties by characterizing the defeat of quasi-­human “­others” or otherworldly “aliens” as necessary to maintain the status quo. Romance writers followed a predictable formula (love desired, love found, love tested, love affirmed, love in the happily ever ­after) to meet the expectations of middle-­class white w ­ omen readers. ­These popu­lar premises afforded typical readers opportunities to escape from their realities, the result commonly used to distinguish category fictions from so-­called literary fictions.8 Uncomplicated prose, predictable formulas, and familiar plots are said to facilitate this escapism, a release that lasts at least as long as it takes to consume a novel or story. Since popu­lar fictions capably do this social work, the fact of a shape-­shifting black ­woman on the cover and as the subject of a 1988 sci-fi novel is awesome, if not radical. Barlowe’s cover challenges the “marketing reasons” that determine what an attractive sci-fi cover should be; additionally, Wild Seed forced the publishing powers-­that-be (powers-­that-­were?) to acknowledge audiences that previously they w ­ ere not prepared to see.9 Given

Prologue • xi

t­ hese givens, and in light of this proj­ect’s motivation, I want to map the significance of my encounter with Wild Seed’s cover carefully. While category fictions are commonly understood as vehicles that drive typical readers’ escapist fantasies, Wild Seed offers me (U.S.-­based, immigrant, black ­woman with dark-­brown skin and 4b hair) ­little that can be considered “escapist.” It features historical and paranormal depictions of slavery, examples of spectacular patriarchal oppressions, and normalized gender and social hierarchies that subjugate black ­women. To put it plainly, the novel’s settings and relationships mirror ­those I know and most that I experience regularly. My embrace of this work of popu­lar fiction, then, demonstrates that “­there’s more than escapism g­ oing on h ­ ere.” Time magazine’s book critic Lev Grossman writes, Why do we seek out t­ hese hard places for our fantasy vacations? B ­ ecause on some level, we recognize and claim t­ hose disasters as our own. We seek out hard places precisely ­because our lives are hard. When you read genre fiction, you leave ­behind the prob­lems of real­ity—­but only to re-­encounter ­those prob­lems in transfigured form, in an unfamiliar guise, one that helps you understand them more completely, and feel them more deeply. Genre fiction i­ sn’t just generic pap. You d­ on’t read it to escape your prob­lems, you read it to find a new way to come to terms with them.10

Grossman takes simplistic notions of escape off the t­ able and gives me the language to articulate why I read and reread Wild Seed. Anyanwu’s fictional real­ity is familiar in that she is locked into and dominated by vari­ous systems of power (patriarchy, gender, global power, anti-­Africanness). Even when her strug­gles are less familiar (coerced migration; alienation from ­people, history, culture; immortality; shape-­shifting), I can still imagine how they affect the protagonist’s ability to be herself. Yet despite the novel’s fictionalizations of familiar extraliterary oppressions, the imaginable possibility of Anyanwu—­specifically her ability to transform and heal and to be herself—­remains fascinating. Before meeting Doro (whose name means “east”), Anyanwu (whose name means “sun”) does not understand herself as “black” or “African” or subservient to men but as an elder, a healer, and a descendant of Onitsha ­people subject to the Benin Empire. ­A fter Doro, she exists within limitations and subordinations demanded by him as well as ­those orchestrated by Eu­ro­pean notions of gender and civilization and the transatlantic slave trade. Yet, in t­ hese evolving contexts, Wild Seed’s female protagonist makes and can make herself into all manner of beings: female and male, h ­ uman and animal, and species that exclusively exist in the novel’s real­ ity.11 Nevertheless, she is not flawless. Although Octavia Butler’s imagination and genre-­of-­choice allow Anyanwu myriad bodily configurations, the female hero does not countenance e­ very body. She willingly remakes her female body for the plea­sure of male lovers, yet the suggestion that she similarly adjust her male’s body to plea­sure a ­woman disgusts

xii • Prologue

her. ­A fter she tells Doro that he has benefited from her ability to modify her vagina, the immortal responds, “ ‘Someday,’ he murmured, vaguely preoccupied, ‘we w ­ ill both change. I ­will become a w ­ oman and find out w ­ hether you make an especially talented man.’ ‘No!’ She jerked away from him. . . . ​‘We w ­ ill not do such a ­thing!’ . . . ​‘It would be a vile ­thing.’ she whispered. ‘Surely an abomination.’ ”12 She is physically able to perform gender and sexuality fluidly, but Anyanwu’s initial response indicates that unfamiliar bodily contortions can only be abominable.13 Though her adherence to Onitsha history and culture limits the imaginable possibilities of what she can physically perform, Anyanwu can still refuse narratives that ­others script for her. Despite multiple dominating forces (Doro, Eu­ro­pean ­people and cultures, the slave trade), the protagonist’s ability to re/ make herself—­for herself—­imagines a black femaleness that Butler’s popu­lar form-­of-­choice assists. Navigating terrains that she did not make, Wild Seed’s female hero knows herself in ways that protect her from alien landscapes and foreign social-­scapes, and fantastically so. Doro, drawn to Anyanwu ­because he perceives her “specialness,” coerces her into joining him by presenting the prospect of progeny who might live at least as long as she has lived. Traveling by foot u­ ntil they arrive at the West African coast, they join a coterie of Doro’s special ­people and travel through their own ­Middle Passage to the American colony. Anyanwu, Doro, and clan ultimately arrive in the village of Wheatley, where the antagonist’s ­people (Anyanwu’s shipmates as well as ­people Doro transports from across the globe) prepare a welcome feast. Overeating and unfamiliar food cause Anyanwu stomach pain, but ­because she is both shape-­shifter and healer, she controls the impulse to vomit. At the end of the festivities, she retires to Doro’s bedroom and turns her consciousness (“inner awareness”) inward to identify exactly what has made her sick. Only then can Anyanwu “[soothe] the sickness from her body.”14 Doro, still learning the extent of the protagonist’s “gifts,” observes her as Anyanwu observes herself. A ­ fter, He reached u­ nder the blanket, rubbed her stomach g­ ently. Her body was almost buried in the too-­soft feather mattress. “Have you healed yourself?” “Yes. But with so much food, it took me a long time to learn what was making me sick.” “Do you have to know?” “Of course. How can I know what to do for healing u­ ntil I know what healing is needed and why? I think I knew all the diseases and poisons of my ­people. I must learn the ones h ­ ere.”15

Anyanwu lives three hundred years without Doro, but through him, she is exposed to previously unknown tyrannies put in motion by his determination to build an immortal legacy. His goal knows no limits other than ­those imposed

Prologue • xiii

by the antagonist himself. And yet, Anyanwu knows bodies so intimately that she can become any body. Her bodily transformations manifest so thoroughly ­because of her intimate knowledge of her own body; nevertheless, ­these dif­fer­ ent states of intimacy do not prevent her from being the self that Octavia Butler writes so deliberately: black and ­woman. The protagonist moves through myriad individual and or­ga­nized contexts that impose identities on her; still her intimate self-­knowledge determines each cellular alteration that makes her into an/ other. In other words, Anyanwu is always Anyanwu. She is never self and iterations of vari­ous bodies (both/and); she is and/and—or, more precisely, she is. Doro coerces/forces her participation in his plan to breed superhumans; nevertheless, the protagonist’s known self resists his definition and uses of her as well as the new territories to which he introduces her. As a black ­woman living in the United States, affected by ste­reo­types intended to denigrate me, I intentionally assess Anyanwu’s ability to be and to be self-­aware. The inner awareness of Wild Seed’s protagonist disrupts narratives that subjugate, exhibiting a fictional subject who refuses to be reduced by oppressive gender and racial mores. By depicting the conviction that Anyanwu exists in and in excess of bound­ aries fashioned by Doro, slavery, Eu­ro­pe­anness/whiteness, and maleness, Butler fictionalizes what has as­suredly been part of a diasporic African zeitgeist since the inception of the transatlantic slave trade. This may appear to be a huge claim, but it is one affirmed by Imani Perry’s creative nonfiction (2020): “So many ­people taught us to be more than the hatred heaped upon us, to cultivate a deep self-­regard no ­matter what ­others may think, say, or do. Many of us have absorbed that lesson and revel in it.”16 It is also affirmed by Elizabeth Alexander’s creative nonfiction (2020): “Black creativity emerges from long lines of innovative responses to the death and vio­lence that plague our communities. ‘Not a h ­ ouse in the country a­ in’t packed to its raf­t ers with some dead Negro’s grief,’ Toni Morrison wrote in Beloved, and I am interested in creative emergences from that ineluctable fact.”17 And lastly, it is affirmed by Lucille Clifton’s 1993 poem: “born in babylon / both nonwhite and w ­ oman / what did i see to be except myself?”18 Each of t­ hese ­women (1) articulates historical truths that violate and (seek to) proscribe who black ­people are and can be, and (2) lays bare truths that disrupt and upend t­ hese same racial/gender/class proscriptions. Or, most provocatively, though 1 and 2 occur si­mul­ta­neously, Butler, Clifton, Perry, and Alexander speak truths about blackness and black femaleness—­ones that know black experience beyond the limits of racist biases and misogynoir19—­truths that pragmatically refuse parochial discourses of race and gender. Importantly, the expression that Alexander, Perry, Butler, and Clifton share manifests the vital congress between content and their respective genres (creative nonfiction, science fiction, poetry), vital ­because the intimate connection between what ­these writers say and how they say it expresses a complex black subjectivity that lives—­can live—in ways that this subjectivity was not intended to exist.

xiv • Prologue

The preceding pages capture the enormous impact of Octavia Butler’s sci-fi imagining and Wayne Barlowe’s visual rendering of Anyanwu and establish Evi­ dence of ­Things Not Seen’s point of departure. The combination of Barlowe’s doubly visual form (painting and book cover) and the inherent hyperbole of Butler’s form-­of-­choice is an exaggerated expression of a fundamental premise: Anyanwu perceives her black womanness in her own way and as irreducible to the overlapping oppressions that she subsequently encounters. A power­ful consequence of Butler’s fantastical illustration of the female hero, in and through vari­ous repressive contexts, is the idea that infinite iterations of black femaleness are pos­si­ble ­because they are imaginable. The author’s scribal imaginings, as well as Barlowe’s vision for his painting, exist. As reader, I enlarge their foundations: the Anyanwu I imagine lives beyond the novel’s pages b­ ecause she helps me to deeply imagine ways to “come to terms with” the prob­lems she f­ aces, that we—­ Anyanwu and I—­face.20 The Anyanwu I see and imagine makes it pos­si­ble for me to ask, How can I re/see my black and w ­ oman self? Navigating oppressive terrains that I did not make, can my re/seeing be a tool that upends ­these terrains and my relationships to them? Wild Seed, specifically its protagonist’s self-­ awareness, responds to ­these questions. This form/content analy­sis of Wild Seed’s 1988 cover and protagonist evolved into my conception of fantastical blackness. I theorize this phrase in the introduction, but ­here it begins with my vision of Anyanwu. As it appears in the hyperbolic reaches of science fiction, fantastical blackness is vis­i­ble in the protagonist’s expressed belief that her black self cannot be wholly defined by the desires of anyone other than herself, an inexorable truth augmented by her ­imagined self (long-­lived, shape-­shifting Onitsha ­woman) and available to readers outside of Wild Seed’s pages. Anyanwu’s ­imagined (conceived and written by Butler, visualized by Barlowe) and imaginable (interpreted by me) selves, not to mention selves that I cannot currently imagine (likely even if not wholly conceivable now), illustrate a fantastical blackness that critically articulates possibilities for black subjectivity in contexts in which black and ­human ­were never expected to be. Evidence of fantastical blackness in other types of popu­lar fiction further supports this Anyanwu-­machinated conceptualization.

Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

Introduction They made us into a race. We made ourselves into a p­ eople. —­Ta-­Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me A black child picks up a copy of Spider Man and imagines himself swinging into a world beyond the limitations imposed by Harlem or Congress. —­Walter Mosley, “Black to ­Future”

Being Black and Fantastical Several certainties motivate Evidence of ­Things Not Seen: Fantastical Blackness in Genre Fictions: first, that popu­lar creative forms—­specifically popu­lar liter­ ary forms—­are unique vehicles in which complex repre­sen­ta­tions of blackness exist and through which they are purposefully articulated; second, that the hyperbolic features of popu­lar fictions make them inexorable tools for theorizing fantastical blackness. This proj­ect acknowledges that antiblackness and the condition of social death are made—­and made necessary—to support supremacist notions and privileges of whiteness.1 And yet, in Evidence of Th ­ ings Not Seen, I am interested in what happens when analyses of blackness in popu­lar fictions center us, specifically the us who could make a p­ eople when we w ­ ere reduced to a race. ­These certainties derive from the concept of fantastical blackness. The term and its variants (“blackness’s fantastical truths,” “blackness’s imaginable truths”) are “evidence of t­ hings not seen”: truths about blackness that are real and accessible though they resist quantification. That which defines blackness as fantastical

1

2 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

is the “deep self regard” that lives despite what o­ thers think or say or do (Imani Perry, “Racism Is Terrible. Blackness Is Not”); the emergent, innovative responses to the death and vio­lence that haunt black communities (Elizabeth Alexander, “The Trayvon Generation”); the intentional making of self when ­there is no model (Lucille Clifton, “­won’t you celebrate with me”); the “movement in and out of the frame . . . ​or what­ever externally imposed social logic” (Fred Moten, “The Case of Blackness”).2 This perception of a black self is fantastical—­ “conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained imagination” (Dictionary​.­com)—­because it lives, despite ­every attempt at annihilation.3 And this blackness is amazing b­ ecause fantastical blackness is irreducible to antiblackness. Fantastical blackness captures a quintessence emboldened by the evidence of black ­people refusing and upending antiblack narratives, by the knowledge of the truth that blackness cannot be reduced by racist/oppressive imaginings. And fi­nally, as I put it to work in this proj­ect, fantastical blackness is an ethical interpretive practice: it does not teach blackness to ­those who lack knowledge but positions this black self-­knowledge as an interpretive point of departure rather than as a reaction to dominant narratives that threaten and diminish us. As Alexander, Perry, and Moten theorize it, fantastical blackness acts in extraliterary spaces by unsettling the authority of antiblack narratives; Clifton imagines it ­doing the same when she depicts it poetically. That this concept is vis­i­ble in fiction and nonfiction, and that each written form contributes to breaking limits on black possibilities in extraliterary spaces, indicates that it is a critical tool that offers insight into diasporic black self-­k nowledge while rejecting narrow par­ameters for blackness. The unrestrained imaginings that characterize mystery, romance, science fiction, fantasy, and mixed-­genre popu­lar fictions speak to the “strange and wonderful” aspect of the fantastical in fantastical blackness (Cambridge Dictionary); thus, category fictions’ hyperbolic registers communicate the profundity of this quality of blackness. And when black pop-­fiction writers center this expressive quintessence, they make it available to a broad and knowledgeable audience that can use its imaginable vocabularies outside of fiction (remember, Lev Grossman says, “you ­don’t read [genre fiction] to escape your prob­lems, you read it to find a new way to come to terms with them”).4 I do not, however, advance fantastical blackness as merely celebratory or resilient. ­Because literary forms are significant critical tools through which we assess worlds outside of fiction, we need their unique insights now more than ever. Racial discourse in the current global climate—­a “current” that I locate in 2012 ­a fter the murder of Trayvon Martin and Black Lives M ­ atter found­ers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi’s call to action—is stricken by a crisis of imagination. Whiteness only appears able to imagine itself and its “greatness” through exclusionary vio­lence, and blackness is constrained by its perception in the white imagination.5 The rise in antiblack (among other) hate crimes, unsurprisingly accompanied by a rise in visibility of white-­supremacist groups, demonstrates the lengths some white ­people are willing to go to reinforce narratives

Introduction • 3

of white superiority and privilege. As bell hooks observes, “­there is a direct and abiding connection between the maintenance of white supremacist patriarchy in this society and the institutionalization via mass media of specific images, repre­sen­ta­tions of race, of blackness that support and maintain the oppression, exploitation, and overall domination of black p­ eople.”6 Where hooks’s primary focus is the United States, Christina Sharpe makes a similar observation about locations across the globe: “In much of what passes for public discourse about terror we, Black p­ eople, become the carriers of terror, terror’s embodiment, and not the primary objects of terror’s multiple enactments; the ground of terror’s possibility globally.”7 Through institutionalized scribal and visual forms across the globe, racist ste­reo­types are used to terrorize blackness and “reinforce and reinscribe” a mythic whiteness.8 To respond to this crisis of imagination, what I propose are ways to envision and assert a differently i­magined blackness. Consider, for example, how Claudia Rankine and Lynn Nottage articulate this crisis. Rankine writes, “­because white men c­ an’t / police their imagination / black p­ eople are d­ ying.”9 Nottage, responding to questions about her play Sweat and its muses (working-­class residents of Reading, Pennsylvania), says, “we are a country that has lost our narrative.”10 Both creative writers capture the significance of imagination and the stories we tell about ourselves. Rankine’s tercet exposes the role that imagination plays in determining white men’s be­hav­ior; the enormity of her poetic revelation is excruciatingly revealed when the murder and abuse of black p­ eople are considered reasonable b­ ecause they are i­ magined as such. Th ­ ese three lines speak the power of imagination, in this case, the power to kill black p­ eople ­imagined as “terror’s embodiment.” Lynn Nottage responds in her interview to what she perceived as a sense of wretchedness among Reading’s working-­class ­people: “One of the first questions we asked was, how do you describe your city? ­People would respond by saying: ‘Reading was . . .’ They w ­ ere incredibly nostalgic for this glorious ­imagined past. It nearly broke my heart. I thought this is a city that cannot conceive of itself in the pre­sent or ­future tense. It is a microcosm of what is happening in Amer­i­ca ­today. We are a country that has lost our narrative. We c­ an’t proj­ect our f­ uture ­because we ­don’t know where we are ­going.”11 Researching “how economic stagnation was shifting the American narrative and how so many ­people who had so thoroughly invested in the American dream found themselves broadsided,” Nottage “saw a certain level of rage, particularly among the white working class, which . . . ​would express itself in some malignant way”: “When I was having conversations with p­ eople, a lot of the subtext, unspoken, was the white majority’s discomfort with diversity and inclusion.”12 Working-­class whites focused not on the social, po­liti­cal, and economic institutions designed to privilege the elite but on ­people who “prevented” working-­class white ­people from claiming ­favors they considered their due. Nottage’s muses held onto failed narratives of white supremacy, a consequence of which was an inability to form new narratives.

4 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

Though taking on dif­fer­ent aspects of this crisis of imagination, both Rankine (poetically posing the result of a l­imited imagination) and Nottage (dramatically portraying the United States’ flawed imagining) describe the same ­consequence: targeted black p­ eople. The poet and the playwright reference a durable, mythic whiteness and a refusal to relinquish privileges that attach to it as narratives that produce an i­magined, denigrated blackness. And while they describe imaginings that lead to vio­lence, both suggest the need for new ways to imagine dif­f er­ent pre­sents and f­ utures. I am, however, only indirectly concerned with how and why whiteness imagines itself. Instead, this proj­ect explores how— in dif­fer­ent and multiple contexts of antiblackness—­blackness can re/imagine blackness and what tools blackness uses to do so. Or rather than argue for new ways, I want to recollect the ways that blackness imagines itself (“So many p­ eople taught us to be more than the hatred heaped upon us, to cultivate a deep self-­ regard no ­matter what ­others may think, say, or do”).13 Evidence of ­Things Not Seen, to state it succinctly, explores how—­when amplified by pop fictions’ hyperbolic imaginings—­fantastical blackness privileges self and breaches the limits of antiblackness. Nottage and Rankine document imagination’s material impact: to maintain destructive social mores, to kill. Since poem and play persuade, imagination can also reveal, consider, re/make, and re/imagine other materialities.14 Sylvia Wynter describes the kind of transformative imagining I mean, in her thinking about dif­fer­ent Jamaican histories: So the decision to borrow the name of Jamaica Journal from an ­earlier planter class journal was deliberate on my part. The idea was that ­you’re ­going to keep a continuity with the past, but you are g­ oing at the same time to transform the conception of that past. . . . ​I wanted us to assume our past: slaves, slave masters, and all. And then, reconceptualize that past. . . . ​You see, ­because we have taken from the West their conception of freedom and slavery, we tend to conceptualize freedom and slavery only in their terms. Yet when we look at African conceptions of slavery, it’s entirely dif­fer­ent. . . . ​What I’m trying to say is that we have looked back on our slave past with a shudder, and so w ­ e’ve not been able to see it.15

This quotation literally explains Wynter’s decision to use the name of “a planter class journal” for one committed to the exploration of a con­temporary, black Jamaica. Read theoretically, however, Wynter advances the argument that an exclusively Western lens cannot constructively see Jamaica, can only see Jamaica’s encounter with the West and see it as dread. And she continues, positing that through “African conceptions of slavery,” this same history must look dif­fer­ent. Wynter envisions something that only becomes pos­si­ble when we accept that multiple lenses exist and see in myriad ways. I use this perspective specifically to

Introduction • 5

support the claim that, ­shaped by unrestrained imaginings available in genre fictions, fantastical blackness makes up, then makes real.16 The power of blackness and black womanness expressed above and in the prologue (Butler’s, Rankine’s, Nottage’s, Perry’s, Alexander’s, Clifton’s, Moten’s, Wynter’s) resides not only in the common thread that connects each rendition but also in the forms that convey ­these shared expressions. I thus turn my critical eye ­toward the likelihood that a similarly ­imagined quality of blackness can be expressed in myriad popu­lar genres. Features and techniques that differentiate science fiction, creative nonfiction, multimedia/lyric poetry, theater, and criticism permeate each writer’s view of blackness, putting formalist emphases in conversation with content. With regard to popu­lar fictions, their extravagance defamiliarizes the familiar, a relationship that encourages readers to ask dif­fer­ ent questions—­and to move t­ oward vari­ous, imaginable resolutions. Formalist analyses of race in genre fictions encourage questions about how we know what we know, and how we communicate what we know, about black selves. Fantasy, romance, multigenre, and science fictions are literary forms in which the uncanny, the inexplicable, the idealized, and the i­magined unimaginable are fundamental, features that—­when intricately linked to content—­create feedback loops that per­sis­tently magnify portrayals of black experience. The exaggerated—­ the hyperbolic—in category fictions reflects and proj­ects the fantastical of blackness.17 By magnifying this subject, category fictions make way for focused readerly attention to and strong impressions of fantastical blackness. Attributes that define specific popu­lar fictions are larger than life, and as such, they are intentional, embellished expressions that push beyond the limits of the currently known. ­These m ­ ental flights of fancy lend themselves to examinations of blackness, distinguishing repre­sen­ta­tions that are ­shaped by myriad diasporic African locations. Fittingly, an intimate ­union of literary form and black content characterizes fantastical blackness. When popu­lar lit­er­a­ture centers this concept, readers can focus on imaginable possibilities of seeing blackness as self-­ perceived blackness as well as in/in excess of extraliterary realities.18 And strong impressions last and live outside of pages of fiction. Evidence of Th ­ ings Not Seen reads, as a category of analy­sis, fantastical blackness in twentieth-­and twenty-­first-­century erotic/urban romance, fantasy, mystery, science fiction, and multigenre popu­lar fictions written by black writers from the Anglophone Ca­rib­bean, the United States, and Canada. Th ­ ese impor­ tant literary works, some rarely analyzed, refine and enact my critical vision: Tobias Buckell’s “Spurn Babylon” (fantasy story), Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain (erotic romance novel), Nalo Hopkinson’s “A Habit of Waste” (fantasy story) and Brown Girl in the Ring (sci-­fi/fantasy novel), BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam (mystery novel), and Colson Whitehead’s The Under­ground Railroad (thriller/suspense/fantasy/mystery/historical novel). B ­ ecause often “obscured by a realist frame of reference,”19 fantastical registers magnify black experiences

6 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

to make them more intentionally, centrally, profoundly, and variously vis­i­ble. The impact of this kind of repre­sen­ta­tion, at this crucial moment, unlocks imaginable possibilities that resist limits of myriad antiblack narratives. My primary texts are distinctive in that each supports a sustained form/content critique, a literary critical approach to theorizing blackness that permits the interrogation—­and visibility—of the un/imaginable.20 Each chapter highlights a popu­lar genre in which blackness is uniquely performed, a critical orientation that asks a range of questions. Evidence of Th ­ ings Not Seen generally inquires, What can be learned from depictions of inter-­and extraterrestrial migrations; or super­natural ­peoples, species, and locations; or idealized love and lovers; or transubstantiated belief systems of African, North American, and Ca­rib­bean ­peoples? More specifically, it asks, What mysterious crimes are revealed by an amateur sleuth who chooses to be black (BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam)? What is revealed when a fantastically black lens turns to the United States’ foundational narrative (Whitehead’s The Under­g round Railroad)? What practical lessons are available in a fantasy story about a curvaceous black, Canadian ­woman who downloads her consciousness into the boyish body of a white w ­ oman (Hopkinson’s “A Habit of Waste”)? Might thinking about multiculturalism in Canada shift radically if informed by a Trinidadian-­Canadian character who channels Yoruba-­derived gods through Toronto’s CN Tower (Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring)? What kinds of black love can be made if the protagonist of an erotic romance is the role model (Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain)? How much and what kinds of work must a “whitey-­man” do to both rethink and claim his relationship to the legacies of slavery in the Anglophone Ca­rib­bean (Tobias Buckell’s “Spurn Babylon”)? The novels and short stories that raise t­ hese questions operationalize the intentions of their respective genres, concurrently struggling with residual hierarchical, racist, gendered, and colonial traces that inhere in ­these forms. Category fictions have managed white fears about changing sociopo­liti­cal climates, often by celebrating white male protagonists who set ­things right by vanquishing aliens and policing nonwhite ­others.21 Nevertheless, and ­because ­these fictions appeal to t­ hose who are “dissatisfied with the way ­things are: adolescents, post-­adolescents, escapists, dreamers, and t­ hose who have been made to feel powerless,”22 their explorations can reveal “a failure in the under­lying structures of white Western civilization and . . . ​set right ­those destructive social and po­liti­cal forces in nature.”23 Introducing so-­called ­others as intentional agents allows for a critique of typical genre conventions as well as the environments to which t­ hese conventions respond. Centering blackness—­ black characters, black histories, black migrations, black spaces, black cultural traditions, black experiential realities—­black writers make use of “highly didactic” fictions that ­were once dominated by so-­called liberal, white, and male writers and readers.24 But rather than merely making intercessions into or revisions of category genres’ formalist prescriptions, black writers’ creative works

Introduction • 7

peel away the white-­supremacist and patriarchal accretions that have attached to ­these radical literary forms, speaking to an audience for whom an irreducible blackness is a resonant rememory. As I imagine it, fantastical blackness is a literary critical enactment of a theory of diasporic blackness. Theorizing through fantastic or mysterious or romantic depictions of black characters, subjects, and/or settings not only highlights the critical possibilities of vari­ous literary forms but also privileges enigmatic, imaginable narratives of blackness in the Amer­i­cas. When successfully crafted, fantastical blackness is a tool for extraliterary activism, the “making real” that derives from the “making up.”

Re/imagining Blackness Black characters depicted in early genre fictions—if such fictions included us at all—­were wholly othered beings and/or criminals used to realize and maintain elite, white patriarchy. In their nascent incarnations, t­ hese fictions used blackness to make conservative worldviews about race, class, and gender consumable and thus attractive to typical readers. Yet as I read black characters and themes centered in works by black writers, blackness actively resists the traditional denigrations produced in early mystery/detective, fantasy, romance, and science fiction forms. Centering the paradigmatically other not only interrogates the presumption of racial and gender alterity but also unsettles the foundations on which this kind of othering relies. Black popu­lar fiction writers’ literary moves disrupt the traction of normalized, dominant social mores, at least chipping away at the notion that such norms are sacrosanct. Emphases on ethnicities and cultures of the African diaspora bring possibilities of more complexly rendered black characters to the fore by making use of popu­lar lit­er­a­tures’ structural features and centering an irreducible perception of blackness. This is a pro­cess that brings form and content together to queer the familiar, and once defamiliarized, readers can relate to social concerns ­imagined in category fictions differently to reconceive racial facts and racial fictions. However, contending with specters of victimized, alien, criminal, unlovable blackness—­commonplace characterizations that branded popu­lar literary forms—­a ffirms the need for a shift to fantastical blackness as a primary way of seeing black. Durable repre­sen­ta­tions of black characters and cultures in early category fictions can warp twenty-­first-­century repre­sen­ta­tions, but in arguing for the presence and utility of fantastical blackness, I do not determine con­ temporary repre­sen­ta­tions as mere correctives to previously flawed ones. Though more complex than the flat ste­reo­t ypes of yore, fantastical blackness performs as Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley’s “black queerness” performs—it “disrupts provocatively . . . ​opaquely, not transparently”—­developed as it is by imagination’s vagaries.25 ­Because fantastical blackness is imaginable and thus intricate, it evokes flattened ste­reo­types while productively contributing to an

8 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

epistemology of black life in the Amer­i­cas. So conceived, fantastical blackness is a critical tool activated by its complex orientation, fortified by the certainty that dominant and Western perspectives are neither the first nor the only ones that determine how blackness sees itself. André M. Carrington offers a persuasive critique of Nichelle Nichols’s character on the original Star Trek that is relevant ­here. The critic observes that the weight of Nichelle Nichols’s/Lt. Uhura’s off-­ camera influence far exceeded the marginalized role that the actor played on Star Trek. Uhura was a glorified office assistant, a recurring though minor character in genre tele­vi­sion, but one that made it pos­si­ble for Nichols to be the “celebrity recruiter who diversified the astronaut corps.”26 Carrington’s persuasive critique illustrates the possibilities of fantastical blackness as an extraliterary activist strategy that promotes an imaginable blackness that unsettles antiblack narratives. His analy­sis also demonstrates how permeable the bound­aries between the fictional and the extraliterary are. ­Because racial discourse negotiates bound­a ries between the real and the ­imagined, useful insights accrue as critiques move and exist within and between the two. So ­here and in the entirety of this work, I define and use “black” and “blackness” as common nouns and adjectives. I also use them so­cio­log­i­cally to reference African, African-­descended, and diasporic African ­peoples. Conceptually, I join Frank B. Wilderson III in acknowledging a key tenet of Afropessimism: that in the West, “black” and “­human” are impossibly oxymoronic ­because p­ eople, in and in the aftermath of the trade in captured Africans, ­were made into objectified commodities. As such, ­people made black and slave could not/cannot be ­human; as a consequence, the only way to conceive of black humanity is through the radical reconsideration of the definition of “­human” and the destruction of the institutions enabled by the dominant definition of such. Diasporic blackness, therefore, is saturated with all that African ­people retained, what African-­descended ­peoples encountered in the West, as well as the legacies of ­these encounters. And yet, as one of this proj­ect’s certainties describes, narratives of blackness antedate, coexist with, and postdate slavery’s racial formations. This always/already irreducible blackness contains past/present/future visions as well as perceptions of what is ­currently unimaginable. As such, blackness in the Amer­i­cas (Ca­rib­bean countries, the United States, Canada) has been and is si­mul­ta­neously real (physical, ­mental, economic, and social consequences) and unreal (social construction), rational (calculated, deliberate, durable) and irrational (perverse, unquantifiable). That blackness is a bounded racial category cannot be ignored; neither can it be forgotten that it served (serves) interests of elite power brokers in and across time and global spaces. Ultimately, however, I  understand black and blackness as qualities of being that Moten describes as “fugitive”: “an ongoing refusal of standards imposed from elsewhere, . . . ​a desire for and a spirit of escape and transgression of the proper and the proposed. It’s a desire for the

Introduction • 9

outside, for a playing or being outside, an outlaw edge proper to the now always already improper voice or instrument” and a fugitive “movement in and out of the frame . . . ​or what­ever externally imposed social logic.”27 Fantastical blackness disrupts the characterization of African and African-­ descended ­peoples developed by architects of the transatlantic slave trade. Globally perceived as “slave” and “black,” captured and enslaved African ­people w ­ ere further ­limited by the evolution (devolution?) of “slave” into a rigid social category through pro­cesses imposed not only on African p­ eople but also on geographic locations. As Wilderson explains, “­There is a global consensus that Africa is the location of sentient beings who are outside of global community, who are socially dead. That global consensus begins with the Arabs in 625 and it’s passed on to the Eu­ro­pe­ans in 1452. Prior to that global consensus you c­ an’t think Black. You can think Uganda, Ashanti, Ndebele, you can think many dif­ fer­ent cultural identities, but Blackness cannot be dis-­imbricated from the global consensus that de­cided h ­ ere is the place which is emblematic of that moment the Choctaw person is spun out from social life to social death.”28 By “social death,” Wilderson means that the slave is alienated from and dishonored by society at birth and subject to gratuitous vio­lence by all ­those who are “not slave.”29 This socially dead slave/black allowed Eu­ro­pe­ans to claim rights associated with being both “not slave” and “not black.” ­These privileges, as well as access to them, quickly fell u­ nder the exclusive province of “whiteness,” as t­ hose who ­were neither slave nor black came to be known.30 But ­there is more, ­because whiteness is not only about physicality or access to privileges. To be white is also about the imaginable. Whiteness came to be known as such b­ ecause of what par­ tic­u­lar socie­ties believed it was—­and ­imagined it deserved. Belief in this kind of whiteness became a pro­cess that necessitated a blackness that was similarly distinct, so “a system of advantage, based on race” was born.31 Although that which motivated rigid racial categories was distinct and largely quantifiable (mea­sured by what could be had), how ­those categories came to be defined and applied was perverse. Two cases brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1922 and 1923 exemplify this perversity. The Japanese-­born and U.S.-­ raised Takao Ozawa applied for citizenship when this status only extended to a selected group of p­ eople commonly accepted as white. In a case argued on 3 and 4 October 1922, Ozawa stated that he was faithful to the United States but most significantly that his skin was light (particularly parts of his body typically protected from the sun). In the 13 November 1922 decision, justices agreed that Ozawa’s skin was light in color but ruled that b­ ecause he was Japa­nese, he was not Caucasian and therefore could not be white. This decision “takes up the science of the day and says, well, to be white, means to be Caucasian.”32 Bhagat Singh Thind, whose case came before the U.S. Supreme Court only two months a­ fter the Ozawa decision (the Thind case was argued on 11–12 January 1923 and de­cided on 19 February 1923), saw the 1922 ruling as an opportunity.

10 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

Appealing to the science of the day, as well as to the judgment in the Ozawa case, Thind’s representatives maintained that he was—by definition—­Caucasian/ Aryan and, therefore, white. By all mea­sures available at the time, popu­lar and ­legal, Thind was white and thus eligible for U.S. citizenship. However, Ian Haney López highlights the perversity of the Thind decision: “[Thind] said look, anthropologists classify me as Caucasian, Caucasians are white. Naturalize me. Slam dunk. It seemed an incredibly easy case.” But the court de­cided differently: “Every­body knows a dark brown Hindu is not a white person. And this is ­really an extraordinary moment. B ­ ecause h ­ ere you have the court saying, ‘Science has in some ways betrayed us b­ ecause it’s including all sorts of ­people [who] we ­don’t believe are white. So ­we’re gonna jettison science, and ­we’re gonna say the only ­people who are white in terms of being able to join the country are the sorts of ­people [who] we as a country believe are white.’ And this moment crystallizes that white is ­really something that’s socially constructed. It’s produced by cultural practices.”33 Haney López continues, “This is the significance of the Thind decision. It said we ­were happy to rely on science when it confirms our prejudice, but when science challenges our prejudice, . . . ​­we’re gonna abandon [it] and continue with a racial proj­ect with no scientific justification whatsoever.”34 Rulings in the Ozawa and Thind cases w ­ ere written by Justice George Sutherland; in them, he argued that Caucasian could only be white if it ­were popularly and com­ monly understood as such. In the Thind case, Sutherland added that popu­lar understanding of whiteness took pre­ce­dent b­ ecause science was undecided about who, precisely, could be accepted as Caucasian. No one seemed able to see the irony in Sutherland’s singular (elite, male) self speaking for the popu­lar, common understanding of whiteness. The success of his proclamations tapped into a racial proj­ect that became a normalized perception of what whiteness could be and have. bell hooks affirms this when describing media narratives that entrenched whiteness and its privileges: “­there is a direct and abiding connection between the maintenance of white supremacist patriarchy . . . ​and the institutionalization via mass media of specific images, repre­sen­ta­tions of race, of blackness that support and maintain the oppression, exploitation, and overall domination of black p­ eople.”35 Media, and also courts and laws, became tools put in ser­vice of a specific racial proj­ect. Defining narratives that the law and media institutionalize and disseminate resulted in both (and si­mul­ta­neously) supremacist whiteness and denigrated blackness. ­These narratives also made exclusionary vio­lences against black, brown, and yellow p­ eoples normal, further enabling a ­free and privileged whiteness as well as the geographies that whiteness claims. Or, as Wilderson states, “Vio­lence against the slave is integral to the production of that psychic space called social life. . . . ​What we need to do is begin to think of vio­lence not as having essentially the kind of po­liti­cal or economic utility that vio­lence in the other revolutionary paradigms have. Vio­lence against the slave sustains a kind of psychic stability for all o­ thers who are not slaves.”36 Wilderson’s thinking adds nuance to documentable white privilege by empha-

Introduction • 11

sizing the ­imagined real­ity that makes postulations about its superiority appear as fact. The truth of this (Afro)pessimistic vision and its structural legacies cannot be denied, but thinking differently can re­orient us t­ oward dif­f er­ent perceptions. When defining the term “social death,” Wilderson states that it has three constituent ele­ments: the slave is subject to gratuitous vio­lence, is natally alienated, and is “dishonored prior to [the slave’s] per­for­mance of dishonored actions.” He finishes this definition with a statement that opens the door to a more sanguine vision: “And the third point is general dishonor, which is to say, you are dishonored in your very being—­and I think that this is the nature of Blackness with every­ one ­else.”37 If “every­one e­ lse” sees us as black and therefore slave, and if this seeing consigns black ­people to social death as a fixed social position, then something e­ lse is also true: a host of o­ thers do not see blackness in this way. Specifically, black ­people know blackness in im/possible ways, in ways that ­were not supposed to be pos­si­ble. And it is this knowledgeable truth that is fantastical. The pro­cess through which blackness became alienated from a Western-­ influenced and Western-­oriented global community was forged on slave ships moving across the Atlantic. Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley writes, “on this Atlantic, then, black body w ­ aters, corporeal effluvia, and the stains of gendered and reproductive bodies ­were among the first sites of colonization.”38 Practically from first contact with enslavers, it appears that captured Africans “live[d] their existence as slaves,” the institution jettisoning sentient beings out of community and into social death.39 Wilderson grimly proj­ects the revolutionary destruction of all socie­ties developed by chattel slavery as the only way to redefine the socially dead slave and thus right the depredations imposed on black and minoritized ­peoples in the West. We can, however, shift our lens away from perspectives of the colonizer, enslaver, and cap­i­tal­ist exploiter and t­ oward an/other perspective. Tinsley persuasively argues that although the enslavement pro­cess intended to dehumanize captured Africans, they “refused to accept that the liquidation of their social selves—­the colonization of oceanic and body w ­ aters—­meant the liquidation of their sentient selves.”40 This is a change in racial perspective, away from a tacit ac­cep­tance of Western social hierarchies/institutions and t­ oward a more complex understanding and analy­sis of black selves within and despite them. In “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic,” Tinsley observes the emergence of black queerness in seventeenth-­century Atlantic maritime and oceanic crosscurrents. She puts this truth in conversation with analyses of race in twenty-­first-­century Eurocentric queer studies as well as repre­sen­ta­tions of queerness in con­temporary black studies. The former academic field casts black queerness as wholly new (postmodern) and the latter as anomalous to the slave experience that marked the origins of the African diaspora.41 In contrast, Tinsley reads creative writing by the Ca­rib­bean diaspora writers Maurine Lara and Dionne Brand as historically situated and productively intersectional, marking their work as “a queer,

12 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

unconventional, and imaginative archive of the black Atlantic.”42 In this article, Tinsley looks to the history of the ­Middle Passage and imaginable truths in creative writing as resources that evince complex, queer blackness. It is her critical imagining and its resultant conclusion that intervene in Wilderson’s Afropessimistic vision of global social institutions and supports my take on fantastical blackness. Tinsley writes that during oceanic passages, captive African ­women and men refused categories of “slaves” and “blacks,” as Wilderson theorizes them. They “resisted the commodification of their bought and sold bodies by feeling and feel­ ing for their co-­occupants on ­these ships,”43 power­ful indication of a way of seeing that unsettles the very foundations of antiblackness. Tinsley conceives this state of black being as “a praxis of re­sis­tance”: “Queer not in the sense of a ‘gay’ or same-­sex loving identity waiting to be excavated from the ocean floor but as a praxis of re­sis­tance. Queer in the sense of marking disruption to the vio­lence of normative order and powerfully so: connecting in ways that commodified flesh was never supposed to, loving your own kind when your kind was supposed to cease to exist, forging interpersonal connections that counteract imperial desires for Africans’ living deaths.”44 Her queer and queered blackness, forged in the holds of ­Middle Passage slave ships, references “African ­women [who] created erotic bonds with other ­women in the sex-­segregated holds, and captive African men created bonds with other men” as queer, and critically, for my purposes, she theorizes as queer raced and gendered p­ eople who “resisted the commodification of their bought and sold bodies by feeling and feeling for their co-­occupants on ­these ships.” The following quotation relays the precise relevance of Tinsley’s thought to this study: This Atlantic and ­these erotic relationships are neither meta­phors nor sources of disempowerment. Instead, they are one way that fluid black bodies refused to accept that the liquidation of their social selves . . . ​meant the liquidation of their sentient selves. Some mati and malungo45 ­were prob­ably sexual connections, o­ thers not. Yet regardless of ­whether intimate sexual contact took place between enslaved Africans in the Atlantic or a­ fter landing, relationships between shipmates read as queer relationships.46

As discussed in the prologue, I interpret Anyanwu’s disruptive self as a fantastically true praxis defined as such by literary form and black-­and-­female content. In other words, interpretations of blackness in genre fictions are not merely reactions to white-­supremacist terrors or evidence of black victimization and/or resilience. Visualized through Tinsley’s queered optic, the imaginable possibilities of fantastical blackness signal untold possibilities of “made-up” blackness that can be “made real.” Deploying philosophies and fiction’s role at play in Tinsley’s analy­sis, I map routes through structures and legacies of slavery to theories of

Introduction • 13

blackness in category fictions, finding that imaginable, fantastical blackness insists on being (existing) and being self (self-­defined) in and along t­ hese routes. Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being and Tinsley’s “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic” articulate the truth of blackness in excess of antiblackness in complementary ways. Both, in Sharpe’s words, excavate “a mode of inhabiting and rupturing this episteme [the wake of slavery, in slavery’s afterlives] with our known lived and un/imaginable lives.”47 Whereas Wilderson is urgent in his attention to institutionalized consequences of dissembling African ­peoples as slaves, Tinsley’s and Sharpe’s critical visions of black ­people in antiblack contexts are invested in how blackness sees blackness. Though I acknowledge the truth in t­ hese critical perspectives, I believe that imaginable interventions into systemic antiblackness powerfully breach bound­aries fabricated by specific crises of imagination. That category fictions deployed by black writers imagine blackness fantastically, and that readers make use of ­these imaginings in extraliterary spaces, represents an active knowledge that “even as we experienced, recognized, and lived subjection, we did not simply or only live in subjection and as the subjected.”48 I experience blackness in popu­lar fictions through the lens of my intersectional self, in whom race, class, and gender feature significantly. This self is also the foundation of my critical perspective on fantastical blackness. I was reader before I was critic and before I was versed in models of literary criticism. As I read Richard Iton’s In Search of the Black Fantastic and Sharpe’s In the Wake, both appear to be of this same mind. Whereas Iton turns to the black fantastic for a lens that adjusts how we assess modernity, Sharpe avers, “We must become undisciplined. The work we do requires new modes and methods of research and teaching; new ways of entering and leaving the archives of slavery, of undoing the ‘racial calculus and . . . ​po­liti­cal arithmetic that ­were entrenched centuries ago’ . . . ​and that live into the pre­sent.”49 In asking what survives “insistent Black exclusion, this ontological negation,” Sharpe observes that an undisciplined approach to lit­er­a­ture, per­for­mance, and visual culture “mediate[s] this un/survival.”50 ­These new (“undisciplined”) methods can complement the re/seeing of blackness in the global, popu­lar imaginary, where in “much of what passes for public discourse about terror we, Black p­ eople, become . . . ​terror’s embodiment, and not the primary objects of terror’s multiple enactments.”51 When I follow Iton’s and Sharpe’s leads by critically, ethically, resituating my interpretive frames to center diasporic blackness, specific knowledges manifest: the making of race; constitutive, terrorized blackness; the need for denigrated blackness; and black responses to ­these truths. Sharpe’s In the Wake demonstrates how thoroughly vio­lence against and negation of black p­ eople constitute white supremacy. She considers that “the question for theory is how to live in the wake of slavery, in slavery’s afterlives, the afterlife of property, how, in short, to inhabit and rupture

14 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

this episteme with . . . ​our knowable lives.”52 Ethical studies of blackness, undisciplined and (following Tinsley’s lead) feeling and feeling for, and (following Iton’s lead) making use of a black fantastic lens to see differently, results in a praxis that Sharpe calls “wake work.” Wake work plots, maps, and collects “the archives of the everyday of Black immanent and imminent death” and tracks “the ways we resist, rupture, and disrupt that immanence and imminence aesthetically and materially.”53 To make vis­i­ble what is in ­these undisciplined archives, critics must be open to seeing differently and to unlocking ways to see differently. Sharpe seeks complicated ways to analyze blackness from academic perspectives, offering a methodological approach that assesses the spaces in which a lived and diasporic blackness thrives. When critics reject narratives that prosper from limited/limiting ways to be black, what can be seen clearly is an insistent black being. Throughout her analy­sis, Sharpe nuances her definition of “the wake,” and concomitantly of “wake work,” operationalizing the undisciplined practice for which she advocates. “The wake” that produces black death in the wake of slavery and its afterlives is the space where victimization, absence, and lament reign, but/and “the wake” in which black being is insistently asserted is “the power of and in sitting with someone as they die, the impor­tant work of sitting (together) in the pain and sorrow of death as a way of marking, remembering, and celebrating a life.”54 ­These wakes, and infinitely pos­si­ble wakes, communicate and are in community. Sharpe’s double (multiple) entendre keeps several types and meanings of “wake” in play in opposition to flattened views of blackness. In the Wake maintains that it is not enough to recognize the ways that whiteness uses blackness to imagine itself and to build and sustain white privilege: this recognition must commune with a necessary strategy of “inhabiting a black­ ened consciousness that would rupture the structural silences produced and facilitated by, and that produce and facilitate, Black social and physical death.”55 Sharpe continues, For, if we are lucky, we live in the knowledge that the wake has positioned us as no-­citizen. If we are lucky, the knowledge of this positioning avails us of par­tic­u­lar ways of re/seeing, re/inhabiting, and re/imagining the world. And we might use t­ hese ways of being in the wake in our responses to terror and the varied and vari­ous ways that our Black lives are lived ­under occupation. I want . . . ​to declare that we are Black p­ eoples in the wake with no state or nation to protect us, with no citizenship bound to be respected, and to position us in the modalities of Black life lived in, as, ­under, despite Black death: to think and be and act from t­ here.56

What blackens this knowledge, what makes it a uniquely black way of knowing and being, is that it witnesses black ­people living ­under threat, unprotected by states, and it recognizes consequences of this enforced living. Yet acknowledging all this is, Sharpe argues, a point of departure (“to think and be and act from

Introduction • 15

t­ here”); it is a reactionary response to antiblackness, but it is not merely this. The vision that Sharpe advocates is a generative, critical consciousness that results in “par­tic­u­lar ways of re/seeing, re/inhabiting, and re/imagining the world.” Hers is a blackened consciousness that re/sees blackness in excess of antiblackness; her blackened consciousness is also a critical approach to black study that treats its subject ethically. Sharpe’s blackened consciousness is a call for the purposeful habitation of a critical location that thinks through “containment, regulation, punishment, capture, and captivity and the ways the manifold repre­sen­ta­tions of blackness become the symbol . . . ​for the less-­than-­human being condemned to death.”57 I understand thinking through a blackened consciousness as a means of assessing structural perspectives on blackness as (merely) immanent/imminent death and as a response to denigrated blackness. A blackened consciousness is also an “envisioning from”: an informed seeing-­through-­to-­the-­other-­side (seeing-­ other-­sides), revealing black worlds within, and parallel to, and fracturing the worlds in which blackness lives and has lived. Sharpe’s In the Wake charts moves that reveal vio­lence and terror as constitutive of black being in diaspora and encourages us to see in/around/through ­these constitutive ele­ments and embrace extant black narratives that disrupt, despite and in excess of ­these quin­tes­sen­tial ele­ments. Any investigation of blackness must know antiblack terror and vio­lence, despite the unspeakability and injustice; however, though this orientation echoes key features of Afropessimist thought, a more constructive description—­a nd one that governs my reading of In the Wake—is that looking for and theorizing from the position of insistent, fantastical blackness fugitively moves “in and out of . . . ​what­ever externally imposed social logic” exists.58 Sharpe and Tinsley assess and reassess black humanity by using dif­fer­ent tools, by thinking and seeing other­wise. I, too, see the core of Evidence of Th ­ ings Not Seen as centering fantastical blackness as an analytic that knows external and imposed logics but that does not accept an impossible black humanity as the only or primary defining truth. What I propose ­here is an undisciplined methodology: looking to popu­lar fictions to theorize blackness and privileging truths available in what hyperbole makes pos­si­ble. I observe and argue for a blackness that is, a blackness that antedates/coexists with/ exists beyond antiblack contexts. As imaginable and fantastical as it may be, this blackness is available in mystery, erotic/urban romance, fantasy, science fiction, and genre-­straddling fictions, and this availability is enough. When manifested by genre fictions’ magnifications and exaggerations, fantastical blackness is made both vis­i­ble and strategically useful. So, by weaving together the preceding critical insights, this proj­ect reads blackness in genre fictions as making up (creating and inventing) and making real (imaginable possibilities for blackness), rather than merely naming and affirming black humanity as such. In this proj­ect’s primary texts, fantastical blackness ignites imaginations, leading to new questions, be­hav­iors, and ways to think and be. This perception of blackness can be construed as a “technology,” as Chenjerai Kumanyika describes

16 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

it: “[Blackness is] a technology b­ ecause [it is] not something that is hardwired into our biology, that just determines who we are. Instead it’s something that we use.”59 In fictions where what is “normal” is already disruptive, black authors use blackness-­as-­technology in extraordinary ways. Placing popu­lar fiction in conversation with extraliterary narratives of blackness and imaginably pos­si­ble blackness, popu­lar forms influence raced perceptions by amplifying and projecting blackness’s fantastical aspects. “The fantastic” and “the mysterious” are integral to the realities of blacks in the Amer­i­cas and thus re/imagining extraliterary discourses of race, gender, and class in genre fictions are instructional when put in ser­vice of black lives.

Genre-ed Imaginings of Blackness Fantasy, romance, urban/erotic romance, science, and mixed-­genre fictions stage their respective imaginings dramatically, and if done well, the believability of their hyperbolic renderings is unmatched. Still, t­ hese fictions can be much more than credible, as the previous reference to Lev Grossman reminds us: readers read category fictions not merely to escape realities but to witness fictions’ insightful conceptions—­and to put them into practice. As the prologue demonstrates, when a black w ­ oman (Octavia Butler) imagines and then writes a black w ­ oman shape-­shifter (Anyanwu), a black ­woman reading this character leaves the novel with resources that upset misogynoir. Such a black-­and-­woman reader might also claim and reimagine an antiblack-­woman ste­reo­t ype, as does Nina Simone in “Four W ­ omen.” Making productive use of form (sound, written lyr­ics, but also in Simone’s tone, pauses and phrasing, emphasis, timbre, driving musical crescendo), both singer/songwriter and black ­woman listener reach out to and hold Simone’s fourth, “angry, black ­woman”: My skin is brown My manner is tough I’ll kill the first m ­ other I see My life has been rough I’m awfully b­ itter t­ hese days ­Because my parents ­were slaves What do they call me My . . . ​name . . . ​is . . . ​PEACHES60

The look and sound of Simone’s stanza allows for a critical recasting and embrace of an “othered” black w ­ oman; so too does Butler’s fantasy character. Wild Seed and Anyanwu are the foundations that make my analyses pos­si­ble, as mystery or romance or science and multigenre fictions make similar moves that pose strategic uses of and fantastically dif­fer­ent perspectives on blackness. Imaginable inquiries into, as opposed to reactionary responses to, the abuses of slavery and

Introduction • 17

its legacies manifest in fictions whose popularity signals their accessibility. ­These fictions’ attractions are particularly relevant b­ ecause they extend the notion of fantastical blackness to broad audiences that are intimately familiar with category fictions’ formalist stylings. To put it plainly, complex truths about blackness and black ­people are conveyed lucidly in literary forms, increasing readers’ exposure to and understanding of complicated ideas. My formalist and critical orientation finds support in analyses of race in early Amer­i­ca represented in the gothic romance. In Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison explains that early North American lit­er­a­ture was strikingly pessimistic in its tone. Specifically, she writes, “It is difficult to read the lit­er­a­ture of young Amer­i­ca without being struck by how antithetical it is to our modern rendition of the American Dream. How pronounced in it is the absence of that term’s elusive mixture of hope, realism, materialism, and promise. For a ­people who made much of their ‘newness’—­their potential, freedom, and innocence—it is striking how dour, how troubled, how frightened and haunted our early and founding lit­er­a­ture truly is.”61 Morrison continues by stating that the gothic romance—­its characteristic medieval settings, horrific and gloomy atmospheres, irrationality, and mysterious and violent occurrences—­perfectly captures the terror, uncertainty, and perversities that characterized the works of this country’s first writers and settlers.62 To manage ­these “horrific” responses to their new world, early Americans conjured what Morrison describes as deliberately black(ened) images: “first, in the pervasive use of black images and p­ eople in expressive prose [a persona that she l­ ater describes as an eerily recurrent Africanist presence]; second, in the shorthand, the taken-­for-­granted assumptions that lie in their usage; and, fi­nally, to the subject of this book: the source of t­ hese images and the effect they have on the literary imagination and its product.”63 The Africanist persona—­represented by characterizations of real black ­people and ste­reo­typed images of blackness and the meanings and uses that soon became attached to both—­was a crucial, though secreted, aspect of early North American lit­er­a­ture and identity. The fictionalized persona allowed so-­called Americans to understand “the American identity” as new, ­free, white, and male ­because it was not black, not enslaved, and not wretched.64 Significantly, the image of this newly minted American traversed bound­aries between the literary and the social, since “knowledge . . . ​plays about in linguistic images and forms cultural practice.” Additionally, “responding to culture—­clarifying, explicating, valorizing, translating, transforming, criticizing—is what artist everywhere do, especially writers involved in the founding of a new nation.”65 And in much of early U.S. lit­er­a­ture and its extraliterary contexts, Morrison’s analyses are borne out. Thus, if early Americanness can be seen more critically through the lens of gothic fiction, then science, fantasy, erotic romance, mystery, and genre-­straddling fictions can be rich resources for examinations of con­temporary racial discourses.66 The gothic romance reflects European-­descended p­ eople’s terror of new geographies and highlights the use of blackness to militate against this terror. Evidence of

18 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

­ ings Not Seen thus makes use of relatives of the gothic—­those authored by Th African-­descended ­peoples writing out of Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean—to illuminate the inexplicable perversities that both characterize blackness in the Amer­i­cas and, in light of an apparently global antiblackness, act as tools that reflect and utilize how black p­ eople re/imagine and live blackness and black lives. In the poem “I/We,” Ursula Rucker delivers two lines that exemplify both the use and critical possibilities of literary form: “We subscribe to society’s definition of us / we define ourselves.”67 Her juxtaposed lyr­ics and their attendant meanings articulate a unique experience: to be black in the United States (and—­ for my purposes—in Jamaica, St. Thomas, and Canada) is to acknowledge and, si­mul­ta­neously, to resist antiblackness. And Rucker’s poetically rendered truth performs what Wilson Harris calls “an act of imagination”: “in the Amer­i­cas as a ­whole, it would seem to me that the apparent void of history which haunts the black man [sic] may never be compensated ­until an act of imagination opens gateways between civilizations, between technological and spiritual apprehensions, between racial possessions and dispossessions.”68 This imaginative act, as Harris conceives it and Rucker performs it, is active: it opens, allows, moves, subscribes, and defines. Whereas Rucker and Harris write and perform imaginable black being in contexts of antiblack racism (“racial possessions and dispossessions”), bell hooks affirms this formalist orientation by seeking an act of imagination that manifests in a visual register: “if we, black p­ eople, have learned to cherish hateful images of ourselves, then what pro­cess of looking allows us to ­counter the seduction of images that threatens to dehumanize and colonize[?]”69 Through genre fictions’ imaginative acts and the fantastical blackness portrayed in them, black ­people re/imagine self differently and, therefore, can be dif­f er­ent selves ­because, as Walter Mosley states, “anything conceivable . . . ​is pos­si­ble.”70 In light of the queries posed by Octavia Butler in this chapter’s epigraph, what good is this kind of imagining for black ­peoples, when past/present/future blackness is cast as pure threat and when the proliferation of this denigrating narrative makes it hard to see other­wise? Category fictions by black writers are media through which “unspeakable” (evidence of t­ hings ill spoken) black being is re/read and in which complex and diasporic blackness is rendered visibly and fantastically true. In “Notanda,” the final section of Zong!, M. NourbeSe Philip uses the word “unspeakable” to consider what happened on a slave ship, from which the captain was “obliged to throw overboard 150 . . . ​negroes,” and the subsequent court case in which Messrs. Gregson (the ship’s ­owners) sought to recoup from insurers amounts paid for ­those murdered ­people.71 She writes, “In Gregson v. Gilbert the material and nonmaterial would come together in unexpected ways. An accurate interpretation of the contract of insurance . . . ​would result in ­g reat financial benefit to [the Gregsons]: they would be paid for murdering 150 Africans. At the same time, it

Introduction • 19

would mean that the deliberate drowning of 150 p­ eople was not murder, but merely the disposition of property in a time of emergency to ensure preservation of the rest of the ‘cargo’—­a reasonable interpretation at that time given the law govern­ ing contracts of insurance.”72 Justly revolted, Philip contemplates how the massacre and court case defined Africans on board the Zong as not-­human (“cargo”) and, at the same time, as ­human (“Africans are reduced to the stark description of ‘negroe [sic] man,’ ‘negroe ­woman,’ or, more frequently, ‘ditto man,’ ‘ditto ­woman’ ”).73 Her critical and poetic interrogations are mired in this inconceivability: that Africans could be ­people and, therefore, killed and also be cargo and, therefore, not murdered. Philip’s pro­cess highlights the significance of form (­legal) in representing a truth for black ­people in the Amer­i­cas. And, in light of the 186 pages of experimental poetry that Philip creates using the text of Greg­ son v. Gilbert, form (experimental, poetic) also communicates truths that understand blackness fantastically. Resolved to articulate Zong’s unspeakable truths, Philip traces them within the enormity of the vio­lence that transatlantic slavery enacted on black (blackened) p­ eoples as well as through the difficulty in expressing this enormity comprehensibly.74 As Philip conceives it, the unspeakable also communicates the duty to speak anyway, to find ways to speak the fullness of black experience in the West. “This story must be told by not telling,” she writes, a paradoxical formulation to which she returns repeatedly, in effect fashioning “not telling” as a form uniquely suited to telling (some part of) the truth of the callous murder of 150 African w ­ omen, ­children, and men.75 The unspeakability of the Zong massacre and the implications of its legacy for diasporic African ­peoples are rehearsed in the numerous ways (eleven by my count) that Philip invokes the “not telling” form. It is through uniquely envisioned forms that a differently ­imagined blackness is best articulated and that this book argues. Although poetry is not my literary form of choice, Philip’s Zong! is not only accessible (deliberately so) but also emotionally and intellectually impactful. This, and the experimental nature of the poems, puts the onus of meaning-­making on readers/listeners.76 We witness how black letters, words, phrases, and white spaces look on pages, and readers/listeners of the poems hear their exclamations. We also choose how to read poems, as differently spaced words and phrases approximate columns that inspire myriad approaches to reading. Philip also helps us engage Zong! by including a glossary of “Words and Phrases Overheard On Board the Zong” represented in African and other global languages and a manifest that lists African ethnic and languages groups, as well as lists of animals, body parts, and crew names (imaginably) pre­sent on the slave ship.77 Fi­nally, the collection’s “Notanda” expresses both Philip’s calling to write Zong! and her pro­cess of tran­ scribing the poems. The collection’s cover and acknowl­edgments reveal the author as a vessel through which the collection came to be: the contents of the collection are “as told to the author by Setay Adamu Boateng,” and Philip offers

20 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

thanks to “the Ancestors for bestowing the responsibility of this work” on her.78 By formalist means, Philip expresses an imaginable truth of blackness in the West. Richard Iton shares with Philip the meticulous pursuit of a form suited to speaking black content intelligibly. His In Search of the Black Fantastic not only affirms that popu­lar media (­music, ­music videos, comedic and filmic per­for­ mances, creatives who speak about, within, and outside their respective genres) successfully articulate black content but also enumerates the specific contributions that make popu­lar genres suitable to this task. Iton begins his study by locating it in the post-­civil-­rights era and in a politics influenced by modernity. “We,” Iton writes, “cannot understand black politics and the ways black subjectivities are (differently) interpolated in the . . . ​ post-­civil rights era without examining the developments in the corners not traditionally considered po­liti­cally significant, and the spaces . . . ​not formally linked with the state.”79 His work is also invested in blackness in the United States and diasporas.80 By way of introduction, the critic asks a series of framing questions from perspectives of t­ hose who are dominated by dominant cultures: How do the excluded engage the apparently dominant order? Does pro­gress entail that the marginalized accept mainstream norms and abandon transformative possibilities? Th ­ ese questions, of course, become more complicated once we recognize that the excluded are never simply excluded and that their marginalization reflects and determines the shape, texture, and bound­aries of the dominant order and its associated privileged communities. The identities of the latter are inevitably defined in opposition to, and as a negation of, the repre­sen­ta­tions of the marginalized, and in certain re­spects, the outside is always inside: invisible perhaps, implicated and disempowered, unrecognized but omnipresent. In this context, how do the outcast imagine and calibrate pro­gress, and assess options?81

­ ese questions reflect a nuanced and complicated blackness, defined by black Th (self-­identified) and antiblack (ste­reo­typed, imposed) subjectivities, not to mention nefarious uses to which antiblack ste­reo­types are put. Iton invokes popu­lar media as productive though underused resources, ones that tap into “minor-­key sensibilities generated from the experiences of the under­ground, the vagabond, and ­those constituencies marked as deviant—­notions of being that are inevitably aligned within, in conversation with, against, and articulated beyond the bound­aries of the modern.”82 He distinguishes “a black fantastic” as an aspect of the popu­lar, distinct from heteronormative, aspiring and middle-­class black politics. The po­liti­cal science scholar defines it as “a double descriptive [borrowed from Zora Neale Hurston’s anthropologies of Negro syntax]: separately and in tandem, blackness and the fantastic work to disrupt the bodily imperialisms of the colonial and corrupt the related, innocent repre­sen­ta­tions of the modern.”83

Introduction • 21

His black fantastic is powerfully disruptive, upending “governmentalities and the conventional notions of the po­liti­cal, the public sphere, and civil society that depend on the exclusion of blacks and other nonwhites from meaningful participation and their ongoing reconstitution as raw material for the naturalization of modern arrangements.”84 In light of how he sources the popu­lar, Iton’s black fantastic is accessible, an accessibility that motivates a focus on its makers and consumers. While it is impor­tant to examine how and where the black fantastic finds voice, Iton also attends to who voices it (black artists and creatives) and who welcomes it (specifically black consumers). By his emphases, Iton positions black-­ and-­creative artists and black audiences as power­ful social agents who recognize and make active use of the black fantastic. Recasting the popu­lar as a resource for local and state po­liti­cal analyses and activisms, the critic also acknowledges the critical intelligence of black artists and black audiences that manifests in knowledge of popu­lar forms. Iton supports his argument by attending to how audiences respond to truths available in the popu­lar. If electoral politics limit possibilities for formal black repre­sen­ta­tion (electability; diverse class, gender, and sexuality repre­sen­ta­tion; and levels of education of the elected) and an enabling black politics (mostly) in the United States, then popu­lar “informal” politics are an inherently resistant praxis where activist-­ creatives and activist-­consumers use popu­lar forms and platforms to speak a progressive politics. But in Iton’s words, “The inclination in formal politics ­toward the quantifiable and the bordered, the structured, ordered, policeable, and disciplined is in fundamental tension with popu­lar culture’s willingness to embrace disturbance, to engage the apparently mad and maddening, to sustain often slippery frameworks of intention that act subliminally, if not explic­itly, on distinct and overlapping cognitive registers, and to acknowledge meaning in ­those spaces where speechlessness is the common currency.”85 In popu­lar realms where “speechlessness” (the unspeakable) must be spoken, in and through chaotic spaces that disturb the formal and the structured, In Search of the Black Fantastic succeeds in affirming popu­lar ways of knowing as well as unexpected knowledges. Iton’s study also focuses on the uses to which black creatives and consumers put the popu­lar, specifically how both make and respond to popu­lar expressive qualities as well as what they uniquely express. As vehicles through which a complex black politics engage the mad and maddening to unsettle po­liti­cal structures that limit access, black artists “in choosing to say something . . . ​can seek both to influence outcomes and to redefine the terms of debate, within and outside their immediate communities, and to bring attention to—­and perhaps confer legitimacy on—­the spaces in which they operate (­whether ­these are black-­community-­specific or not).”86 But no ­matter how fantastic the black fantastic or how persuasively it is conveyed in popu­lar creatives’ platforms-­of-­choice, the popu­lar is neither perfect nor perfectly radical. By way of example, Iton cautions that though the singer/songwriter Me’Shell

22 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

NdegéOcello and a list of musicians and filmmakers “would in dif­fer­ent ways and to varying degrees provide templates for the engagement of black interiority in opposition to the dominant disinterest in such fluidity and ambiguity, undecidability and uncertainty,” some creatives rejected NdegéOcello and her fantastical vision b­ ecause she identifies as queer.87 This example demonstrates that popu­lar forms and their creators are not protected from limiting intrusions and suggests that they do not categorically result in radical social change. And yet, “It is extremely rare—­though not impossible—­for actions undertaken by creative artists alone to bring about specific substantive public policy re­orientations on the part of state authorities. Rather, the discursive disruptions artists instigate and the meanings read into their actions and creations are most likely to have a more diffuse, symbolic impact, at least in the external domain. Although ­music, films, and books are capable to some degree of generating attention around a specific issue, generally popu­lar culture is about the mobilization of broader and less coher­ ent sentiments.”88 Richard Iton does not, then, advocate for the black fantastic in popu­lar forms as a panacea for all that ails black p­ eople in multiple global locations. What he argues, and well I think, is that it advocates for a way of seeing that shifts internal and internalized black narratives ­toward the resistant and disruptive qualitative as a means of affecting formal politics. He pre­sents this adjustment as a point of departure, identifying qualitative and imaginable experiences of U.S. blacks as starting points from which to recognize the extensiveness of black po­liti­cal life. That this possibility is available in popu­lar ­music, films, and “books,” and by the artists who make them, cannot be overlooked. Iton says that “although per­for­mances need not be insincere or merely calculating, and are sometimes simply a ­matter of amplification (making one’s intentions and message as clear as pos­si­ble), popu­lar culture thrives on, and indeed demands, nuance, dadaesque ambiguity, and contrapuntality as it resists fixedness in its moves between the grounded and the fantastic.”89 Counternarratives available in popu­lar creative forms amplify and complicate possibilities available in the realm of the formally po­liti­cal, thereby contributing perspectives that “resist through the circulation of competing narratives.”90 ­These competing and counternarratives challenge what Iton specifically describes as misreadings of modernity, specifically with regard to blackness and modernist proj­ects (formal politics).91 Analyzing filmic, musical, and literary articulations of the black po­liti­cal, Iton’s research topic and methodology critically assess blackness. His pro­cess, then, stands as a productive example of black study that frustrates approaches that traffic in ­limited visions of black ­people and black life. Iton’s In Search of the Black Fantastic highlights what an informal black politics looks like and means in popu­lar media and commends black creatives and consumers who use t­ hese media to navigate formal politics’ imposed limits. Popu­ lar media’s influence on formal politics, though not simply radical, instructs on how black p­ eople claimed the black fantastic to reconceptualize politics that

Introduction • 23

alienate based on race, class, and sexuality. Iton, however, downplays the radically transformative possibilities of the black fantastic by demoting its contribution: “the discursive disruptions artists instigate and the meanings read into their actions and creations are most likely to have a more diffuse, symbolic impact,” and “generally popu­lar culture is about the mobilization of broader and less coherent sentiments.” Yet faced with imaginable truths of the kind that Iton relegates to the inspirational (“popu­lar culture’s ability to focus attention on a specific issue” and “[raise] awareness regarding”), Walter Mosley arrives at more operative conclusions.92 ­Because “the world we live in is so much larger, has so many more possibilities, than our ­simple sciences describe,” minds immersed in the fantastical have to be expansive.93 Armed with the prodigious imaginings manifest in science fiction, fantasy, romance, and other popu­lar literary forms, we can make up and then make real. What Evidence of Th ­ ings Not Seen posits, then investigates, is how genre fictions endorse fantastical blackness, not merely to highlight extraliterary societal concerns but as an activist way of seeing through which such concerns are differently cast and that results in changed minds—­and changed be­hav­iors (make up, then make real). ­Because of category fictions’ hyperbolic reaches, they are both petri dishes and models for re/seeing and re/imagining in this activist way. Genre/pop­u­lar/category fictions, not to mention the forms in which Morrison, Philip, and Rucker (et al.) convey their ideas about blackness, are “unconventional and imaginative archive[s]” of blackness in the Amer­i­cas.94 Evidence of ­Things Not Seen envisions popu­lar literary forms as critical resources that are part of this archive. The popularity of ­these fictions extends crucial depictions of race to a large audience, one that is also well versed in the formalist practices of mystery, romance, fantasy, suspense/thriller, and science fiction. Th ­ ese audiences consequently have levels of expertise comparable to scholars, affording them insights that positively influence interpretations of fantastical blackness. Blackness’s imaginable truths proliferate in and disseminate through the popularity of genre fictions, exposing readers to ways of being black that ­these lit­er­a­tures represent as profoundly imaginable and practical. A notional situating of popu­lar fictions finds purchase in definitions developed by creatives, fans, and scholars of t­ hese lit­er­a­tures, setting a relationship between what ­these genres do and what they are. As such, ­these definitions become practical tools that convey imaginable possibilities for black being. The genre that Walter Mosley calls “science fiction,” Charles Saunders, Kalí Tal, and Gregory Rutledge describe as “futurist fiction,” and Nalo Hopkinson defines as “fabulist fiction”; nevertheless, it is clear that pop­u­lar/category fictions offer readers/scholars flexible tools to see worlds in myriad ways.95 Mosley describes “science fiction and . . . ​fantasy, horror, speculative fiction” as “a literary genre made to rail against the status quo,” significant ­because they offer “alternative account[s] for the way t­ hings are.”96 Kalí Tal claims that futurist fiction “deals with the

24 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

effects of change on p­ eople in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the ­future, or to distant places. . . . ​It usually involves ­matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community.”97 Charles Saunders defines futurist fiction as a genre that purports to “transcend convention and ste­reo­type,” and as such, it can, as Tal explains, “set right t­ hose destructive social and po­liti­ cal forces in nature.”98 Saunders continues, saying that “science fiction . . . ​[is] the my­thol­ogy of our technological culture. . . . ​And for all the condescending disdain the literary establishment had heaped on sf and fantasy, writers in t­ hose genres serve a function similar [to] that of the bard or the griot in ways ‘literary’ writers cannot approach.”99 In Nalo Hopkinson’s call for stories for Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Ca­rib­bean Fabulist Fiction, she defines “fabulist fiction” in two parts: “a particularly northern tradition of speculative and fantastical fiction, . . . ​[in which] plot and content are equally impor­tant and the speculative or fantastical ele­ments of a story must be ‘real.’ . . . ​It’s an approach designed to ease or force the suspension of disbelief, to block flight back into the familiar world, to shake up the reader into thinking in new tracks.”100 In search of the right “feel” for stories for the anthology, Hopkinson settled on the word “fabulist”: “The stories invoke a sense of fable. Sometimes they are fantastical, sometimes absurd, satirical, magical, or allegorical. Northern science fiction and fantasy come out of a rational and skeptical approach to the world: That which cannot be explained must be proven to exist, ­either thorough scientific method or in­de­pen­dent corroboration. But the Ca­rib­bean, much like the rest of the world, tends to have a dif­fer­ent worldview: the irrational, the inexplicable, and the mys­ terious exist side by [side] with the daily events of life.”101 The preceding descriptions compel: popu­lar fictions “can tear down the walls and win­dows, the artifice and laws by changing the logic, empowering the disenfranchised or simply by asking, What if?”102 In the logic of genre fictions’ hyperbole, fictional worlds coexist with extraliterary ones. Imagining this relationship differently allows us to ask dif­f er­ent questions and, as a result, tap into un/imaginable pathways that can lead to dif­fer­ent outcomes. Yet the possibilities that inhere in ­these imaginings are not merely illusory, ­because “­there are few concepts or inventions of the 20th ­century—­from submarine to newspeak—­that w ­ ere not first fictional flights of fancy.”103 If, as scholars, creatives, and fans, we are open to imagining exponentially, then we can practically make the consequences of such imaginings real. Genre fictions are motivated by fantastical imaginings of extraliterary worlds; making critical use of ­these fictions’ concepts and techniques, then, allows interpretations of blackness that begin with the imaginatively pos­si­ble and proceed complexly—­perhaps even unexpectedly—­from ­there.104 Part of this unexpected aspect is that activist uses of popu­lar fictions must contend with ­these forms’ traditions (maintenance of status quo, supremacy of elite whiteness, presumptive white males as readers), as well as the unquantifiable possibilities of fantastical truths. In other words, blackness in genre fictions written by black writers hyperbolize, upend, and rupture to unquantifiable effect. M. Jacqui Alexander

Introduction • 25

describes similar impassioned effects with regard to African spiritual traditions. To chart ­these cosmologies as they move and change in dif­fer­ent diasporic locations and at dif­f er­ent times, Alexander writes, “Who is remembered—­and how— is continually being transformed through a web of interpretative systems that ground meaning and imagination in princi­ples that are ancient with an apparent placement in a dif­fer­ent time. Yet, both the bound­aries of t­ hose princi­ples as well as what lies within are constantly being transformed in the pro­cess of work in the pre­sent; collapsing, ultimately, the rigid demarcation of the prescriptive past, pre­sent, and f­ uture of linear time. Both change and changelessness, then, are constant.”105 Alexander thus identifies the need for a critical method that can move t­ oward the unquantifiable aspects of migrating sacred energies that must, as Tinsley argues, “explore outside narrow conceptions of the ‘factual’ to get [to a black feminist epistemology]. Such explorations would involve muddying divisions between documented and intuited, material and meta­phoric, past and pre­sent.”106 To conceptualize persuasively a blackness that understands itself as fantastical and irreducible to antiblackness, I too explore outside of the narrowly factual by centering depictions in genre fictions. As a conceptual frame, fantastical blackness intuits from popu­lar narrative spaces to re/think what is considered normal, to promise imaginable possibilities. And what good is all this to black p­ eople?

­Doing Blackness, Fantastically To frame my thinking about fantastical blackness in category fictions critically, I find discrete features of Afrofuturism (a cultural aesthetic or ideology) particularly useful. Though its definition is not standardized and is far from static, two linked ele­ments of its meaning are vital to this proj­ect: “it’s a radical act for black ­people to imagine having a ­future,” and ­these black ­futures must be “sought in unlikely places, constellated from far-­flung points.”107 I arrive at this Afrofuturist organ­izing logic by returning to the beginning, that is to Mark Dery’s coining of the term “Afrofuturism” in 1994: Speculative fiction that treats African-­American themes and addresses African-­ American concerns in the context of twentieth-­century technoculture—­and, more generally, African-­American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced f­ uture—­might, for want of a better term, be called “Afrofuturism.” The notion of Afrofuturism gives rise to a troubling antinomy: Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine pos­si­ble f­ utures? Furthermore, i­ sn’t the unreal estate of the ­future already owned by the technocrats, futurologists, streamliners, and set designers—­white to a man—­who have engineered our collective fantasies? . . .

26 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

But African-­A merican voices have other stories to tell about culture, technology, and t­ hings to come. If t­ here is an Afrofuturism, it must be sought in unlikely places, constellated from far-­flung points.108

Dery goes on to constellate Afrofuturism’s influencers and influences: visual art by Jean-­Michel Basquiat; filmic exemplars like John Sayles and Lizzie Borden; musical contributions of Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, Herbie Hancock, Bernie Worrell, Sun Ra, Parliament-­Funkadelic, and Lee “Scratch” Perry; “black-­ written, black-­drawn comics such as Milestone Media’s Hardware”; and “the New York graffiti artist and B-­boy Rammellzee.”109 His exploratory-­definitional pro­cess culminates in a term that some p­ eople describe as a “movement”—­perhaps a “cultural movement” in light of Dery’s sources—­that is heavi­ly indebted to African American histories and expressive cultures, though several of Dery’s prototypes are diasporic African (Haitian/Puerto Rican/American Basquiat, Jamaican Perry, Hancock’s and Sun Ra’s diasporic musical stylings). Though Dery is more suggestive than definitive about what Afrofuturism is, he asks provocative questions that seem to occupy most iterations of the term since 1994: How do a ­people focused on the reconstruction and reclamation of a denigrated past imagine future/presents? And if the “unreal estate” of such a ­future has been ­imagined as white and Western, then what place can blackness have in it? Dery’s Afrofuturism has burgeoned into meanings that are, to say the least, unwieldy. However, Daylanne  K. En­g lish’s encyclopedic definition is lucid, appears to engage Dery directly, and organizes key texts into a substantial bibliography: “Afrofuturism comprises cultural production and scholarly thought—­lit­er­a­ture, visual art, photography, film, multimedia art, per­for­mance art, ­music, and theory—­that imagine greater justice and a freer expression of black subjectivity in the ­future or in alternative places, times, or realities. It also offers speculation about a world wherein black p­ eoples are normative.” En­glish also explic­itly includes Africa and its diaspora in her definition: “Afrofuturism refers to a flourishing con­temporary movement of African American, African, and Black diasporic writers, artists, musicians, and theorists.”110 En­glish’s classification, like Dery’s, speaks to Afrofuturism’s “how” and “who” in that it describes the vehicles that black scholars and creatives use to imagine black pasts, pre­sents, ­futures, and alternative realities. Nalo Hopkinson, however, speaks to the “what” of Afrofuturism, responding to the absence (death), erasure (ste­reo­t ype), and unseeing (subjectivity) of black ­people by claiming perceptions of black ­futures as a radical act. Her statement avows that this f­ uture resists being wholly defined by the vio­lence of antiblack narratives forged during the transatlantic slave trade. Similarly, This American Life’s Neil Drumming offers an insightful vision of the latter while circling back to Dery’s query about African Americans’ exploration of the past: “One of the t­ hings that’s sort of ­really specific about Afrofuturism that I like is that it takes into account the past in a lot of ways. It imagines that, you know,

Introduction • 27

black p­ eople have forms of survival through . . . ​the slave trade, through persecution, that that’s almost a technology in itself, the ways in which ­we’ve come through ­those ­things.”111 By suggesting that the fact of enslaved black ­people’s survival is not only a technology but also a historically grounded one that structures pre­sent and f­ uture realities, Drumming’s interpretation sublimely invokes NourbeSe Philip’s “unspeakable” in that it is a way of seeing (speaking) black in and beyond confining antiblack contexts. Afrofuturism, therefore, considers ways to be black that are “raced,” denigrated, exploited by/in slavery and its afterlives but that are never exclusively any of ­these ­things. And, as Hopkinson suggests, Afrofuturistic blackness has revolutionary potential both within and outside of the creative arts: “if black p­ eople can imagine our f­ utures, imagine—­ among other ­things—­cultures in which we ­aren’t alienated, then we can begin to see our own way clear to creating them.”112 This nuanced classification, explic­ itly articulated by Hopkinson and evident in ideas presented by the aforementioned artists and critics, is the critical frame through which Evidence of ­Things Not Seen assesses mystery, romance, fantasy, and multigenred fictions. Precise definitions of Afrofuturism and blackness, as well as meanings of both that circulate in the popu­lar imaginary, are productively served by secondary sources that are both accessible and popu­lar. Thus, I have compiled podcasts, encyclopedias, trade press books, online reviews, websites, Wikipedia, blogs, vlogs, m ­ usic, public art, fashion, hairstyles (myriad virtual resources), not to mention book-­length scholarly treatments of the popu­lar that capture a zeitgeist around and nuance meanings of category fictions, critical terms, and blackness. This proj­ect’s critical method deliberately weaves the popu­lar and the scholarly together in support of close readings of primary and secondary texts and to weigh my ideas against critical and creative sources. In careful interpretations of fantastical blackness in primary readings, Amazon​.­com reviews, op-ed pieces, and interviews in newspapers and magazines stand in intimate conversation with sources vetted in established academic forums. I blend academic and popu­lar, the creative and the philosophical, the historical and the so­cio­log­i­cal, to illuminate the complexity of my subject ­matter: a self-­aware blackness, in and in excess of antiblackness, that envisions un/imaginable black pasts/presents/futures. Evidence of Th ­ ings Not Seen considers what popu­lar literary forms reveal about seen and unseen blackness, as well as the ways ­these forms implement interpretive strategies that make depictions of blackness vis­i­ble. I find the magnification in genre fictions particularly instructive: when romance lit­er­a­ture plots who an ideal lover is and where a lover can be found, when a mystery novel detects whodunit, when fantasy fictions create beings who successfully navigate ethereal worlds, and when a thriller/suspense/mystery novel unearths subterranean narratives, fantastical blackness becomes the norm as it upends normalized narratives circulating in extraliterary, diasporic African spaces. As I see it, the kinds of blackness imaginable in popu­lar fictions do not merely respond to “the apparently dominant order.”113 ­These depictions recognize black

28 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

p­ eople and spaces that are, that unsettle, and that disrupt established ways of seeing. To put it another way, I am not merely interested in how genre fictions’ fantastical blackness responds to oppressions; they do respond, but most significantly they re/see, re/make black selves. This is an affirmative way of seeing black that knows antiblackness and/still exists in the hyperbolic possibility of the imaginable. A fantastically black analytic originates in profound complexity and then converses with genre-ed narratives, an intricate point of departure that is further refined when put in conversation with critical examinations of race, diaspora, and the popu­lar imaginary.

“To Boldly Go Where [Some Have] Gone Before” ­ ecause genre fictions are grounded in the fantastically pos­si­ble and in repre­sen­ B ta­tions of the imaginably true, they are particularly suitable to express blackness’s unspeakable/must-­be-­spoken truths. By interrogating popu­lar literary forms, Evidence of ­Things Not Seen reflects on critical examinations of popu­lar fiction and questions of nation, citizenship, and race. Sean McCann, for example, identifies themes in hard-­boiled detective fiction written between the 1920s and the 1960s, works that depicted contradictions between a truly demo­cratic, informed citizenry and the goals of New Deal liberalism. Gumshoe Amer­i­ca also ties changes in mystery/detective fiction to social change from the Victorian-­ influenced Sherlock Holmes tales to the U.S. urban scenes trod by Sam Spade.114 Erin Smith asserts that white working-­class men, Black Mask’s targeted readers, bought into the masculinity, consumerism, and citizenship prescribed in the hard-­boiled stories published in the pulp magazine. Specifically, Smith’s research finds that “hard-­boiled detective stories hailed working-­class readers as the ideal consumers of a commodity culture—­ethnically unmarked, bourgeois individuals interested in protecting their ‘wages of whiteness.’ This shaping of working-­ class men’s subjectivities, however, was pos­si­ble only b­ ecause of the Utopian impulses at the core of this fiction—­nostalgia for a disappearing artisan culture and visions of a differently gendered world.”115 Both works are persuasive, affirming that impor­tant po­liti­cal and sociocultural work can be done through the lens of popu­lar fiction. I avail myself of the opportunities that Smith and McCann make to attend to fantastical iterations of blackness in popu­lar fictions by black writers. My result considers racial themes familiar since the Harlem Re­nais­sance and civil rights eras in North Amer­i­ca as well as in Anglophone postcolonial periods in the Ca­rib­bean. Specifically, by centering ­people and themes that popu­lar genres have traditionally cast as “wholly other,” and against which a normative middle-­class, white, and male identity has been constructed, imaginable blackness claims “the fantastic” and “the inexplicable” as integral to perceptions of and for itself.

Introduction • 29

Smith’s and McCann’s research demonstrates how the popu­lar influences readers’ conceptions of self and mea­sures their relationships to social mores outside of fiction. Turning popu­lar lenses onto blackness now, when instances of systemic and individual antiblack racism are viral, is crucial. The need for this kind of analy­sis can be seen in the number of studies that have taken up some part of the critical work in which Evidence of ­Things Not Seen is engaged. Kevin Young’s The Grey ­Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, André M. Carrington’s Speculative Blackness: The ­Future of Race in Science Fiction, and Michelle D. Commander’s Afro-­Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic all examine popu­lar culture and fantasy/science fiction in relation to black subjects and themes. Kevin Young’s The Grey A ­ lbum is more about the how than about the what: how black creatives—­mainly t­ hose in what is now the United States—­“create their own authority in order to craft their own, alternative system of literary currency and value, so to speak, functioning both within and without the dominant, supposed gold-­standard system of American culture.”116 An African/ diasporic African trickster toolkit—­storytelling, lying, and Young’s neologisms “storying” and “counterfeiting”—is the cultural form that dramatizes the how. Identifying storying and counterfeiting as literary and musical iterations of lies, Young claims lying as a transgressive authorizing practice that must be reclaimed: it is the root of black Americans’ self authorizing, and it is an aspect “of black culture abandoned even by black folks, ­whether it is the blues or home cookin’ or broader forms of not just survival, but triumph.”117 Young shows how the how is revealed by shifting focus away from dominant authenticating tools and practices for evaluating blacks’ cultural works (he invokes the panel of white men who assessed Phillis Wheatley’s ability to write poetry) and t­ oward lying as a black self-­authorizing tool—­and artifact.118 Young’s tome is also what it is about: The Grey A ­ lbum is an example of “the storying tradition, of the self in­ven­ted and pursued through a profound act of imagination.”119 Sources that support his claims are sometimes elusive, namely, references to ­family lore as well as lyrical, poetic, literary, and literary critical sources that can read as untranslated foreign tongues.120 Readers of Young’s five-­hundred-­paged volume e­ ither know t­ hese references . . . ​or they do not, an apparent strategy that transforms readers into witnesses to and observers of the lies (storying, counterfeiting) that black creatives tell and the truths ­these lies make. Young weaves his expertise with poetry, lit­er­a­ture, and vari­ous types of ­music into a narrative that speaks the centrality of black culture to the dream of Amer­i­ca and the centrality of this culture to the quotidian. ­Doing so, Young anticipates Sharpe’s “undisciplined” approach to black study. Young puts vari­ous forms of black creativity into persuasive conversation with established works of literary and cultural criticism. Nevertheless, The Grey ­Album’s opening chapters raise specific questions: The lies are vis­i­ble in black

30 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

tales, stories, lit­er­a­ture, and m ­ usic, but are they seen, and if so, by whom? To which Young responds, black p­ eople, t­ hose who know—­but may need to rememory—­ that “we ­don’t need proof that we exist and can write and are lit­er­at­ ure; we need ‘troof,’ a funky, vernacular ‘truth’ that d­ oesn’t answer to white-­based or any other preconceptions of black real­ity.”121 Young’s primary focus is U.S. blackness, although he invokes the trickster as an African cultural retention traceable through the African diaspora, as well as Jean-­Michel Basquiat and Nicolás Guillén (Cuban) as exemplars. Nevertheless, this perception of “the blackness of blackness,” Young’s definition and interpretation of lying and storying in African American life and letters, and the utility of creative works produced by black ­people (“ultimately, storying is the space such useful fiction occupies in both [black] lives and our writing”)122 thoroughly supports my read of fantastical blackness as a common noun and as an ethical praxis. Young’s critical vision, grounded in African American cultural traditions and histories, is black. His method exemplifies a blackened consciousness, an ethical approach that speaks to and elevates the constitutive role that black p­ eople and black cultural production play in the making of the United States. Michelle Commander’s Afro-­Atlantic Flight responds to what she sees as a sense of dislocation from Africa and Africans experienced by U.S. blacks—­a population that her book treats as a representative example for African-­descended ­peoples in diaspora. She argues that this sense of dispossession, triggered by the trade in captured Africans, is amplified by the unjust rolling back of government policies and programs won by civil rights activism. Commander supports her argument with ethnographic, historical, literary, and filmic evidence that features returns to African, and “African,” homelands.123 Considering the folktale of Flying Africans as influencing myriad flights of imagination, Commander then turns her attention to intra-­(returns to the U.S. South, South Carolina) and international migrations (from the United States to Ghana, from the United States to Bahia, Brazil), arguing that ­these physical movements are motivated by speculative imaginings of African homelands and locations in the Amer­i­cas with strong African retentions. Ultimately, Commander argues that each type of Afro-­Atlantic flight expresses a nuanced speculation that was “a subversive way of life for Black Americans, who w ­ ere determined to self-­actualize, forge communities, and experience plea­sure on their own terms.”124 Fi­nally, she posits that an i­ magined, ancient Africa motivates t­ hese flights, an “Africa [that] emerges as a signifier that is perpetually in flux, reinforcing the impossibility of literal returns despite the perpetuity of yearning as well as the hybridity of Afro-­Atlantic identities.”125 However, the redemptive possibilities for speculative flights of return fail if driven by “individualist concentration on homeland returns.”126 Commander, motivated by “what follows yearning,” advances the idea of neoteric Pan-­Africanism, a possibility for “new under­ground po­liti­cal expressions that are marked by fantastic modes of transnational Black social relations outside of

Introduction • 31

normative politics” and determined by “how [diasporan blacks might] live more freely in the pre­sent and how to fly resolutely into the ­future.”127 Commander supports her argument with original ethnographic research, participant-­observation of cultural tourism, and analyses of film and lit­er­a­ture, privileging the stories of “writers, tourists [and tourist-­industry workers], [expatriates,] urban planners, [traditional faith leaders and healers,] and activists,” with particularly persuasive results.128 Her descriptions of flights of imagination and Afro-­Atlantic speculative returns nicely support my thinking about fantastical blackness, specifically how t­ hese ­imagined returns represent a “subversive way of life for Black Americans, who w ­ ere determined to self-­actualize, forge communities, and experience plea­sure on their own terms.” However, in theorizing black diasporan speculative imaginings of African returns as specific responses to ruptures caused by transatlantic slavery as well as per­sis­tent second-­class status in the United States, Commander’s Afro-­Atlantic flights are largely reactionary responses to antiblackness. The speculative flights that she collects show “Afro-­speculation [as] an investment in the unseen and precarious; it is a ­gamble. It is the belief in the possibility of the establishment of new, utopic realities outside of dominant society despite the lack of proof that Black social life is conceivable. The humanistic qualities and liberatory nature of the genre renders speculative thought a fantastic, radical epistemological modality through which Afro-­Atlantic identity can be lived across time and space.”129 Yet ­these amazing flights of imagination can be overwhelmed by “eternal groans and bellows, which can be witnessed in the landscapes and literaturescapes across the Afro-­Atlantic, demand remembrance, articulate sorrow, and express perpetual rage against the shores of dispossession.”130 As such, ­these speculative flights are framed by Western/white proscriptions of and for blackness. If ­these flights are primarily reactions to the ways whiteness sees blackness, the ­futures that literary, filmic, and physical migrations can imagine are not as bright as they could be. Carrington’s book posits what he describes as an overrepre­sen­ta­tion of white authors and white experience in print, filmic, and televised science fiction (he uses this term interchangeably with “speculative fiction”). This perspective results in the view that reading “speculative fiction as a White cultural tradition . . . ​ [marks] alienation as a signal feature of Black experiences with the genre.”131 Intent on unlocking the grip of this alienation, Carrington subtlety redefines blackness in speculative fiction by attending to how readers/viewers consume traditional repre­sen­ta­tions. “I would argue,” Carrington writes, “that mobilizing renditions of Blackness in lit­er­a­ture and culture that displace the Whiteness of science fiction thoroughly enough to call the identity of the genre into question—­ not to dissolve it, but to reconstruct it—­entails reconsidering what we mean by Blackness.”132 The critic interprets cultural products that result from this consumption—­fan fiction, fan art, music/music videos, fanzines, comics—­and investigates the appearance of black characters in “iconic works of science

32 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

­ ction” such as the Star Trek tele­vi­sion franchise, finding that they commune fi with the whiteness of science fiction and manifest the centrality of black experience to U.S. culture. By so reading and rereading race and blackness and by assembling works of cultural production and the social, Carrington concludes that “­every cultural form in­ven­ted by Black ­people in diaspora, from the sorrow songs to break dancing, demonstrate complex and potentially liberatory uses of existing cultural forms.” Speculative Blackness reads “Black subjects [as emblematizing] the generative quality of marginality in the popu­lar imagination.”133 Carrington’s meditation on (not definition of) “speculative fiction” is intentionally loose, b­ ecause myriad fan-­generated forms necessarily extend and challenge existing definitions of popu­lar genres. His formalist meditations are also significantly informed by his “recognition that African American culture encompasses characterizations of Blackness that are profoundly resonant with practices of futurity, speculation, alternative understandings of space and time, and the super­natural.”134 As he frames and supports his argument, black cultural production disrupts the whiteness of science fiction, re/inserting nuance into the genre by making use of blackened ways of re/producing black pasts, pre­sents, and ­futures. Carrington’s Speculative Blackness is most useful in establishing the significant influence of black consumers of science fiction as well as the extra­ literary impact of the fan fictions that they produce. In his second chapter, as I briefly discussed e­ arlier, he describes Nichelle Nichols as a popu­lar culture phenomenon—­popu­lar ­because she acted on a genre tele­vi­sion show and popu­ lar ­because this visibility made her a power­ful black w ­ oman icon who impacted worlds beyond the small screen. In other words, Nichols’s marginal acting role enabled her enormous influence on U.S. institutions and culture. Though I extend my attention to examinations of fantastical blackness beyond the United States and through literary forms other than science fiction, Carrington’s proj­ect corroborates my claims about the extraliterary impact that blackness ­imagined in popu­lar forms can have. Where the aforementioned studies focus on U.S. blackness and privilege science fiction and musical and poetic forms, Evidence of Th ­ ings Not Seen examines blackness rooted in U.S., Canadian, and pan-­Caribbean frames of reference, all rendered fantastically true in romance, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and thriller/suspense/mystery/historical fiction. Thus, this book also sheds re/newed light on geo­graph­i­cally situated notions of blackness/antiblackness rehearsed in other disciplines as well as in popu­lar imaginaries. ­Because of its attention to fantastical, imaginable truths of and for black ­peoples in and in excess of antiblack racism, this work does not merely recognize blacks’ contributions to the West (Young, Carrington) or merely characterize black ­people as resilient in the face of oppressions (Commander). Instead of documenting reactionary responses to routinized antiblack terror, I read genre fictions formally and theoretically, foregrounding fantastical truths of being black and imagining strategies of black

Introduction • 33

being beyond limiting dominant narratives. Nevertheless, the work of Young, Commander, and Carrington are similarly animated by the certainty that African diasporic ­people can and do understand self through our own eyes, and creative cultural forms discern this vital self-­knowledge. I believe, and I write Evidence of Th ­ ings Not Seen to demonstrate, that this perspective on blackness is productively vivid in genre fictions by black authors and cannot be ­limited by antiblackness. Speaking to a group of students at Rutgers University, Junot Diaz observed the supreme importance of not only being able to imagine but also putting that imagining to active use: ­ ere’s this idea that monsters ­don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve Th always thought i­ sn’t that monsters d­ on’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a ­human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I d­ idn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, “Yo, is something wrong with me? That the w ­ hole society seems to think that p­ eople like me ­don’t exist?” And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a ­couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.135

If we “make up, then make real,” then fantastical, imaginable black being, unrestrained in popu­lar lit­er­a­ture and applied to antiblack social and po­liti­cal contexts, recognizes and si­mul­ta­neously refigures how p­ eople made monstrous speak and live fantastical selves.

Chapter Summaries The prologue and this introduction map the influences and evolution of ideas that resulted in this proj­ect’s argument. This introduction then puts Evidence of ­Things Not Seen in conversation with works that philosophize black being as well as ­others that analyze blackness in popu­lar cultural forms. This chapter’s pro­ cess and lit­er­a­ture review situate the book within extant analyses of race in the popu­lar while distinguishing it by its attention to a range of category fictions written by black writers, specifically ones that interleave blackness’s imaginable truths into forms of mystery, romance, multigenre, science fiction, and fantasy. My argument, at its core, asserts that contexts that denigrate blackness and black ­people cannot be the first or only mea­sure of blackness or blackness’s imaginable possibilities: black subjectivity is irreducible to (myriad forms of) racist oppression and dominant narratives that propagate ste­reo­typed and exploitative repre­sen­ta­tions. This introduction defines fantastical blackness as an extant quality of blackness that is mirrored and amplified in the hyperbolic reaches of

34 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

category fictions. Fantastical blackness is also an ethical interpretive practice that privileges blackness’s unrestrained imaginings of itself. Fantastical blackness is distinguished in genre fictions, a result of which is its strategic application outside of fiction. At last, this chapter posits fantastical blackness in genre fictions as a critical language through which blackness, un/imaginable and unrestrained, is strategically used and useful. Each of the following chapters investigates dif­fer­ent manifestations of fantastical blackness in specific literary forms. Using broadly available as well as scholarly resources, the following chapters elaborate on the presence and workings of fantastical blackness, and each chapter applies its literary critical analy­sis to literary and extraliterary conversations on race, class, and gender. In First—­Mystery, “Fantastically Black Blanche White: BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam,” the protagonist is the black/woman/domestic-­worker lens through which readers see racism, sexism, and classism as the novel’s crimes, though the amateur sleuth navigates all manner of murderous and criminal acts. ­Because White’s blackness (and womanness and working-­classness) fortify her—­ though she is immersed in antiblack contexts that try to diminish her—­Blanche anticipates “that black abundance” that Kiese Laymon recalls in Heavy: An American Memoir.136 Blanche is abundantly black by choice, a subject position that provides her a critical lexicon through which she assesses race, class, and gender in the U.S. South. Unlike the mixed-­race ­future depicted as a ­viable response to U.S. racial animus in George Schuyler’s Black No More,137 reading Blanche on the Lam through the protagonist’s fantastical blackness exemplifies a self-­ referential and strategic response to the criminality of antiblackness, no ­matter the consequences. Second—­Urban Romantica, “Making Black and Jamaican Love: Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain and Romance-­ified Diaspora Identities,” interprets Channer’s novel through its form, content, and online evaluations.138 Methods of close reading and content analy­sis reveal how much attention online reviews pay to the act of choosing a black, Jamaican identity, particularly when separated from the place and cultures of Jamaica. This perspective on Waiting in Vain reads the romance-­novel form closely, and in conversation with its virtual reviews, to illuminate how a loveable, diasporic, black identity is made and how readers understand this making. Channer’s erotic romance novel’s large readership (as opposed to “literary [fictions’] . . . ​smaller, more intellectual audience”139) and hundreds of e-­reviews speak to a need both to create and to disseminate a loveable, idealized black self in a range of diasporic African locations: Amazon​.­com reviews variously describe the novel’s protagonist as Trinidadian, African American, Jamaican, Ca­rib­bean, or black. In the novel, characters create intimate and physical types of love, and Waiting in Vain’s online reviews demonstrate appreciation for the author’s strategies for creating and finding ideal lovers. Yet when read collectively, the e-­commentaries identify strategies for making a romance-­ified, black and Jamaican identity and emphasize the importance of such a subject posi-

Introduction • 35

tion. The content of Waiting in Vain’s online commentaries affirms a power­ful desire to make a diasporic black self, particularly in response to discourses of blackness that limit who diasporic black ­people can be. In Third—­Fantasy, “Fantastic Possibilities: Theorizing National Belonging through Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring,” Hopkinson’s novel re/thinks national belonging and Canadian multiculturalism. What, for example, are the extraliterary implications for Canadian identity when the Canada-­born child of Trinidadian and Jamaican immigrants uses Canada’s National (CN) Tower to channel Yoruba-­derived gods? How can Canadianness be re/conceptualized when a Trinidadian w ­ oman’s heart, transplanted into the body of an incumbent Ontario politician, makes the public servant into an/other ­woman who reassesses her conservative po­liti­cal platform? When considering the so-­called divisive features of Canadian multiculturalism, particularly ­those driven by belief and postulation, attention to Brown Girl’s form and themes theorize ­these questions’ imaginable possibilities. Experiencing characters who live inclusive and—at the same time—­racially, spiritually, and culturally complex lives trigger re/considerations of the Multiculturalism Act’s allegedly segregationist impulses. Brown Girl’s fantastically dif­fer­ent Canadianness realizes truths that challenge postulations about multiculturalism’s fragmentary effects, and armed with imaginable possibilities for complex subjectivities, readers might act according to t­ hese novel perspectives and positively impact how Canadian multiculturalism circulates in the public imaginary. Fourth—­Multigenre, “Seeing White: Colson Whitehead’s The Under­ground Railroad,” uses thriller/suspense/mystery/historical fiction to express what has been mystified: the making and uses of whiteness in the United States. Cora is the novel’s fantastically black lens that assists this vision; as such, she characterizes an ungovernable fugitivity, a fantastically black lens through which readers re/see the United States’ foundational narrative. Reading Whitehead’s novel through Cora-­as-­lens manifests the underrepresented role that whiteness plays in the making of the United States. The railroad that facilitates Cora’s moves from a state of slavery through states of freedom represents not merely an anachronistic technology but also a contrivance that lays bare the nation’s durable machinery. So exposed, readers witness how the mythic U.S. nation runs on vicious per­for­mances of whiteness. ­Imagined through Whitehead’s combination of thriller, suspense, mystery, and historical literary forms and using Cora as a critical lens, “Seeing White” highlights U.S. foundational truths as narratives, as stories that speak whiteness’s durability and vio­lence. Whereas chapter  4 illuminates a foundational whiteness seen through Cora-­as-­lens, chapter 5 and the epilogue interpret white characters who see black, working the premise that ­every body (and every­body) can learn from fantastical blackness. In Fifth—­Fantasy Short Story, “Fantastically Black ­Woman: Nalo Hopkinson’s ‘A Habit of Waste,’ ” Cynthia and “whitey-­man” in Tobias Buckell’s “Spurn Babylon” (epilogue) are, respectively, whitened and whitish; each is,

36 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

however, fantastically black and thus charged with imagining their worlds through its resistant optic. “A Habit of Waste” narrates the first-­generation Canadian Cynthia’s choice to download her consciousness out of the curvy and dark-­ skinned body in which she was born into the narrow and pale-­skinned body of a white ­woman. This story thus imagines a strategic black femaleness in an imaginable black and Canadian f­uture but does so through Cynthia’s whitened body. The epilogue focuses on Buckell’s “whitey-­man” narrator, who observes a strangely preserved slave ship that is “disinterred” from Charlotte Amalie Harbor. Over a series of days, black residents of St. Thomas lovingly refurbish the ship, preparing it for a passage to Zion. Once remade, ­every (black) body on the island boards the ship and sets sail. Alone, the whitish narrator decides to take his own fantastical flight to Zion. Attending to the work that Hopkinson’s Cynthia and Buckell’s whitey-­man must do in order to see and be fantastically black and foregrounding what is revealed by each character’s revolutionary actions, the book concludes with a meditation on what it might mean for whiteness to re/see black and white through an unrestrained, fantastical blackness. In Evidence of Th ­ ings Not Seen, African diaspora subjects and themes are fantastical in that black writers, with regard to their reactions to and uses of “technologies,” “[‘refunction’] old/obsolete technologies or [invent] new uses for common ones,” fashioning “technologies to fit their needs and priorities.”140 This multigenre, transdisciplinary proj­ect—­drawing from examinations of literary form and also analyses of race in lit­er­a­ture, history, sociology, po­liti­cal science, and popu­lar culture—­considers what truths haunt, what myths fortify, and what kinds of imaginings enliven black being in Canada, the United States, and the Ca­rib­bean. This proj­ect makes literary intervention into several academic fields and disciplines (African diaspora studies, American studies, history, cultural studies, sociology), challenging research that diminishes activist capacities in creative prose and genre writing. And in addition to attentive interpretations of popu­lar literary forms, I put criticism of popu­lar fictions in conversation with Afrofuturist and Afropessimist thought and apply ­these faceted readings to extraliterary contexts (historical, social, popu­lar) to generate new insights.

1

First—­Mystery Fantastically Black Blanche White: BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam The ways popu­lar culture can mobilize or demobilize—­for instance, the way much of turn-­of-­the-­century black pop (ranging from rapper Jay-­Z’s “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” to gospel vocalist Donnie McClurkin’s “We Fall Down”) naturalized economic hardship and specifically black poverty—­need to be integrated into any effective framework for understanding the development of black politics. If we are to understand black politics fully, from an empirical or academic perspective, we cannot overlook t­ hose spaces that generate difficult data. Similarly, t­ hose committed to progressive change must also engage with ­those arenas and voices that promote regressive and discomforting narratives. —­R ichard Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic

Blanche Tells It Like It Is When a judge finds Blanche White guilty for bouncing a few checks, her first response is physical: her legs go weak, her hands grow cold, and “beads of sweat popped out on her nose.”1 Her second response builds (her) character: “She also wanted to ask him where the hell he got off, lying about her like that! This was her second, not her fourth charge. Furthermore, just as ­she’d done the last time, 37

38 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

she would have made good on the checks even if she h ­ adn’t been summoned to court. H ­ adn’t she already covered three of the five checks s­ he’d written? And right ­here in her handbag she had the forty-­two-­fifty she still owed, plus fifty dollars for the fine—­same as the judge had made her pay last time.”2 BarbaraNeely3 details Blanche’s terror response to the judge’s decision, but the author continues by distinguishing consequences that the protagonist ­faces from ­those that white ­people face: “[The] county commissioner recently charged with accepting bribes,” Blanche surmises, “­wouldn’t get thirty days.”4 The criminal milieu that the judge describes, immediately before he hands down his sentence, has ­little to do with the black w ­ oman standing before him. Blanche cannot speak (another symptom of her terror), and she is not given the opportunity to speak. Still, her inner dialogue reveals a self who is dramatically dif­fer­ent from whom the judge sees and subsequently punishes.5 Blanche White’s bodily response and the signs of her temperament individuate her and reveal a distinctly black/woman/working-­class character. Readers of Blanche on the Lam, the first in BarbaraNeely’s Blanche White series, observe the difference between the protagonist and the persona the judge “sees,” an observation that foregrounds Blanche’s sense of self and also her perceptions of the not oxymoronic “criminal justice” system: “ ‘criminal justice’ was a term [Blanche] found more apt than it was meant to be.”6 The “impartial” judge, a­ fter giving “Blanche a look that made her raise her handbag to her chest like a shield,” sentences her to thirty days plus restitution for her fourth bad-­check charge.7 This representative of the state of North Carolina sees not Blanche but rather a preponderance of crime—in this case, multiple check-­k iting offenses. That said judge judges her to be morally lacking (“Perhaps some time in a jail cell ­will convince you to earn your money before you spend it, like the rest of us”) also contributes to the harshness of his judgment.8 The differences between Blanche and the criminal/criminalized being charged by the judge manifests an invisibility to which—in light of her bodily and narrative responses—­her black/working-­class/woman self is particularly vulnerable. Blanche “­didn’t want to admit to anyone that she worked six days a week and still ­didn’t make enough money to take care of herself and her ­children. Her low salary ­wasn’t her fault, but it still made her feel like a fool, as if ­she’d fallen for some obvious con game.”9 Seduced into believing that hard work equals financially beneficial work, Ms. White nonetheless stands in front of the judge prepared to pay her due. Nevertheless, her assurance of her subjectivity stands in stark contrast to the judge’s misrecognition; significantly, and ­because of her sense of self, Blanche reforms the crimes the judge finds meaningful. The protagonist’s interior narrative manifests how the act that brings her to court metamorphoses from verb (bouncing checks) into noun (serial criminal offender). She is prepared to replace the funds that made her checks insufficient and to pay the fine, as she did once before, but is overwhelmed by the two strikes the judge levels

First—­Mystery • 39

against her—­being morally flawed and a multiple offender. And it is soon affirmed that ­these “strikes” speak more about forces outside of herself than they do about Blanche White: she bounces ­these checks b­ ecause four of her clients failed to pay what they owed.10 It is significant that all of this occurs in the novel’s opening pages, establishing the delimiting contexts in which Blanche lives but also the primacy of her self—­and her self-­perception—in t­ hese contexts. Blanche White dodges the thirty-­day sentence by escaping the court officer and hiding out as a replacement domestic worker in rich Aunt Emmeline’s summer home. Blanche shares this hideout with the old ­woman’s niece, Grace Car­ ter Hancock; Grace’s husband, Everett; and Emmeline’s nephew, Mumsfield. The country estate, however, quickly becomes more dreadful than the threat of incarceration. Blanche and Nate Taylor, the black gardener at the summer home, find themselves involved in a scheme to defraud Mumsfield of his inheritance: Grace and Everett replace the real Emmeline with “Lucinda” or “Lucille” (rumored to be Emmeline’s ­father’s child by the ­family’s black ­house maid), who signs a codicil that makes the married c­ ouple Mumsfield’s trustees. When bodies start piling up—­first the corrupt local sheriff, then Nate, then the real Emmeline—­and when the fake Emmeline dis­appears, Blanche uses what she knows about self, southern aristocracy, and her vast network of African American domestic workers, spiritualists, friends, and ­family to solve crime. But Blanche’s assertive, black-­identified, and working-­class perspectives may ultimately cause her undoing. This summary pre­sents Blanche on the Lam as a mystery novel ­because it adheres to “conventions of suspense, action, physical danger, and intrigue.”11 And, like many of its genre kin, the novel offers readers several red herrings: Blanche, a black ­woman on the run from the law; Everett, a philandering and greedy husband who plots to defraud his cousin-­in-­law and who is the object of the sheriff’s extortion; and Grace, an avaricious and lovesick ­woman who stands by her man. However, ­these fraud and murder suspects, and suspects of the novel’s other crimes, are not the only misdirections. The mystery’s amateur detective is a curvaceous, dark-­skinned, working-­class w ­ oman who wears her hair in its natu­ral state, characteristics and subject positions that intersect to form a fantastically black lens through which crimes more menacing than murder are revealed. ­Because the novel’s crimes are both plural and nuanced, they literally make Blanche on the Lam a “mystery”: the novel explores “a hidden or secret ­thing; something inexplicable or beyond ­human comprehension; a person or ­thing evoking awe or won­der but not well known or understood” (OED Online). Yet ­because the murders are readily accessible, portrayals of sexism, classism, and racism are the “hidden, secret ­things” that dictate characters’ be­hav­iors. And despite the intimate contact that domestic work requires, Blanche’s affluent, white clients perceive her, and black ­people generally, as “person[s] or ­thing[s] . . . ​ not well known or understood.” As a result, Blanche White is exceptionally

40 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

skilled at determining whodunit b­ ecause she embodies mysteries and is an amateur detective. Yet the raced machinations that are so vividly represented in the opening court scene do not resonate in Amazon​.­com reviews that judge Blanche on the Lam to be a third-­rate mystery, largely ­because the first “one hundred plus pages [are] filler before the mystery takes form.” This review continues by offering explicit detail: “The major difficulty I find with the Blanche White series is it misplaced [sic] in the mystery category.”12 Other reviews repeat this sentiment: “to put it bluntly,” TJ Stepp avers, “it took too long for someone to die.”13 By this mea­sure, every­thing that precedes Sheriff Bobby Lee Stillwell’s death and delays its resolution does not advance and is not relevant to the novel’s mystery.14 Apparently, reviews of this kind do not consider that the race, color, class, and gender prejudices that dog Blanche and her black p­ eople could be crimes. I, however, am specifically interested in the crimes and criminality that Blanche’s intersectional self makes vis­i­ble. White’s is a faceted blackness that privileges itself, effectively upending narratives that render her and hers invisible, mysterious, and felonious. Blanche’s being-­of-­choice also upsets politics of respectability that overdetermine her options with regard to profession, hairstyle, marriage, and procreation. Hers, therefore, is a fantastical blackness ­because it is “conceived . . . ​by an unrestrained imagination” (Dictionary​.­com); its centrality to the novel is also remarkable, as Blanche uses it strategically to solve the mystery’s crimes and to navigate U.S. crimes. Whereas other novels in the Blanche White series attempt (and purportedly fail) “to figure out how to establish blackness outside the forces of the law,” Blanche on the Lam represents and makes use of the protagonist’s way of being and seeing black that exists within and in excess of unseen, misrecognized blackness.15

“That Black Abundance” through a Blackened Consciousness This chapter reads Blanche on the Lam from formalist and theoretical perspectives, a combination that centers a blackness with abundant self-­knowledge and inclination to refuse antiblack denigrations. This is a perspective that the immoderation of mystery fiction captures and expands. This fantastically black optic converses with Christina Sharpe’s notion of a blackened consciousness as well as Kiese Laymon’s portrayal of “that black abundance.”16 And I assess the novel’s critical pro­cess as responding to the moment when, a­ fter the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his murderer, “black lives ­matter” had to be articulated and its articulation incited a global, activist movement. Theories in Sharpe’s and Laymon’s works, as well as truths of Trayvon Martin’s murder, seem to pivot on the certainty that the privilege denied Martin (that which was extended to his murderer) is grounded in the historical, ­legal, and social making—­ and consequences—of U.S. whiteness.

First—­Mystery • 41

In a 2017 podcast, John Biewen plots the moves that resulted in U.S. racial categories. He introduces the case of John Punch, an African indentured servant, to demonstrate when perpetual black servitude was made l­egal and what purposes this legalization served. The objectives of elite plantation ­owners, Biewen notes, w ­ ere twofold: they wanted access to ­free l­ abor and w ­ ere determined to undermine cross-­racial l­abor co­ali­tions. Fabricated notions of black inferiority masked ­these intentions and ­were used to solidify cross-­class allegiances among white (whitened) p­ eople. To achieve ­these ambitions, Biewen’s “Seeing White” series documents how elites used the state and instruments of the state (government, policing, ­legal system) to protect and serve its class and economic interests and, fi­nally, to define U.S. citizenship as white.17 Chenjerai Kumanyika, the series’s cohost, offers an example that crystallizes this pro­cess: JOHN BIE WEN  ​So, a lot of this, a lot of t­ hese efforts, the laws, the ways of ­really

forcibly separating the races and setting them against one another, r­ eally, and creating only incentives for them to separate—­the argument is that t­ hose t­ hings ­were designed to lead to what [Suzanne Plihcik] called a multiclass co­a li­tion of white ­people, right? As opposed to a multiracial co­a li­tion of ­people who had economic interests in common. CHEN JER AI KUMAN Y IK A  ​That’s right. And I mean, one of the most clear expressions of this? . . . ​John C. Calhoun, who was a . . . ​po­liti­cal thinker and statesman from South Carolina who eventually goes on to become vice president, in 1848 he . . . ​delivered a speech on this called . . . ​the Oregon Bill. And . . . ​he says, “With us, the two g­ reat divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black. And all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class and are respected and treated as equals.” Which is like kind of crazy that he says that, right? I mean . . . ​the reason why he says the two ­great divisions of society are not the rich and poor is b­ ecause he realizes that t­ here are folks who are starting to see it that way, mainly b­ ecause he’s like a rich-­ass plantation owner, you know, who eventually sort of bequeaths land that becomes Clemson University. But, so he has to clarify, he has to jump in and say, no it’s not rich and poor, it’s white and black, and all, all of the poor white ­people, you have as many rights as me. Which is, of course, not true. But it just shows you like how clear that proj­ect was in his mind.18

Sharpe limns the fact of black social death and physical, antiblack vio­lences and determines the utility of both in myriad diasporic African spaces, as a result and constitutive of the mythic whiteness that Calhoun orchestrates. Laymon’s “that black abundance” is situated in the legacy of this U.S. whiteness and in the critical space that Sharpe’s thinking opens—in the wake, ­doing wake work: “I’ve been thinking of this gathering, this collecting and reading ­toward a new analytic, . . . ​tracking the ways we resist, rupture, and disrupt [Black immanent and imminent death] aesthetically and materially.”19

42 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

Applying ideas available in Sharpe’s philosophy and Laymon’s memoir results in a reading of Neely’s novel that is not wholly unfamiliar: mystery/detective fictions by black writers have often erupted out of demonstrations of black enfranchisement and citizenship claims in the United States.20 Black writers used ­imagined responses in mystery/detective fictions critically to evaluate the legislated, institutionalized criminality of blackness; this popu­lar form, then, has long been a vehicle through which black characters and experiences w ­ ere strategically deployed. In social spaces where re/newed ways to be black in the United States ­were being fomented, “the urgent mission of the detective is not so much to solve the mystery as it is to investigate and narrate, to remember and relate a history of race relations in the US from the perspective of a common person.”21 Read in this way, BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam is an aesthetic (re)source and example of a disruptive blackness that actively rejects that which calls for our immanent/imminent death.22 It goes without saying, though, that this is not the only work BarbaraNeely imagines for her protagonist. Sharpe’s blackened consciousness evocatively persists between, around, within recurrent reminders of terrorized black ­people but also in and ­because of black lives, the recognition and vigorous embrace of an insistent black being. She writes, “while the wake produces Black death and trauma . . . ​we, Black ­people everywhere and anywhere we are, still produce in, into, and through the wake an insistence on existing: we insist Black being into the wake.”23 This quotation depicts “the wake” that produces black death as the space where victimization, absence, and lament reign, but it is also “the wake” in which an insistent blackness cares for self. In this latter wake is “the power of and in sitting with someone as they die, the impor­tant work of sitting (together) in the pain and sorrow of death as a way of marking, remembering, and celebrating a life.”24 Blanche White represents a way of being and seeing that functions analytically: because of it, she reads contexts in which she is misrecognized, and through it, her woman/black/working-­class self ruptures the narrative of mysteriously absented black presences. Ms. White and her variously rendered black community insist on being their black selves. Fi­nally, Sharpe maintains that it is not enough to recognize the ways that whiteness uses blackness to imagine itself and to build and sustain white privilege. This recognition must be paired with the necessary strategy of “inhabiting a blackened consciousness that would rupture the structural silences produced and facilitated by, and that produce and facilitate, Black social and physical death.”25 What blackens this consciousness, what makes it a uniquely black way of knowing, is that it witnesses black p­ eople living u­ nder occupation, and it recognizes consequences of living in t­ hese contexts. And yet acknowledging both is a point of departure (“to think and be and act from ­there”); it is, literally, a reactionary response to antiblackness, but it is more than this. The vision that Sharpe advocates is generative, resulting in “par­tic­u­lar ways of re/seeing, re/inhabiting, and

First—­Mystery • 43

re/imagining the world.”26 Purposefully inhabiting this critical position thinks through narratives of blackness as “the symbol . . . ​for the less-­than-­human being condemned to death” by envisioning from a place that sees extant and generative lives.27 BarbaraNeely’s Blanche White embodies this kind of blackness in that she is aware of the former (antiblack narratives and social death) and exemplifies the latter (generative blackness). Sharpe’s In the Wake perceives blackness in diaspora as wholly constituted by death while advocating for the simultaneity of alternate narratives, ones that blackness clearly knows. And by highlighting the latter, she proves that blackness insists on being; and ­because blackness exists, blackness disrupts. Blanche on the Lam depicts ­legal, social, and practiced be­hav­iors that consign Blanche to prescribed ways of being, sullying who she is and how she exists in white spaces. The novel also details how Blanche White sees and sees through a black/woman/ worker lens in the courtroom and in raced and classed locations. To put it another way, Blanche is not merely seeing self through frames that are not hers; her black self is sustained by a heuristic formed through her female self, ­family, friends, and ­sister (and ­brother) domestic workers. Most significantly, hers is a fantastically black self for self. Hers is, in other words, “that black abundance.” Laymon’s phrase, as a blackened consciousness, is a “par­tic­u ­lar [way] of re/seeing, re/inhabiting, and re/imagining the world,” the “luck” that results from seeing differently. “That black abundance” is a knowledge of and appreciation for a profoundly complicated blackness that thrives when not limited by a whitened gaze. As such, an abundant blackness solidifies the concept of fantastical blackness and educates readers how it can be applied outside of fiction. The first expression of “that black abundance” occurs in the fifth chapter of Laymon’s Heavy, “Meager,” importantly expressed when Kie (the narrator) and LaThon Simmons (Kie’s friend) are out of place. The closure of Holy ­Family, the Catholic school attended by black and poor kids, forced some students into St. Richard’s, the Catholic school attended by white and rich kids. LaThon, being his Holy ­Family self, looks directly in the eyes of the St. Richard student Seth Donald, a white boy whom LaThon promptly renames “Seff six-two”: “LaThon shifted and looked directly in Seff 6’2’s eyes” and pronounces, “Everythang about y’all is erroneous. ­Every. Thang. This that black abundance. Y’all d­ on’t even know.”28 In St. Richard’s eighth-­grade classroom, Simmons made “abundance” (his favorite seventh-­g rade vocabulary word) into “that black abundance,” an insistent blackness (race, place, ways of being, with emphasis on ways) that makes a word “like galore”—­through sound and abundant meaning—­into “gal-­low,” a word that sounded like love.29 LaThon, his transplanted Holy ­Family classmate Jabari, and Kie own this word—­its love-­sounds and love-­meanings—­while it is beyond Seth Donald’s experience. “That black abundance” predated the ­children’s arrival at St. Richard but/and was forged and thrived t­ here. Within the Holy ­Family universe, Kie says, “in the world we lived in and loved, every­one black

44 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

was in some way abundant. . . . ​But outside of stadiums and churches, and outside of weekends, we ­were most abundant.”30 On each page of “Meager” and periodically through the memoir, “that black abundance” exists as an intelligence that means feeling and caring for black p­ eople who are not perfect.31 “That black abundance” originates and radiates out of Laymon’s (and Heavy’s characters’) black Mississippi experience and decidedly for black selves instead of “making educating white folks at Millsaps [Kie’s] homework.”32 Kie muses, I sat in the principal’s office thinking about what you [Mama] told me the day before we started St. Richard. “Be twice as excellent and be twice as careful from this point on,” you said. “Every­thing you thought you knew changes tomorrow. Being twice as excellent as white folk w ­ ill get you half of what they get. Being anything less w ­ ill get you hell.” I assumed we ­were already twice as excellent as the white kids at St. Richard precisely b­ ecause their library looked like a cathedral and ours was an old trailer on cinder blocks. I thought you should have told me to be twice as excellent as you or Grandmama since y’all ­were the most excellent ­people I knew.33

Heavy’s narrator knows his black self, the black selves of his Holy F ­ amily friends, his ­mother, and grand­mother in ways that break the whitened lens through which his ­mother sees black. With less (a library that was an old trailer on cinder blocks), Kie and kin are always abundant even when they—­ black parents and St.  Richard peers and teachers—­cannot see it. “That black abundance” is, it exists. Defined experientially, “that black abundance” can be seen when Kie and LaThon, looking for Jabari, encounter Ms. Stockard (a teacher at St. Richard). Stockard tells them that students and teachers have complained about Jabari’s body odor, and she asks the boys to intervene. Kie recalls that Jabari and Jabari’s ­house smelled dif­fer­ent ­a fter Jabari’s m ­ other died, a knowledge shared—­and understood—by the Holy ­Family community. “But all of us ­were stanky at some point,” the narrator continues. “When we w ­ ere stanky, we laughed about it, took a shower, or threw some deodorant, cologne, or perfume on top of the stank and kept it moving.”34 Kie recollects that the knowledge of being stanky sometimes was a shared experience, and in this knowledge, he and his are seen and understood. But feeling unsafe/unseen/uncared for at St. Richard makes “that black abundance” into a vital resource. Considering all the ­things that the community of St. Richard did not know, LaThon, Jabari, and Kie arrived at a conclusion: Eventually, Jabari laughed with us when LaThon said, “They ­don’t even know about the Abundance. For real. We c­ an’t even be mad. They d­ on’t even know.”

First—­Mystery • 45

“We can be mad,” Jabari said. “But we can be other stuff, too.” We both looked at Jabari and waited for him to say more. I was fi­nally understanding, for all that bouncy talk of ignorance and how they ­didn’t ­really know, that white folk, especially grown white folk, knew exactly what they ­were ­doing. And if they d­ idn’t, they should have. But by the end of February of our eighth-­grade year, what white folk at St. Richard and the world know d­ idn’t m ­ atter. We w ­ ere learning how to suck our teeth, shake our heads, frame a face for all occasions like Richard III, and laugh each other ­whole. That meant a lot. Mostly, it meant that although some of us had more welts on our bodies than lunch money, light bill money, or money for our discounted tuition, we knew we w ­ ere not the gross ones. We w ­ ere mad, and sometimes sad, but we w ­ ere other stuff, too.35

In “Meager,” Layman puts forth not only a vision of blackness that sustains, forcefully so, but also one that illuminates. “That black abundance” exists before St. Richard, through it, and ­after it. Laymon writes “that black abundance” as a specifically black knowing and being, a black intelligence abundantly available to ­those who made and live it; it is even ­there for ­people like Kie’s ­mother, who does not appreciate it. Writing, “some of us had more welts on our bodies than lunch money, light bill money, or money for our discounted tuition,” Laymon underscores adjectives that modify but that do not transform into nouns: he changes the narrative by stressing black being and not blackened (denigrated) descriptors. Blanche White, too, insists on a generative blackness, a “we can be mad . . . ​but we can be other stuff, too” that sustains through its self-­knowledge. In Laymon’s memoir, that black abundance finds form; in Neely’s mystery, it is the fantastical foundation that makes it pos­si­ble for Blanche to solve crimes. Reading Blanche on the Lam from the perspective of fantastical blackness unlocks interpretations by centering black ­people who are in and in excess of the law as well as other antiblack crimes. This first novel in the Blanche White series is decisive in its embrace of a blackness that is also working class and gendered w ­ oman. Black, personal, and communal knowledge networks navigate and disrupt an elite whiteness that is protected and served by the state, characterizing Blanche’s fantastical blackness and revealing depths made vis­i­ble for readers to see.

Genre in Black/Class/Gender If “from its very origins and on into the pre­sent, African-­A merican fiction has articulated and analyzed the intersection of crime and [race] in the US,” then black writers who choose crime fiction uber-­fictionalize themes that have occupied lit­er­a­ture since blacks in the United States began writing creatively. Writers have used detective fiction to chronicle con­temporary social climates as well as to explore societal changes in the United States and ­Great Britain. The

46 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

attraction that this type of fiction holds for so-­called minority writers, then, can be understood through interrelated contexts: the genre allows such writers to examine issues pertaining to race/ethnicity, class, and gender through critiques of the United States’ society and culture. The deliberate use of this popu­ lar literary form by black U.S. writers can be understood in a larger context, as Richard Iton states: “for African Americans, partly ­because of their marginal status and often violent exclusion from the realms of formal politics, popu­lar culture was an integral and impor­tant aspect of the making of politics throughout the pre-­civil rights era and the civil rights era itself.”36 When denied access to benefits of citizenship, black creatives and consumers of popu­lar forms used them, and their unrestrained formalist imaginings, to articulate subjectivities and experiences that the state refused to appreciate. Raymond Chandler explains that mystery fiction thrives when ­there is a “certain spirit of detachment” ­because the form “has . . . ​a depressing way of minding its own business.”37 Although mystery/detective fictions’ ideological baggage is difficult to ignore, some writers redeploy the form to c­ ounter individualist, race, gender, and class biases of conventional stories. Frankie Y. Bailey explains that “crime and detective fiction can be considered a barometer of changes in racial attitudes,” making this feature a productive point of access for ethical maneuvers.38 Through emphases on black and brown p­ eople, poor and working-­ class p­ eople, and ­women—­foci that shift significantly from the prototypical white, male worldview—­the social critique that detective fiction can offer takes on a wholly dif­fer­ent character. Novels in this genre contain narrative threads that also make mystery/detective fiction a flexible critical tool. In a related vein, Robert Crooks notes similarities between western/frontier lit­er­a­ture and hard-­ boiled detective fiction. Identifying the “frontier” as a signifier that became detached from its western context a­ fter the frontier was “closed,” Crooks argues that frontier logic shifted to an urban landscape and that the hard-­boiled detective and the black criminal replaced white civilization and Indian savagery.39 Gloria Biamonte argues that nineteenth-­century American w ­ omen writers folded features of domestic and romantic fictions into a mystery format, through which they examined white ­women’s evolving social roles.40 And as Daylanne En­g lish observes, “race and class make a difference in crime and in crime ­fiction—in the case of race, so much so that even if Chester Himes and Walter Mosley both had simply ‘made the f­ aces black’ in their novels, they would have necessarily altered the meaning and power of the genre.”41 With ­these flexible maneuvers in mind, when black sleuths use black racial contexts in their attempts to determine whodunit, they are solidly located within their communities, thus challenging the isolationist feature of the genre that Chandler declaims as central. But detective fiction by black writers cannot be l­ imited to social critique. “[BarbaraNeely] vehemently argues that many of the African American authors who write detective novels are more in line with Poe than Himes, being inter-

First—­Mystery • 47

ested in the detective procedural aspect of the story more than any so­cio­log­i­cal message. It would be a kind of ‘ghettoizing’ to lump all black writers of detective stories into a category of having a concern for social issues.”42 Some writers are interested in mystery/detective fiction for the sake of form (Grace F. Edwards, Eleanor Taylor Bland, Valerie Wilson-­Wesley); o­ thers blend formalist and social concerns (Patrick Chamoiseau), and still o­ thers offer a social critique but use the detective-­as-­individual model (Chester Himes, Walter Mosley). Nevertheless, when black writers use the mystery/detective form to critique their socie­ties, they put the pro­cess through which crimes are solved (the how) in ser­vice of the what: the nature of crime and—in light of BarbaraNeely’s concern with isms—­crimes. Thus, if “Blanche represents a new sort of detective: black and female and working class with ­those social categories driving the novels’ content,” then her novelty also extends to the critical possibilities of the work the character can do.43 Holding both author and protagonist to traditions of the “cozy” mystery novel as well as to a Chandlerian definition of form, Kathy Phillips won­ders, “Is the mystery a useful forum for social attack? Presumably the mystery reader is looking for lighter, if not lightweight, fare, and the Blanche novels no longer provide anything of the sort, if the first novel arguably did.” Phillips continues, “In subsuming her plot to her character’s attitude, Neely is sacrificing the primary goal of the mystery novel, which is to pre­sent a puzzle to be solved by that character and by the reader. While she may be succeeding as a novelist, it is less likely that she is succeeding as a mystery novelist.”44 The type of work that mystery novels have done, and can do, appears to exceed Phillips’s rigid conception. The critic also has a slim view of why readers read detective fiction, discounting Lev Grossman’s readers, who “­don’t read it to escape . . . ​prob­lems” but “to find a new way to come to terms with them.”45 Yet if we replace the “primary goal” of the genre that critics may describe as “anachronistic” with the goal to critically assess society and social mores, Blanche White’s novelty “serves to imagine solutions that are literary and po­liti­cal and intraracial and interracial.”46

Black and Blanche White Blanche’s skill at all ­things domestic, her sleuth-­like perceptions, and the black/ woman/worker self she cultivates and is determined to live expose the novel’s crimes as class, race, and gender oppressions. How the protagonist observes and negotiates t­ hese crimes, particularly the criminalization and degradation of black ­people, determines how she negotiates overlapping isms and their consequences. Inhabiting her black abundance, White can see ­behind mythic curtains to navigate white spaces, agents in them, and individuals who refuse to see her. In a literary form intended to preserve the dominant order by staving off agents of social change, the Blanche White character disorders both literary form and dominant narratives that unsee her and hers by privileging a fantastical blackness that, in its immoderation, recognizes and serves itself. Blanche replaces

48 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

the props of the mainstream detective—­“the magnifying glass, the pipe, the trench coat, [the] slouch hat, cigarette, and b­ ottle of whiskey in the top desk drawer”—­with yellow rubber gloves, expertly prepared meals, ­mother wit, and insight into her employers’ intimate habits.47 And in her incarnation as “African American,” “­middle aged,” “working class,” “­woman,” Blanche White “forever [transforms] the mystery novel.”48 BarbaraNeely may use the “tropes of black detection” to plot Blanche’s discoveries,49 but I find that the novel’s attention to crime (antiblack racism, misogynoir, classism) and crime (murder, fraud) highlight the fantastical blackness that sustains Blanche, a subject position that ultimately saves her life. Much has been made of Blanche’s figure, its proportions launching critical discussion of body positivity and size prejudices. The same might be said of BarbaraNeely’s characterization of the protagonist’s dark skin, its import deepened by her first and last names. With regard to the protagonist’s physical self, Bar­ baraNeely’s use of familiar literary devices underscores the degree of un-­change in U.S. racial and gender discourses.50 Early in the novel, readers learn of Blanche White’s physical dimensions through her intimate musings: “Though she ­didn’t consider herself fat, she did admit to having big bones and hips. And breasts and forearms to match, when it came right down to it. Only her legs ­were on the smallish side.”51 Note that readers experience the protagonist’s body from her perspective, a matter-­of-­fact account that stands in stark contrast to the depiction of Blanche’s color. At first defensive about her names, forty-­year-­ old Blanche contextualizes what some characters consider grossly anomalous: “She ­didn’t think having a name that meant ‘white’ twice was any funnier than a w ­ oman who tripped over invisible objects and knocked over w ­ ater glasses being called Grace.”52 The novel continues by re/casting the protagonist’s color through the persona of Night Girl, whose superpower is invisibility. “Cousin Murphy,” Ms. White recollects, “was responsible for Blanche’s becoming Night Girl, when Cousin Murphy found eight-­year-­old Blanche crying ­because some kids had teased her about being so black.”53 Murphy attributes the teasing to envy ­because the ­children wanted to have “the night” in them as Blanche has in her: p­ eople with the night in them had the power to become invisible. The narrator continues, Cousin Murphy’s explanation h ­ adn’t s­ topped kids from calling [Blanche] Ink Spot and Tar Baby. But . . . ​Murphy and Night Girl gave Blanche a sense of herself as special, as wondrous, and as power­f ul, all ­because of the part of her so many p­ eople despised, a part of her that s­ he’d always known was directly connected to the heart of who she was. It was then that s­ he’d become Night Girl, slipping out of the h ­ ouse late at night to roam around her neighborhood unseen. S­ he’d sometimes stop beside an overgrown azalea . . . ​and learn from deep, earnest voices of neighborhood deaths and fights, wages gambled away, about-­to-­be-­imprisoned sons and

First—­Mystery • 49

pregnant ­daughters, before her ­mother and her talkative friends had gotten the news. This prior knowledge had convinced Blanche’s ­mother that her child had second sight.54

By relating her naming to that of the graceless Grace, Blanche exposes who—­ and who is not—­subject to the kind of belittling she experiences. Everett, however, finds the protagonist’s names funny, but BarbaraNeely skillfully redirects both the humor of a dark-­skinned black w ­ oman being named Blanche White and also the authority of an elite white man to make sport of it: “Why, good morning, Blanche White!” Th ­ ere was a chuckle in Everett’s voice. He drew her name out so that it sounded like a taunt. . . . “Well, I’m sure w ­ e’re delighted to have you, Blanche White.” ­There it was again. Blanche checked his eyes for malice but found only laughter of the teasing variety. “You a­ in’t mocking me, are you, sir?” His eyes widened slightly. “Sensitive, a­ ren’t we?” “­Isn’t that what you hoped . . . ​sir?”55

By the time of this encounter, Blanche White is self-­confident enough to claim her black skin as integral to herself. That ­people outside of herself—­black and white characters alike—­denigrate forty-­year-­old Blanche’s skin color does not diminish its connection “to the heart of who she was.” That White’s skin/self/ power complex is also prescient thoroughly disrupts externally imposed meanings that degrade black skin and that circulate in the spaces in which the protagonist finds herself.56 Night Girl allows Blanche to detect mysteries better than ­others and reveals her black skin as a site of power. The progressive movement ­toward adult Blanche’s fantastical blackness is affirming. As White becomes assertively black, by upending prescribed ways of being black in the United States, she also rejects what her ­mother, Miz Cora, claims is acceptable for a black ­woman of the South: “It had taken Blanche a long time to feel like her own ­woman, out from ­under Miz Cora’s strong hand. Her ­mother had not approved of her refusal to belong to the church, her leaving Farleigh for New York, her decision to continue to do domestic work instead of being a nurse like her s­ ister or some other mother-­proud professional. Th ­ ey’d been fighting for nearly twenty years over Blanche’s unstraightened hair.”57 Critically, this quotation represents several attributes that ground Blanche’s feelings of self-­possession. How she wears her hair, the ­career she chooses, and her decision to be single without biological ­children58—­all in personal and social contexts that predetermine the ranges of acceptable choices—­sow seeds that grow Blanche’s black abundance. Unlike black domestic workers and black female characters that typically ­people mystery fictions, big-­boned Blanche “was very good at and proud of what she did in a world where that combination was harder

50 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

to find in many professions.”59 Still, she has no illusions about how some characters perceive her work or her self. In Farleigh, North Carolina, where she returns to protect her s­ ister’s c­ hildren from a pos­si­ble kidnapping in New York City, the protagonist finds it hard “to find an employer willing to pay for a full-­service domestic instead of the bunch of so-­called genteel Southern white ­women for whom she currently did day work.”60 White’s view of her ­career choice is authoritative, though she remains aware that she is not the only authority: “She always returned to domestic work. For all the châtelaine fantasies of some of the w ­ omen for whom she worked, she was r­ eally her own boss, and her clients knew it. She was the expert. She ordered her employers’ lives, not the other way around. She told them when they had to be out of the way, when she would work, and when she ­wouldn’t. Or at least that’s the way it was most of the time.”61 Ultimately, Blanche’s choice to do domestic work is colored by and suitable to the needs of her black, single-­woman self.62 Blanche’s black skin, superpowered as Night Girl, is the medium through which her power­ful self is seen, in spite of every­thing that privileges elite whiteness and maleness. Although Leo, her high school beau, desires her as she is, she chooses not to marry him.63 Ms. White’s determination inspires the self she makes, despite adversities and also b­ ecause of the networks she cultivates. Unlike the lone male detective in the typical crime novel, “Blanche’s individuality recognizes the importance of the social collectivity, and all its shifting relations, within the individual.”64 Despite the fantastical possibilities that inhere in her blackness, Blanche—­her self and strategic claims on her fantastical blackness— is not flawless. Her rigid views on maleness obstruct her ability to identify the murderer ­until it is almost too late, and Blanche’s opinions on elite whiteness foreclose the possibility of an intimate connection with Mumsfield. But the faults in Blanche White’s bastion of blackness read as complication more than cancellation. Hers is not a superficially resilient self, impervious to all encroachments; instead, imaginable truths in the novel’s mystery form reveal Blanche’s blackness as a deliberate choice to be black, to occupy black space, and to re/make other spaces to make blackness vis­i­ble. Choosing to imagine blackness differently and her strategic uses of this re/imagining progressively question (ask again and again) who black ­people are and can be, what black ­people can do, and how black ­people do what we do. The novel includes several examples of antiblack ste­reo­types, often accompanied by White’s trenchant critique of them. Each is, though, contextualized by Blanche’s fantastical blackness. Strategically, Blanche inhabits racial and class ste­ reo­types to protect and care for herself, to ply her trade as she sees fit, and to discover secrets that some ­people would rather she not know. ­A fter escaping the court­house, for example, Blanche wishes “she had a ­little white child to push in a carriage or a poodle on a leash so ­she’d look as though she belonged [in a high-­ end, white neighborhood].”65 Th ­ ese props remain wished for (while fleeing the court­house, Blanche recalls a weeklong job that she forgot to cancel) but none-

First—­Mystery • 51

theless demonstrate her awareness of dominant and overlapping race, class, and gender scripts. That this recollection comes immediately before she enters Everett and Grace’s world is not an accident. Blanche’s black analytic sanctions the use of ste­reo­typical personas, a hiding in plain sight that often persuades the most unlikely suspects to reveal clues. Lest readers believe that Blanche subscribes to antiblack ste­reo­t ypes, the amateur sleuth believes that “putting on a dumb act was something many black ­people considered unacceptable, but she sometimes found it a useful place to hide. She also got a lot of secret plea­sure from fooling ­people who assumed they ­were smarter than she was by virtue of the way she looked and made her living.”66 Blackface minstrel per­for­mances are also part of Blanche’s repertoire, tools that serve her prodigious self. She is always aware of her raced and classed body, and she employs the knowledge of how each signifies within the contexts in which she circulates. Part of the plan to defraud Mumsfield depends on Blanche’s previous employment in Emmeline’s ­house­hold. Readers learn that Grace and Everett replace the real Aunt Emmeline with her half ­sister, Lucille/Lucinda, and need a former employee to validate the imposter. Grace tries to confirm that Blanche has previously worked for them, and, needing a hiding place and relying on the belief that Grace “­ain’t got no more idea what’s ­going on in her ­house than a jackrabbit,” Blanche lies. Blanche forced her mouth into a toothy grin and blinked rapidly at the ­woman. “Oh, yes, ­ma’am!” Blanche’s voice was two octaves higher than usual. “You remember me! I worked for ya’ll about six months ago. I think one of ya’ll’s regular help was out sick? Or maybe had a death in the f­ amily?” She gave [Grace] an ex­pec­tant look. The ­woman’s face remained blank for a moment. “Oh, yes, of course.”67

“Blanche had learned long ago,” readers learn, “that signs of pleasant stupidity in ­house­hold help made some employers feel more comfortable, as though their wallets, their car keys, and their ideas about themselves ­were all safe.”68 In the preceding quotation, the protagonist secures her hideout by anticipating and exploiting Grace’s ignorance. This per­for­mance, too, exposes the false nature of Grace’s kind of “comfort” while challenging readers to question the employer’s “ideas about [herself]” and about Blanche. Convinced that Lucille/Lucinda is the real Emmeline, Archibald Symington (Emmeline’s cousin and l­ awyer) accepts her signature on the codicil that makes Everett and Grace trustees over Mumsfield’s inheritance. Having discovered that Fake Emmeline may be about to flee, Blanche decides that she needs to know why. To extract information from Grace, Blanche “was tempted to launch into a full-­fledged lay-­it-­on-­my-­bosom number, complete with wet eyes and hand-­ patting, but that role was too familiar for a Mistress of the Manor type like

52 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

Grace. Instead Blanche let her arms fall to her sides and was attentively ­silent.”69 ­Later in the novel, ­after Nate is murdered and the protagonist commits to avenging his death, Blanche responds to Grace’s revelation of the gardener’s death by “[lifting] her apron to her face as s­ he’d seen Butterfly McQueen do in Gone with the Wind. If the subject had been anything other than Nate’s death, s­ he’d have had a hard time keeping a straight face.”70 In both cases, Blanche’s per­for­mances prove effective, assisted by Grace’s interest in winning Blanche over to her side (more about this l­ater) as well as by the ste­reo­types the white w ­ oman holds. In other words, Blanche is successful ­because she taps into racist, sexist, and classist scripts that Grace holds dear. White is savvy enough to make use of her employer’s biases, yet knowledge of their utility does not prevent her from being critical of them. Grace, attempting to convince Blanche that Lucinda/Lucille is Emmeline, bursts into tears while describing her “aunt’s” alcoholic decline. Blanche is not impressed by the display and instead contemplates her employer’s “Mammy-­save-me eyes”: “Mammy-­savers regularly peeped out at her from the ­faces of some white ­women for whom she worked, and lately, in this age of the touchy-­feely model of manhood, an occasional white man. It happened when an employer was struck by ­family disaster or grew too compulsive about owning every­thing, too over-­ wrought, or downright frightened by who and what they ­were. She never ceased to be amazed at how many white ­people longed for Aunt Jemima.”71 The racial and class ste­reo­types to which Grace subscribes and Blanche deploys are manifest. Significantly, White is the only one who appears aware that they are, in fact, per­for­mances. Even when she is most solicitous, Blanche manages her clients. Suspecting Everett of murder, she serves him a meal with aplomb. This is “a game she sometimes played with herself when she particularly disliked an employer she ­couldn’t afford to drop. S­ he’d give herself merit points for being as correct and as civil as pos­si­ble.”72 It is when she learns of Nate’s death, however, that the protagonist vows to disrupt denigrating racial and class narratives by repurposing her per­for­mance of each. Relying on her accumulated knowledges—­garnered from self exploration, relationships with diasporic black ­people, acquaintances in her varied communities, friends and f­ amily—­Blanche White stands in her fantastical blackness as she drives t­oward the novel’s denouement: solving its crimes and its crimes. Ultimately, the hero’s class and racial minstrelsies are points of departure, signs of her black ways of knowing that reveal her fantastical blackness most abundantly. BarbaraNeely writes Grace as a character who abides by class and racial codes constituted in U.S. slavery (Grace is surprised that Blanche is able to deduce whodunit).73 The author also uses Blanche-­as-­lens imaginatively to represent the systemic vio­lence against black p­ eople. But the protagonist’s perception, s­ haped by her raced/classed/gendered choices, not only comments on the fact and consequences of antiblackness in her United States but also subtly reveals the personal impact of such vio­lence. Blanche “still remembered the police beatings of ­people

First—­Mystery • 53

in the sixties, and the murders of young black and Puerto Rican males by cops in Harlem—at least one for ­every spring ­she’d lived in New York—as though they ­were deer in season. ­She’d watched the cops break down the apartment door of her neighbor Mrs. Castillo, beat the w ­ oman’s husband unmercifully, and totally ransack their apartment, only to realize they had the wrong building. The policemen ­hadn’t even apologized for the mess.”74 This quotation illustrates Blanche’s intimate knowledge of traumatic antiblack vio­lence but also that her perspective is always, and si­mul­ta­neously, gendered and classed. She mea­sures changing seasons by police brutalization of black and brown ­people as she evaluates their actions in terms of her profession. Th ­ ese connections show how this vio­lence touches most aspects of the amateur detective’s life, making it impossible for her to subscribe to the protect-­and-­serve narrative of policing that determines how Mumsfield feels about Sheriff Stilwell. For this elite and white and male character, the mythologized police narrative is so power­f ul that it overwhelms Mumsfield’s habitually poor interactions with the sheriff.75 Ms. White clearly experiences police and policing differently than does Mumsfield, and this difference cannot only be attributed to how BarbaraNeely imagines them. Blackness and class in the United States, and legacies fictionalized in Blanche on the Lam, are what make Blanche’s experience singular: “She’s come to understand that her desire was to avoid pain, a pain so old, so deep, its memory was carried not in her mind, but in her bones. Some days she simply ­didn’t want to look into the eyes of p­ eople likely raised to hate, disdain, or fear anyone who looked like her. It was not always useful to be in touch with race memory. The thought of her losses sometimes sucked the joy from her life for days at a time.”76 This exemplifies Blanche’s “blackened knowledge, an unscientific method, that comes from observing that where one stands is relative to . . . ​ that moment of historical and ongoing rupture.”77 ­Whether BarbaraNeely imaginatively re-­creates a fantastical blackness or ­whether she taps into and channels a U.S. racist, classist zeitgeist, Blanche’s world-­weariness persuasively conveys the novel’s real­ity. The sleuth’s black self-­knowledge teaches her how to know the whites who are her clients as well as ­those who are members of the larger white community. In addition to the female hero’s use of this skill (to facilitate her working, living, being), it is also a repre­sen­ta­tion of an imaginable truth that serves as a strategy for seeing black outside of fiction. In BarbaraNeely’s hands, Blanche White’s views of her black skin, her hair, and her ways of being and seeing are ­imagined, and/but t­ hese models for being, living, and working derive from extraliterary black lives and knowledges. Traveling with Mumsfield to purchase personal items for her stay in the country, for example, Blanche finds a radio station playing Diana Ross. “She felt better with Diana in the car”: Diana’s voice was like a ribbon tying Blanche to the part of the world she knew and needed. It ­wasn’t simply her singing that soothed Blanche. Diana had once

54 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

been poor, just like Blanche. If Diana could move from the welfare and the housing proj­ects of Detroit to the top of the m ­ usic charts and starring roles in movies, certainly Blanche could get herself out of this mess she was in, just as black w ­ omen had been getting themselves and their p­ eople out of messes in this country since the day the first kidnapped African w ­ oman was dragged onto t­ hese shores.78

Diana Ross is not fictional, yet the protagonist sees the entertainer as fantastically black. Ross’s social moves, using class and job skills with which Blanche is familiar, inspire and motivate. What intrigues about White’s way of seeing Ross, however, is the world that Blanche’s seeing creates. In the first part of the quotation, Blanche builds this world; then, in the second part, she describes the messes that exist in it. Untethered from “the world [Blanche] knew” b­ ecause of the judge’s sentence and adrift in Emmeline’s world, Ross’s sound and biography build, and build on, a foundation made by generations of black w ­ omen. This grounding re­orients Blanche, moving her away from an overwhelming helplessness by reminding her of black ­women whose skillful maneuvers negotiated the “messes” on which the country was conceived. Lessons like t­ hose personified by Diana Ross frequently appear in Blanche on the Lam, underscoring the singular place they hold in the making of Blanche’s self-­of-­choice. Consider that minutes ­a fter meeting her new client, Blanche “knows” Grace b­ ecause the protagonist knows old lady Ivy, a client who lived in Long Island, New York. Neither Grace nor Ivy, Blanche opines, could “stand to see the help in regular clothes, . . . ​might ­mistake them for ­human beings.”79 Blanche repositions her class lens to foreground her black one ­after Grace stumbles for the second time and “continued walking and talking as though nothing had happened.” This be­hav­ior brings Aunt Sarah to mind, since Sarah continued “to expound on the best way to smoke a turkey while sitting in a sea of oranges ­she’d knocked from a bin at the supermarket, a­ fter stumbling over nothing anyone could see.”80 ­These similes recur, casting White as ever prepared to rely on assessments of current circumstances through untutored ways of knowing. If, ­after the novel’s first chapter, readers are not persuaded by Neely’s characterization of Blanche’s choices, this black fantastical critical perspective is practically impossible to resist ­a fter the protagonist commits to avenging Nate’s murder. Nate Taylor dies soon ­after Sheriff Stillwell does, a passing that both Blanche and Mumsfield feel before they know. Immediately a­ fter hearing the radio report of the gardener’s death, Blanche rages: “It was just too damned much! It ­wasn’t enough that the man had been treated like a machine, robbed of re­spect, and kept poor all of his life. It ­wasn’t enough that his time had been owned by other ­people who also de­cided how high he could raise his eyes and his voice, and where he could live and how. He also had to be murdered over some white ­people’s shit that ­didn’t have a damned ­thing to do with him.”81 What this quotation makes clear are narratives of race and class distinctly expressed from

First—­Mystery • 55

her black perspective. Blanche already committed to being herself in the world, but Nate’s murder catapults her out of self-­interested preoccupations and into full (amateur) detective mode. She w ­ ill avenge Nate, a black and working-­class man who “­ought to have been appreciated for being the wattle that held the walls together. Instead, [he was] expendable, interchangeable, rarely missed, hardly regarded, easily forgotten. Not this time!”82 And Nate’s unique role in the novel makes White’s conviction all the more significant. Taylor worked for Aunt Emmeline since Grace was a child, a history that supports his embodiment as the literal, physical, and psychic terror of misrecognized blackness. The representative visibility of t­ hese characteristics also denotes a quotidian yet absent(ed) black presence. Blanche responds to the murder of a man with whom she identifies in many ways, and her response demonstrates an insistence on Nate’s presence as well as her own. The gardener’s recounting of an experience he shares with Grace shows the raced and classed trajectories that intersect in and through his character. ­Because he was black and male and owned a pickup truck, “them Klan boys” seized Nate when “a white w ­ oman’s body was found in a ditch by the road.” Young Nate was weeding Aunt Emmeline’s flowerbed when they descended upon him. Taylor recalls this terror when talking to Blanche: “They grabbed me and was draggin’ me to they truck when Miz Grace come out the front door lookin’ for me. Her dog, Lady, was ’bout to whelp and the child was ’spectin me to help with the birthin’. “[Five-­year-­old] Grace come runnin’ over to ­those boys holdin’ me. Now, you know what crackers is like round gentry, and ­these boys was just gettin’ started, so they w ­ asn’t drunked up enough to step out they place. They ­stopped draggin’ me off when the child come runnin’, but they ­didn’t let me go. ‘This ­here your n-----, Miss?’ one of ’em ask her. “ ‘Yes,’ she told him, ‘and you let him go right now! He has to stay ­here to see to my dog!’ ”83

Emmeline hears the commotion and intervenes, but Taylor remembers, “[The] minute I see Miz Grace agin, I tole her. I say, ‘Miz Grace, I’m in your debt. I ­really is. Why, if you h ­ adn’t needed me to midwife your dog, I’d prob­ably be dead t­ oday!’  ”84 The story ends with Blanche joining Nate in peals of laughter tinged with deep sorrow: his life was wholly contingent on his ser­vice as a bitch’s midwife.85 ­Later in the novel, Blanche observes that Grace recalls this same story in a dramatically dif­f er­ent way: “A bittersweet smile curled her thin lips as she talked of polka-­dot sundresses and homemade ice cream. ­There was no mention of Nate in Grace’s description of how the ­house and its inhabitants had looked to her ­little girl eyes.”86 White’s insistence on the importance of Nate’s being, not merely his life and death, demands that she hold his murderer accountable. Blanche determines that Everett murdered Nate and calls on her networks to learn all she can to defeat him.87 Miz Minnie, a w ­ oman whom Blanche

56 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

describes as a “wise ­woman elder,” knows Farleigh’s black community and, therefore, “had plenty of information about the white one.”88 Through Minnie, Blanche learns of the suspicious death of Everett’s first wife and Grace’s likely complicity in it. She also learns, through “Miz Rachel, who did sewing for Emmeline, [and who] had been in Emmeline’s room pinning up a hem, [that] Emmeline was taunting Everett with how much she was worth, how she had gotten it, and how ­little of it he had any hopes of ever touching.”89 ­These pieces of information confirm some facts for the amateur detective: Everett, in his greed, may have killed his first wife (with the assistance of his second wife) and conspired to defraud Mumsfield of his inheritance. The corrupt sheriff becomes aware of the fraud, extorts Everett, and then also dies suspiciously. Nate, who lives near the bluff from which the sheriff plunges to his death, tells Blanche that he recalls seeing a distinctive pink jacket (Everett owns a salmon-­colored blazer) on someone driving past his ­house near the time of the sheriff’s death. From this collection of clues, Blanche deduces that Everett murdered the sheriff to end the blackmail and murdered Nate for seeing too much. Blanche White is fantastically black: she evaluates p­ eople and contexts from her self-­determined and intersectional black perspective, and she does so in spaces in which she is vilified. She uses her fantastical lens to navigate her job and relationships and to live a philosophy of being that eschews reactionary responses to antiblackness. But while she is and claims a black/working-­class/woman self that sustains her, Blanche White is not perfect.90 Her views on patriarchy put her black, w ­ oman self in competition with Nate ­because she resents the gardener’s “manly” presumptions.91 And, though Blanche on the Lam is peppered with clues about the identity of the murderer and motivations for the murders, the amateur detective practically misreads e­ very one of them. This, however, is not unusual ­because in mystery/detective fiction, “the fin­ger of suspicion points at several characters,” and the seemingly guilty are proven innocent and vice versa.92 BarbaraNeely’s use of red herrings may explain the faults in Blanche’s sleuthing, but this turn to genre formulas to explain White’s missteps does not satisfy. Neither does this reasoning explain why she misreads clues or the consequences of her misreadings. More than mere genre convention, the novel’s red herrings highlight Blanche’s commitment to holding her black, w ­ oman self. Blanche is aware enough of Grace’s biases to exploit them, but her own suspicions of wealthy, white, and heterosexual men—­and the ­women who defer to them—­almost ends her life. White identifies the source of the novel’s crimes when her life is literally in danger, but ­because of her unwavering beliefs about elite and gendered whiteness, she is almost taken in by the real killer—­Grace. The depth of Blanche’s commitment to her black self-­knowledge and knowledge of blackness in the world defers the novel’s denouement and also taints her relationship with Mumsfield. But consequences notwithstanding, Blanche makes and adheres to her choices. Though “reading p­ eople and signs, and sizing up situations, w ­ ere as much a part of her work as scrubbing floors and making beds,” Blanche misreads both

First—­Mystery • 57

Grace and Everett.93 Everett is contradictory: he is (overly) concerned with his physicality and appearance, yet his bedroom is filthy. He has neither job nor money, making him all but uselessness as a provider, yet Grace covets his support and strength. Blanche is aware of the mixed messages she receives about Everett and about Grace, and she quickly deduces that Everett has murdered the sheriff and Nate. What clouds her vision is what Blanche knows about Everett: his elite status, his whiteness, and his maleness—­and that he is elite ­because he is white and male: “Only a crazy person keeps killing p­ eople and killing ­people, [Blanche] thought, and realized she had no reason to think Everett w ­ asn’t crazy. He was a rich white male. Being in possession of that par­tic­u­lar set of characteristics meant a person could do pretty much anything he wanted to do, to pretty much anybody he chose—­like an untrained dog chewing and shitting all over the place. Blanche was sure having all that power made many men crazy.”94 Ms. White hears Everett threaten the sheriff, and she sees him driving away from the ­house on the night Stillwell dies, yet what supports her interpretation of ­these clues is her belief that white maleness is, always and inherently, villainous.95 Specifically, Blanche reviles the kind of villainy that makes white men abusive and that allows them to profit from abusing working black p­ eople and ­women of all races. What intervenes between Blanche’s sleuthing skills and her mis/perception of Grace is the latter’s female self, specifically her per­for­mance of a w ­ oman submissive to a man. What Blanche knows about this kind of ­woman is what makes her susceptible to Grace’s manipulations. ­There are myriad examples of Grace’s graceless physicality as well as her obsessive man-­love; Blanche sees and often remarks on her employer’s sloppiness and clumsiness yet remarks on Grace’s obsessively ordered bedroom. Also, when the protagonist watches Grace in repose, the strength in the white w ­ oman’s profile belies the frailty and dependence she exhibits at other moments. Blanche looks down on Grace ­because of her clinging love for and dependence on her husband and, it seems, cannot accept her as a murderer. In her own mind, the amateur detective understands how Everett can fool Grace so easily: the sleuth herself remembers a time when she was more in love with the image of a man than with the man himself.96 Everett’s fate is sealed, and Blanche sides with Grace, when he tries to convince Blanche that his wife is crazy: Everett “[drags] out that tired crazy-­woman number! She wished she had a nickel for ­every time some man had told her she was nuts, just at the moment in their relationship when she was letting him know that she saw him for what he was.”97 But t­ hese feints are not the extent of Grace’s misdirections: most telling are the strategies she uses to incriminate Everett in e­ very murderous act.98 The final act in Grace’s attempted incrimination occurs immediately before Blanche figures out why Stilwell, Nate Taylor, and the real Emmeline are murdered and who kills them. Grace and Everett leave the country h ­ ouse on a mysterious errand (they search for Lucille/Lucinda, who aborts the plan to

58 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

impersonate Aunt Emmeline), but Grace returns alone: “ ‘I’ve injured my arm.’ Grace held her arm out for Blanche’s inspection. Blanche knew she was expected to go to Grace, to make soothing sounds and call on the Lord for protection and mercy while she fluttered about, gathering first-­aid items and insisting she be allowed to call the doctor and the police. It was the combination of her memory of Everett’s pale arm resting on the car win­dow ledge and Grace’s unwavering left eye that made her step back instead.”99 This quotation offers details about how Grace sees Blanche as a black w ­ oman, servant, and believer in a Christian God and determines how Blanche is supposed to behave. Blanche’s insistence on her way, though, catapults her into detective mode—­not a paid professional but an expert crime solver. The sleuth, by rejecting Grace’s ste­reo­types, is now able to identify Nate’s murderer: “ ‘You killed Nate.’ The accusation jumped unbidden from Blanche’s mouth with calm certainty.”100 Blanche’s refusal to behave “appropriately”—at least according to Grace’s sense of propriety—­gives her the power to be unrestrained and undisciplined.101 Blanche shatters the narrative of blackness that Grace expects and immediately recognizes the novel’s criminal and solves the murders as well as the fraud attempt. Her embrace of her fantastically black self also solves crimes in Blanche on the Lam, solidifying Blanche White’s certainty about the black, working-­class ­woman she is and ­will be. However, unlike with Everett and Grace, Blanche’s read of Mumsfield is not misdirected: he pre­sents as special at their first meeting. Blanche defines their relationship as “sympa”: “it was a term her Haitian friend Marie Claire used to explain relationships between ­people who, on the surface, had no business being friends.”102 The “surfaces” that queer Blanche and Mumsfield’s relationship are racial, gendered, and classed; nevertheless, the protagonist feels for him as she feels for ­family and friends. She soothes him when he is upset and feels his presence before she sees him. By the end of the novel, White is compelled to articulate their connection: [Blanche] watched [Mumsfield] walk down the drive and stared her growing affection for him in the face. She ­didn’t like what she saw. But she knew it was useless to deny it. She believed that e­ very person was unique. She also believed some ­people ­were more obviously special than o­ thers. And Mumsfield was very special, at least to her. She d­ idn’t know if he was able to connect with other ­people the way he did with her, but each time they talked, she came away feeling that if they just had the time, they could learn to talk without words.103

The timing of this revelation is impor­tant, but its emotional traces are evident throughout the novel. Blanche acknowledges—­and resents—an intimate connection to a man she has known less than one week; nevertheless, she acknowledges its truth.104 But the reasons for her resentment are the same as ­those that allow her to be herself and determine whodunit. Th ­ ese reasons are also why Blanche can confront Grace with evidence of her criminality almost immedi-

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ately ­after White names the sympa she shares with Mumsfield. The novel’s hero is connected, intimately, to Mumsfield, and yet she privileges the intimate connection to herself more. The amateur detective accuses Grace of murdering Nate and Stilwell and discloses her suspicion that Grace killed her young cousin as well as Everett’s first wife. The employer/murderer, surprised that Blanche can know what she knows, tries to kill Blanche, underestimating the sleuth’s formidable self: Grace’s attack leaves her bruised and unconscious. When Mumsfield retrieves Archibald and the ­lawyer learns of Grace’s fraudulent and murderous activities, he thanks Blanche in a way that affirms how elite whiteness exists in the novel: “Despite her shock and fatigue, Blanche was quite attentive to Archibald’s long, drawn-­ out speech about how grateful the ­family was for her good sense in contacting him instead of the authorities. . . . ​He worked his way up to hoping s­ he’d stay on as h ­ ouse­keeper and companion to Mumsfield at a salary that made her eyes sparkle.”105 Blanche tells the attorney about her trou­bles with the law, and he promises to fix them and repeats his job offer; this time, Mumsfield begs her to accept. Though Archibald agrees to her terms (a written ten-­year contract, with a pension), Blanche is reluctant to accept. Readers soon learn why, for her reasons lie in her black/blackened worldview: “Blanche spun around and looked from one to the other of the two whitemen waiting for her to make up her mind to serve them, to preserve their secrets and their way of life by throwing herself like a big black blanket over what had happened ­here. But what about Nate? And even the sheriff? ­Wasn’t somebody supposed to do something about their deaths beside cart the killer off to a cushy asylum and hire a h ­ ouse­keeper with hush money?”106 Blanche’s mis/apprehensions and delayed assessments of Everett and Grace, as well as her vexing bond to Mumsfield, are intersected by her raced, gendered, and classed biases. The most salient f­actor in her decision, though, is her determination to be and live her self-­determined black self. BarbaraNeely is most explicit about why Blanche rejects Archibald’s job offer; nonetheless, the ­lawyer’s cash lubricates her departure. The possibility that Grace, though a serial murderer, might end up in a m ­ ental ward rather than in prison, is a consequence that Blanche cannot accept. The sleuth muses while on her trip out of Farleigh, North Carolina: “What would Archibald think when he realized he’d paid her all that money and ­she’d hardly gotten out the door before she was asking around for a reporter a person could halfway trust? Of course, she ­hadn’t promised to keep her mouth shut, and she w ­ asn’t responsible for Archibald’s assumption. Aggravation pay, not hush money.”107 But in owning her life and eulogizing Nate, Blanche sacrifices a potentially sustaining, productive relationship with Mumsfield. She clearly rejects this kind of connection with a white man, no ­matter his specialness: “For all his specialness and their seeming connectedness, Mumsfield was still a whiteman. She ­didn’t want to shower concern on someone whose ancestors had most likely bought and sold her ancestors as though they w ­ ere shoes or machines. Would she always find some

60 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

reason—­retardation, blindness, sheer incompetence—to nurture p­ eople who had been raised to believe she had no other purpose in life than to be their ‘girl’? Had the slavers stamped mammyism into her genes when they raped her great-­ grandmothers? If they had, she was determined to prove the power of ­will over blood.”108 Blanche plainly resists an identity imposed by “slavers” and insists on her right to resist and assert her own power. Still, Mumsfield and Blanche’s “parting had been very sad”: ­ ere was no way she could explain how the last six days had confirmed her Th constitutional distaste for being any whiteman’s mammy, no m ­ atter what she thought of the man in question, or how many fancy titles and big salaries w ­ ere put on the job. But while their parting was very sad, it was dif­fer­ent from what ­she’d expected. S­ he’d braced herself for his tears and pleading, his pitiful need for her. ­There had been tears in his eyes, but ­they’d stayed unshed. He’d neither pleaded nor looked pitiful. “I understand, Blanche,” he’d told her. “I understand.” And for two seconds ­she’d thought that somehow he’d leaped across the gap between them and truly knew what it meant to be a black ­woman trying to control her own life and stand firm against having her brain vanillaed.109

Blanche, in choosing her profession and her unpro­cessed hair and coming to terms with her deeply hued skin and ample figure, is determined to be her own ­woman—as she defines her.110 Readers might question ­whether intimate relationships between ­people who claim blackness and ­those who claim other identities are pos­si­ble. Yet BarbaraNeely puts the im/possibility of t­hese connections into conversation with Blanche’s choices to be abundantly, fantastically black. If, as Robert Crooks claims, “a good deal of criminal activity in [hard-­boiled detective] fiction is a result of the U.S. economy’s partitioning through segregation [making crime] itself . . . ​a potentially resistant practice,” then Blanche’s class/race/gender moves can be understood as similarly resistant.111 Blanche White evaluates social and institutional structures that consign blackness and working-­class status to the bottom of almost ­every social register, particularly ­those that thrive on vio­lences perpetrated against black p­ eople. That she emphatically rejects t­ hese racial renderings is nothing short of radical. Critically analyzing Blanche on the Lam from perspectives that are ethical and fantastically black, borrowing again from Crooks, offers an effective way to lay bare “ideological under­pinnings and internal contradictions” of U.S. antiblackness in extraliterary contexts.112 Though fictional, Blanche’s choices demonstrate—­and represent—­a blackness-­for-­ blackness, a depiction of imaginings and be­hav­iors that read as praxis. The female hero’s stance is firm and appears insurmountable; however, BarbaraNeely drops a crumb for readers to consider as we finish Blanche on the Lam. If elite, white, and male Mumsfield can leap “across the gap between them,” in other

First—­Mystery • 61

words, if he is willing to do the work to know, truly, “what it meant to be a black ­woman trying to control her own life and stand firm against having her brain vanillaed,” he can form and maintain an intimate relationship with a w ­ oman like Blanche. I have noted the scripted roles to which Grace, Everett, Nate, and even Blanche adhere—­though for varying lengths of time and for vari­ous reasons. Aware of ­these scripts, however, Blanche intentionally rejects their prescriptions and broadcasts a vision of her self-­made self, self-­justified and si­mul­ta­neously abundantly aware. In ­these contexts, the protagonist’s missteps and her relationship with Mumsfield are acceptable casualties of war. Blanche White is/will be Afro-­ centered, a feminist, a reluctant ­mother, a successful detective, and—­surviving Grace’s murder attempt—­“she would also always be a w ­ oman who’d fought for her life and won”: “She knew she would step lightly again, dance, joke, laugh. She would always be a ­woman who’d come too close to murder, who knew what it meant to actually fear for her life. But, of course, that ­wasn’t all of it. She smiled again at the memory of Grace lying unconscious at her feet. She would always be a w ­ oman who’d fought for her life and won. That w ­ oman, no m ­ atter how much ­she’d changed, was still capable of negotiating ­enemy territory—­even without a reference from her most recent employer.”113 Blanche on the Lam’s protagonist successfully survives the crimes of fraud, murder, and attempted murder. Yet what I highlight ­here is her means of surviving ­these and the novel’s other crimes: antiblack racism, misogynoir, and classism. I do not suggest that Blanche White dispenses with t­ hese social ills, within or outside the novel’s pages; she does not. Instead, what she represents is an imaginable—­fantastical—­way of being black in antiblack contexts that is knowledgeable, insistent, and able. Ms. White is always black/woman/domestic worker, and she is even joyous (“step lightly again, dance, joke, laugh”)—or she can be, soon. And seeing, living in, this fantastical blackness can—­I believe—­change the world.

Black No More . . . ? George Schuyler’s satirical/fantastical Black No More (1932) is a compelling assessment of race—­whiteness and blackness—in the United States.114 Revealing the economic and social necessity of a denigrated black underclass, for the country’s northern and southern regions alike, the novel’s exaggerated solution—­the almost total expurgation of black Americans by Black No More’s end—­challenges antiblack racists as well as problack activists. H ­ ere I introduce how Schuyler’s novel specifically addresses the North American country’s “Negro Prob­lem,” in support of the preceding fantastically black interpretation of Blanche on the Lam. Schuyler begins Black No More with the “fantastical, speculative premise” that the United States’ “Negro Prob­lem” is the Negro, without whom t­ here would be no prob­lem.115 “My sociology teacher,” orates Dr. Junius Crookman, cocreator of the “Black No More” whitening pro­cess, “had once said that ­there w ­ ere

62 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

but three ways for the Negro to solve his prob­lem in Amer­i­ca, . . . ​to e­ ither get out, get white or get along. Since he w ­ ouldn’t and c­ ouldn’t get out and was getting along only differently, it seems to me that the only ­thing for him was to get white.”116 Schuyler makes compelling use of literary form to expose the United States’ vexed racial and status realities, plainly mapping how race is made and used for elite individual and systemic benefit. None are spared Black No More’s satirical reach: Schuyler’s critique includes white p­ eople but also blacks who profit from extant racial realities and the structures they uphold. His scathing analy­ sis not only rings true in its imagining of racial makings and uses, but is supported by con­temporary and recent critical work on how U.S. racial categories ­were made.117 In a recent review of Black No More, Danzy Senna offers an assessment that speaks to the novel’s legacy. On the biting artistry of Schuyler’s imaginings, Senna writes, In Black No More, racialized thinking has turned white ­people into nothing but self-­satisfied buffoons. The white workers are so distracted by their hatred of black p­ eople that they w ­ ill never see the true source of their oppression, the white wealthy landowners who exploit their l­ abor. Black leaders are portrayed as corrupt—­especially the high-­yellow octoroons being paid a fortune to speak for the larger race, to whom they feel distant and superior. In one scathing passage Schuyler writes: “While a large staff of officials was ­eager to end all oppression and persecution of the Negro, they w ­ ere never so happy and excited as when a Negro was barred from a theater or fried to a crisp.” The black and white working classes are shown to be victims of an elite of white supremacists and black racemen who use race as a tool to deflect attention from their own greed.118

As John Biewen charts in his “Seeing White” podcast series, the making of “black” as a U.S. racial category, and the concomitant making of black inferiority, formed an indelible free/diminished black laboring class intended to maintain (sustain) white as superior while discouraging cross-­race ­labor co­ali­tions.119 Since Black No More was first published “before [this] had been confirmed by social scientists, [Schuyler] understood that ­there was no such ­thing as race as a real, biologically determined category. But he saw how real race’s influence was, and all the ways racialized thinking—­that other opiate of the masses—­limited and imprisoned both black and white Americans.”120 Though a persuasive interpretation of Black No More’s driving themes, Senna’s reading of Schuyler’s racial critique does not satisfactorily account for the novel’s ending. ­A fter practically ­every black person living in the United States chooses—­for varied and complicated reasons—­the benefits and privileges of whiteness, the newly positioned surgeon general, Dr. Crookman, conducts a clinical study that finds that the made-­white white skin of New (formerly black) White P ­ eople is

First—­Mystery • 63

whiter than that of Old (formerly white) White ­People. The omniscient narrator asks, “What was the world coming to, if the blacks ­were whiter than the whites?”—­a question that leads to a proliferation of research studies that “proved” the inferiority of ­people with too-­white skin: “if it ­were true that extreme whiteness was evidence of the possession of Negro blood, of having once been a member of a pariah class, then surely it w ­ ere well not to be so white.”121 Naturally, employment, housing, and social discrimination against New White ­People ensues. Circling back to the economic motivations that trigger the making of the black “race,” the growing oppressions faced by too-­white white ­people produce a need for skin-­staining products, which would “impart a long-­wearing light-­brown tinge to the pigment.”122 It is impor­tant to note that ­these products make “all of them, [Surgeon General Crookman] noticed, . . . ​as dusky as l­ittle Matthew Crookman Fisher,” the mixed-­race son of the first “Black No More” convert, Max, né Matthew Fisher, and his white (white-­ish) wife, Helen Givens Fisher.123 Black No More ends with a mulatto vision of the ­future, a black-­white racial mixture that reveals the novel’s sanguine conclusion. To put it plainly, mixed-­race Matthew Crookman Fisher embodies an end to the hy­poc­risy on both sides of the U.S. racial divide (“Amer­i­ca was definitely, enthusiastically mulatto-­minded”).124 As the youth carries Crookman’s name, he personifies the resolution (resolute intention?) of the doctor’s fantastical pro­cess. “Eventually, most American citizens end up a happy shade of brown ­either through skin products, tanning, or birth.”125 Rather than excising black p­ eople as a solution to antiblack racism (the Negro Prob­lem), Crookman’s pro­cess facilitates the return of the repressed: the pro­cess whitens adults, but ­children born of the whitened and the white are mixed—­children of a whitened and a black parent are black, and ­children of two whitened parents are black—­unless the Crookman pro­cess begins again. The novel’s final solution, the staining of too-­white white p­ eople, manifests what is true from the start: Black No More is dedicated “to all Caucasians who can trace their ancestry back and confidently assert that ­there are no Black leaves, twigs, limbs or branches on their f­ amily trees,” a tongue-­in-­cheek acknowl­ edgment that racial purity cannot exist in the United States and that meanings attached to pure races are as flawed as ­those that attach to ­every racial category.126 And if we are all and already mixed, then social hierarchies and their attendant privileges (and denigrations, degradations) are man-­made to serve individual as well as systemic/institutional needs. Black No More is both an agile assessment of U.S. races and a compelling example of how genre fiction contributes to extraliterary, interdisciplinary knowledges. Though race is not a biological truth, Senna reads Schuyler’s novel as documenting its pervasive influence. But how, then, do we assess the oppressions that evolve (devolve) ­a fter every­one in the United States is beige? How, then, do we read the mulatto ­future in light of this? Is racial assimilation the solution to the racial strife that Schuyler tackles in the novel?127

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As quoted in the introduction, Christina Sharpe states, “We are Black p­ eoples in the wake with no state or nation to protect us, with no citizenship bound to be respected, and to position us in the modalities of Black life lived in, as, ­under, despite Black death: to think and be and act from ­there.”128 Black No More satirizes whiteness and blackness, but its dusky (skinned) conclusion does not “think and be and act from ­there”: it identifies absurdities in racial thinking but does not think from the perspective of the consequences, the resultant afterlives of racial constructions. Thus, it is difficult to see what the novel re/sees, re/inhabits, and re/imagines by staining New White ­People, tanning Old White ­People, and—­most significantly—­privileging t­ hose who need neither stain nor tan. Bodies are raced, raced bodies are hierarchized, and raced bodies that are positioned at the bottom of social hierarchies are exploited by raced bodies at the apex. When all bodies are raced the same, lightness is parsed to affirm/reintroduce hierarchies. And, in light of t­ hese truths, t­ here is no indication that anything would change if e­ very body is beige. Rather than speculate about the possibilities of universal claims to our racial impurity, thinking and being and acting “from ­there” requires more. Black No More exposes fallacies of racial thinking but ends with the insinuation that a U.S. racial utopia can be achieved by/in the person of Matthew Crookman Fisher. Reading Blanche on the Lam from an ethical, blackened consciousness centers a fantastical blackness and imagines a dif­fer­ent way of seeing (being) black. BarbaraNeely has said, “if you ­don’t get that this is a book about race, let me give you this big black w ­ oman whose name means white—­twice.”129 The novel begins from ­there but eschews a victimized or celebratory blackness for a blackness that is irreducible to antiblackness, re/imagining ways of being black in the United States as a choosing to be and a choosing how to be. ­Because of the biases that occupy the novel, BarbaraNeely highlights communities and African American and diasporic African cultural traditions that are affected by and, nonetheless, coexist with the isms that Blanche introduces: racism, sexism, and classism. ­Because the protagonist, Blanche White, occupies multiple conceptual identity categories si­mul­ta­neously—­“ black,” “female,” “working class,” as well as the category and real­ity of “black w ­ oman”130—­she is uniquely suited for a type of lit­er­ a­ture that tells multiple stories si­mul­ta­neously, that can be used to extend a critique of society, that can give voice to marginalized ­peoples. The certainty of the blackness that Blanche White knows, experientially (self, ­family, community) and intuitively (“in her bones”), allows her to see and respond to antiblackness; significantly, and si­mul­ta­neously, her fantastical blackness exceeds reactionary responses. As Laymon suggests, Blanche White is unapologetically black, without justification.

2

Second—­Urban Romantica Making Black and Jamaican Love: Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain and Romance-­ified Diaspora Identities With a few exceptions, he was wary of definitions, not b­ ecause he was indecisive or undisciplined, but ­because he believed that bearings w ­ ere more impor­tant than bound­aries. Instead of definitions he preferred guidelines—­ points of departure that gave him the confidence to range across borders without losing his way. —­Colin Channer, Waiting in Vain [Readers] willingly acknowledge that what they enjoy most about romance reading is the opportunity to proj­ect themselves into the story, to become the heroine, and thus to share her surprise and slowly awakening plea­sure at being so closely watched by someone who finds her valuable and worthy of love. —­Janice A. Radway, Reading the Romance The bumper crop of new novels in the black love story genre has proven the obvious—­the existence of a long-­deprived, but only recently discovered market, hungry for works that reflect the black experience in love and life. At a point that the genre appeared to be settling into the formulaic and 65

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predictable, Colin Channer’s debut takes dead aim at satisfying a more discerning appetite. As its warm reception amply demonstrates—­Number 1 on Essence magazine’s Black bestsellers list—­it’s a bulls-­eye. —­“Deborah Brown,” Amazon​.­com review of Waiting in Vain

This chapter asks, What can a romance novel teach us about being black and Ca­rib­bean in diaspora? Can this literary genre offer insight into the pro­cess of becoming loved and loveable as a black and Jamaican person? What can a romance novel contribute to extraliterary discourses of blackness and ethnicity? I tackle t­ hese questions by putting Waiting in Vain’s form—­“urban romantica” (shorthand for an erotic and urban romance novel)—in conversation with its content. Reading Channer’s 1998 novel as urban romantica and mining its Amazon​.­com reviews for descriptions of how the novel was read and received support this philosophical intervention. Reading Waiting in Vain through its form, content, and online evaluations shows how much attention was paid to the act of choosing a black identity, particularly if one lives in contexts that denigrate race and nation. This interpretation of the romance novel sheds light on how loveable raced and ethnic identities might be made and how we might understand their making.1 In the novel, Channer makes (creates) intimate and physical types of love; Waiting in Vain’s online reviews reflect an appreciation for ­these intimacies, but they also claim the novel’s strategies for making a loveable black and ethnically Jamaican self-­in-­diaspora. The content of the novel’s e-­commentaries reveals a power­ful desire to be a sublime self-­in-­diaspora, particularly one that can proj­ect this ideal to o­ thers. Reading Channer’s novel as romance and assessing what Amazon reviews describe as its loveable content demonstrate how Waiting in Vain’s characterizations might be put in ser­vice of a loveable black Jamaicanness-­in-­diaspora—­and might reveal a pro­cess through which this raced and ethnic identity comes into being.

A “New Aesthetic Criteria” Waiting in Vain opens with Adrian J. Heath (known as “Fire”) contemplating the end of his ten-­year relationship with Blanche and anticipating an encounter with the w ­ oman of his dreams, who, we soon learn, is Sylvia Lucas. Lucas remembers l­ittle of her Jamaican parents or childhood, a geo­graph­i­cal alienation that shapes the trajectory of her life u­ ntil she meets Fire. Heath’s move from past lover to present/future lover corresponds with his travels between Jamaica, Cuba, ­England, and the United States, significantly tying national border crossings to his romantic self and associations. Fire and Sylvia’s affair turns on issues of identity, specifically the protagonist’s certainty about his own and his desire that Ms. Lucas reconnect with her Jamaican and creative selves

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and effectively shed experiences accrued and choices made since she left the island nation as a child. Waiting in Vain examines additional themes of masculinity, ethnicity, belonging, and artistic integrity through Fire’s childhood friend Ian Gore. When Fire imagines his self, he describes a Jamaicanness composed of selected characteristics; nevertheless, features on which the protagonist does not dwell—­ particularly elite status and old money—­sustain his identity claims. Though Heath briefly acknowledges that “lucky sperm” (a phrase that signifies the luck of being born into privilege) may partially explain his life’s successes, his is largely “a romantic nationalism [that] smooths over the contradictions posed by [his] elite social status.”2 In addition to his cosmopolitan experiences, Fire’s identity weaves his personal notions of self into perspectives meaningfully drawn from the lives and cultures of Kingston’s poor; Heath also circumvents Jamaican class/ status, color, and race/ethnicity conflicts that dog Jamaican-­born Ian and Sylvia. Ian’s and Sylvia’s experiences of poverty, vio­lence, sexual abuse, and prejudice, encountered within and outside Jamaica, affect their depictions, but Fire’s idealized self rises above the(ir) mire. In short, the protagonist is the standard from which all other characters deviate, and through him, we glean the codes needed to make and live an authentically black, Jamaican self. Noting Channer’s underemphasis of traits that complicate Fire’s claims to an au­then­tic Jamaican self, Faith Smith’s “You Know Y ­ ou’re West Indian If . . .” persuasively critiques the author’s romance-­ification of Jamaican identity. Consider Smith’s interpretation of the following. Channer describes Fire as “a New World hybrid,” but “the final combination—­brown like sun-­fired clay, cheeks high and spread apart; nose narrow with a rounded tip; lips wide and fluted—­was vibrantly Yoruba and Akan.”3 With regard to Fire’s Yoruba and Akan features, Smith explains, “It is not supposed to m ­ atter h ­ ere that the signifiers ‘Yoruba’ and ‘Akan,’ so compatible in Fire’s face, would not make sense as synonyms—­are in fact worlds apart—in West Africa, and for that ­matter in Brooklyn and Brixton. What m ­ atters is that in a Jamaican context they stand for ‘African,’ and therefore for the historical defiance of a national motto of ‘out of many one,’ which can be interpreted as strategically diluting the oppositional character of a population that is 90  ­percent dark-­skinned black and working class.”4 With re­spect to Jamaica’s extraliterary realities and Channer’s depiction of an au­then­tic, racial identity, Fire’s Akan/Yoruba self is imaginable as a black Jamaicanness that does not acknowledge the difficulties of actually being this self. Nevertheless, evaluative narratives available on Amazon draw from the same literary evidence as does Smith but arrive at dif­fer­ent critical conclusions. While Smith persuasively assesses an impossible Jamaicanness ­because it eschews the country’s racial (among other) realities, online commentaries use the same evidence to celebrate Fire as a role model and praise Waiting in Vain for providing the tools from which a loveable black Jamaicanness can be made and disseminated. What is impor­tant, then, is that when unmoored from

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natal foundations and grounded in antiblack contexts, the novel authorizes imaginable truths that make a fantastical—­supremely romantic and exceptionally loveable—­black Jamaicanness pos­si­ble. If Curdella Forbes hopes to “provoke” academics and cultural producers into conversing across the gap between “ ‘the street and the outside’ on the one hand, and the acad­emy on the other,” then critical attention to Waiting in Vain’s online commentaries might just be an answer to her call.5 If Channer’s popu­lar novel embraced “the implicit criteria for ‘true/serious—­lit­er­a­ture’ ” ­because it garnered academics’ attention, then layering my analy­sis through the novel’s form and the content of its evaluative e-­narratives results in “new aesthetic criteria” that intensify what can be learned by reading popu­lar fiction.6 I read each of Waiting in Vain’s 364 Amazon reviews for common threads and references to the novel’s form.7 With Amazon’s over 300 million active customers (2021) and, thus, potential reviewers, the accessibility of Amazon reviews make them critically rich resources for evaluations of Channer’s novel, particularly ones that offer insight into the ways the novel was received.8 As such, ­these e-­commentaries fall ­under the category of what Forbes describes as “cultural texts,” “such as dancehall lyr­ ics, films and even the bodies showcased in beauty contests,” that can “highlight the issues that are shared by academia and the street/outside, but also begin to reinvent the concept of the literary text as they utilize the same or similar strategies that are used to critique scribal texts.”9 Online cultural texts on Channer’s first novel reflect familiarity with its urban romantica form, appreciation for its sex scenes, and admiration for its loveable depictions of blackness and Jamaicanness. ­These, however, are the commentaries’ most reliable truths. Individual posts that allege Jamaican roots or any Ca­rib­bean connection (­later I cite one review sent from an “@cwjamaica​.­com” email address that expresses its appreciation for the novel in Jamaican patois) ­were the most content-­rich; however, ­because virtual book reviews allow—­ perhaps enable—­myriad identity per­for­mances, this chapter finds interpretive usefulness in content analyses of selected reviews. I do not make any claim about the identity of any reviewer, a perspective I manifest by putting scare quotation marks around “names” posted with specific comments.10 B ­ ecause ­these virtual entries are vital to this chapter, I maintain their integrity by maintaining their word, spelling, and punctuation choices; I do, though, add notes to define unfamiliar terms, and convert all caps to small caps for easy reading. Again, content-­ rich evaluations that speak to Waiting in Vain’s form, content, and repre­sen­ta­tions of blackness, Jamaicanness, and/or Ca­rib­be­anness are most central to the interpretations I make ­here. In t­ hese, the following themes are most productive: appreciation for Waiting in Vain’s genre and/or author; cele­bration of the novel’s loveable (and sexy) scenes and characters, particularly Fire and Sylvia; descriptions of Jamaica, Jamaicans, and Jamaicanness; descriptions of the Ca­rib­bean and Ca­rib­be­anness; positive repre­sen­ta­tions of blackness and masculinity,

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particularly black and Jamaican/Ca­rib­bean masculinity; and acknowl­edgment of the novel’s strategies for “making” some form of self: loved, lover, man, Jamaican and/or Ca­rib­bean, black, self-­in-­diaspora. An overwhelming majority of the novel’s 364 Amazon reviews read Fire as an exemplary “us,” an us that is variously defined as “Jamaican,” “Ca­rib­bean,” “West Indian,” “African American,” “Diasporic African,” or “black.” ­These e-­commentaries rarely challenge Channer’s characterization of Fire, but the three that do (in two-­, four-­, and five-­star reviews) indicate that the protagonist was too good to be true or, intriguingly, insecure.11 Waiting in Vain’s few “negative” assessments (one or two stars) describe difficulty with its Jamaican patois and a lack of familiarity with its Jamaican references. The staggering number of sanguine evaluations, as well as the range of racial and national identifications used to describe characters, may reflect the many ways terms are used (e.g., “African American” as a synonym for “black”) or may signal the strength of “a narrative that responds to displacement by offering the possibility of grounding, or certainties that have been lost,” as Smith suggests, or the range in terminology may indicate readers’ inattention to textual details. However, when Waiting in Vain is read as literary romance—­a genre that counts on intimate connections between author, readers, and characters—­the vari­ous national referents suggest that characters (and, more broadly, the novel) serve specific readerly desires.12 In other words, dif­fer­ent readers might proj­ect onto and find specific needs in the novel, needs that address specific desires for specific black or black ethnic ­people. If it is pos­si­ble to imagine bearings and guidelines as more meaningful than borders and definitions, then it is pos­si­ble to re/imagine perceptions of blackness and Jamaicanness (and Ca­rib­be­anness). Definitions of erotic and urban romances (particularly how each conceives reading audience) and interpretations documented in selected e-­commentaries identify parts of the novel best suited to making loveable and ideal selves. Assembling tools available in the novel, online evaluations identify strategic ways to imagine and perform desired—­ and desirable—­selves. Amazon reviews re/imagine Waiting in Vain as a prophylactic against extra­ literary “ailments,” specifically ­those that deny the possibility of an attractive and remarkable black Jamaicanness. E-­commentaries also lay claim to romance’s formalist attributes that instruct readers on how to discern the most loveable features of potential lovers. Ultimately, the content of Waiting in Vain’s Amazon evaluations represent a stage in the pro­cess of fashioning black and diasporic Jamaican identities. This critical pro­cess is fascinating ­because the novel’s form and content, in conversation with its e-­narratives, re/think blackness in diaspora and provide techniques to negotiate dominant antiblack narratives experienced both at home and abroad. From this perspective, an imaginable and loving embrace complicates what blackness means as readers opt to be both black and ethnic.

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Imagining the Diasporic Self Fantastically My approach engages Faith Smith’s “You Know Y ­ ou’re West Indian If . . .” but makes critical use of the novel’s popu­lar literary form and its online cultural texts to realize fantastical ways of seeing “black,” “Jamaican,” and “diaspora.” This chapter, then, interprets pro­cesses through which black p­ eople might imagine and reimagine black selves-­in-­diaspora, as well as how t­ hese selves relate to home and receiving countries. In “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse,” Kim Butler suggests that “the diasporan scholar” move away from an “ethnographic approach” that risks “essentializing ‘diaspora’ as an ethnic label.”13 “Rather than being viewed as an ethnicity,” she stresses, “diaspora may be alternatively consid­ ered as a framework for the study of a specific pro­cess of community formation.”14 If diaspora is conceived as “dynamic social pro­cesses of diasporization,” then the historian determines the following research dimensions to be significant: 1 2 3 4 5

Reasons for, and conditions of, the dispersal Relationship with homeland Relationship with hostlands Interrelationships within communities of the diaspora Comparative studies of dif­fer­ent diasporas15

Butler’s second and forth items are most relevant h ­ ere. With regard to the “relationship with [the] homeland,” Butler argues that the connection may be physical (­actual return[s] to the native land) or i­ magined. With regard to the latter, imaginings may take the form of cultural retentions, attraction to enclaves in the receiving country (social clubs, restaurants, neighborhoods, ­etc.), or the embrace of narratives of “home”: “it is the existence of the issue of return, and the related sense of connection to the homeland, that is intrinsic to the diasporan experience, rather than a specific orientation t­ oward physical return.”16 Importantly, ­these imaginings of the homeland can be understood as active—­and activist; that is, t­ hese ­imagined and imaginable connections determine the diasporan subject’s be­hav­ior and self-­perception. Butler “[cites] a recent example”: “Scholars of the Armenian diaspora have suggested that diasporan status is not necessarily conferred automatically based on the location of a specific community outside the homeland, or on the fact that most of its individual members w ­ ere born in dispersal. Rather, they differentiate between a symbolic, ethnic identity of ‘being’ and a more active, ‘diasporan’ identity requiring involvement. Such a concept of diaspora calls attention to the relationship between identity and active participation in the politics of hostland and homeland.”17 If “symbolic, ethnic identity of ‘being’ ” can be a status automatically conferred by birth outside the homeland, then the certainty about dif­fer­ent definitions of and possibilities for self in sending and receiving countries, and be­hav­iors informed by this certainty, support my use of the words “active” and

Second—­Urban Romantica • 71

“activist.” If merely being away from the homeland is not enough to be diasporic, then some type of work is needed to achieve it. In this context and for my purposes, I determine imaginable connections and critical re/definitions to be types of work that make diasporan identity pos­si­ble. “To some extent,” Butler avers, “diasporan repre­sen­ta­tions of the homeland are part of the proj­ect of constructing diasporan identity, rather than homeland actuality.”18 Some t­ hing happens: p­ eople in diaspora imagine and represent the place they left and know that hostland is not homeland; as a result, they know that they are both diasporic and in dias­ pora. Similarly, ­these ­peoples must do something so that they can know that they are dif­fer­ent from o­ thers in the hostland. Th ­ ese knowledges inform be­hav­iors and make diaspora active . . . ​and real. Butler states, “not only does [the relationship with a homeland] continue, it may also take diverse forms si­mul­ta­neously, from physical return, to emotional attachment as expressed artistically, to the reinterpretation of homeland cultures in diaspora.”19 I find both this diversity and simultaneity persuasive, specifically ­because of Butler’s emphasis on the role that artistic expression and reinterpretations—in other words, imaginings, repre­sen­ta­tions, creative narrations—­play in theorizing diaspora. This complex, the simultaneous existence of ­imagined, imaginable, reinterpreted, and/or physical relations with homelands, defines a “diasporan consciousness,” one that recognizes “the historical and cultural connection to the homeland, [and] a simultaneous recognition of the unique community existing between members of the diasporan group.”20 One becomes conscious of self as a diasporan subject through an ­imagined, represented, and (perhaps) physical relationship to homeland; at the same time, this subject knows self as diasporan b­ ecause peers are known. Knowing ­these t­ hings, I would also argue that the diasporan subject knows peers in dif­f er­ent diasporas as well as the long-­term inhabitants of the host country. Understanding self in diaspora, self as part of a diaspora and in relation to ­others in and out of diasporas, defines the “psychosocial real­ity of diaspora.”21 I have highlighted Butler’s exploration of tenets key to theorizing diaspora. Taking from her discussion of diasporan subjects’ ­imagined relationships to homeland and their knowledge of and relationships with their peers and o­ thers while in the hostland, I am drawn to how affective truths manifest in how diaspora is theorized, particularly the ways that lit­er­a­ture and literary studies intervene in ­these often historical and so­cio­log­i­cal frameworks.22 I extend and apply this assessment of diaspora, specifically a Jamaican/Ca­rib­bean diaspora, into a critically undisciplined perspective on blackness, Jamaicanness, and romance novels.23 Chenjerai Kumanyika, cohost of Scene on Radio’s “Seeing White” podcast series, offers an intriguing—­and useful—­conceptualization of this kind of critical method. He says, “I’m proud of blackness but I’ve come to see it less as my, you know, an identity, and more as, like, a technology. . . . ​It’s kind of a weird word, but I see it as a technology b­ ecause I see blackness as not something that is hardwired into our biology, that just determines who we are. Instead it’s

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something that we use. And I have to think about it like that ­because I have to recognize the way that it can also be used against us.”24 As Kumanyika expresses it, blackness is an instrument; it can, therefore, make. And hands that hold the tool determine what blackness makes and can make. The dominance of the United States dramatically influences how we understand blackness, not only in the Amer­i­cas but globally (remember Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic). However, with global movements of ­people being so much a part of our twenty-­ first-­century real­ity, quotidian definitions of blackness have expanded ­because of flows of immigrants of African descent. “American racism,” Milton Vickerman wrote in 2001, “has created and thrived on a uniform—­ a lmost monolithic—­view of ­people of African ancestry.”25 Several years ­later, Jill M. Humphries made a similar claim: “To be black can no longer be simply equated with a single racial/ethnic group—­A frican American. Rather, African immigrants . . . ​, Afro-­Caribbean immigrants . . . ​, and black Latinos . . . ​bring dif­fer­ ent understandings and interpretations of what it means to be black.”26 Vickerman’s so­cio­log­i­cal and Humphries’s public administration disciplinary orientations necessitate a re/reading of Fire Heath’s understanding of his black self and his black homeland: it is, decidedly, not African American: Jamaica, despite its motto, “Out of many, one ­people,” was a black country, and he was a black man, and ­there, on that island, no m ­ atter how hard ­things ­were at times, he waited for scraps at no one’s ­table. He was no one’s scapegoat. No man’s Sambo. No one’s recurring nightmare. And ­people ­there did not whisper the word white in conversation, ­because they know that in 1833 and 1865 and many times before that and since, the black ­people of Jamaica have risen up and spilled white blood, licked it off their fin­gers, swallowed it, burped, and said, “No prob­lem.”27

The way of seeing primed by Vickerman’s and Humphries’s perspectives not only distinguish Fire’s blackness as Jamaican; the preceding quotation suggests that it is ethnically Jamaican ­because it is not a ste­reo­typed African American. His not-­ Jamaican blackness is named (Sambo), scapegoated, cowed by, and subjected to an oppressive whiteness. His Jamaican blackness, however, is active b­ ecause none of ­these descriptors apply. And the claim on blackness that Jamaican Fire makes is not only skewed by its failure to acknowledge how Jamaica’s histories of colonialism and slavery, and class, influence his racial imaginings; it also fails to see Ian’s Indian and Sylvia’s mixed-­race claim to the Ca­rib­bean country (more on ­these points shortly). Nevertheless, the chaotic discourse of blackness in diaspora, and Channer’s romance-­ified black Jamaicanness, must consider how and why Waiting in Vain’s supportive reviews love Fire’s ability to self-­create. Fi­nally, I blend a formalist analy­sis of romance novels with theories about diaspora and blackness to interpret Channer’s novel and its Amazon evaluations.

Second—­Urban Romantica • 73

Romance lit­er­a­ture, in documenting how characters find and fight for love, thrives in an affective register. Generally speaking, this kind of fiction depicts heterosexual “individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work.” It has an “emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending” where “lovers who risk and strug­gle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.”28 Romances frequently “reward characters who are good p­ eople and penalize ­those who are evil”; also, “a ­couple who fights for and believes in their relationship ­will likely be rewarded with unconditional love.”29 Both the conflict and the climax of the novel should be directly related to the core theme of developing a romantic relationship, although the novel can also contain subplots that do not specifically relate to the main characters’ romantic love. Nuance in the form’s definition suggests a flexibility that allows writers to shape and reshape their creations to suit myriad intentions. Writers can avail themselves of the benefits of the genre (established, identifiable audiences and distribution networks) while flexing specific writerly intentions. Romance lit­er­a­ture is also extremely reader-­oriented; as such, publishers and writers rely heavi­ly on research and marketing to identify and then give readers what they want, and in packages readers appreciate.30 Thus, romance fiction aims to fulfill busy readers’ wants: a maximum of relaxation, fantasy, and escape.31 The Smithton ­women who w ­ ere subjects of Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance qualified the preceding definitions by asserting specific interests and concerns.32 ­These readers ­were adamant that “to qualify as romance, the story must chronicle not merely the events of a courtship but what it feels like to be the object of one.”33 Thus, some of ­these ­women readers ­imagined themselves not only as heroines but specifically as heroines who successfully negotiated familiar relationship difficulties.34 “However,” Radway continues, “all of the ­women I spoke to, regardless of their taste in narratives, admitted that they want to identify with the heroine as she attempts to comprehend, anticipate, and deal with the ambiguous attentions of a man who inevitably cannot understand her feelings at all.”35 The attraction of familiar romantic narratives (some readers—­ though not the Smithton readers—­interpret this familiarity as “formulaic”) may also signal dif­fer­ent emotional needs: “Although romances are technically novels ­because each purports to tell a ‘new’ story of unfamiliar characters and as-­yet uncompleted events, in fact, they all retell a single tale whose final outcome their readers always already know.”36 The surveys and interview questions that Radway used affirmed Smithton readers’ affinity for happy endings as well as their escapist desires. The researcher questioned interview subjects about precisely what they meant by “escape” and teased out the “implications of the word . . . ​[by focusing on] its reference to conditions left ­behind and its intentional projection of a utopian f­ uture.”37 The specific romances ­these ­women read sustained them ­because they expressed desires to behold a heroine who was loved by “a man who is strong and masculine, but

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equally capable of unusual tenderness, gentleness, and concern for her plea­sure.”38 ­These readers’ “romantic fantasy is therefore not a fantasy about discovering a uniquely in­ter­est­ing life partner, but a ritual wish to be cared for, loved, and vali­ dated in a par­tic­u­lar way.”39 Radway’s Reading the Romance thoroughly documents what a specific group of romance readers “got” from reading selected romance novels. If we look at other types of romance fiction, Radway’s conclusions suggest, we might discern similar but also unique concerns of readers of t­ hese narratives, as well as the uses to which readers put them. Recent debates among readers, writers, and critics have marked an evolution in what counts as romance lit­er­a­ture. The genre now depicts same-­sex relationships, ambivalent endings, subgenres (paranormal romance, historical romance, science fiction romance, ­etc.), and “subplots that do not specifically relate to the main characters’ romantic love.”40 ­These debates have specifically drawn attention to gender and racial/ethnic diversity among romance fiction’s readership and, therefore, the themes and characters ­these par­ tic­u­lar audiences find attractive.41 For example, ­women of color might seek heroines who share their racial and/or ethnic identities, and men read and write romance fiction (though ­there is ­little research on the desires of male romance readers).42 Nevertheless, what remains most constant, even when the definition of this popu­lar genre evolves, is the form’s investment in readers’ wants: what­ ever gender expression, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, romance readers want to feel good about romantic love, be loved and appreciated by a lover, revel in provocative (or chaste) depictions of physical intimacies, study features that define an ideal lover, and delight in lessons available in choice novels. A romance writer’s language and style choices are vehicles through which readers’ psychological needs can be fulfilled.43 Radway writes, “Any cursory glance at a popu­lar romance reveals that the form uses few linguistic techniques capable of thwarting a reader’s effort to ‘discover’ immediately the sense of the story’s words. The con­temporary romance’s prose is dominated by cliché, ­simple vocabulary, standard syntax, and the most common techniques associated with the nineteenth-­century realist novel. Quick reader comprehension is therefore made pos­si­ble by the resolute familiarity of the romance’s language.”44 From this perspective, symbolic language and other intricate writerly techniques would prob­ably interfere with readers’ connection to a romance novel’s characters and themes. Thus, writers use proven techniques to engage readers’ intimate desires for love. “Erotic romance” and/or “urban romance” best describe Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain. The former has “strong sexual content, . . . ​use[s] more frank language, . . . ​[and] include[s] more sex scenes, often focusing more on the sex act rather [than] more traditional love scene[s].”45 “Urban romance” is more loosely defined, a term most often applied to romances written by blacks and/or works that feature black characters and urban settings. Channer’s novel includes diasporic black settings, and though it includes scenes of masturbation, vaginal and

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anal sex, phone sex, veiled references to same-­sex loving, and lessons on sexual positions, the author tweaks Waiting in Vain’s urban romantica form by featuring an idealized male protagonist (one so attractive that his love interest practically occupies a supporting role) and subplots that explore physical and sexual vio­lence, materialism, cosmopolitanism, and the seedy side of New York’s art scene. The novel also speaks to black, male, female, Jamaican, Ca­rib­bean, and young professional audiences through Channer’s repre­sen­ta­tions of experiences of young, black professionals, familiar Ca­rib­bean diasporic routes and musical flows, as well as Jamaican languages, styles, foods, and cultures.46 The author’s appeal to young, black professionals includes detailed descriptions of travel, education, trendy clothes, designer name-­dropping, artists, writers, and examples of cosmopolitanism that resonate with this age/status group.47 It is pos­si­ble that Channer’s choice of a male protagonist and decision to play with form attracted the number of virtual reviews purportedly written by men, but the author himself may have played a role in this. In an interview, Channer said he hoped to improve relationships between ­women and men by putting them in conversation: “Hopefully, ­people w ­ ill find something useful in Waiting in Vain. I think ­women should buy it for their boyfriends.”48 Presumably, once ­women shared the novel with their male partners, ­couples could improve their relationships by putting its most engaging parts into practice. But for what­ever reason, and judging by the content of the reviews as well as the novel, Waiting in Vain was read by men, ­women, diasporic black, and diasporic Ca­rib­bean readers (among ­others). This range surely affirms the existence of a robust audience for romance fiction with diasporic black content.49 The content of Waiting in Vain’s virtual evaluations demonstrate the desire for “improved” repre­sen­ta­tions of Jamaica as well as positive depictions of black men, characterizations that could be used to strengthen readers’ claims to ­these identities. The interpretive milieu created by Amazon reviews distinguishes this use of the novel, so much so that Fire’s ability or inability to “range across borders without losing his way” may not be as significant as readers’ conviction that his kind of “ranging” is pos­si­ble. If e-­comments reflect what Radway observes as a “ritual wish to be cared for, loved, and validated in a par­tic­u­lar way,” the loving embrace of a male character who claims an unambiguously black and Jamaican self while moving across multiple borders dramatically upends narratives that denigrate blackness and Jamaicanness in diaspora.

Romancing a Black, Jamaican Self Waiting in Vain’s e-­commentaries reflect the kind of subjectivity and agency Fire embodies and demonstrates in his courtship with Sylvia. Sampling them, therefore, helps us understand “the dynamic social pro­cesses of diasporization from which . . . ​groups are created.”50 I am specifically interested in expressions of identity that must be pre­sent in order for “the physical real­ity of dispersal [to be

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recognized as] the psychosocial real­ity of diaspora.”51 I pay par­tic­u­lar attention to loving repre­sen­ta­tions of blackness and Jamaicanness emphatically depicted in Waiting in Vain’s e-­commentaries, ones that exemplify the pos­si­ble uses to which such identifications might be put. The edicts of the “real world” can be contradictory, so t­ hose who exist in it must be skilled at reading the scene and responding accordingly. As a result, ­those who succeed in a receiving country can be seen as larger than life, or romance-­ified. In light of how Waiting in Vain’s online book reviews respond to Channer’s literary form and characterizations, e-­claims about the novel’s hyperbolized features mea­sure imaginable truths about and strategies for identity formation in diaspora. In celebrating the novel’s form and romance-­ified black Jamaicanness, commentaries imagine and advocate for notions of race and nation that are ethnically unique and not defined by dominant narratives. Since romance lit­er­a­ture’s fantasy, escapism, and depictions of ideal love and lovers speak to readers’ psychic and emotional needs, Waiting in Vain–­as–­romance indicates how to achieve t­ hese and more by educating readers on how to recognize and make an unambiguously black, assertively Jamaican self that deliberately stands in its own dignity. Waiting in Vain begins with the protagonist pulling away from Blanche and anticipating Sylvia. Importantly, this transition connects Fire’s romantic moves to his physical and geographic ones ­because they occur in and between the prologue and chapter 1. The speed of this shift is key to establishing the intimate connection between geographies and love: “It was eleven [a.m.]. Air Jamaica was leaving at three; and they w ­ ere always on time. [Heath] would be in New York at seven.”52 Waiting in Vain thus plots the routes between finding/making love and being able to move—by physical, telephonic, and epistolary means—­across borders: Fire and Sylvia find each other and romance in and between Kingston, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and London. Fire personally embodies ­these romantic and physical migrations: he is, as previously noted, a “New World hybrid” who is si­mul­ta­neously and “vibrantly Yoruba and Akan.” The ge­ne­tic/geo­graph­i­cal migrations that make up Fire’s “biological” self reflect many of the historical and social realities of the Ca­rib­bean region but do not include expressions of the power, vio­lences, displacements, and po­liti­cal and social complications inherent in them. However, rather than a passive recipient of his vari­ous ge­ne­tic and geographic flows, Fire actively chooses who he is—­black and Jamaican—­despite and/ or ­because of his mixtures. Back in Jamaica and in conversation with best friend, Ian, Fire documents his choice: “I ­can’t tell you what to do, Ian, but for me Jamaica is the place. I mean I miss London y’know, but when I was ­there I missed Jamaica. And when the urge take me now, I jump on a plane and go where I feel like go. But this is my base, Ian. This is where I’m rooted. I’m Jamaican, Ian. Yardie to de bloodclaat core. I love stout more than wine. I love cricket more than baseball. I love rice more than pasta. And I love Bob Marley more than Beethoven or Count Basie.”53 By re/telling his identity as a narrative of black Jamaicanness, Fire produces and lives a self that resonates loudly in Amazon

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entries. And Heath’s identity narrative also favorably compares to Stuart Hall’s description of identity formation. In response to Frantz Fanon’s observation that “colonization . . . ​turns to the past of oppressed ­people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it,” Hall opines that cultural identity is a production, composed not from “an identity grounded in the archaeology, but [from one grounded] in the re-­telling of the past.”54 Examples of this transdisciplinary (creative writing/psychological/cultural studies) pro­cess of formation are quite vis­i­ble in Waiting in Vain’s virtual reviews. What appears attractive in ­these posts is the certainty of Fire’s identity claims b­ ecause, if truth be told, Channer might have used the same examples to declare Fire’s British or Anglophone Ca­rib­bean (pick almost any country) identity since preferences for stout, cricket, rice, or Bob Marley do not exclusively signify Jamaicanness. Nonetheless, this character is black and Jamaican ­because he says and believes and behaves as if he is, and a majority of the 364 online commentaries accept, if not Fire’s composed self, then the pro­ cess through which he composes it, not to mention ranges of possibilities that his pro­cess makes real. Channer’s novel also enacts Fire’s formation pro­cess by charting his influence on Sylvia, in all her facets: the self ­shaped by her personal history, her national self, and her ­woman self. The female protagonist holds tight to financial security (represented by her lover Lewis) and self-­sufficiency, fearful of what she believes is the penniless and unpredictable love that Fire represents. It is Fire who identifies Sylvia as Jamaican,55 and it is he who allows her to admit a calculated, though unexamined, estrangement from ­others: Her life to this point had been a ­matter of avoiding history; she ­didn’t ask ­people about their lives ­because she ­didn’t want them to ask about hers in turn. So most of her involvements, both romantic and platonic, had been rooted in shallow earth. But with Fire she was feeling wet ground beneath her, layers of silt brought down from the hills of her fore-­parents and laid down over thousands of years in a cycle of flooding and retreat, a pulling away that had left b­ ehind a trea­sure of minerals to nourish her like a tree. Her body was feeling damp now, from sweat, humidity, and the sap on the tip of her bud.56

And in a most provocative scene, Fire underscores damage in Sylvia’s child/ woman/sexual self, and he schools her—­and readers—on how she can come to terms with each aspect: A cab came. They got inside, she ahead of him ­because he held the door. And they began to snuggle before the driver had put the Chevy in gear, he leaning against a door, almost horizontally, and she on top of him, sighing as his hand skimmed over her wavy hair, calming her soul like a breeze. “Is this what it should feel like?” she mumbled, peeling back his T-­shirt like a foreskin. As she nuzzled his chest, he pinched a nipple between two fin­gers

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and began to suckle her, rocking her, steadying her as the cab bounced out of potholes and swerved to avoid collisions, holding her both hard and soft.57

­ ese moments are epiphanic in that they recognize flaws in Sylvia’s character, Th wounds in need of the sort of healing that Fire can supply. The ways that the male hero intuits that she is from the Anglophone Ca­rib­bean, that he personifies intimate connections to another and to a place, and that his intimate flows peak in a scene that blends sexual, female-­and-­male, and parent-­and-­child intimacies manifest the uses to which Fire’s (and the novel’s) fantastical blackness can be put. Thus, t­ hese scenes are instructive ­because they practically map how an individual can be a tool through which another achieves black and Jamaican self-­awareness.

Fantastical Blackness, Virtually Speaking . . . If “the moment that makes Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain pos­si­ble is marked by the anx­i­eties of a global Ca­rib­bean community, located in Brooklyn, Bridgetown, Brixton and other spaces,” and if “­these anx­i­eties are about the power of a single nation-­space to define itself in relation to other spaces,” the novel’s online evaluations are remarkably unanxious about Fire’s ability to quantify and “live” his black and Jamaican self, wherever and with whomever he chooses.58 A review attributed to a “Suzzanne Scott” is a case in point: “waiting in vain” is g ­ oing into its sixth week as #1 on the jamaican bestsellers list and outlets just c ­ an’t seem to keep channer’s novel on the shelves! “Waiting In Vain’s” success in Jamaica has no doubt been due to Channer’s keen insights into both the male and female psyche, to his excellent artistry, to the incredible sex, and to the sheer excitement of the novel’s reggae beat. And it is oooooohhhhh soooooooo Jamaican . . . ​incorporating all the qualities of the best Jamaican art . . . ​yet with im­mense universal appeal. Jamaicans have claimed “Waiting In Vain” just as they have claimed Channer himself who won the hearts of all who heard him on the radio and of all who ­were priviledged [sic] to meet him.59

This review begins by noting, “with 180 reviews to date submitting an average rating of 5 stars, ­there seems very ­little I can add to recommend Channer’s ‘Waiting In Vain’ that h ­ asn’t already been said by his very many fans.”60 But b­ ecause the preceding quotation emphasizes the narrative’s Jamaicanness and Jamaicans’ embrace of it and its author, I presume that ­these emphases are what make this evaluation worth making. Thus, “Suzzanne Scott’s” assessment wrests Channer’s novel from t­ hose 180 reviews that do not demonstrate an awareness of the country’s significance to the novel. In this review, t­here is l­ittle ambiguity about

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Channer’s—or his novel’s—­Jamaicanness: it unassailably declares its reggae beat, art, and charisma as Jamaican. One might challenge the ste­reo­t ypes that this e-­commentary evokes; however, it does more than emphasize the best of Jamaica/ Jamaicans (signaled by its use of capitalization) and avoid any unseemly aspects. The assurance of its declarations signals an investment in re/presenting Jamaicans as “vibrant and absolutely unforgettable h ­ uman being[s].”61 The tone and vibe of this virtual review appears to respond to scenes such as this: “Ian had forgotten about the beauty of the drive. And as the salt spray tickled the hair on his arms, and the sea breeze licked his sun-­warmed skin, he was overwhelmed by the sense of space and freedom, and felt the urge to cry. On his left was Kingston harbor, gray ­water brushed into waves by doting breezes. On his right, undulating sand dunes shimmered against each other like sea-­wet nudes arranged for the lens of a dirty magazine.”62 Ian, from and of this country though abroad for just over a de­cade, is part of it, his body and the natu­ral landscape intimately connected. Perhaps, as the “Suzzanne Scott” post recognizes, identities can be made through connections to national landscapes, as the best (Jamaican) m ­ usic and art are made. Online evaluations that consider the romantic form among the novel’s most winning features purposefully document Waiting in Vain’s lessons. ­These types of posts claim that the novel offers instructions on how one can be a better lover. An entry written by an anonymous fan declares its love of the book’s genre: waiting in vain captures the essence of romance. Colin takes the reader on a journey filled with hope and fulfillment of ones own passion. Fire is a sensual, compassionate and talented black man, spiritually rooted to his own self worth who loves deeply from his soul. I could not get enough of the relationship between Fire and Sylvia and am waiting in vain for a continuation of their lives together. Congratulations Mr. Channer, your first book is truly a success story of ­great magnitude. I hope you continue to write with such ­great clarity of the ­human nature to love unconditionally.63

Another anonymous review, posted from Kingston, Jamaica, continues in this formalist vein. This entry asserts that the novel “has wide appeal. Passionate. Erotic. A modern-­day love story rooted in real­ity. Captures the imagination of ­those who dare to dream. Compelling. Engrossing. An exploration of the h ­ uman psyche, . . . ​the complexities of relationships pitted against the crucial essence of self awareness. Entertaining. Delighful [sic]. Makes good reading. A choice antidote for de-­stressing.”64 “RoniLynn” posts a five-­star review from Birmingham, Alabama, on 30 November 1999: “I’d just like to thank Colin Channer for giving me hope in knowing that men can be sensitive and that they do have feelings and that they do, and can, want to have a meaningful relationship with one

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­ oman. . . . ​I found myself wanting to find a man like that for myself. Although w Fire was fictional I completed that book knowing that t­ here is someone out t­ here with at least a few of his characteristics.”65 Each of the preceding quotations touches on aspects of Waiting in Vain’s form, capturing its most familiar conventions. ­These reviews celebrate Fire as an ideal lover and assess the novel’s romantic world as one that can be entered and, importantly, exited with tools to build better extraliterary worlds. “RoniLynn’s” comments are particularly meaningful in that they characterize the relative nature of the romantic “escape,” revealing a certainty that the reader ­will meet a man like Fire outside the novel’s pages. “RoniLynn’s” post proclaims that Waiting in Vain is a how-to manual that can be consulted to remake—­rather than to flee—­ real­ity. Thus, Channer’s novel includes techniques that can be applied to readers’ extraliterary lives. This set of comments embraces the novel’s characters as romantic ideals but also as yardsticks against which self and lovers can be mea­ sured. Prob­ably referencing a scene that proj­ects an ideal romantic connection, a review by “Makeeta,” writing from Portland, Oregon, declares, “I hate to say it, but I felt like a character in each scene. When it came to Fire, and Slyvia [sic], I took turns of who I would be at that time, and it was exciting.”66 This comment speaks of an interchangeable quality of Fire and Sylvia’s connection. They are not exactly the same but rather an ideal(ized) complementarity. “One after­ noon,” Fire says, “we strolled the Brooklyn Promenade and talked and talked and we covered so may ­things, just moving together, man, like athletes out on a Sunday run. Th ­ ere was this immediate understanding that nobody was trying to outrun anybody and the pace picked up and slowed down with the clear sense that nobody’s brain would be tired or that no one was being held back.”67 Among the myriad reasons that lovers attract each other, the male lead’s passion about this harmony inspires. And if Fire teaches us whom to love sublimely and how to love realistically, then his—­and the novel’s—­love lessons cannot be ­limited to physical acts of love. Since Jamaica figures so prominently in Waiting in Vain, discernable lessons on how to romance-­ify the country and, si­mul­ta­neously, how to put this romance-­i fication in ser­vice of a made and loveable Jamaicanness are certainly among its available curricula. Word about the novel appears to have spread, and more commentaries remarked on its depiction of Jamaica and its diaspora. Most notably, Waiting in Vain’s descriptions of Jamaican patois and foods, as well as familiar local and diasporic locations, ­factor into the positive assessments. “Makeeta” says, “the island setting was terrific, I am from Trini, and loved the description of places, and characters that Fire would come across while in Jamaica.”68 The review by “Akelia Bennett” concurs when it says, “Being a Jamaican i was always interested in books that depicted some form of Jamaican culture. This book gave a ­little of dif­fer­ent worlds, it showed some aspect of life in the UK, New York and of course Jamaica.”69 The e-­commentary attributed to “Denis T.,” from Tacoma, Washington, echoes the previous statement, noting,

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“Waiting in Vain” exposes the reader in the vari­ous parts of life in Jamaica. Having lived in Jamaica for a short time and luckily part of the culture in Canada h ­ ere are some of the ­things that had an almost emotional effect on me: The patois, the food descriptions, the mannerisms and details of the vari­ous cultures that the novel swiftly passes through. It took me back to Jamaica and re-­energized all the good ­things about being ­there. The day to day expressions used by every­one, the food descriptions, the sensuality and the caring between the broad Jamaican ­family.70

The “Denis T.” review gestures t­ oward a familiar, if not common, identity for Jamaicans at home and abroad by referencing expressions “used by every­one” and the caring innate to “the broad Jamaican ­family.” “Makeeta’s” comments, affirming Jamaican places and characters through a self-­proclaimed “Trini” lens, allude to pan-­Caribbean possibilities for the novel’s loves. Evaluations posted by “Makeeta,” “A. Bennett,” and “Denis T.” also derive positive and intimate associations from the book’s geographic descriptions. Yet ­these enthusiastic responses to resonances in the novel are not isolated. Other reviews focus on Waiting in Vain’s fictionalized Jamaica and, allegedly speaking from informed positions, congratulate Channer for challenging per­sis­tent ste­reo­types about the country and its ­people. An anonymously written 20 September 1999 post asserts that Waiting in Vain is “a must read for west indians and african-­americans” and indicates, “For Jamaicans especially, our culture is beautifully displayed not in the kind of touristic, white sand beaches, all-­inclusive resorts only kind of way, but in the true reggae vibe which transcends through our p­ eople.”71 This same post is unconflicted about recommending this fictionalized “nontourist” Jamaica to African Americans (see this review’s title) as well as the novel’s protagonist to black men (referenced without nation): “The character Fire is a sensitive, no nonsense, knows what he is about kind of guy, who portrays a magnificent lover. Black men are portrayed in a very positive light and Fire is an example of the Man of the Millennium.”72 This entry describes a specific Jamaica (one distinct from the touristy kind), speaks to West Indians and African Americans as well as Jamaicans, and describes a black masculinity unrestricted by place, to persuade ­others of the novel’s attractions. The review attempts to unite blackness across national borders and gender categories (Jamaican, West Indian, African American, male) without acknowledging experiences that prohibit easy associations. This “Jamaican’s” e-­comment invokes Jamaican/West Indian/ black/male identities awkwardly (a nonste­reo­typical Jamaica celebrated by referencing its ste­reo­t ypical “true reggae vibe”), but the review reveals a deliberate se­lection pro­cess. By picking attractive—­perhaps even lavish—­parts of the novel, this anonymous review assem­bles and pre­sents an entirely admirable Jamaican package for all and sundry. In piecing together this take on the novel, “A Customer’s” evaluation exhibits a pro­cess that ends in a well-­made self.

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Not only is it impor­tant that the previous assessments value Waiting in Vain’s repre­sen­ta­tion of Jamaica, positively reflecting vari­ous Ca­rib­bean and black diasporas as well as black masculinity, but their acknowl­edgment of Channer’s nonste­reo­typical, nontourist vision appears to contribute to knowledgeable readers’ passionate fantasies. Such evaluations exhibit familiarity with many t­ hings Jamaican, aspirations for tools to fashion better selves, and hopes for black and Jamaican features that can be claimed and outwardly projected. Judging from the overwhelmingly positive tone of the novel’s three-­hundred-­ plus evaluations on Amazon, Waiting in Vain’s reviews embrace the ways Fire imagines himself and his Jamaica. Posts that revel in Channer’s depictions are ­those in which identifications as Jamaican, Ca­rib­bean, and/or black appear; t­ hese entries also remark on the author’s sublime rendering of the island nation’s imaginative, artistic, and literary truths. In ­these kinds of reviews, it is evident that identities, rather than being determined solely by biology, society, and culture, can be selectively made, and made well, as Fire is made. In some virtual appraisals, this pro­cess of making and performing a loveable Jamaican self, nation, and love begins with the author. Critics have established that romance readers believe they share a connection with romance writers, a relationship sustained through a purportedly shared language.73 The familiar ways that some commentaries address Channer-­ the-­author suggest a comfortable bond. Knowledges contained in proauthor e-­reviews correlate what Channer “knows” to what Fire knows about loving and about self. It is from this author-­reader-­author “cycle of knowing” that desires triggered by the novel are most vis­i­ble. As the aforementioned Amazon reviews indicate, some of what triggers familiarity with Channer can be attributed to the recognition of loveable role models and locations. The following entries place Colin Channer in this context. A post written by “SeKaRa” of Bridgetown, Barbados (5 August  2004), invokes Waiting in Vain’s author quite specifically in its evaluation of his novel: Colin Channer is a son of Ca­rib­bean soil, a single soul merely descendant of ­those slaves who chose life over suicide throughout the triangular slave trade. Like most of us Afrikan descendants he has an innate passion for his work, a mini-­universe that channels himself into beautiful lyr­ics. He is a lyrical god to ­those who understand where his passion resides and the fact that its source is infinite, his contributions are sure to continue to colour and shape our apetitie for good writing. Ode to Colin Channer, for writing Waiting in Vain was his first crime against mediocrity in modern romance fiction, setting the standards for his ­brothers and ­sisters in the Ca­rib­bean and all Diaspora.74

Through an expressed knowledge of histories of transatlantic slavery and ideas reflective of a type of Negritude (blacks’ “innate passion for [their] work”),

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“SeKaRa” makes a “Colin Channer” out of a confident knowledge that the writer is connected to both. This evaluation gathers “SeKaRa,” “SeKaRa’s” i­ magined “Channer,” and, perhaps, the real Channer as well as all ­those who “understand where [the author’s] passion resides” as progeny of an uncommon “Ca­rib­bean soil,” both in the region and in “all Diaspora.” The “SeKaRa” review claims Wait­ ing in Vain’s creator as part of a diasporic African community and weds this communal experience to the genre of romance fiction. In this evaluation, an African-­based and Caribbean-­informed “passion” imbues the novel’s form (“his first crime against mediocrity in modern romance fiction”) as well as its author (“he is a lyrical god”), configuring ­these characteristics into a model for a decidedly black and diasporic literary ­future. Interestingly, “SeKaRa’s” claim on the author can be seen in other commentaries. And if they do not explic­itly identify with the writer, they embrace the characters he created in similar ways. An entry attributed to a “Michelle,” Jamaica born but, as of 21 October 2002, living in Ontario, Canada, avers, “Never have I ever read a book that I felt a part of. It was so real that I d­ idn’t have to put myself in character to enjoy and feel the complete essence of it.”75 Clearly, this commentary demonstrates an embrace of the novel’s “maximum real­ity” (the title of the review) that allows the reader to step into it effortlessly. “Amazon Customer,” a self-­proclaimed Jamaican, also finds the novel “real”: this entry deems it “a realistic look at the love journey and a very real rendition of life in Jamaica and the Jamaican hang ups without any form of under­lying cynicism.”76 Significantly, this comment defines “real” as “nontourist,” a definition that adds a layer to “Michelle’s” personal emphasis and “SeKaRa’s” historical and racial ones. Regardless of the specific orientation, each of ­these evaluations speaks to how Channer is and how he writes Jamaica and Jamaicans and suggests that author and novel validate aspects of extraliterary selves, experiences, and perspectives. “Chantal Miller” (claiming residence in Charlestown, Saint Kitts and Nevis) vows that Waiting in Vain literally changed “her” life. To put it plainly, “Chantal Miller” pronounces that a new self was made by using the novel’s “love resources”: Never have I read a book so touching and life changing. I have been profoundly affected. Mr. Channer has managed somehow to reach into the depths of his characters souls and make them so real that I now find myself looking and thinking that I too deserve a “Fire.” ­A fter all Sylvia seems to be not only myself, but several of my friends as well. I felt truly honored as a West Indian to find a novel that for once shows that we are a fiercely artistic, intelligent, well travelled and multi-­faceted ­people. I have read this book Three times and each time I read e­ very single word, page and Chapter. This book ­will Entertain and Educate. . . . ​I went out and bought John Updikes “Brasil” and Rita Doves “Through the Ivory Gates” ­because of this book . . . ​what more can I say???77

84 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

The evaluation describes using the novel to revive a self who existed pre–­Waiting in Vain. ­A fter reading the novel, “Chantal Miller” reveals/revels in a new, Sylvia-­ like self: one who deserves a par­tic­u­lar kind of love and lover. This pronouncement also identifies the review as written by one of a “fiercely artistic, intelligent, well travelled and multi-­faceted p­ eople,” a group whose superior qualities apparently go unrecognized. “Chantal Miller’s” assessment ties a quality ­woman (one who deserves a Fire) to an exemplary West Indian (one whose notable traits deserve positive attention); to put it another way, this online entry ties romantic form to thematic content. Fi­nally, though the “Chantal Miller” review claims Saint Kitts and Nevis as “home,” it declares a “West Indianness” that represents an extranational diaspora community. The Amazon review written by “Mikie Bennett” includes an “@cwjamaica​ .­com” email address and offers a critique that complements “Chantal Miller’s.” “Mikie Bennett” declares, This book dares to challenge the sterio typical Ca­rib­bean male female relationships and the usual setting for such a story. The language is exciting and seasoned with lots of Jamaican scotch bonnet peppers, skellions78 and erotic and aphrodisiac herbs. To a love of reggae the book seems to be set to a sountrack of vintage reggae conjuring up images of latenight rub-­a dub dances and girls girating and inviting sexual advances. The main character of the book Fire comes across as the new hero for the Jamaican male an educated sex symbol who is as comfortable on a lecture tour as he is on a footballfield or at a stage show with The cool ruler Gregory Isacs. I think this is a must read for ­every Ca­rib­bean male especially Jamaicans and I give it Nuff Bigg Ups. Mikie Bennett at mikeben@cwjamaica​.­com79

Although research on male readers of romance fiction is thin, ­these comments suggest that male romance readers, similar to their female counter­parts, want to read about an admirable character.80 In the call for specifically Jamaican men to read the novel, the “Mikie Bennett” review combines gender and national identities a bit differently than in the “Chantal Miller” post (“Chantal Miller” did not explic­itly represent “Sylvia” as Ca­rib­bean) but, seemingly, for similar purpose. The gist of both comments is that Waiting in Vain contains truths that, if embraced, w ­ ill lead to a “loveable” West Indianness and an exemplary Jamaican maleness, both characterized by diverse knowledges, nuance, and cosmopolitanism. Th ­ ese two appraisals articulate improvement in individual, “real” lives derived from the consumption of the personas Channer depicts in his novel. By acknowledging what they believe to be characters’ ideal traits, the “Chantal Miller” and “Mikie Bennett” reviews list ones that travel well. That is, the characteristics each describes technically are not unique to any racial or national group; without any apparent tension, however, both posts attach them to Jamaica/the Ca­rib­bean.

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Read as a collective, virtual cultural texts demonstrate how Waiting in Vain is strategically put in ser­vice of an admirable and extraliterary black and national self. Each evaluation features aspects of the novel that appeal to perceptions of quality men and w ­ omen, lovers, blacks, Jamaicans, and so on, without regard to ­whether the proposed compositions can withstand close scrutiny. Th ­ ese commentaries also forge connections between the novel’s romantic features and its thematic ones, venerating the volume’s lovers and romance-­ified Jamaicans and Jamaica. Fi­nally, t­ hese posts reveal specific lessons learned, ones that might help readers not only improve their romantic selves but also re/imagine themselves as gendered, national, and racial subjects. Methods of self-­making that ­these evaluations represent are all the more vis­i­ble in posts allegedly written by ­people from Jamaica and/or other Ca­rib­bean countries since they, as can be seen in the evaluations that follow, describe experiences that chip away at perceptions of who Ca­rib­bean p­ eople can be when they are away from home. ­Earlier, “Mikie Bennett’s” comments suggestively “speak” from the perspective of a Jamaican living abroad, while an enthusiastic “Ca­rib­bean American’s” e-­critique specifically proclaims this hyphenated identity descriptor. Writing on 23 August 1998, “A customer” declares, “The Caribbean-­born author and characters speak to an aspect of our culture that is typically not heard. Caribbean-­ Americans are usually lumped into the greater African-­A merican experience when in actuality we bring an entirely dif­fer­ent flavor and dynamic to it. This novel has given our culture a resounding voice. . . . ​Th is novel was a journey to self-­ discovery and a find that was definitely worth waiting for.”81 This appraisal emphasizes the “entirely dif­fer­ent” Ca­rib­bean American “flavor” that distinguishes it from that of African Americans, expressing an awareness of what gets lost when the former is lumped together with the latter. The entry’s “resounding voice,” therefore, appears directed at ­those for whom t­ hese differences are incomprehensible or unimportant. The novel’s e-­commentaries embrace Channer’s imaginings, but they do so selectively: the book reviews do not dwell on parts of the novel that trou­ble Fire’s characterization. The character’s identity choices, for example, stand out as idealized ­because he forges his self by sidestepping obstacles that keep Ian from making similar choices. Ian is ambivalent about his Jamaican self ­because he is of Indian descent: “He loathed [his m ­ other] Miss Gita b­ ecause she was East Indian. A coolie. A despised and ste­reo­typed minority in an overwhelmingly black country.”82 Nostalgic reminiscences occupy many posts that contain references to shared Ca­rib­bean narratives, but most specifically address prob­lems with African Americanization and identify tensions that impact Ca­rib­bean immigrants’ diasporic encounters. The previously referenced review by “Denis T.” reminisces about a past Jamaica but identifies Waiting in Vain as a means of (re)connection: “ ‘ Waiting in Vain’ . . . ​took me back to Jamaica and re-­energized all the good ­things about being ­there.”83 It continues, describing Channer’s narrative as “a wonderful book, that Americans should read to get a better understanding

86 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

of the riches that immigrants so often leave ­behind.”84 “Denis T.’s” words compare Jamaica and Canada’s Jamaican enclave by marking similarities in language, culinary traditions, and individuals’ be­hav­iors. Critical differences between the two places and how the listed features manifest in them are manifold, yet “Denis T.” determinedly draws on Channer’s repre­sen­ta­tions of immigrants’ premigration realities. In this commentary, an uncomplicated Jamaican real­ity can quantitatively change o­ thers’ views of mi­grants and positively impact diasporic Ca­rib­be­ans’ lived realities. A review by “Sophia” (Atlanta, Georgia) extends “Denis T.’s” themes: As someone who left Jamaica twenty years ago this book brought back memories as only another J’can [sic] could. His words, his thougths and feelings allowed us all (J’cans and non-­J’cans) to experience the feelings of what it’s like to be raised amongst the upper-­class and his rebellion about his times spent in the ghetto & appreciating that way of life & his association w/his Rastafarian ­uncle. . . . Waiting In Vain is a definite must read and must have for always. This w ­ ill be a reference novel for my friends who have often asked about growing up in Jamaica.85

It is not just the mood and flavor of Jamaica that the “Sophia” comment observes but also the novel’s treatment of the country’s issues with class. Significantly, class is a theme only cursorily presented in Waiting in Vain, but this entry retells narratives of class (class rebellion and uncertain outcomes for individuals’ needs) in ways that challenge—­but nonetheless make use of—­the novel.86 Waiting in Vain’s most trenchant class critique occurs in a conversation between Ian and Fire. The former is strapped for cash, but Fire points out that he wears an expensive watch. In response, Ian asks and answers his own question: “You waah know why I wear TAG [Heuer] and you wear a Timex? B ­ ecause you used to visit the ghetto on holiday and I used to live t­ here. ­Because your f­ ather is a painter and my old man was a thief. ­Because your ­mother was a pi­lot and mine is a maid. ­Because before I went to study in London I’d never been on a plane. For ­these and other reasons, Fire, I cyaah wear a Timex. I must wear a TAG.”87 Heath does not respond, and nowhere ­else in the novel is class conflict more explicit. Though I cannot make definitive claims about the reasons for “Sophia’s” interpretation of class in the novel, lenses of genre and desires that recur in Amazon reviews suggest that extranarrative perspectives inform this class analy­ sis. Romance readers and this writer’s “shared” epistemologies and diasporic threads show that Waiting in Vain acts as both tool and vehicle for this review’s class/status critiques. Fi­nally, “Asantewa19’s” lengthy review nicely reflects this chapter’s critical concerns. Uploaded from Manhattan, New York, this evaluation states,

Second—­Urban Romantica • 87

Channer was able to accurately represent the identity strug­g le which many Jamaicans and other Ca­rib­be­a ns often experience when they migrate to another country. When read on a supreficial level, the novel may appear to be another love story. . . . ​However, when evaluated on a deeper more meaningful level, it is a story about p­ eople who are struggling to identify who they are in a foreign country based on beliefs and values which are also foreign to them. . . . ​Fire embodies for most ca­rib­be­a ns the need and the desire to remian [sic] connected to “home.” To keep alive the traditions and values with which they ­were raised, while living in a society which often tries to devalue ­those traditions. Channer did a wonderful job illustrating the strug­g le and the torn identity often experienced by p­ eople [of] Ca­rib­bean decent while showing I benefits of deciding to retain the connection to home. I think that through the story, Channer is suggesting that the identity angst experienced by Ca­rib­be­a ns can be solved by chosing to retain the cultural traditions with which they ­were raised. Accordingly, since many of ­these p­ eople often do not return home, it appears that the best way to reatain this connection is through another person from that country, as evident in Sylvia’s connection to Fire. . . . ​Channer did a wonderful and accurate job portraying the feelings of myself and other Jamaicans who are trying to carve a place in a society which is I dif­fer­ent from the one in which w ­ ere raised. It is one of the most in­ter­est­i ng, consistent and well-­thought out novels that I have ever read.88

The “Asantewa19” commentary is a virtual “how-to” for Jamaican and Ca­rib­bean ­peoples in diaspora: to challenge disconnects they may feel when far from home and assailed by foreignness, émigrés should build community with peers and “retain the connection to home.” Though this commentary reads Channer’s male lead as successfully manifesting t­ hese edicts, it does not seem to account for Ian’s inability to do so. Tellingly, t­ hese instructions do not recognize any difficulty in enacting t­ hese strategies, but they nevertheless highlight some of the novel’s disruptive truths: How can Fire ignite Jamaica in Sylvia when her connection to the country and its traditions is cursory, at worst, or at best tangential, through her u­ ncle Syd? Waiting in Vain depicts Sylvia’s Jamaicanness in this way: “­She’d been born in Jamaica but had no memory of the place except that ­she’d lived in a ­house near ­water,” and “her recollections of concrete walls came from her stay in the sanatorium where ­she’d been quarantined from four to eight with TB.”89 At nine years old, ­after her African-­Jamaican f­ ather murders her Syrian-­Jamaican m ­ other, Sylvia moves to the Bedford-­Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to live with her ­father’s b­ rother, Syd, who is illiterate, “an alcoholic and had no c­ hildren,” and who is “a decommissioned sailor who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”90 If readers accept that an ideal lover can ignite Sylvia’s “Jamaicanness,” what kind

88 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

of self can it be? How can it compare to Fire’s, or is his more “au­then­tic” b­ ecause he is “igniter” and not “ignitee”? How much does Fire’s class position define his “Jamaicanness,” and how does this identity mea­sure up to his other ones: the “upper-­middle-­class, Yale-­educated [man] . . . ​who studied art in Cuba and taught creative writing in ­England”?91 Despite ­these likely barriers to the kind of diasporan identity represented in the “Asantewa19” assessment, Fire’s black love, his Jamaican love, and his black Jamaican loving—­that is, his chosen identity and his sensual and sexual selves—­successfully trigger Sylvia’s long dormant and injured Jamaican, sexual self. Readers learn to align Fire and his sexual self to Jamaica ­because of the associations with specific foods and wildlife: “his cock filled his palm like a fat iguana” and “[his cock] was hard and brown like a length of renta yam.” Heath also assesses the likelihood and presence of true love by the smell and taste of molasses.92 The Ca­rib­bean generally and Jamaica in par­tic­u ­lar connect Sylvia to Fire. It goes without saying that sex and sexuality also connect t­ hese lovers. Recalling t­hings that happened during and a­ fter a Gregory Isaacs concert Sylvia attends with her soon-­to-­be-­lover Fire, she realizes that “she had never felt such ease with [her African American lover] Lewis. But then she had never felt such ease with herself e­ ither.”93 Being from Jamaica, both protagonists know what it means to point with one’s lips, while the female hero would have to explain this to Lewis. This recognition triggers another: “As she considered this, she realized that ­she’d been quietly missing her culture for years. She loved jazz. She loved classical. And the blues and R&B. But she d­ idn’t feel them in the same way she felt some Trenchtown bass bussin her head or some Lavantille steel pan racklin through her bones. She ­hadn’t dated many men from the Ca­rib­bean, and this was an issue s­ he’d never come to terms with, but which she suspected had a lot to do with Syd.”94 Fire’s knowledge and appreciation of Jamaican/ Ca­rib­bean expressive culture (pointing with the lips) and ­music set off ­these musings, while he induces her to use his body to conquer fears that resulted from her ­uncle Syd’s sexual abuse (a trauma about which Fire is unaware but nonetheless knows). Not long a­ fter young Sylvia moves in with Syd, he begins grooming her: He would call her beautiful. And when she said that she was ugly, that she was too skinny to be pretty, he would run his hand ­under her nightie and say, “But right ­here fat . . . ​and right ­there fat . . . ​and ­behind ­here fat . . . ​and in the ­middle ­here . . . ​lemme check it again . . . ​is so fat. Can I kiss it?” If she said no he would make funny f­ aces and she would indulge him. Not just b­ ecause it thrilled her—it felt dangerously good, like jiggling a shaky tooth—­but ­because in the hospital no one had wanted to touch her. In school no one wanted to be her friend—­she spoke funny and dressed funny and her hair was frizzy, and she c­ ouldn’t play sports. . . .

Second—­Urban Romantica • 89

But Syd said she was beautiful. Why not let him kiss her where she peed. He ­wasn’t hurting anyone.95

Syd’s sexual abuse progressed to rape and continued ­until Sylvia refused to be fucked. U ­ ncle Syd’s vio­lence, however, had lasting consequences: being so betrayed by the only ­family she has left taints her relationships with the Ca­rib­bean and specifically with men from the Caribbean—­until Fire, who, as an innate and caring lover, gives her the tools she needs to slay her dragons.96 She began to bear down on him with more of her weight, her waist stretching and compressing like an accordion, and he began to thrust back, filling her up, cocking his hips and dubbing her up, winding her like a clock. She let his wrists go and grabbed his hair. “The dragon is near, ­isn’t he?” “Yes,” she said. “You can see him across the plain. Snorting. You can see his wings and the sun on his scales.” “Yes.” “So r­ ide ­toward him  .  .  . ​­ride hard.”97

Sylvia’s murdered m ­ other and murderous ­father and abusive Syd associate Jamaica and vio­lence. Fire’s healing love disrupts this narrative by centering Sylvia and her intimate needs, re/defining who she is and can be as an artistic Jamaican ­woman. Fire’s sexual prowess and caring nature rehabilitate Sylvia’s Jamaica, igniting her capacity to love both self and country. ­A fter meeting and bonding with Fire, Sylvia can heal her sexual self and learns to express her Jamaican self through patois. Raging at Lewis a­ fter she discovers that he has been conspiring against her with her boss, Virgil, she “looked up at him, her mouth filled with the hurt that s­ he’d regurgitated like bile. How could he? That motherfucker . . . ​that bomboclaat!”98 Her evolution into Jamaicanness, perhaps best understood as her return to it, occurs in the space of the preceding quotation’s ellipsis dots; rather than merely referencing an omission, the ellipses signal Sylvia’s move from black and African American to black and Jamaican, from Lewis to Fire. As “Asantewa19” expresses, “since many of t­ hese ­people often do not return home, it appears that the best way to reatain [sic] this connection [to home] is through another person from that country, as evident in Sylvia’s connection to Fire.” The review posted by “Asantewa19” may not reflect the truth for all Caribbeans-­ in-­diaspora, but it certainly reflects a truth available in Waiting in Vain and acknowledged in most of the 364 Amazon posts. And as such, I interpret this truth as representing a part of the pro­cess of identity formation for diasporic Jamaicans. “Asantewa19” also demonstrates how Waiting in Vain functions

90 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

within this pro­cess: it understands the novel as romance (“on a [superficial] level”) but significantly as more-­than-­romance (on a “deeper more meaningful level”). In short, the “Asantewa19” evaluation selects and makes use of the narrative as a passionate technology: it serves the express purpose of making a loving and loveable self.

Postcoital Conclusions Themes that recur in virtual assessments of Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain suggest that they respond to realities made unloveable. Strategizing on how to make Jamaican and black selves is most vis­i­ble in postings that detail the making and remaking of identities out of selected features of the novel, t­ hose determined as most appropriate for love. References to romantic and/or physical love dominate most e-­commentaries, but ­those that declare Ca­rib­bean, Jamaican, or black roots (and routes) also describe a longing to love black selves, nation, self-­ in-­diaspora, and nation-­in-­diaspora and a need to challenge ­hazards that spoil experiences in/of their receiving countries. Th ­ ese black and Jamaican romance-­ ifications are technologies that deflect foreign attacks on selves that travel from “home,” attacks that chip away at who diasporic ­peoples are, or can be, while abroad. Online perspectives on Waiting in Vain highlight how Fire Heath and urban romantica narrative conventions produce a loveable black Jamaicanness. Complementarities between virtual interpretations and my own affirm critical uses of popu­lar literary forms, specifically in explorations of desirable Ca­rib­bean identity formations. What readers can “get” from Channer’s urban romantica novel nicely mirrors what can be gotten from becoming/coming into po­liti­cally and culturally informed diasporic selves. Stuart Hall acknowledges a type of cultural identity that recognizes “many points of similarity” among émigrés but also one that highlights “critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute ‘what we r­eally are’; or rather—­since history has intervened—­‘what we have become’. . . . ​Cultural identity, in this second sense, is a m ­ atter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being.’ It belongs to the f­ uture as much as to the past.”99 Kim Butler’s emphasis on solidifying “diaspora” as a critical concept marks pro­cesses through which mi­grants become diasporic subjects as theoretically significant. Fi­nally, Janice Radway cites Bruno Bettelheim’s analy­sis of fairy tales’ effects on ­children to describe romance fictions’ influence on Smithton readers: “while the fantasy is unreal, the good feelings it gives us about ourselves and our f­ uture are real, and t­ hese good feelings are what we need to sustain us.”100 In Channer’s representing Jamaica and black Jamaican identities as he does, and in ways that resonate so thoroughly in Amazon e-­commentaries, his erotic/urban romance speaks to an emotional and substantive stage in “becoming” black, in performing a fantastically loveable

Second—­Urban Romantica • 91

blackness. His depictions also seem to release social and psychic stressors referenced in online cultural texts. The idea of coming into a par­tic­u ­lar black identity using tools available in romance lit­er­a­ture is significant. This usage appreciates genre as a vehicle that can be used in instructive ways. In romance fiction, romantic and other desires are packaged in ways that resonate for targeted audiences and that such audiences might find attractive and entertaining. But as can be seen in the selected online comments in this chapter and in my interpretations of them, Waiting in Vain’s love lessons resonate in readers’ extraliterary lives, providing tools to re/ imagining and making our own way. So when Fire is a good lover, a good Jamaican, a good black man, and when he performs all t­ hese subjectivities, what he manifests is how to feel good about fantastically black, Jah love.

3

Third—­Fantasy Fantastic Possibilities: Theorizing National Belonging through Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring In the Amer­i­cas as a ­whole, it would seem to me that the apparent void of history which haunts the black man may never be compensated u­ ntil an act of imagination opens gateways between civilizations, between technological and spiritual apprehensions, between racial possessions and dispossessions. —­Wilson Harris, “History, Fable, and Myth in the Ca­rib­bean and Guianas” To live in the Black Diaspora is I think to live as a fiction—­a creation of empires, and also self-­creation. It is to be a being living inside and outside of herself. It is to apprehend the sign one makes yet to be unable to escape it except in radiant moments of ordinariness made like art. —­Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging The novel at its best demands a sort of complexity of vision which politics ­doesn’t like. —­R alph Ellison

92

Third—­Fantasy • 93

Po­liti­cal Landscapes, Fantastically ­Imagined The “power to imagine is the first step in changing the world,” a practical declaration if one believes that “we make up, then make real.”1 Imagining abundantly, then adjusting be­hav­iors to accommodate the resulting concepts and forms of conceptualization, is crucial to the pro­cess of claiming a fantastical blackness that refuses the limits of antiblackness. Walter Mosley advances this idea and its connection to features of science fiction (and its relatives) in his 1998 op-ed, anticipating the work that M. NourbeSe Philip’s experimental poetry performs in 2008 and that Richard Iton engages po­liti­cal science research to explore, also in 2008. Mosley articulates a progressive relationship between black content and popu­lar forms, one that I see duplicated and amplified across genres and academic disciplines. This vision of activist uses of fantastical blackness supports this chapter’s interpretation of Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring. In “Notanda,” the last section of Zong!, NourbeSe Philip considers that Captain Luke Collingwood was “of the belief that if the African slaves on board die a natu­ral death, the o­ wners of the ship w ­ ill have to bear the cost, but if they ­were ‘thrown alive into the sea, it would be the loss of the underwriters.’ ”2 When insurers denied the claim, Messrs. Gregson (the ship’s o­ wners) filed a case in which they sought to recoup from insurers amounts paid for the ­people they “purchased” and whom Collingwood murdered. Philip writes that “they would be paid for murdering 150 Africans. At the same time, it would mean that the deliberate drown­ ing of 150 ­people was not murder, but merely the disposition of property in a time of emergency to ensure preservation of the rest of the ‘cargo’—­a reasonable inter­ pretation at that time given the law governing contracts of insurance.”3 Philip contemplates how the massacre and the court case defined Africans on board the Zong as not-­human (“cargo”) and, at the same time, as ­human (“Africans are reduced to the stark description of ‘negroe man,’ ‘negroe ­woman,’ or, more frequently, ‘ditto man,’ ‘ditto ­woman’ ”).4 Though an enormity practically too horrifying to conceive—­even in the context of chattel slavery—­African ­people could reasonably be killed and not murdered. And yet in this context, each poem in Zong! narrates, visualizes, performs, and is a eulogy for the murdered ­children, ­women, and men. The collection recognizes that an act of terror conceived by a captain (whose knowledge of insurance claims overshadowed his skill as seaman) can si­mul­ta­neously, miraculously, inexplicably speak and speak for the dead. Zong! and “Notanda” recognize how written forms—­both ­legal and poetic—­ can codify and liberate black being in the West. In speaking and speaking for murdered souls, Philip’s is an undisciplined imagining that communicates imaginable truths of black experiences, ones that know an unrestrained blackness. The poet’s vision does not see African ­people as mere victims of the trade in enslaved Africans and laws that underwrite Western economies. In poetically speaking and speaking for 150 African p­ eople, Philip’s is a revolutionary act that

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“resist[s], rupture[s], and disrupt[s] [Black immanent and imminent death] aesthetically and materially.”5 Richard Iton’s book is in conversation with Philip’s poetry collection: both resolutely pursue forms (po­liti­cal science and poetic, respectively) that speak black content that is not readily available in other forms (formal politics; laws and insurance claims). Iton’s In Search of the Black Fantastic affirms that the popu­lar successfully articulates a disruptive blackness that upends “governmentalities and the conventional notions of the po­liti­cal, the public sphere, and civil society that depend on the exclusion of blacks and other nonwhites from meaningful participation and their ongoing reconstitution as raw material for the naturalization of modern arrangements.”6 As Iton describes it, popu­lar forms used by black creatives and consumed by a black audience express truths unavailable in other forms and unsettle (with regard to his topic) formal politics. The black fantastic is vis­i­ble in content and in what it can say. Iton, by his emphases, positions black-­and-­creative artists and black audiences as power­ful social agents who make active use of the black fantastic. Recasting the popu­lar as a resource for local and state po­liti­cal analyses, the critic also acknowledges the critical intelligence of black artists and audiences that manifests in popu­lar forms. Iton supports his argument by attending to what is consumed through and how audiences respond to truths available in the popu­lar. If electoral politics limit possibilities for formal black repre­sen­ta­tion (electability; class, gender, sexuality diversity; and levels of education of the elected) and an enabling black politics (mostly) in the United States, then popu­lar “informal” politics are an inherently resistant praxis where activist-­creatives use popu­lar platforms to speak a progressive politics. But in Iton’s words, “The inclination in formal politics t­ oward the quantifiable and the bordered, the structured, ordered, policeable, and disciplined is in fundamental tension with popu­lar culture’s willingness to embrace disturbance, to engage the apparently mad and maddening, to sustain often slippery frameworks of intention that act subliminally, if not explic­itly, on distinct and overlapping cognitive registers, and to acknowledge meaning in ­those spaces where speechlessness is the common currency.”7 In support of this statement, Iton discusses Kanye West’s appearance on NBC’s Concert for Hurricane Relief (2005), the network’s response to the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures in New Orleans. As a successful recording artist, West spoke deliberately and off-­script during a scripted tele­vi­sion program. NBC and event organizers expected West to read what was posted on the teleprompter, but he went off-­script, effectively ­de-­forming the form. Instead of the scripted narrative about New Orleans’s destroyed landscape and hopes for rebuilding (to complement cohost Mike Myers’s script), West determinedly shared pointed truths about the media’s skewed portrayals of black p­ eople (looters) versus white p­ eople (looking for food) trying to survive in the aftermath of the hurricane and levee breeches. And yet the statement that continues to resonate since West’s disrupting

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performance—­“George Bush d­ oesn’t care about black p­ eople”—­positions him in the black fantastic.8 Kanye’s statement was received as explosive, although it was accurate: it “captured in many re­spects what the federal response in all its absences and shortcomings seemed to underscore.”9 Iton states that “while a number of more impor­tant issues ­were raised by the flooding of New Orleans that happened in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in the late summer of 2005, and by the series of ­earlier decisions that made the disaster pos­si­ble and predictable, one of the more remarkable pro­cesses associated with the crisis was the search for language to characterize the situation.”10 In the interim, media and talking heads resorted to familiar narratives of black criminality and inhumanity (gangs, looters, rapists), with the result that black ­people fleeing New Orleans ­were deemed unworthy of care. White New Orleanians, on the other hand, ­were cast as most deserving of empathy and assistance. A predictable backtracking followed the show (“the ­thing I want to stress is I’m not into politics,” “I ­don’t know that much about politics”), yet it did not erase the impact of West’s televised manifesto.11 About the Zong massacre, NourbeSe Philip writes, “this story must be told by not telling,” and proceeds to fashion “not telling” into a form uniquely suited to telling (some part of) the truth of the callous murder of 150 African p­ eople, to speaking for the dead.12 As Iton tells it, West claimed “not telling” as a form by speaking the unspeakable into the popu­lar imaginary. In Search of the Black Fantastic wraps Iton’s interpretation of West’s black fantastic with a list of aural, visual, and comedic artists who followed West’s disorderly narrative. Many of them, however, qualified their statements with an awareness of the consequences: “Dave Chappelle quipped, regarding West, ‘I d­ on’t know if you agree with him or not, but give it up for him. I’ve got a lot of re­spect for him. And, I’m ­going to miss him.’ Taking the joke to its logical conclusion, he added, ‘I’m not risking my entire c­ areer to tell white ­people obvious ­things.’ ”13 Iton’s proj­ect focuses on the uses to which black creatives and consumers put the popu­lar, specifically how both make use of and respond to chaotic, expressive qualities of the popu­lar and what ­these unique expressions can say. Kanye West used the black fantastic to speak “obvious” truths to power. Iton solidifies the evidence of the import/impact of West’s speaking the unspeakable in this way: “in choosing to say something, black artists can seek both to influence outcomes and to redefine the terms of debate, within and outside their immediate communities, and to bring attention to—­and perhaps confer legitimacy on—­the spaces in which they operate (­whether ­these are black-­community-­specific or not).”14 When media dominated the narrative about New Orleans, West’s disruption was a point of departure that recognized and made known perspectives that “resist through the circulation of competing narratives.”15 In t­ hese ways, Philip and Iton depict the extraliterary influence of imaginatively critical texts. Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring similarly theorizes a way of being Canadian enabled by fantastical blackness.16 Un/expected truths

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that characterize blackness formulate the novel’s Canadianness; in so ­doing, the realities of Brown Girl’s fantastical population challenge some of the most conservative responses to the country’s vexed racial history, particularly as articulated in responses to the Canadian Multiculturalism Act.17 Hopkinson’s fantasy/ science fiction novel, then, offers po­liti­cal insight into a complicated Canadianness that is also and significantly black and immigrant. Brown Girl is set in a near-­future Toronto decimated by “rich flight” and government neglect. Th ­ ose who remain in “the Burn” (metropolitan Toronto in common parlance) are barricaded within and left to fend for themselves. Farming, bartering, and—­for some of the Burn’s inhabitants—­criminality, have become primary means of survival. Ti-­Jeanne is a new ­mother learning to cope with her unnamed baby boy; her drug-­addicted ex-­boyfriend, Tony; her emotionally distant grand­mother, Gros-­Jeanne Hunter (aka Mami); and her absent-­ then-­present ­mother, Mi-­Jeanne (aka Crazy Betty). Linked to t­ hese characters are Catherine Uttley, Ontario’s incumbent premier and a ­woman in need of a heart transplant, and posse don Rudy Sheldon, who manipulates diasporic African and pan-­Caribbean religious practices to control the Burn. And Hopkinson further complicates relationships between t­ hese characters: Rudy is Mami’s ex-­husband and Mi-­Jeanne’s f­ather; the don forces Tony to “secure” a heart for Premier Uttley; Tony asks Ti-­Jeanne and Gros-­Jeanne to entreat the gods to help him avoid this odious task and escape Rudy’s wrath; the young addict “discovers” that Mami is an ideal match for Premier Uttley; Rudy attempts to use Ti-­Jeanne’s soul to continue his oppressive dominance; and the protagonist ultimately fulfills her spiritual inheritance by serving the gods her grand­mother serves. Hopkinson’s novel gilds extraliterary locations and traditions with a provocative blend of literary fantasy and science fiction, with a result of interceding theoretically into narratives about what it means to be Canadian.18 Thus, Brown Girl induces readers to ask, How might one interpret national belonging if viewed through the lens of a science fiction/fantasy novel set in a postapocalyptic Toronto? What are the critical implications for Canadian belonging when the Canada-­born child of black Ca­rib­bean immigrants uses the CN (Canadian National, now Canada’s National) Tower to channel Yoruba-­derived gods? How might Canadianness be re/imagined when a black, Trinidadian ­woman’s heart, transplanted into the body of a white Ontario politician, revives the public servant as a ­woman who reassesses her conservative po­liti­cal platform? When considering Canada’s raced history in conversation with the so-­called divisive features of Canadian multiculturalism, particularly discourses driven by belief and postulation, attention to Brown Girl’s form and themes unlocks imaginable possibilities of narrating the Canadian nation through a black and immigrant lens.19 The extraliterary, critical prospects for Hopkinson’s novel are profound, particularly ­because science fiction and fantasy use accessible language and provocative story lines to engage a large, general audience. If, as Walter Mosley argues,

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“anything conceivable . . . ​is pos­si­ble. From the creation of life itself . . . ​to freedom,” then exposing a large reading audience to novel perspectives, and ­doing so through science fiction/fantasy lit­er­a­ture, can stimulate be­hav­iors inspired by the imaginable.20 This book explores how blackness imagines blackness and considers the tools blackness uses to re/imagine self. With regard to Hopkinson’s novel, such an orientation draws attention to characters who live inclusive and differently classed, racially, spiritually, and culturally complex lives to re/imagine antiblackness in the “exclusionary and racist practices of the Canadian state” as well as the Multiculturalism Act’s allegedly segregationist impulses.21 This chapter argues that Brown Girl’s fantastically black Canadianness unsettles perceptions of national belonging that understand it as white and m ­ iddle class b­ ecause it is “not black” and “not immigrant.” It then theorizes Canadian identity from perspectives of the Burn’s diasporic Ca­rib­bean, immigrant, working-­class and poor residents to imagine what is gained by this shifted, and shifting, orientation.22 As an imaginably true depiction of national identity, the novel re/thinks a Canadian multiculturalism that “insufficiently addresses race and racism in Canada.”23 The strength and complexity of the novel’s fantastical vision, as Ralph Ellison notes in the epigraph to this chapter, can outpace narrow po­liti­cal views about who can belong to the Canadian nation. Rather than reduce the unruliness of Canada’s raced and ethnic landscape to narrow po­liti­ cal registers, the opposite—­re/thinking ways to live in the unruly—­might be more productive and more h ­ uman. As Richard Iton describes it, “The inclination in formal politics t­ oward the quantifiable and the bordered, the structured, ordered, policeable, and the disciplined is in fundamental tension with popu­lar culture’s willingness to embrace disturbance, to engage the apparently mad and maddening, to sustain often slippery frameworks of intention that act subliminally, if not explic­itly, or distinct and overlapping cognitive registers, and to acknowledge meaning in t­ hose spaces where speechlessness is the common currency.”24 The immoderate features through which Brown Girl in the Ring depicts its imaginings prepare readers to embrace “cognitive registers” needed to explode fixed narratives about who can belong in Canada.

Canadian Blackness The sociologist Vilna Bashi argues for a way of analyzing international migration—­specifically movements of laborers from “eco­nom­ically poorer and po­liti­cally weaker nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin American” to “capitalist-­ oriented and eco­nom­ically more developed” ones such as United States, the countries of western Eu­rope, Australia, and Japan—­that makes room for “a truly international approach to international migration [that] w ­ ill not simply focus on the ways newcomers affect the host society they enter, or on ­whether they succeed or fail, but instead w ­ ill also take into account the ways that mi­grants and the socie­ties with which they come into contact interact with larger international

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systems (such as ­those of economy, politics, and race).”25 And Bashi’s proj­ect persuades: hers is a critical re­orientation that reconceptualizes black immigrant networks.26 “We miss much,” Bashi writes, “by focusing only on the immediate national or binational aspects of such a move. Scholarship on three aspects of internationalism are helpful in reinterpreting the significance of cross-­national movement in global terms: works on the global economy, on global racial hierar­ chy, and on transnationalism and migration systems.”27 To ground her methodological foci, she writes a historiography of black, mainly Ca­rib­bean, immigration to ­England, Canada, and the United States. Her historical frame supports the premise that “between the systems and transnationalism approaches . . . ​we can be sure to know that migration is more than a one-­time geographic relocation. At minimum, we must consider long-­term and continuous two-­way relationships among mi­grants, their kith, kin, community, and state.”28 ­These simultaneous emphases make vis­i­ble “networked” black, immigrant global flows, putting ­England, the United States, and Canada in relation not only with black immigrants’ relocations but also with changes in global immigration policies. When read through Bashi’s so­cio­log­i­cal frame, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act’s difficult reception must be understood in context with the country’s long relationship with local and global antiblackness. Enslaved black ­people in Canada w ­ ere manumitted in 1843, yet “antiblack discrimination in Canadian immigration policy began in 1818 . . . ​with a law that disallowed black immigration.”29 Black immigrants w ­ ere welcomed into the North American country when public and private interests wanted their l­abor; when they did not, however, “blacks from tropical regions [­were believed to be unable to] survive or succeed in cold climes and therefore should not be admitted. This argument was first promulgated in Canada in the late 1600s . . . ​but was also used throughout the 1950s.”30 And this perverse bias has worked against Canada’s national interests: “Disdain for new black immigrants continued unabated, for at the end of the Second World War, Canada had the opportunity to acquire Dominion territories, including Bermuda and British Guyana. Canadian officials declined the offer. Even the possibility of acquiring territory as part of the spoils of war did not appeal to the Canadian government if that meant acquiring the blacks who live in it.”31 This durable objection to black immigration, manifesting as the undesirability of black belonging in Canada, is a significant part of the country’s foundational narrative. Yet with ­little indication of its being exorcised from the national consciousness, this belief infuses the zeitgeist in which the Canadian Multiculturalism Act was rooted. Lloyd Wong notes that “ ‘multiculturalism,’ while a nebulous concept, has . . . ​ been a­ dopted by academics for vari­ous analytical interpretations, and thus has added more confusion to the term.”32 When examining how specialists and nonspecialists use the term, Joseph Garcea identifies another point of confusion: “The postulations are generally based on an inadequate distinction between

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multiculturalism public philosophy and multiculturalism public policy. The postulators tend to comment on the prob­lems of multiculturalism without explic­itly specifying ­either ­whether it is the public philosophy or the public policy that is problematical, or which par­tic­u­lar facets of ­either of ­those is problematical.”33 Garcea continues by defining the concept’s two parts—­“the public philosophy of multiculturalism (i.e., the normative framework that values the co-­existence and perpetuation of diverse cultures) and the public policy of multiculturalism (i.e., the ­actual policy and program initiatives undertaken by vari­ ous ­ orders of government designed to deal with the co-­ existence and perpetuation of diverse cultures)”—­a move that highlights “public philosophy” as a critical space in which affective and qualitative truths hold sway.34 For the purposes of this chapter, I focus on multiculturalism as a public philosophy that contends that racial and ethnic pluralism thrives when backed by popu­lar and legislative support. Nevertheless, this public philosophy understands Canadian multiculturalism as a corrupted fiction ­because it is a “Canadian imaginary that excludes [blackness].”35 Garcea uses the word “postulation”—­defined as a proposition “that [is] not proved or demonstrated but [one that is] considered to be self-­evident”—to describe a se­lection of four de­cades of academic research on Canadian multiculturalism, a choice that highlights a lack of quantifiable support for the policy’s so-­called fragmentary effects.36 As postulations, perspectives on the act’s fragmentary effects are based on what postulators “believe, rather than on the basis of facts produced by any systematic research and analy­sis.”37 The role of belief in research by “social scientists and a few other prominent authors and analysts,” not to mention in opinions expressed by contributors to Canadian newspapers, is significant: postulators believe, proceed as if their belief-­based conclusions are self-­evident, and often maintain their beliefs in the face of evidence to the contrary.38 It is in this space of belief (the believable) that I turn to literary fantasy and science fiction and inject critical analy­sis of the form and content of Brown Girl in the Ring. Since belief and affective truths play significant roles in po­liti­cal discourse, lit­er­a­ture and literary analyses can shape ideas that influence policy. Creative imaginings, formalist maneuvers, and specified languages, particularly ­those constellated in fantasy and science fiction, offer imaginable insights into extant realities. When fantastical blackness critically intervenes, it brings its prodigious possibilities to bear on what it means to be part of a nation. With Garcea’s emphasis on postulations that influence public perceptions as well as scholarly evaluations of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act and Barrett’s attention to narratives of Canadianness that occupy the national imaginary, literary critical methodologies—­close reading, genre and formalist critique, lit­er­a­ture in social and historical contexts—­reveal interpretations unique to this discipline and impor­tant to this extraliterary context. Even Karim H. Karim’s attention

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to views of multiculturalism that appear in op-ed pieces in Canadian newspapers is nicely unpacked using lit­er­a­ture’s analytical tools: the op-ed, as Karim’s form, is the means through which postulations that influence his interpretations find voice.39 And it is from the perspective of literary studies that I approach the language of the Multiculturalism Act itself, to consider how its wording and emphases might influence its reception.40 Interpretation of the ­actual language of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act grounds my analy­sis of multiculturalism’s public philosophy; sociology, po­liti­ cal science, communication research, newspaper editorials and op-ed pieces, and (to a lesser extent ­here) literary criticism conceptualize its “popu­lar contexts and imagination.” It is not my intention to prove or disprove assertions about the act’s capacity for fragmentation; instead, I put this conservative postulation in conversation with analyses of the language of the act as well as interpretations of Brown Girl’s fantastical repre­sen­ta­tions to consider how the novel’s imaginable truths productively theorize Canadian belonging, specifically through a fantastical black analytic. Hopkinson’s depictions of Ti-­Jeanne’s Canadianness interleave pos­si­ble truths into extant analyses, putting imagination and literary form in conversation with durable postulations, popu­lar opinion, and multidisciplinary research, ultimately offering a fantastic praxis that engages received notions of the act itself. Read from the perspective of this interdisciplinary critical frame, Nalo Hopkinson’s 1998 novel centers flexible notions of belonging in Canada through characters’ i­magined physical and spiritual occupations of Torontonian spaces.

Po­liti­cal (F)Acts, Po­liti­cal Fictions The Canadian Multiculturalism Act, designed “for the preservation and enhancement of multiculturalism in Canada,” “recognizes the diversity of Canadians as regards race, national or ethnic origin, colour and religion as a fundamental characteristic of Canadian society.”41 ­These intentions are acknowledged in the Preamble, while the body specifies how “all Canadians, w ­ hether by birth or by choice, [can] enjoy equal status, [and avail themselves of] the same rights, powers and privileges [while being] subject to the same obligations, duties and liabilities.”42 Yet despite t­ hese stated intentions, actualizing the act’s mandate—at least in the popu­lar imaginary—­reveals inadequacies in both the act’s contextualization of race and its accounting for the fact and uses of racist beliefs. The Preamble states, “persons belonging to ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities” can “enjoy their own culture, . . . ​profess and practise their own religion or . . . ​use their own language.”43 ­These persons are also encouraged to “share” their cultures (et al.) with ­people outside their ethnic, religious, linguistic groups. However, ­these edicts—­perhaps even the ­peoples referenced by them—­appear to compete with the act’s assertions of Canada’s “official” languages and, inferentially, its other “official” aspects. The act does not detail how official languages

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“communicate” with other languages, and perhaps it cannot, if the inelegance of the following quotations is any indication. The act asserts, “the Constitution of Canada and the Official Languages Act provide that En­glish and French are the official languages of Canada and neither abrogates nor derogates from any rights or privileges acquired or enjoyed with re­spect to any other language.”44 This quotation acknowledges that dif­fer­ ent languages can and do exist in the North American country, but it implies that they do not exist equally. If French and En­glish are official, then other languages must be unofficial: the act does not suggest any other qualifying adjective. The official languages are authoritative, too, b­ ecause only they have the power not to abrogate or derogate the rights of other languages. Subsequent passages consolidate the interpretation of languages other than French and En­glish as not official. Section 3, part 1, subsections (i) and (j), are particularly relevant: 3. (1) It is hereby declared to be the policy of the Government of Canada to . . . (i) preserve and enhance the use of languages other than En­glish and French, while strengthening the status and use of the official languages of Canada; and ( j) advance multiculturalism throughout Canada in harmony with the national commitment to the official languages of Canada.45

The decree venerates tongues other than French and En­glish while asserting the primacy of the two Eu­ro­pean languages. Unofficial languages effectually valorize—­can only valorize—­French and En­glish, for they strengthen “the status and use of the official languages of Canada.” Th ­ ese awkward and repeated assertions of the status and uses of En­g lish and French must be interrogated: Why would Canadians “facilitate the acquisition, retention and use of all languages that contribute to the multicultural heritage of Canada” if ­these languages are mainly conceived as strengthening En­g lish and French?46 If En­g lish and French officially pronounce “Canadianness,” then what can and do the other languages pronounce? If French and En­glish are Canada’s official languages, can the ­others only express a qualified Canadianness? I draw attention to the act’s awkward declarations about the country’s languages to suggest how difficult it can be to legislate the realities of a diverse citizenry. In other words, the desire to proclaim the North American country’s multicultural realities appears easier than trying to legislate it. Once the act moves beyond its objectives of “cultural transmission, intergroup harmony, and an understanding of ethnic subcultures,” fissures become legible.47 Despite the act’s intention, it effectively affirms a static position: that to be authoritatively Canadian, one must speak En­g lish and/or French and, by implication, be “not dif­f er­ent”—­that is, not be nationally, ethnically, racially dif­fer­ent. The frame created by interpretation of the text of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act centers a specific type of Canadian and casts other kinds

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as relationally peripheral and/or absent. And even this affiliation is static: the language of the act suggests that t­ here are only official Canadians and qualified Canadians. With regard to public perceptions of the act, Canadian newspapers—­“impor­ tant public vehicles for airing and challenging opinions”—­offer a range of perspectives on the policy’s success. According to Karim H. Karim, contributions to ­these public forums do not represent a thorough accounting of public sentiment about multiculturalism but rather offer the “most prominent set of expressions” of it.48 A sampling from several publications indicates that “the nature of the arguments [is] usually s­ haped by the commentators’ respective interpretations of the policy’s objectives”: “the complete assimilation of minorities into the mainstream and the abandonment of their cultural traditions; the integration of immigrants into Canadian society as they continue to retain aspects of their own cultures; . . . ​the establishment of equality; [encouragement of] better inter-­ cultural relations; . . . ​privileging minorities; [and/or] promoting cultural relativism.”49 Fi­nally, Karim notes that the most intense discussion about Canada’s multiculturalism policy occurred a­ fter the “June 2 [2006] arrest [on charges of plotting terrorist acts] of 17 suspects with Muslim backgrounds in southern Ontario.”50 Generally, then, public perceptions of the act exist on a continuum: at one end is the position that “multiculturalism is leading to the disintegration of Canadian society,” and at the other end is the position that “it is strengthening the nation in which Canadians of vari­ous backgrounds have a sense of belonging.”51 From this continuum, I have selected several pieces whose ideological positions engage Hopkinson’s novel most directly. At one end are opinions like that expressed by “[Daphne] Bramham . . . ​in her May 13 [2006] Vancouver Sun column, . . . ​[in which she asserts] that ‘in our desire to accommodate and embrace all ­people, we may have sacrificed a national identity and common cause.’ ” In an editorial in the Gazette, “Montreal’s largest English-­language daily,” an unnamed writer remarked, “In our commitment to multiculturalism, Canada seems to have lost any sense of what we expect of new citizens. . . . ​That has to change. Citizenship is a reciprocal agreement, and immigrants need to know not just what t­ hey’re entitled to, but also what’s expected of them.” Fi­nally, in a column published in the Ottawa Citizen on 9 June 2006, “John Robson took a . . . ​harder line: ‘We need uncompromising belief to win the war of ideas,’ . . . ​[and] he asserted that ‘our way of life is better than ­others,’ and [he] urged a war in which ‘we ­either convert our enemies or kill them, or they do it to us.’ ”52 By stating that immigrants need to know “what’s expected of them,” the piece from the Gazette appears to concur with Bramham’s suggestions that immigrants learn and commit to the notion of a homogeneous “national identity and common cause.” While the first two leave room for the possibility that “nonnative” Canadians can become Canadian, Robson’s language evokes rigid bound­aries between “us” and “them.” Despite the latter’s binaristic

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advocacy, ­these three examples intimate that “Canadianness” is—­and can be—­ commonly understood and is more or less transferable. As I argued e­ arlier, attention to the text of the Multiculturalism Act exposes a fixed definition of Canadianness—­determined by (over)emphasis on official languages—­a uniform stance that is reflected in the most conservative op-ed pieces. In response to a rigidly defined Canadian identity, p­ eople on the opposite end of the continuum advocate for the act’s intentions. In a “June 7 column . . . ​ [published] in the Globe and Mail, [John Ibbitson] sought to put ­things into a broader perspective”: “Some writers talk about developing a written moral or social code to which all Canadians—­and new Canadians, especially—­must adhere. What would this new code say? Who would get to decide what went in it? What would happen if native-­born Canadians refused to swear to it? If non-­ native Canadians alone w ­ ere forced to swear to it, what would that accomplish? ­A fter all, most of ­those charged with [the June 2] conspiracy are native born.”53 In this same vein, “Dawn Henwood’s June 21 op-ed in the Chronicle Herald . . . ​ raised issues about the evolving nature of Canadian values and the importance of finding a common language that can articulate inter-­cultural relations.” Henwood wrote, “Although ­we’ll soon hear lots of [Canada Day, July  1] rhe­toric about ‘Canadian values,’ it’s no longer clear exactly what ­those are. Democracy means that nothing is ever written in stone. The living w ­ ill of the ­people, not the mutable law, determines the norms of the nation.” And she concluded her op-ed piece with a power­ful assertion: “we ­will need to invent a new language for talking about what it means to live the Canadian way.”54 If Walter Mosley is correct in stating that “we make up, then make real,” and if Henwood anticipates a new kind of language that can and continues to speak Canadianness (see also Philip and Iton), then language and imagination can meaningfully theorize—­and re/make—­perceptions of national identity in Canada. As I interpret popu­lar fictions’ creative imaginings, as well as Garcea’s and Karim’s disciplinary perspectives, they all productively frame the critical work that Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl does. The novel’s form proj­ects a fantastically complex Canadianness in an accessible way, imagining this subjectivity through the body and experience of a young, black, second-­generation Canadian w ­ oman of Trinidadian and Jamaican descent.

Singly, and Plurally, Canadian Karim, a professor of journalism and communication, collects a number of editorials and op-ed pieces that capture and upend static notions of Canadian identity. Yet even when advancing the need for more flexible (disruptive, chaotic) thinking about Canadian subjectivity, race, racism, and ethnicity typically fall out of the discussion.55 The black, diasporic lens that Paul Barrett uses to interpret belonging and the Canadian state exposes the erasure of race or a

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disinclination to acknowledge its place in discourses of Canadianness, an erasure taken up by the creatives Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke, and Tessa McWatt, who “transform national lit­er­a­ture and identity.”56 I begin with Barrett’s orientation to interpret the “disorder” that blackness introduces into rigid notions of Canadian identity not only as signifying truth (in light of the presence and duration of the country’s vis­i­ble, black population) but also as theoretically enabling: the size of Canada’s black population (about 2.01 ­percent of the Canadian population identified as black in the 1996 census, 2.2 ­percent in 2001, and 3.48 ­percent in 2016) and, in light of t­ hese percentages, its heterogeneity exposes blackness as si­mul­ta­neously true (factual) and resistant to easy categorization (fantastical).57 African-­descended p­ eoples from myriad geo­g raph­i­cal locations and ethnic groups produce Canadian blackness (perhaps b­ ecause of the heterogeneity of this mix, black has been categorized as a “vis­i­ble minority” as defined by the Employment Equity Act). This blackness includes histories, cultures, and traditions of ­free Africans who arrived in 1605 in addition to British loyalists from what is now the United States who ­were granted land and freedom in the 1700s; Africans enslaved in what is now Canada and formerly enslaved Africans from what is now the United States; and blacks who immigrated from the United States, the Ca­rib­bean, and African countries since the 1960s.58 Both long-­standing and durable, “Blacks in Canada [have] diverse backgrounds and experiences. . . . ​Some Blacks can trace their roots in Canada back several centuries, while other have immigrated in recent de­cades.”59 The impracticality of reducing Canadian blackness into a homogeneous group can be seen in the language used to describe the country’s black population.60 The aforementioned sources as well as a basic Google search for the question “What are black ­people in Canada called?” yield myriad results: Black Nova Scotians, African Canadian, West Indian Canadian, Afro-­Caribbean Canadian, Ca­rib­bean Canadian, black Canadian. This list attempts to acknowledge sending countries, but this only partially explains the generalizations ­because not all sending countries are highlighted. Canada’s 2001 census, for example, reveals that about one-­third of forty-­four hundred pre-1961 foreign-­born blacks migrated from Jamaica, while Barbados accounted for 15 ­percent and Trinidad/Tobago for 6 ­percent (the United Kingdom and the United States accounted for 6 ­percent and 5 ­percent, respectively), yet “Jamaican-­Canadian” or any other similarly hyphenated term does not appear to be one used in the North American country. This might be explained by dramatic changes in sending countries between the 1960s and the 1980s. By the 1980s, black immigrants from Jamaica made up between 30 and 40 ­percent of the North American country’s black population, while ­those of Haitian descent made up 20 ­percent.61 Before 1961, 72 ­percent of foreign-­born black Canadians migrated from Ca­rib­bean countries, and less than 1 ­percent came from African ones. By 1991–2001, immigrants from African countries made up 48 ­percent of Canada’s black population, while t­ hose from the

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Ca­rib­bean made up 47 ­percent.62 Yet distinct differences still characterize Canada’s black population, as the 2001 census indicates that Canadian-­born blacks fare better than foreign-­born blacks with regard to level of education, labor-­force outcomes, and employment income.63 Nevertheless, and simultaneous to ­these demographic shifts, Althea Prince recalls a “collective consciousness” among this small and multifaceted black population in the 1960s.64 I cannot fail to note, however, that this collectivity responded to oppressive acts by agents of the Canadian state, part of a unifying pro­cess that led to a black solidarity that breached geo­graph­i­cal and chronological bound­aries: Our experiences created a sense of insecurity around several issues. We realised that we did not know the law, and needed to know it fast! We also realised that we needed to develop a collective consciousness about the police and about our rights as residents in Canada. In short, we needed to move out of our positions as passive “aliens” to become knowledgeable residents of Canada, aware of all the civil rights afforded us. We did, a­ fter all, live h ­ ere; and even though we kept on telling ourselves that we w ­ ere “­going back home,” it was clear that while we lived h ­ ere we needed to take some decisive steps to ensure our survival in this new “home.”65

Prince remembers that recent arrivants from the Ca­rib­bean turned to members of Canada’s generations-­old black communities, making “connections with long-­ established African Canadians, the majority of whom had been immigrants ­here since the 1920s”: “We also got to know Black ­people who ­were native to Canada (at least as ‘native’ as some whites ­were). Th ­ ese ­people provided us with loving care and nurturing, and taught us much about how to survive in Toronto.” She recalls that despite—or ­because of—­this population’s heterogeneity, 1960s and 1970s immigration manifested needs for social and po­liti­cal activism: “the swelling of the Black community by a large influx of Black p­ eople from the Ca­rib­ bean, Africa, and the U.S., brought a new sense of urgency to the work to be done.”66 I steadfastly challenge the impression that antiblackness, or an innate and homogeneous perception of blackness, is the only reason for black solidarity by emphasizing the centrality of pro­cess and method in Prince’s description of Canada’s black collective. She describes raced and immigrant oppressions but also expresses a determination to identify and access specific information and knowledgeable communities to educate ethnic blackness into black Canadianness. Highlighting both pro­cess and steps in that pro­cess illuminates blackness as self-­ interested and irreducible to antiblackness. Dionne Brand describes a fantastical pro­cess through which blackness becomes self-­aware: “to live in the Black Diaspora is . . . ​to live as a fiction—­a creation of empires, and also self-­creation.” She voices how blacks-­in-­diaspora know that we are locked into dominant imaginaries (“the sign one makes yet to be unable to escape it”), but this is a knowledge that is fantastical b­ ecause of the

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simultaneity of our insistence on being “in radiant moments of ordinariness made like art.”67 Barrett interprets an abiding theme in Brand’s oeuvre as drawing “attention to the distinctive quality of ‘fictions’—­both fictions of the nation that exclude black ­people and the empowering fictions of black diasporic identity.”68 Like Prince’s remembrances in memoir, Brand’s prose also understands diasporic black p­ eoples in places (“outside of herself”). So, to be black and Canadian is also a pro­cess through which one learns to know self as being of a place. An ordinary, radiant, complex blackness that is formed where found indicates truths of being created by empires, being self-­created, living inside/outside self and place. Fi­nally, Brand speaks the complicated and fantastical truths of black being in the Amer­i­cas. Brown Girl in the Ring expresses this imagining through its form, thus foregrounding dif­fer­ent ways of conceptualizing belonging to the Canadian nation.

Fantastically Black and Canadian In an extraliterary context where the Canadian Multiculturalism Act rec­ords the policy’s tenets, scholars analyze the act and its impact, and heterogeneously black Canadianness lives, Nalo Hopkinson’s novel imagines Canadians whose quotidian realities embrace ancestral and national pasts along side their Torontonian/Canadian pre­sents. Put in conversation with theories of Canadian racial and multicultural belonging, this work of literary fantasy and science fiction “intervene[s] in . . . ​readers’ assumptions by creating a world in which standards are dif­fer­ent,” a po­liti­cally astute intervention that re/articulates “what it means to live in [a] Canadian way.”69 Though the novel ambivalently depicts the consequences of Tony’s betrayals as well as Ti-­Jeanne’s vexed relationship to motherhood, Hopkinson’s emphasis on life—on being—in the Burn identifies how its protagonist and other characters manifest a fantastic Canadianness. The novel’s imaginings reject the belief that Torontonian citizens are inherently dangerous, disposable, or unable to affect their society; in its place, the novel offers a literary praxis through which ­people are re/seen through location, belief, communal relationships, races, and ethnicities across bound­aries. Toronto, specifically its center, is demonstrably pre­sent in the novel. Hopkinson names streets and landmarks that exist outside the novel’s real­ity, a mapping of the metropolitan center that quickly brings the Burn into sharp relief: “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.”70 With its damage at first appearing as a natu­ral phenomenon (rust that forms when metal is submerged in ­water), Toronto’s corroded core takes on a nefariously h ­ uman aspect. The Burn

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is a “donut hole”: “that’s what they call it when an inner city collapses and ­people run to the suburbs,” says Mr. Reed, the novel’s “self-­appointed town librarian.”71 Thus, Brown Girl’s geography is meta­phor­ically dense and literally identifiable, making the center “knowable” in imaginatively conceivable as well as in extraliterary ways. Yet what at first appears as accepted knowledge is quickly disturbed. Describing the fictionalized Toronto as a disintegrating hub and donut hole directs attention outward, ­toward its suburbs; nevertheless, the novel centers a Torontonian “hole” that is filled with Canada’s recent arrivants as well as ­peoples too poor, too stubborn, too committed, and/or too criminal to abandon it.72 Brown Girl thus creates a lens that makes seeing black and immigrant fantastically pos­ si­ble. Despite the lack of myriad resources, the Burn’s inhabitants live: by making alliances, by cultivating the land or r­ unning small businesses, by bartering. Urban denizens return to communal and pre­industrial relationships; in short, the Burn’s residents live by building and relying on community, and one unencumbered by familiar racial, ethnic, and religious divisions.73 Significantly, this communal real­ity does not extend beyond the city’s barricades. Suburbanites perceive Toronto negatively, the tenor of this perception succinctly expressed by Constantine, Premier Uttley’s campaign man­ag­er: “the place is a rat hole, complete with rats.”74 Still, Brown Girl’s fantastic real­ity turns the donut inside out, overturning established interpretations of a “failed” city and dominant narratives of black and immigrant pathology. Hopkinson refines her narrative choices by abstaining from standard conventions of a “critical dystopia” to animate truths obscured by ill-­conceived urban policies, and she persuasively argues for the centrality of African-­descended Ca­rib­bean immigrants’ place in and invigoration of Canada’s “national fabric.” As Hui-­chuan Chang writes, “According to current definition, [a] critical dystopia is open-­ended, harbours an eutopian enclave, and entertains some kind of hope. However, this definition fails to identify crucial aspects of dystopias around the millennium.”75 Hopkinson’s Ti-­Jeanne lives in a Toronto with restorative and cooperative relations among individuals and communities; by contrast, the author writes the suburbs as damaged. The protagonist ultimately risks her life to unseat Rudy’s authority, but rather than “fixing” the Burn, she is motivated by a need to serve and take her place with her gods as well as her matriarchs. Brown Girl’s ambiguous ending proj­ects an optimistic vision of Toronto’s f­ uture, but for reasons I describe shortly, the ­imagined city reads like a “post-­apocalyptic dystopia” b­ ecause it marks the end of the world known by suburbanites.76 Hopkinson writes characters’ cognitive imaginings charged by their awareness of their rich contributions to and defining roles in Toronto’s pre­sent. Being in the city’s center, and sharing its daily realities, makes residents into Torontonians ­because of their racial, ethnic, gender, spiritual, and class differences. Ultimately, since the novel successfully thinks Canadian citizenship as (paradigmatically speaking) black and Canadian and defined by location and belief, it builds a world

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that exists rather than one that is or responds to an issue or cause. A result of Hopkinson’s fictive maneuvers is an imaginable truth of belonging heightened by the genre’s defamiliarizing effects, ones that trigger disruptive re/imaginings of Canada’s racial and immigrant alienations. Brown Girl in the Ring opens with a familiar image of a prominent city in serious decline and inhabited by ­people who cannot or choose not to leave. Into this familiarity, Hopkinson introduces novelty via a protagonist who is a nursing and ambivalent ­mother. Also unexpected is the real­ity that Ti-­Jeanne does not want to escape the Burn; on the contrary, she fears the so-­called safety of the suburbs: “The thought of the ’burbs scared Ti-­Jeanne. She knew it was safer. She knew that ­there ­were hospitals and corner stores and movie theatres, but all she could imagine ­were broad streets with cars zipping by too fast to see who was in them, and p­ eople huddled in their h ­ ouses except for jumping into their cars to drive to and from work.”77 Counterintuitively, in light of all the ­things that Toronto does not have, Ti-­Jeanne rejects what she is taught to believe is safe and necessary to live a par­tic­u­lar lifestyle b­ ecause what she imagines is more undesirable: anonymous individuals dominated by ­things. The Burn, however, is the society that Ti-­Jeanne prefers, despite its lack of resources and her vexed personal relationships. On Mami’s farm, the young ­mother apprentices in healing arts, further integrating her into the Burn’s dynamic community. The previous, nonfantastical quotation reflects a worldview that is a radical shift in perspective: it centers a new way of seeing and being in the novel’s Canada. Whereas the language of the Multiculturalism Act and of some conservative opinions about it authorize the Eu­ro­pean as authentically Canadian, Brown Girl’s foundational narrative is a fantastical Canadianness made so by cooperative relationships among myriad p­ eople. ­A fter Toronto collapses, the Trinidadian-­born Gros-­Jeanne moves into a  structure designed to represent Canada, but one that predates the large-­ scale immigration of ­people from non-­European countries.78 Riverdale Farm, the author writes, “had been a city-­owned recreation space, a working farm ­constructed to resemble one that had been on ­those lands in the nineteenth ­century. Torontonians used to be able to come and watch the ‘farmers’ milk the cows and collect eggs from the chickens. The Simpson House w ­ asn’t a real h ­ ouse at all, just a façade that the Parks Department had built to resemble the original farm­house.”79 The farm and its buildings pay homage to the way t­ hings ­were supposed to have been in the North American country and also indoctrinate pre-­R iot citizen-­visitors into its mythologized history. Mami converts a space designed for a specific national per­for­mance into living/dining, medical examination, and sleeping rooms, transforming it from a static veneer into a place of living and healing. Gros-­Jeanne also introduces her black, female, Trinidadian, and spiritual selves into a national/physical space from which they w ­ ere excluded. Yet ­because she “Ca­rib­be­anizes” this Canada—­and “Canadianizes” her Caribbean—­she does much more than insert alienated selves into the

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i­magined idyll. ­A fter Mami, Riverdale Farm is both/and—­Canadian and Ca­rib­bean (among other influences)—­and no longer merely one or the other. Ti-­Jeanne’s vision of the Burn and Gros-­Jeanne’s presence at Riverdale Farm/ Simpson House portray black p­ eople intimately connected to Canadian geography. This kind of intimacy is amplified by connections ­these characters have to ­others as well as to diasporic African religious traditions. Being in Toronto makes the city real for Ti-­Jeanne, and she knows herself as a part of it, though she initially rejects the spiritual aspect of her being that is central to the narrative. When Gros-­Jeanne learns that her grand­daughter has visions of death, that Ti-­Jeanne is the d­ aughter of Prince of Cemetery/Legbara, who “does watch over death . . . ​but . . . ​control life, too,” the older w ­ oman wants to train the younger on how to honor this relationship and serve the spirits.80 At first, fear and ignorance cause Ti-­Jeanne to reject her clairvoyance as well as her grand­mother’s guidance; but, ultimately, her desire to help Tony forces her to come to terms with serving the spirits as well as being in a better relationship with Gros-­Jeanne. Members of the novel’s Yoruba-­derived religious community relate across racial, ethnic, and class lines. Romni Jenny, whose “­people is Romany p­ eople,” teaches Gros-­Jeanne how to do tarot-­card readings, but with cards redesigned to reflect Mami’s spiritual and cultural traditions. Painted to Mami’s specifications, each card depicts a Yoruba god rendered as a traditional Trinidadian carnival figure.81 ­These cards, therefore, signify a convergence that is unique to Brown Girl’s Toronto, and they represent a “both/and-­ness” that resonates in other aspects of Mami’s faith. Belief allows adherents to straddle bound­aries between godly and earthly realms, and literary fantasy depicts t­ hese spiritual crossings persuasively. Ti-­ Jeanne is Prince of Cemetery’s spiritual d­ aughter, but instead of being ridden by her father-­spirit—­where the believer behaves in ways that invoke the divine figure—­Ti-­Jeanne becomes him. Her first transubstantiation occurs when Gros-­ Jeanne entreats the gods on Tony’s behalf. Initiating contact with her own father-­ god, Osain, Mami finds Ti-­Jeanne’s parent-­god more willing to help.82 While detailing the protagonist’s god/human border crossing, this scene also maps geo­ graph­i­cal ones: continental African and pan-­Caribbean beliefs and traditions convene in the northern American space via a center pole that reaches into spaces and times, vertically connecting realms of the godly, the living, and the dead. Hopkinson uses this scene to solidify the protagonist’s multiplicities: through her diasporic African/Ca­rib­bean spiritualty, specifically her connection to Legbara; through her intimate relations, with Tony, Baby, Gros-­Jeanne, Mi-­ Jeanne, and Rudy; and through place, space, and self. Ti-­Jeanne is deeply Canadian, and her Canadianness renounces Constantine’s rat analogy. The female hero embodies a fantastical self that does not gloss contradictions, thus making the idea of rigid bound­aries and fixed identities unpersuasive (unsustainable). Other relations in the novel mirror Mami’s intervention into Riverdale Farm’s state-­sanctioned, whitened Canadianness, introducing living (life) and healing

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into a cold façade. Early in the novel, Ti-­Jeanne similarly experiences another space in the Burn. As she returns from r­ unning errands for Mami, the young ­mother hires a pedicab runner to take her to “Sherbourne Street [on the] corner of Carlton.”83 Disembarking at her destination, Ti-­Jeanne observes, “The runner moved off quickly, not even looking around for more customers. Coward, Ti-­Jeanne thought to herself. It was safe enough in this part of the Burn. The three pastors of the Korean, United, and Catholic churches that flanked the corner had joined forces, taken over most of the buildings from h ­ ere westward to Ontario Street. They ministered to street p­ eople with a firm hand, defending their flock and their turf with baseball bats when necessary.”84 Guided by a shared desire to “[minister] to street ­people with a firm hand,” the leaders of ­these three churches unite around a common desire to serve p­ eople. Though theirs may be a situational cooperation, it is one that serves sacred (each church’s flock) and secular (the safety of characters like Ti-­Jeanne) communities. Po­liti­cal and social realities may have staged this par­tic­u­lar ­union, but it nevertheless resulted “in radiant moments of ordinariness made like art” that benefits most. It is impor­ tant to note, however, that this ­union is not without challenges—­“It was safe enough in this part of the Burn”—an indication that maintaining this relationship in the Burn is a pro­cess. The broadly supportive collaboration between the Korean, Unitarian, and Catholic churches replicates relationships between Gros-­Jeanne’s spiritual and healer selves. Separately, her identities are intricate, but together they are productively complex. Brown Girl defines Mami’s belief by a list of adjectives: “Myalist, bush doctor, iyalorisha, curandera, four-­eye, even obeah w ­ oman for them who d­ on’t understand. But . . . ​Gros-­Jeanne woulda tell you that all she ­doing is serving the spirits.”85 By ­every name and nuanced distinction, Gros-­Jeanne says she serves the oldest ancestors; noticeably, her preferred phrase is at ease with the listed adjectives. As a healer, Mami attends her patients with medical and folkloristic knowledges originating in global geographies and freely ranging across diverse borders. She indoctrinates Ti-­Jeanne with ­these and other ways of knowing that the grand­mother acquired in her and o­ thers’ migrations: [Mami:] “What you does put on a cut to heal it?” Damn. One of Mami’s spot tests. “Ah, aloe?” [Ti-­Jeanne responds.] [Mami:] “And if we c­ an’t get aloe no more? Tell me a Canadian plant.” Shit. It was the one with the name like a tropical plant, but it was something dif­fer­ent. What, what? Oh, yes: “Plantain leaf.”86

This quotation describes Plantain leaf as a Canadian plant like the one with which Mami is familiar. This simile does not diminish the essential nature of ­either herb but puts them into complementary relation. Eu­ro­pean immigrants to and nonblack residents in Canada also share with Gros-­Jeanne their knowledge of North American herbs: “Romni Jenny and Frank Greyeyes ­were

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teaching her about northern herbs.”87 Through Mami, readers experience a Canadian identity intensified by both/and relationships and are prepared to embrace a Canadianness enabled by myriad races and global locations. Brown Girl’s setting fosters the relationships that characterize the Burn, yet being barricaded within the city center is not the only reason for the ties that bind. A crew of street kids, mothered by a young teen named Josée, lives by a creed similar to the Christian ministers’ philosophy. When Susie, one of the youn­gest among Josée’s crew, breaks her leg, her f­ amily carries her to Mami’s farm. As Gros-­Jeanne tends to Susie’s broken leg, Ti-­Jeanne feeds the other ­children. Before dining commences, though, Josée “spoke louder to get the c­ hildren’s attention”: “Hey! Listen up! This lady’s g­ oing to give us food. You remember the rule?” The gritty ­gaggle just looked at her, shuffling its feet. She prompted them, “If somebody helps us . . .” “We ­don’t steal their stuff,” they chorused glumly.88

Josée explains that each child’s survival depends on how they “watch out for each other” and their recognition of and adherence to f­ amily rules.89 Hopkinson does not detail the crew’s racial or gender composition, except to note that a girl with straight black hair sings snatches of a Chinese-­sounding lullaby to Baby.90 Still, in the absence of explicit physical descriptions, readers conclude that Josée’s ­family thrives b­ ecause they decide to be ­family and define and abide by group rules. In other words, rather than a group exclusively defined as such by racial, ethnic, or religious identities, street kids are f­ amily b­ ecause they choose to be bound together and want to live by the rules of their bond. And this ­family is flexible enough to re­spect “somebody [who] helps” them. Like the migrations that bring pan-­A frican and pan-­Caribbean spiritual traditions to Canada, Hopkinson solidifies connections between black diasporas and Canadian space by channeling a pantheon of Yoruba-­based gods through Toronto’s very real CN Tower.91 Linking diasporic African and pan-­Caribbean gods to a structure designed to represent “the strength of Canadian industry [and] a tower [once] taller than any other in the world,” the author marks black/ female/Trinidadian/Jamaican physical, spiritual, and psychic movements through the Amer­i­cas, fi­nally grounding this repre­sen­ta­tion in the postapocalyptic Torontonian landscape.92 Rudy’s maleficent use of the oldest ancestors thwarts Mami and Ti-­Jeanne’s attempt to help Tony, but the grand­daughter’s fight against her grand­father sets the stage for the repurposing of the CN Tower and what it represents. Fear of vio­lence keeps businesses, government, and Canadian elites from living in the Burn (though they fly in and out to exploit it and its residents), creating a vacuum that Rudy fills with his own authority. The don possesses the CN Tower’s observation deck, instigating an authoritative change but not a revolutionary

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one: Rudy merely replaces the “strength of Canadian industry” and the Canadianness that the tower symbolically represents with his Jamaican immigrant self and ambitions. Though he uses dif­fer­ent means, Rudy avails himself of the trappings of Toronto’s formerly dominant culture, significantly represented by the CN Tower itself. When approached to locate a “voluntary” heart donor for Premier Uttley, the don avers that he has no po­liti­cal motivations: “And what that have to do with we? Posse a­ in’t business with politics. Is we a-­rule ­things ­here now.” The narrator continues, “It was true. Government had abandoned the city core of Metropolitan Toronto, and that was fine with Rudy.”93 Rudy’s selfish relationship to both f­ amily and nation is the novel’s main antagonism and stands in stark contrast to depictions of characters and institutions I have thus far explored; still, an intricate Canadianness and the facets that define it drive the novel to its conclusion. Through intricate depictions of characters and spaces, Brown Girl imagines multidimensional black being in Canada, an imaginable truth ultimately affirmed by Ti-­Jeanne’s dramatic repurposing of the national landmark. Rudy tries to coerce his grand­daughter into delegating her spirit into his ser­vice, but Ti-­Jeanne remembers her first ceremony to enlist the assistance of her gods: She remembered her grand­mother’s words: The centre pole is the bridge between the worlds. Why had t­ hose words come to her right then? Ti-­Jeanne thought of the centre pole of the palais, reaching up into the air and down ­toward the ground. She thought of the building she was in. The CN Tower. And she understood what it was: 1,815 feet of the tallest centre pole in the world. Her duppy body almost laughed a s­ ilent kya-­kya, a jokey Jab-­Jab laugh. For like the spirit tree that the centre pole symbolized, the CN Tower dug roots deep into the ground where the dead lived and pushed high into the heavens where the oldest ancestors lived. The tower was their ladder into this world. A Jab-­Jab type of joke, oui.94

Ti-­Jeanne’s envisioning of the tower as a center pole wrests fixed meanings from its recognized (Canadian industry, government, national achievement, tourism) and proxy (Rudy as the black, immigrant face of old power) authorities. As the oldest ancestors answer the protagonist’s call and descend from the heavens, the recently dead ascend from below through the CN Tower/center pole. Ti-­Jeanne/ Legbara facilitates the migration of each group, claims her spiritual legacy, gains Mami’s approval, grows into her womanly self, and affirms her Canadian self—­all at the same time. Through this character and t­ hese fantastical moves, the novel imagines how black immigrants relate to a receiving country; this same scene also represents Canada’s availability to its diverse citizenry. And, at last, Brown Girl spectacularly extends the both/and nature of the relationship

Third—­Fantasy • 113

between citizens of Afro-­Caribbean descent and the North American country in the connection between Gros-­Jeanne and Premier Catherine Uttley. Brown Girl in the Ring fantastically embodies this “dif­fer­ent way of being” in Canada through the posttransplant Premier Uttley. Tony renders Mami brain-­ dead and harvests her heart for the premier’s transplant surgery. While the politician’s surgeons—­and the patient herself—­believe that the heart ­will serve its recipient, it is more true that the heart and the body combine to serve each other, thus performing something bigger than the separate parts: While [doctors fought] to establish a symbiosis between their patient’s body and its new heart, Catherine Uttley’s unconscious mind had been conducting a b­ attle of its own. At some level in her dreams, ­she’d been aware that the lifesaving organ had been placed in her body, had felt relief and a sense of welcome ­toward the donated heart. But then the dream changed. She had realised that she was being invaded in some way, taken over. The heart’s rhythm felt wrong, not her own. It had leapt and battered against her chest as though it ­were determined to break out. Uttley had been stern at first. “Stop that. ­You’re h­ ere to help me. Just s­ ettle down and do your job.” The heart’s frenzied buffeting had slowed to a more regular pace, but then Uttley began to feel a numbness spreading out from her chest with each beat of the heart: down her arms, through her trunk and legs. Bit by bit, she was losing the ability to control her own body. The heart was taking it over. Uttley became alarmed, had tried talking to the alien organ. “Please,” she said. “This is my body. You c­ an’t take it away from me.” . . . And then she was aware again. Her dream body and brain ­were hers once more, but with a difference. The heart—­her heart—­was dancing joyfully between her ribs. When she looked down at herself, she could see the blood moving through her body to its beat. In ­every artery, e­ very vein, e­ very capillary: two distinct streams, intertwined.95

If, as premier, Uttley represents the nation, how she describes the transplanted heart’s relationship to her body is noteworthy. The language of infestation and invasion is both unmistakable and familiar; consider how Bashi describes an En­glish response to Ca­rib­bean immigrants who arrived on the Empire Windrush in June 1948: “­These civilian British subjects did not fall ­under the jurisdiction of the Colonial Office, and their migration could not be as easily controlled as the migration of military recruits who entered Britain in the ­earlier period. ‘What seems to have alarmed officials’ is not merely that ­these immigrants ­were black, but that they came ­under their own volition, which seemed to officials ‘a premo­ nition of a limitless, uncontrollable invasion.’ ”96 Premier Uttley believes the donor heart is put in ser­vice of her (white, elite) privilege, a belief that she is quickly forced to relinquish. Consequently, the premier can no longer uncritically accept

114 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

her hierarchal relationship as “normal,” and she experiences this lesson as a fearful and numbing loss of control. Yet rather than literally inverting the hierarchy, merely maintaining it with another raced self at its apex, Gros-­Jeanne moves through Uttley to become a dif­f er­ent kind of “one.” The phrase “she was healed, a new w ­ oman now” is a double entendre that speaks to the premier’s dramatic healing and to the type of ­woman born ­after the transplant—­two distinct female beings, intertwined. Fantastically, Mami and Uttley are now separately together. This scene functionally represents a repurposed body politic, notably dif­fer­ent from one that normalizes the dominance of one race/culture over ­others. ­A fter the transplant, Uttley can propose several initiatives, all of which reflect a social consciousness that did not exist before her surgery. With her new heart, Uttley wants to “rejuvenate Toronto” by offering “interest-­free loans to small enterprises that are already ­there, give them perks if they fix up the real estate ­they’re squatting on.”97 This plan ­will work, the politician believes, ­because “­there are quite a few resourceful ­people left in Muddy York.”98 ­Because the new Mami/Uttley is not exclusively e­ ither ­woman, the takeaway from this fantastical integration is the productive possibilities of a both/and relationship between dif­fer­ent Canadians. This being is not merely productive on an individual/personal level, or even on a meta­phorical one (Mami as “black immigrant” and Catherine as “white local”), but also in terms of ideology: the fantastic integration of Gros-­Jeanne and Uttley results in Toronto being “thought” out of “a rat hole, complete with rats,” and into a place of “quite a few resourceful ­people.”

Demanding a Complex Vision . . . Fantastical blackness in Brown Girl in the Ring draws on literary fantasy and science fiction to build a world through which readers can re/imagine national belonging in Canada. By featuring Jamaican and Trinidadian p­ eople, languages, and cultures as well as diasporic African and Ca­rib­bean spiritualties, the novel resonates with public and academic debates about blackness and multiculturalism in Canada and re-­presents blackness in a way that challenges the most negative perceptions of who can be Canadian. Though this chapter is not specifically committed to proving or disproving assertions about Canadian multiculturalism’s capacity for fragmentation, it affirms possibilities of a fantastically dif­fer­ ent Canadianness thought from an inclusive and fantastical literary perspective. Within the pages of Hopkinson’s novel are characters and relations that are always multiple, unified by desires to connect and protect ­human beings, representing communities of pangenerational Canadians who si­mul­ta­neously live premigration and ancestral experiences. However, ­these ­imagined Canadians are not merely entertaining since, as Garcea notes, “perceived prob­lems may be as significant as, and possibly even more significant than, real prob­lems.” He continues, “In identifying real and perceived prob­lems, special attention should be

Third—­Fantasy • 115

devoted both to the symbolic and the substantive dimensions of multiculturalism philosophy and policy. The reason for this is that both dimensions are impor­ tant, especially given that . . . ​­people have symbolic as well as material interests. Thus, the symbolic dimensions of multiculturalism philosophy and policy may be as impor­tant as, if not more impor­tant than, the substantive dimensions.”99 Fantasy and science fiction are grounded in symbolic and affective experience; thus, they can make their most purposeful, critical intervention into symbolic aspects of discourses of racial as well as multicultural belonging in Canada. Nalo Hopkinson shares with regard to her writing goals, “I can blatantly show what values the characters in the story are trying to live out by making them ­actual, by exaggerating them into the realm of the fantastical, so that the consequences conversely become so real that they are tangible.”100 Despite the genre’s traditional orientation t­ oward young and white male readers and concepts this audience typically finds attractive, Hopkinson redirects her genres-­of-­choice ­toward their ideological roots: “exaggerating [characters and ideas] into the realm of the fantastical, so that the consequences conversely become so real that they are tangible.” A similar re­orientation occurs when readers are offered “an alternative account for the way ­things are.”101 Fantastical truths in Brown Girl in the Ring reveal novel ways to think Canadian identities by centering p­ eople made other in the North American country. The orientation that this centering affords disrupts normalized narratives (Ti-­Jeanne’s critique of the suburbs), bringing imaginatively pos­si­ble ideas together for a common purpose (Mami/Uttley as two distinct streams, intertwined). Imagining this black diaspora’s present/ future fantastically rethinks postulations about a fragmented national identity, creating space for hyperbolic ideological shifts. By re/imagining Canadian national identity through a fantastically black lens, Nalo Hopkinson’s first novel puts an ­imagined distinct-­and-­intertwined truth in conversation with an extraliterary either/or that characterizes con­temporary debates on Canadian belonging. The resultant portrayal manifests Brown Girl’s form and content as theoretical tools that open up possibilities for re/newed thinking about what black being means in Canada and, as a result, what Canadianness means and can mean. And an idea that can be i­ magined can be made real.

4

Fourth—­Multigenre Seeing White: Colson Whitehead’s The Under­ground Railroad Stick to the truth and not the facts. —­Colson Whitehead, “Book Review Podcast: Colson Whitehead and Jeffrey Toobin Talk about Their New Best Sellers” The dialectic that brings necessity into the foundation of my freedom drives me out of myself. It shatters my unreflected position. Still in terms of consciousness, black consciousness is immanent in its own eyes. I am not a potentiality of something, I am wholly what I am. I do not have to look for the universal. No probability has any place inside me. My Negro consciousness does not hold itself out as a lack. It is. It is its own follower. —­Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of In­de­pen­dence back on the Randall plantation many times, his voice drifting through the village like an angry phantom. She d­ idn’t understand the words, most of them at any rate, but created equal was not lost on her. The white men who wrote it d­ idn’t understand it e­ ither, if all men did not truly mean all men. Not if they snatched away what belonged to other ­people, ­whether it was something you could hold in your hand, like dirt, or something you could not, like freedom. —­Colson Whitehead, The Under­g round Railroad 116

Fourth—­Multigenre • 117

Whitehead’s Language of Form(fulness) Exactly what literary form does Colson Whitehead use in The Under­ground Rail­ road (TUR)? This is not a specious question, as the following quotations attest (italics are mine): critics describe Whitehead’s 2016 novel as “a fantastical tale about a young slave making a bid for freedom in the antebellum South”; “a glistening, steampunk real­ity”; “an ele­ment of magical realism—in this case, the conversion of the figurative railroad . . . ​into an a­ ctual subway system”; “a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the vio­lence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to con­temporary Amer­i­ca”; an “alternative history of slavery in the US . . . ​[that] has won the UK’s top honour for science fiction”; and “a text mired in fantasy that does not reveal history so much as perform it to satisfy the generic expectations of readers.”1 The novel’s marketing, reviews, and the prizes it won blend how the novel does what it does with its content, all in an attempt to describe what it is, that is, its form: prose fiction (realism, historical) or genre fiction (fantasy, magical realism, steampunk, science fiction, suspense/thriller: “the drama of escape”).2 I sort t­ hese claims like this b­ ecause a novel’s label can determine the size of its reading audience: genre fiction tells “stories that can be marketed to an established readership,” while literary fiction has a “smaller, more intellectual audience.”3 What Whitehead says about his formalist intentions, particularly for The Under­ground Railroad, adds to this clamor: I’ve written books that are more resistant to readers and books that are slow and defy the pleasures of plot. Sag Harbor, which is about growing up in the 80s, is a portrait of a summer; t­ here’s no driving plot. But, with [TUR], I think the life-­or-­death stakes—if [Cora] was caught, she would be put to death—­ called for a dif­fer­ent approach to some other books. I was aware of the conventions of a suspenseful book and of withholding information; red herrings and distracting the reader. And I think the plot, like humour, or what kind of narrator you have, is just a tool you use for the right story at the right time.4

The author does not explic­itly state what the right tools for The Under­g round Railroad are, but he appears satisfied with what they built: “having p­ eople like the book this much—­and Oprah and the Times ­thing [a stand-­a lone print excerpt]—­it’s never gonna happen again. So I should enjoy it.”5 By distinguishing Sag Harbor from TUR, Whitehead stresses how each novel engages (or thwarts) readers’ expectations, picking up a thread that runs through the identifiers that reviewers have applied to the 2016 novel. The right descriptor can attract an audience of a par­tic­u ­lar size and specialized expertise. ­W hether it draws literary fiction’s smaller, “intellectual” readership or genre fictions’ large number of readers well versed in the features of their form(s)-­of-­choice, the kind of novel it is m ­ atters. If Sag Harbor resists some readers’ desire for a fast-­paced plot, The Under­ground Railroad’s apparently right-­and-­timely form appropriately

118 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

serves its content and has given many readers precisely what they wanted. If the foregoing critical observations are true, then how and how well does the form of Whitehead’s 2016 novel engage not only content and characters but also readers? What formalist work must a reader do with the novel? And once a motivated reader appreciates the right-­and-­timely genre, what ­will their formalist critique of the novel reveal? Seemingly unbothered by the myriad forms that TUR could be, Stephanie Li commits to reading it as an “escapist narrative that, rather than confront historical suffering, teases readers with vio­lence that his fantastic railroad neatly curtails. The result is a text mired in fantasy that does not reveal history so much as perform it to satisfy the generic expectations of readers. Although Whitehead hopes to escape the limitations of what he once derisively termed the ‘Southern Novel of Black Misery,’ he has fashioned a book true to form.”6 Li holds the novel to a type tethered to the history of U.S. slavery and defined by a narrative that closely mirrors history while also reimagining it. Interpreting from Li’s perspective situates the novel’s most spectacular features as fodder for readers who desire the spectacle of traumatized black ­people.7 The critic attends to the novel’s most astonishing parts—­the vicious and quotidian vio­lence of U.S. slavery in addition to the railroad as literal subway—­maintaining both as objects of a dominant gaze. This approach to The Under­g round Railroad, however, has the effect of hiding what is in plain sight. It is clear that Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel can be variously labeled, thus exhibiting its form as open to interpretation. What is more, Whitehead’s references to “the conventions of a suspenseful book and of withholding information” and to “red herrings and distracting the reader” introduce suspense/thriller and mystery fictions to the genre qualifiers listed above.8 Yet b­ ecause TUR refuses fixed literary form (“­every novel by Colson Whitehead is an affront to genre”)9— or, perhaps, ­because it embraces all of them—­time spent on pinning its form(s) down is practically fruitless. Nevertheless, through ­every attempt to fix the novel’s form, readers and readers’ expectations remain constant. And if we accept flexible forms and discernable readerly l­abor as useful ways into the novel, it becomes clear that TUR is written in a way that welcomes “disturbance, to engage the apparently mad and maddening, to sustain often slippery frameworks of intention that act subliminally, if not explic­itly, on distinct and overlapping cognitive registers, and to acknowledge meaning in t­ hose spaces where speechlessness is the common currency.”10 Whitehead knows what he intended for his novel, but he does not tell every­thing. This makes reading it disconcerting and its conspicuously violent features particularly unsettling. Given t­hese givens, what can be done with a novel that centers disturbances and slippery frameworks? How do features of suspense/thriller, mystery, and fantasy (­etc.) thrive and/or contribute to ­these disturbances? How does The Under­g round Railroad engage dif­fer­ent cognitive registers through its forms, and, in ­doing so, what does it say?

Fourth—­Multigenre • 119

TUR imagines fifteen-­(or sixteen-­or seventeen-) year-­old Cora as ungovern­ able fugitivity. Moving through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, and “The North”—­each a dif­fer­ent state of being—­she is “fugitive movement in and out of the frame, bar, or what­ever externally imposed social logic—­a movement of escape, the stealth of the stolen that can be said, since it inheres in e­ very closed circle, to break ­every enclosure.”11 And Fred Moten refines and affirms this definition, fortifying Cora as the novel’s fantastically black lens: “Fugitivity, then, is a desire for and a spirit of escape and transgression of the proper and the proposed. It’s a desire for the outside, for a playing or being outside, an outlaw edge proper to the now always already improper voice or instrument.”12 Rejecting “the proper and the proposed” and embodying “an outlaw edge [of] the improper voice or instrument,” Cora travels the railroad, an anachronism that effectively represents not merely physical and psychic paces ­toward “freedom” but the manufactured undercurrent that sustains the American nation and its (valorized) citizens.13 In Cora’s transgressive fugitivity is her re­sis­tance to “the commodification of [her] bought and sold [body] by feeling and feeling for” her self and for ­others made black.14 Through her transgressive fugitivity, her pro­gress through what ­will be the United States of Amer­i­ca is a revelation: each station exposes a man-­made whiteness normalized ­because black ­people are made abject. The Under­g round Railroad’s mash-up of popu­lar forms anticipates knowledgeable readers and requires something of us. Sorting out the novel’s forms and making meaning from it/them, we conduct literary critical l­ abor to gain insights into and claim our part in the story the novel tells. But informed readers are not wholly ­free to embrace Whitehead’s narrative as we ­will. An omniscient narrator incites how we relate to content and characters. Consider that, in the absence of substantive details about Cora’s interior self and life, readers do not learn who she is. She is never a fully drawn “person” with whom we can easily identify. Instead, distanced by an omniscient narrator and a lack of detail, Cora is most easily known as slave. In spite of this and in her fugitivity, her character exceeds the limits of the category “slave,” determined by U.S. slavery. So written, Cora evinces a fantastically black lens through which she—­and readers—­see white and, therefore, makes vis­i­ble a raced identity that is secreted and unseen. Since “all lenses filter and focus light so that it hits the sensor or film strip correctly,” fantastical blackness stipulates the focal length range that develops what and how much we see as Cora moves through states.15 Traveling the railroad, the character stresses repre­sen­ta­tions of whiteness that exist in specific states and pictures what enables each perception.16 What Cora-­as-­lens reveals is that which allows the American nation to run smoothly. So exposed, Cora’s sightings demystify the country’s foundational narrative, a mission propelled by the mechanical conveyance that unifies its disparate parts. Rather than a meta­phor for a mechanized system that fantastically exceeds what is pos­si­ble in an extraliterary world or a spectacular imagining of

120 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

the a­ ctual network through which enslaved ­people moved from states of slavery to states of freedom (the most common definition of fantasy fiction), Whitehead’s literal subway symbolizes a complex of interred national truths. The subway assists Cora’s fantastically black optic in revealing the racial perversities that substantiate the nation. One spectacular scene defines Cora as TUR’s fantastically black critical lens. Cora uses her body to shield Chester from Terrance Randall’s unremitting blows, exacted to punish the boy for splashing one drop of wine on the white man’s white shirt: One drop. A feeling settled over Cora. She had not been u­ nder its spell in years, since she brought the hatchet down on Blake’s dog­house and sent the splinters into the air. She had seen men hung from trees and left for buzzards and crows. ­Women carved open to the bones with the cat-­o’-­nine-­tails. Bodies alive and dead roasted on pyres. Feet cut off to prevent escape and hands cut off to stop theft. She had seen boys and girls younger than this beaten and had done nothing. This night the feeling settled on her heart again. It grabbed hold of her and before the slave part of her caught up with the h­ uman part of her, she was bent over the boy’s body as a shield. She held the cane in her hand like a swamp man ­handling a snake and saw the ornament at its tip. The silver wolf bared its silver teeth. Then the cane was out of her hand. It came down on her head. It crashed down again and this time the silver teeth ripped across her eyes and her blood splattered the dirt.17

This beating c­ auses the “star-­shape mark on her t­ emple” described in the fugitive slave ad, but it does not mark Cora as slave.18 Her action might seem “perplexing,” its inexplicability amplified by its futility (“to c­ ounter a master is hopeless”) and thanklessness (“the boy never speaks to her again”),19 but the success or failure of what Cora does is neither the sole nor the most significant way to consider its effect or meaning. What fascinates is the one feeling that Chester’s thrashing sets ­free, the same feeling that is triggered by Blake’s attempt to usurp Cora’s f­ amily plot. This feeling is the expression of the truth (“and not the facts”)20 of Cora’s fantastical blackness. What motivates the girl to shield Chester’s body with her own speaks the abundance of an imaginable truth of a person irreducible to slave. The quotation opens with the trigger for and descriptions of the torturous vio­lence to which she is and has been subjected. It then turns on the feeling that breaks and breaks through the self institutionalized by enslavers and increased by Blake, a character for whom the distance between his ­human and slave parts is insurmountable. This scene, driven by the feeling, illustrates blackness’s fugitivity: “before the slave part of her caught up with the ­human part of her, she was bent over the boy’s body as a shield.” The h ­ uman part of her exists, and exceeds, the slave part of her, signifying Cora’s inherent refusal

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to be governed, no ­matter the consequences.21 The part made both “black” and “slave” by and for the plantation-­owning Randall ­brothers relates to but is not superior to the self that defines and motivates the girl’s shielding action. The quotation’s spectacular vio­lence, and the physical and psychic marks it leaves, cannot explain Cora’s fantastical black self.22 It, however, is accessible in an ethical reading that sees “the slave part of [Cora],” as well as her fugitivity and herself in excess of the made-­slave. Like Frantz Fanon’s perceived self, Cora’s “black consciousness is immanent in its own eyes,” and her “consciousness does not hold itself out as lack. It is [and] it is its own follower.”23 This depiction of Cora’s fantastical blackness moves with her through the remainder of the novel and informs what she sees and what readers see through her. The profound significance of the character’s fantastically black analytic, and its influence on how The Under­g round Railroad can be read, is not excessive, as the following demonstrates. ­A fter escaping patrollers who tracked Cora into South Carolina, she travels by train only to disembark at the deactivated North Carolina station. Station agent Martin Wells displays, rather than describes, the “Freedom Trail” that forces the closure: The corpses hung from trees as rotting ornaments. Some of them ­were naked, ­others partially clothed, the trousers black where their bowels emptied when their necks snapped. Gross wounds and injuries marked the flesh of ­those closest to her, the two caught by the station agent’s lantern. One had been castrated, an ugly mouth gaping where his manhood had been. The other was a ­woman. Her belly curved. Cora had never been good at knowing if a body was with a child. Their bulging eyes seemed to rebuke her stares, but what w ­ ere the attentions of one girl, disturbing their rest, compared to how the world had scourged them since the day they w ­ ere brought into it? “They call this road the Freedom Trail now,” Martin said as he covered the wagon again. “The bodies go all the way to town.”24

Cora escapes South Carolina only to find herself in a town made white by the genocidal murder of ­every black person within its borders (“In North Carolina the negro race did not exist except at the ends of ropes”).25 The name and the genocide make the road monstrous, but nothing so horrific as the whiteness that requires both. North Carolina whiteness does not need enslaved ­people b­ ecause it exists in a state of fear of “the slave [who casts] off his chains in pursuit of freedom—­and retribution.”26 What the state of North Carolina needs, envisioned by the Freedom Trail, is black death.27 Perversely, this state of blackness is essential b­ ecause in the absence of black p­ eople (enslaved or f­ ree), the state blackens white ­people, the fact of which forces Martin to secret Cora in his attic.28 From the vantage point of the garret, Cora witnesses the murderous festivals that produce the Freedom Trail and define the state as white.

122 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

North Carolina, omnisciently narrated through the cautionary tales Martin shares with Cora, cultivates a state of whiteness that goes to g­ reat lengths to maintain it: contracting indentured laborers from Eu­rope, lynching black ­people who cross its borders, and—­for white p­ eople who aid and abet black p­ eople (or who run afoul of other white ­people)—­“the verdict was death.”29 ­These vicious tales are shared to explain Martin’s wife’s terror over Cora’s presence. However, Cora-­as-­lens, locked in the tight space of the garret, understands a lesson dif­fer­ ent from what the agent intends. “Once again, Martin apologized for his wife’s be­hav­ior.” He continues, “You understand she’s scared to death. ­We’re at the mercy of fate.” “You feel like a slave?” Cora asked. Ethel ­hadn’t chosen this life, Martin said. “You w ­ ere born to it? Like a slave?” That put an end to their conversation that night. Cora climbed up into the nook with fresh rations and a clean chamber pot.30

This quotation’s power­f ul meaning is conveyed through direct dialogue (distinguished by quotation marks) and narration. Martin intends his words to confine—­indoctrinate—­Cora into a subject position subordinate to that of the Wellses, yet her responses oppose the category of slave. The girl speaks truths that Martin cannot bear, an interpretation underscored by the agent’s switch from direct dialogue (“You understand she’s scared to death. W ­ e’re at the mercy of fate”) to third person narration (Ethel h ­ adn’t chosen this life, Martin said). That which the station agent cannot bear is Cora’s insistent comparisons while he repeatedly emphasizes the direness of his and Ethel’s circumstance. Cora’s focus is tenacious in its articulation of states of vio­lence and terror that characterize black ­people’s quotidian realities. Martin does not respond directly to Cora, as a reader would expect one sentient being/character to respond to another; the girl’s comparison, however, does not deviate. The conductor’s failure to dialogue normalizes the dehumanizing vio­lence that relegates the girl into “black” and “slave.” It also represents Martin’s inability to conceive of his self in a state of being that, for him, can only be black. The agent of North Carolina’s defunct station stop cannot countenance ­either his or his wife’s white selves as “black” or “slave.” Rendered in direct dialogue, Cora’s questions make clear the knowledge of an insurmountable difference between black/slave and white, a knowing that cannot be bridged by liberal acts (Martin as [former] agent of the under­ground railroad). Though this quotation is short, Cora-­as-­lens and Whitehead’s writerly choices amplify the scene’s suspense and leave a profound impact. The Under­g round Railroad deploys features of suspense/thriller and mystery fictions and pre­sents Cora as a fantastically black lens, representing not only a con­temporary narrative of slavery but significantly a narrative of how “slave” and

Fourth—­Multigenre • 123

“slavery” are made and the racial and national consequences of ­these makings. The novel’s spectacular vio­lence, its anachronistic subway, and its characterizations, developed and made vis­i­ble through fantastically black Cora-­as-­lens, demystify U.S. whiteness while revealing a nation founded on white-­supremacist terror.

How Nation Is Made (White) Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark uses a critique of literary forms to analyze race. Observing the strikingly pessimistic tone in early North American lit­er­a­ ture, Morrison is “struck by how antithetical it is to our modern rendition of the American Dream. How pronounced in it is the absence of that term’s elusive mixture of hope, realism, materialism, and promise. For a ­people who made much of their ‘newness’—­their potential, freedom, and innocence—it is striking how dour, how troubled, how frightened and haunted our early and founding lit­er­a­ ture truly is.”31 The gothic romance—­with its characteristic medieval settings, horrifying and gloomy atmospheres, irrationality, and mysterious and violent occurrences—­perfectly captures the terror, uncertainty, and perversities that characterized writing by North Amer­i­ca’s early settlers and writers.32 Thus, Morrison reads literary form as a vehicle through which the new nation crafted its being; still, this was an Americanness that could only be notional without a counterbalance.33 An eerily recurrent Africanist presence, as the receptacle of Eu­ro­pean fear, became a crucial, though secreted, entity that authorized American innocence and freedom. Constituted in the gothic romance, the Africanist persona allowed Eu­ro­pean immigrants to understand “American identity” as new, f­ ree, white, and male b­ ecause it was not black, not enslaved, and not wretched.34 Significantly, this character in this newly minted lit­er­a­ture of Amer­i­ca breeched bound­aries between the literary and the extraliterary ­because “responding to culture—­clarifying, explicating, valorizing, translating, transforming, criticizing—is what artists everywhere do, especially writers involved in the founding of a new nation.”35 Toni Morrison demonstrates how authors ­imagined an American identity that successfully navigated the anx­i­eties triggered by new-­world geographies by embodying ­those fears in terrifying black characters. Gothic fiction, then, ­imagined whitened ­people into being by managing blackened objects of terror that haunted the American nation. In a relative of gothic fiction, Colson Whitehead also considers an American identity as it relates to a quality of blackness. While the ste­reo­typed blackness that Morrison excavates fashions a mythic (fearless, ­free, white) Americanness, Whitehead’s fantastical black lens peels away accretions to demystify the whiteness fictionalized in the United States’ founding narratives. This whiteness, seen through a fugitive and self-­proclaimed blackness, exposes machinations that occlude the dreadful realities of the new nation.

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The journalist John Biewen, using the twenty-­first-­century form of the podcast, reveals a similar pro­cess of racial excavation in his Peabody-­nominated series “Seeing White.”36 Biewen mines histories, ideas, and narratives about race and racism as a response to notions of whiteness that circulate in the popu­lar imaginary: ­ ere’s a tendency to think that ­human beings looked around at some point in Th the distant past and said, well, let’s see, t­ here’s some of us who look this way and then ­those ­people over ­there look that other way, and t­ hose p­ eople over ­there look that other way, so I’ll just describe us as, you know, black, white, yellow, red. But this history on this continent shows something so dif­fer­ent, which is that [race] was constructed with very specific purposes in mind, lines drawn around the definition. And it ­really alters how you see the meaning of black and white.37

The podcast carefully explores social, l­ egal, and government histories—­seasoned by relevant clips of film and ­music—­through which ­those who are now known as white ­were whitened and benefited from U.S. citizenship and other privileges. Starting with beliefs that categorized humanity by climate and global locations, then charting their evolution into rationalizations for explic­itly drawn U.S. racial formations, “Seeing White” maps how U.S. whiteness was made, bounded, and normalized. In fourteen episodes, the series explores how this tortuously complex “proj­ect took de­cades to complete” while proceeding through mea­sured stages.38 Elite plantation ­owners, seeking an uninterrupted source of compliant l­ abor and determined to thwart a multiraced co­ali­tion among laboring ­people, used their influence to transform African-­descended p­ eoples into slaves. To maintain, extend, and normalize this identity category, men of the planter class ­imagined and deployed narratives to justify motives that opposed Enlightenment teachings and to mask their intentions.39 Racial science did much to advance “slave” as a proper noun (as opposed to an adjective used to describe p­ eople subjected to the circumstance of enslavement), further entrenching the concept of black inferiority. Converting a compilation of scholarly research and activist work on race, racism, and racist ideas into a popu­lar and aural form, Biewen persuasively narrates how the desire for perpetual servitude converted into a justifying narrative that extended the privileges of citizenship to made-­white ­people and concretized racial categories in what is now the United States.40 “Seeing White’s” “premise . . . ​is that the American conversation about race, and the stories we tell ourselves about race and ethnicity, are deeply incomplete and often misleading. We need new stories and new understandings, about our history and our current racial and ethnic real­ity.”41 The success of this podcast identifies it as a form through which re/newed perspectives on race find voice,

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as it makes accessible the deliberate pro­cess through which rigid racial categories ­were fomented. Biewen’s discussion of John Punch is a case in point. Introducing the audio from a recorded workshop led by Suzanne Plihcik, cofounder of the Racial Equity Institute (REI),42 the host of “Seeing White” sets the stage: SUZ ANNE PL IHCIK  ​In the colony of ­Virginia, in 1640, an African indentured servant

by the name of John Punch runs away from his servitude. John has figured out that this w ­ asn’t what he ­imagined it to be. Interestingly, John ­doesn’t run away alone. He runs away with a Dutchman and a Scotsman.43 They are all indentured servants; they are all living in identical circumstance. So they band together and run away. JOHN BIE WEN  ​This does not go well. The three men are chased down and caught. SUZ ANNE PL IHCIK  ​And a very in­ter­est­ing ­thing is recorded in the Colony of ­Virginia. The Dutchman and Scotsman are given four additional years of servitude as punishment—­one to the master to whom t­ hey’re indentured and three to the colony. But the African is given what we see codified for the first time . . . ​as perpetual . . . ​servitude. JOHN BIE WEN  ​The judge tells John Punch that unlike the two men from Eu­rope, he ­will ­labor for his master for the rest of his days. SUZ ANNE PL IHCIK :  ​ What have we [written] down? Slavery. Slavery. JOHN BIE WEN  ​Some Africans ­were already effectively enslaved in V ­ irginia by 1640. But the Punch case seems to be the first explicit approval of lifelong servitude—­ and the first time African and Eu­ro­pean ­people ­were treated differently in the law. SUZ ANNE PL IHCIK  ​Why was it done? JOHN BIE WEN  ​This is impor­tant. Suzanne says ­whether the judge consciously intended this or not, his decision was a gift to rich landowners. SUZ ANNE PL IHCIK  ​The story of race, folks, is the story of ­labor. They needed a consistent, reliable ­labor force. And they could not have a consistent, reliable ­labor force if that ­labor force was banding together and challenging the authority of the colony. JOHN BIE WEN  ​Colonial Amer­i­ca was deeply unequal. Most ­people of e­ very color ­were poor laborers—­farm workers, builders, seamstresses. And ­those workers ­were prone to getting restless and pulling out the pitchforks. ­There w ­ ere lots of worker uprisings. The disparate sentencing of John Punch was one of the first examples, Plihcik says, of what would become an ongoing practice by the rich landowning class and their po­liti­cal representatives: the practice of giving the poor ­people who looked like ­those in power, p­ eople of Eu­ro­pean descent, advantages—­ usually small advantages—­over Africans and Native ­people. SUZ ANNE PL IHCIK  ​And what did that do? It switched their allegiance from the ­people in their same circumstance to the p­ eople at the top. It eventually created a multi-­class co­a li­tion of ­people who would ­later come to be called white. It

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created a multi-­class co­a li­tion. So this was a divide-­and-­conquer strategy. It was completely brilliant.44

Legislation associated with the John Punch case, followed by a series of laws that closed loopholes African-­descended p­ eople used to exploit then-­porous racial and ­labor categories, solidified bound­aries between ­people constructed as slave and, eventually, black from ­those made white, defined as such b­ ecause they ­were neither slave nor black; privileges of citizenship and property owner­ship w ­ ere eventually extended to whitened p­ eople. Th ­ ese l­ egal maneuvers, in other words, developed into narratives of race and enfranchisement. By 1790, when Congress passed the first Naturalization Act, “white” was established as an official racial category when it granted immigrants from western Eu­rope the rights and privileges of citizenship. More laws ­were crafted, as deliberate and intentional as previous ones, resulting in (among other consequences) a system of rules and protections for plantation o­ wners who abused (“corrected”) the ­people they enslaved.45 Through a decades-­long pro­cess, the making of U.S. slavery was “inseparable from the construction of whiteness as we know it ­today.”46 Over time, the specific steps in the pro­cess, features provocatively detailed in “Seeing White,” w ­ ere overwhelmed by the popu­lar my­thol­ ogy of Americanness and its role in the founding of the U.S. nation: “White supremacy was encoded in the DNA of the United States, and white ­people dominate American life and its institutions to this day, and yet whiteness too often remains invisible, unmarked, and unnamed.”47 In light of obfuscations that mythologize U.S. whiteness, how do we access truths about this country’s racial foundations? And then, how do we strip away the rhetorical (­etc.) accretions that prevent us from understanding current racial realities? How can we address the willful ignorance and forgetting that supports mythic narratives of Americanness and deal with narratives of denigrated blackness that support them?48 Suzanne Plihcik asserts, “If we know how we made it, if we know how it was constructed, then we have a better opportunity to deconstruct, to unmake.”49 I support her deconstructive ethos, and that which Biewen’s podcast implements, with an undisciplined approach grounded in fantastical blackness in Whitehead’s multigenre novel. This chapter unravels (sees through) durable narratives of white superiority and privilege, and black inferiority and denigration, by returning to Plihcik’s references to circumstances. She describes John Punch as living in “identical circumstance” with Victor (the Dutchman) and James Gregory (the Scotsman); ­later, she says that elites persuaded selected laboring p­ eople to “[switch] their allegiance from the p­ eople in their same circumstance to the ­people at the top.” In both cases, and to benefit elites, class and judicial narratives downplay common circumstances to advance increasingly fixed definitions of race. Reading Cora’s character in The Under­ground Railroad as fantastically black and fugitive permits critical engagement with circumstances and faceted identities that develop in the novel, rendering the perverse founda-

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tions on which the United States rests, and the legacies of this foundation, dramatically vis­i­ble. A fantastically black reading of TUR further evinces the formalist analytic that Toni Morrison advances in Playing in the Dark, turning our critical gaze t­ oward how a nation was made (“on crazy we built a nation”50) and the literary tools used to make it—­and, possibly, the literary tools that can unmake this par­tic­u­lar making.

Playing in the Light “If you want to see what this nation is all about,” says the Georgia station agent Lumbly, “you have to ­ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of Amer­i­ca.”51 The white man’s directive is paradoxical: the railroad is under­ground, and, therefore, looking outside can only see (reveal) black: “Following Lumbly’s final instructions, Cora looked through the slats. Th ­ ere was only darkness, mile a­ fter mile.”52 If what the man says is true, what face can railroad travel make vis­i­ble? The white man’s point of view appears in direct dialogue, representing an intimate expression of his opinion about the accessibility of Amer­i­ca’s true face. Yet this opinion is queerly grounded. It is Lumbly’s impactful final statement, and it is a statement heralded by a series of ambivalences, making it (and the station agent) a package that c­ auses readers to ask w ­ hether it is pos­si­ble to see (know) the true face of Amer­i­ca, as opposed to its sinister foundation. And so begins Cora’s under­ground railroad journey. Introduced as a ghostly specter, Lumbly materializes in a barn populated by a diversity of restraints and torture devices, “a fearsome display” that the agent “picked up h ­ ere and t­ here” as “souvenirs from [his] travels.” Cora narrates that the ironworks are or­ga­nized by their use and by their states of being (from shackles rusted and broken to o­ thers recently forged). Newly freed from the Randall plantation, the girl confronts chains first and then tours the collection ­until she touches “a metal loop with spikes radiating t­ oward its center. She de­cided it was intended for wear around the neck.”53 Descent through the barn’s floor leads to the under­ground railroad’s Georgia station. The scene is omnisciently narrated, revealing ­little about Lumbly, Caesar, or Cora (characters in the scene), burdening readers’ first encounter with the means of conveyance with incongruity. Lumbly, traveler through states of slavery and collector of slavery’s memorabilia, is also charged with moving Cora and Caesar into the first stage of their journey. ­These truths conjure a host of feelings about the white man, his vision, and the subway. The true face of Amer­i­ca, in this context, can only be miles and miles of obscure tunnels, characterizing Amer­i­ca’s true face as unknown/unknowable. Every­thing that leads up to the station agent’s proclamation makes something clear: looking through a subway car’s slats while speeding through a tunnel cannot be about what eyes can see or meanings that can be made from what eyes can see. Instead, access to the true face of Amer­i­ca must lie in trying to see and making meaning from this trying. The trinkets that the agent collects in his

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travels are one way to see “what this nation is all about,” and the same can si­mul­ ta­neously be seen in the structure that h ­ ouses the collection: it is a portal to a way out of states of slavery. Readers’ introduction to the railway is mysterious, a muddled state that cannot be disconnected from the route, its stops, the ­people who work it and travel on the train, or the country ­under which it flows. Cora’s reaction to Lumbly’s directive does not divulge much about her. The narrator shares what she does—­follows direction, looks through slats—­and then what her actions reveal: darkness. ­These activities do not communicate what Cora thinks or feels about the true face of Amer­i­ca or the subway’s ability to make it seen. What they do communicate is her pro­cess of looking and what readers can glean from it. And though only darkness can be seen, it is impor­tant to note that Cora looks continuously (for mile ­after mile), an act of continuous looking that determines what can be found. Lumbly’s statement is not so much about what the true face of Amer­i­ca is as it is about the kind and duration of actions needed to see it. To uncover the mystery of Amer­i­ca’s true face, readers must sort clues to the unseen, unknown visage that the machinery of the subway discloses. It is also an inscrutable essence that is visualized through Cora’s self, that is, her ability to see for mile ­after mile. The introduction to the literal railroad affirms Cora’s function in the novel, as the lens through which readers witness and interpret its contents.54 It is another way that her fantastical blackness manifests as an indication not of who Cora is as an “individual” but of the faceted complexity of the lens that informs how and what readers see. Lumbly’s accounting of the duration and durability of the muddle that is the true face of Amer­i­ca is prescient in that it recurs three times in the novel, and each subsequent recollection adds to the suspenseful pro­cess of looking for the visage and of finding out what it is. Fiona (the Wellses’ maid) betrays Martin and Ethel to town leaders, an act that confirms the Irish ­woman’s Americanness b­ ecause the betrayal blackens the Wellses and condemns them to death. Ridgeway claims Cora as a fugitive from the Randall plantation and commits to her return. Royal, Red, and Justin (who, like Cora, wants to be ­free from slavery) liberate Cora from Ridgeway and invite her to journey with them through the railway to Indiana. The girl learns that Red and Royal are agents in the under­ground railroad (“ ‘I oil the pistons,’ [Royal] liked to say”)55 and beholds a station stop that eclipses the previous ones: “­A fter the rickety boxcar and then the cargo platform that had conveyed her to North Carolina, to step into a proper passenger car—­well-­appointed and comfortable like the ones she’s read about in her almanacs—­was a spectacular plea­sure. ­There ­were seats enough for thirty, lavish and soft, and brass fixtures gleamed where the candlelight fell. The smell of fresh varnish made her feel like the inaugural passenger of a magical, maiden voyage. Cora slept across three seats, ­free from chains and attic gloom for the first time in months.”56 Lumbly’s words return h ­ ere, at the third leg of her route to a f­ree state. This iteration of the station stop and the train are sublime, making Cora’s recollection

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of the agent’s “true face of Amer­i­ca” more perplexing: “The iron ­horse still rumbled through the tunnel when she woke. Lumbly’s words returned to her: If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ­ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of Amer­i­ca. It was a joke, then, from the start. Th ­ ere was only darkness outside the win­dows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.”57 Cora envisions this move from the Tennessee station in relation to her escapes from states of denigration but also in the context of her experiences in states of slavery (“that have conveyed her to North Carolina”). Experiences of being enslaved on the Randall plantation and locked in the Wellses’ garret in the whitened state of North Carolina travel with Cora as she travels the rails and taint the literal railroad. The novel announces the under­ground railroad with a convolutedness that colors readers’ perspective on the subway. The second iteration of Lumbly’s statement ties the subterranean route to states of degradation. The final incantation continues to affirm how difficult it is for readers to know the true face of Amer­i­ca, but it is a repetition with a difference: “Limping, tripping over crossties, Cora ran her hand along the wall of the tunnel, the ridges and pockets. Her fin­gers danced over valleys, rivers, the peaks of mountains, the contours of a new nation hidden beneath the old. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of Amer­i­ca. She could not see it but she felt it, moved through its heart.”58 This last reference to Lumbly carries with it the disorder of the previous two; it also reclaims the feeling that illustrates Cora’s fantastical blackness—­her self who is irreducible to slave and the institution of slavery. The subway tunnel allows the girl to feel the nation’s geography as it reflects a connection between “the contours of a new nation hidden beneath the old.” Cora brings the foundational narrative that exists beneath the myth to the fore. The seeing that intervenes between and through Cora’s recollection of Lumbly’s declaration develops the American face, but it is the pro­cess that still enables Cora’s national vision. The character’s first perception of the Georgia subway station is awesome: Cora appreciated the ­labor that had gone into its construction. The steps w ­ ere steep, but the stones aligned in even planes and provided an easy descent. Then they reached the tunnel, and appreciation became too mealy a word to contain what lay before her. The stairs led onto a small platform. The black mouths of the gigantic tunnel opened at e­ ither end. It must have been twenty feet tall, walls lined with dark and light colored stones in an alternating pattern. The sheer industry that had made such a proj­ect pos­si­ble. Cora and Caesar noticed the rails. Two steel rails ran the vis­i­ble length of the tunnel, pinned into the dirt by wooden crossties. The steel ran south and north presumably, springing from some inconceivable source and shooting t­ oward a miraculous terminus.59

The language is ambivalent about who builds the railroad (“Who builds anything in this country?”),60 but we must consider this phrase carefully: “The sheer

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industry that had made such a proj­ect pos­si­ble.” The phrase is truncated and hangs in the midst of explicit descriptions of the tunnel’s materials. Readers must question what the fragment’s “proj­ect” refers to: the excavation of the tunnel, the installation of the tiles, or the proj­ect that makes the literal railroad necessary? Depending on how we interpret “proj­ect,” who made the conveyance and its builders’ intentions give us pause. Yet Whitehead’s railroad is a current that flows ­under the American soon-­to-be nation (from South to North), though its source is also difficult to conceive (a state captured by Biewen’s podcast). The subway flows as an electrical charge flows, from location to location, drawing power from each point to propel it to the next. Whitehead’s railroad passes through several states (Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, the North), fixed and durable connections that build a solid foundation. Cora’s description of her first station stop details features that are not vital to the movement of any locomotive (aligned steps, alternating pattern of colored tiles), but they are qualities that make this railroad run nicely.61 The railroad-­a s-­undercurrent unifies the states, establishing that Cora does not move simply from a state of slavery to states of freedom. Though Lumbly describes “­every state [as] dif­fer­ent,” he continues with a provocative truth: “Each one a state of possibility, with its own customs and way of ­doing ­things. Moving through them, you’ll see the breadth of the country before you reach your final stop.”62 Rather than moving closer to a state of freedom, each railroad stop moves Cora through dif­fer­ent states of one ­union. Once Cora and Caesar leave Georgia, intertextual references to Linda Brent’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Anne Frank’s The Diary of Anne Frank, eugenics experiments carried out in the United States and in Germany, and historical narratives of U.S. slavery adjoin the story that The Under­ground Railroad tells. Associating tragic global histories to a chronicle visualized through Cora’s fantastically black fugitivity brings into focus imaginable truths (“stick to the truth and not the facts”) about how—­across time and geo­g raph­i­cal spaces—­ humans have been dehumanized to serve ­others’ ghastly motivations. Reviews of Whitehead’s novel remark on how anachronisms in the “South Carolina” chapter distinguish it from the enormity of the quotidian vio­lence in the “Ajarry,” “Georgia,” and “Ridgeway” chapters. However, discernible threads connect separate parts to the larger story that the novel tells: “South Carolina” references the realities of “Georgia”;63 “North Carolina” exemplifies events in “Georgia,”64 “South Carolina,” and “Tennessee”; at least one character in “Indiana” comes from “North Carolina”;65 and slave catcher Arnold Ridgeway progresses through all of the novel’s chapters. Reading The Under­g round Railroad in an undisciplined way highlights the thread that ties the vio­lence of “Georgia” to the national narrative that “South Carolina’s” Museum of Natu­ral History creates and then disseminates. The clandestine sterilization and eugenics experiments practiced in this chapter mirror the ways that whiteness uses blackness in “North Carolina”

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to serve the state. What is suspenseful in the novel, as its mysteries unfold, is not its anachronisms but its shared racial formations and their consequences. Cora and Caesar escape the Randall property, but they do not escape relations forged on the plantation. In “South Carolina,” Cora lives as Bessie Carpenter, learns to read, sleeps on her first bed in a ­women’s dormitory, and is a paid domestic worker in the Anderson’s h ­ ouse­hold. At first, South Carolina’s realities appear to differ dramatically from those of the Randall plantation, a change that motivates Caesar and Cora to remain in the state. Cora begins to see, however, cracks in the state’s façade. ­A fter a social or­ga­nized for black South Carolinians, Cora observes a young ­woman with a wild demeanor who claims that “they” are taking away her babies. The gathered crowd interprets her lament as a carryover from plantations where ­children being sold away from parents is a common occurrence. Caesar recalls how his male factory coworkers tell similar accounts of plantation pasts that track into their pre­sents. Th ­ ose who have left slavery in search of freedom “­were haunted by the plantation, carry­ing it ­here despite the miles. It lived in them. It still lived in all of them, waiting to abuse and taunt when chance presented itself.”66 However, in South Carolina, plantation afterlives multiply and amplify. Ultimately, what Cora beholds is South Carolina as plantation, but a differently packaged one. In this state, black ­people who w ­ ere previously enslaved in myriad states become the property of the state of South Carolina and of the state (body politic). As property, the new arrivals are bought, sold and sterilized, and their illnesses are left untreated. South Carolina promotes itself as a most enlightened southern state, yet new arrivals are thoroughly documented before being put to work. Unsurprisingly, patrollers and slave catchers take advantage of state rec­ords to reenslave. And the enlightened state serves the nation in subtler ways. Cora leaves the Anderson’s ­house­hold for a second job as a performer in a series of museum displays, curated and managed by Mr. Fields. Cora’s vision and how it functions are most clear in this space of employment ­because, as Fields describes it, the business of a museum is to educate: “The focus was on American history—­for a young nation, ­there was so much to educate the public about. The untamed flora and fauna of the North American continent, the minerals and other splendors of the world beneath their feet. Some p­ eople never left the counties where they ­were born, he said. Like a railroad, the museum permitted them to see the rest of the country beyond their small experience, from Florida to Maine to the western frontier. And to see its p­ eople. ‘­People like you,’ Mr. Fields said.”67 The narrative compares the work of the railroad to that of the museum, as both are means through which citizens/learners are educated about “the world beneath their feet”; and as education tools, they establish and enable the circulation of par­tic­ u­lar narratives. Notably, the narration ends with direct dialogue that ominously associates Cora—­already connected to the subway—­with the museum

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and its educational content. Fields’s narrative describes the museum as a medium through which citizens are indoctrinated into the realities and customs of the new nation. In the context that is South Carolina, the living history that the man­ ag­er curates is specific. Touring the site and acting in its displays, Cora sees white and black cast in specific roles that serve specific national per­for­mances. Cora performs dif­fer­ent roles in three dif­f er­ent exhibits: “Scenes from Darkest Africa,” “Life on the Slave Ship,” “Typical Day on the Plantation.” Fields informs Cora that viewers attend to see her, but the stories that the displays tell resemble neither Cora nor her ­people. With time and focused attention, the girl learns to see through the exhibits’ staged per­for­mances: “What do you say, Skipper John,” Cora asked her fellow sailor [in “Life on the Slave Ship” exhibit]. “Is this the truth of our historic encounter?” She had lately taken to making conversation with the dummy to add some theater for the audience. Paint had flaked from his cheek, exposing the gray wax beneath. The stuffed coyotes on their stands did not lie, Cora supposed. And the anthills and the rocks told the truth of themselves. But the white exhibits contained as many inaccuracies and contradictions as Cora’s three habitats. ­There had been no kidnapped boys swabbing the decks and earning pats on the head from white kidnappers. The enterprising African boy whose fine leather boots she wore would have been chained belowdecks, swabbing his body in his own filth. Slave work was sometimes spinning thread, yes; most times it was not. No slave had ever keeled over dead at a spinning wheel or been butchered for a tangle. But nobody wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world. And no one wanted to hear it. Certainly not the white monsters on the other side of the exhibit at that very moment, pushing their greasy snouts against the win­dow, sneering and hooting. Truth was a changing display in a shop win­dow, manipulated by hands when you ­weren’t looking, alluring and ever out of reach.68

Initially part of a fixed and pristine tableau, the sailor’s painted white exterior begins to peel, exposing an unappealing shade of gray. Before Cora’s vision changes, she plays parts in narratives that construct whiteness as benevolent and kind (Skipper John is a kindly sailor whose pats can be earned). L ­ ater, Cora refocuses on him as kidnapper, marking the African boy’s transformation into “the enterprising African boy whose fine leather boots . . . ​would have been chained belowdecks, swabbing his body in his own filth.” Narrated from the context of Cora’s experiential knowledge, the “Typical Day on the Plantation” teaches readers that though “slave work was sometimes spinning thread, . . . ​no slave had ever keeled over dead at a spinning wheel or been butchered for a tangle.” Insights that this quotation narrates speak to readers, as Cora communicates similar truths with Mr. Fields.

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Cora speaks from the authority of her black and lived real­ity, questioning Fields about the composition of the “Typical Day of the Plantation” display: “She had numerous suspicions about the accuracy of the African and ship scenes but was an authority in this room. She shared her critique. Mr. Fields did concede that spinning wheels ­were not often used outdoors, at the foot of a slave’s cabin, but countered that while authenticity was their watchword, the dimensions of the room forced certain concessions. Would that he could fit an entire field of cotton in the display and had the bud­get for a dozen actors to work it. One day perhaps.”69 Cora knows plantation days, so she spots the artifice in the museum’s living exhibitions. The curator, then, is not committed to authenticity despite what he says about the museum’s watchword. What the displays reveal, and normalize, are whitewashed images of slavery and its architects like the Randall ­brothers. Cora sees that ­these curated narratives disseminate an i­ magined whiteness that “every­one” is supposed to know (“every­one knows the truth of the historic encounter”) but that impacts black ­people in horrifying ways. Cora has lived ­under slavery and can tell the truth about a “typical day on the plantation,” but she is made into the “nobody” who cannot access the “truth [that] was a changing display in a shop win­dow, . . . ​alluring and ever out of reach.” The girl’s behind-­the-­scenes work at the museum unmasks the idyll that is South Carolina. Cora learns to see and then becomes convinced of “stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood. With the surgeries that Dr. Stevens described, Cora thought, the whites had begun stealing f­ utures in earnest. Cut you open and rip them out, dripping. ­Because that’s what you do when you take away someone’s babies—­ steal their f­ uture. Torture them as much as you can when they are on this earth, then take away the hope that one day their p­ eople w ­ ill have it better.”70 South Carolina is not like Georgia, but the difference lies in moves that state agents make to mask the abuses perpetrated on formerly enslaved ­people. Similarities between the two states crystallize with Ridgeway’s first appearance. Cora-­a s-­lens reveals the lie that is South Carolina, peeling away masks of its civilizing mission and commitment to racial uplift. Ridgeway exposes a truer narrative of this state (in the “Tennessee” chapter), causing readers to question the motives for the façade. The slave catcher explains to Cora that Caesar is found at his factory job and taken to jail. When “word spread that [he] was wanted for the murder of a l­ittle boy, . . . ​they broke into the jail and ripped its body to pieces. The decent ­people of South Carolina with their school­houses and Friday credit.”71 The Under­g round Railroad, as readers experience it through Cora’s perspective and means of travel, sees through vari­ous façades, exposing dif­fer­ent states of atrocity. As the girl observes each state, she proj­ects the horrifying vio­lence of slavery enacted on black ­people, but significantly, her attentiveness lays bare the purpose and use of this vio­lence to define whiteness and its privileges.

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The railroad transports Cora to the North Carolina station, and Martin Wells conveys her to his home, secreting her in a wagon among sacks of grain and seed. But before arriving at the safe destination, Martin stops to ensure that Cora sees the Freedom Trail and knows that it is the reason the North Carolina railway station is inoperable. The “Caesar” chapter introduces Caesar as an enslaved man whose movements out of slavery navigate the national narrative, specifically the one that mythologizes northern states: “[Caesar’s] f­ amily had spent too much time with the kindly white folks in the north. Kindly in that they ­didn’t see fit to kill you fast. One ­thing about the south, it was not patient when it came to killing negroes.”72 ­These statements confirm that threads that tie southern states to northern ones, specifically naming black (social and literal) death as the tie that binds. W ­ hether the result of circumstance (grueling l­ abor and the greed that demands it) or notions of white purity that must be named and defined, the United States needs black ­people to die. In the context of the novel, this is not an exaggeration: North Carolina did not merely ship enslaved black ­people out of state; it legislated and orchestrated the genocidal murder of all black p­ eople who existed within its borders. In a multipaged declaration, readers learn why. To elucidate what Cora’s presence means for the Wells, Martin chronicles a history. The state of North Carolina is committed to stemming the black tide unleashed by cotton (“the ruthless engine of cotton required its fuel of African bodies”).73 When left unchecked, so the narrative goes, the influx of blackness would be an affront to a protected whiteness: “Even with the termination of the slave trade, in less than a generation the numbers ­were untenable: all t­ hose n----s. Whites outnumbered slaves two to one in North Carolina, but in Louisiana and Georgia the populations neared parity. Just over the border in South Carolina, the number of blacks surpassed that of whites by more than a hundred thousand. It was not difficult to imagine the sequence when the slave cast off his chains in pursuit of freedom—­and retribution.”74 State lawmakers, supported by “the might of the United States Army,” craft laws to legislate black genocide, a necessary corrective to the possibility of an orchestrated insurrection of enslaved ­people, the ultimate “insult to white order repaid with interest.”75 Legislative and terroristic actions, combined with an influx of indentured l­ abor from Eu­rope, are cast as logical approaches to enabling “more of the former [profits from cotton] and less of the latter [necessary evil, n-----s].”76 However, as Cora’s optic reveals, “Fear drove t­ hese p­ eople, even more than cotton money. The shadow of the black hand that w ­ ill return what has been given. . . . ​A nd ­because of that fear, they erected a new scaffolding of oppression on the cruel foundation laid hundreds of years before. That was Sea Island cotton the slaver had ordered for his rows, but scattered among the seeds w ­ ere t­ hose of vio­lence and death, and that crop grew fast. The whites ­were right to be afraid. One day the system would collapse in blood.”77 Fear unifies North Carolina’s white body politic and cloaks cap­i­tal­ist (elitist) intentions ­under the shroud of a shared whiteness. In the Friday festivals that Cora witnesses from the Wellses’ garret, the state

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normalizes and exploits a fear of ste­reo­t yped blackness. Th ­ ese events are also vehicles through which narratives of black savagery disseminate. Toddlers, uplifted on the shoulders of enabling parents and embodying North Carolina’s ­future, celebrated the festivities. “North Carolina” closes with, in light of the lessons the chapter conveys, an image of success. As the numbers of black ­people in North Carolina decrease, Irish and German p­ eople learn how to cast aside their own blackened aspects, and more native whites are made black. Fiona becomes American and joins the ranks of North Carolina’s white majority by informing local officials that her employers, Martin and Ethel Wells, harbor Cora. As Ridgeway captures and prepares to return her to the Randall plantation, Cora witnesses Martin and Ethel stoned to death by c­ hildren: “A blond girl picked up a rock and threw it at Ethel, hitting her in the face. A segment of the town laughed at Ethel’s piteous shrieks. Two more ­children picked up rocks and threw them at the c­ ouple.”78 Fiona is clear about why she betrays the Wellses: “ ‘A girl’s got to look a­ fter her interests if she’s ­going to get ahead in this country,’ she explained.”79 The Irish maid offers this reasonable justification, laying bare how she uses blackness to claim the privileges of American whiteness. Her motives manifest the extent that blackness is a commodity in the novel’s United States. And Fiona, as an immigrant who remakes herself using tools that the North American country makes available, is not alone. Arnold Ridgeway, the slave catcher who tracks Cora throughout The Under­g round Railroad, is as explicit about how he chooses the profession that defines him. Cora occupies Ethel and Martin’s attic for about four months before Fiona outs her. In this time, and through a peephole gouged in the attic wall, Cora sees North Carolina as a state that takes the exploitation of black ­people, enslaved and ­free, to its logical conclusions. The “Ridgeway” chapter also maps the pro­ cess of making a white, masculine identity by narrating Arnold Ridgeway’s maturation from boy to man. The slave catcher is the presence that haunts Cora through the novel; he is also the thread that weaves narrative parts into a w ­ hole. The story that defines him also describes how an individual’s whiteness is embedded in the nation. Thus far, Cora’s focus depicts a made whiteness on a national scale and unveils narratives that structure the United States. The way she sees Fiona makes vis­i­ble a Eu­ro­pean immigrant’s journey ­toward the nation’s class and racial privileges. As Ridgeway moves in and through chapters, the chase motivates him but also documents his commitment to his narrative of Americanness. Who he is and where he is, therefore, demand that he forcefully contain a blackness that can only be disorderly. Ridgeway’s f­ ather was an accomplished blacksmith, too accomplished for the son to fill his shoes. Believing “­there was no model for the type of man he wanted to become,” Ridgeway set out to craft one.80 Thus, Arnold Ridgeway aligns himself with the early inhabitants of the Jamestown colony (at least, his take on them): “The possibilities lay before [Eu­ro­pean immigrants] like a banquet, and

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t­ hey’d been so hungry their ­whole lives. ­They’d never seen the likes of this, but ­they’d leave their mark on this new land, as surely as t­ hose famous souls at Jamestown, making it theirs through unstoppable racial logic. If n-----s ­were supposed to have their freedom, they ­wouldn’t be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it’d still be his. If the white man ­wasn’t destined to take this new world, he w ­ ouldn’t own it now.”81 Ridgeway’s philosophy drives him to remake himself in the image of the new nation. To maintain both image and nation, he must correct the “flaws” that are Mabel, Cora’s ­mother and the one who got away, and Cora, as recipient of her m ­ other’s legacy.82 King cotton provides the mandate that paves the way for Ridgeway’s maturation. Specifically, it “crowded the countryside with slaves” who need to be controlled.83 Cotton allows Ridgeway to approach his f­ather’s greatness ­because they both contribute to the crop’s financial bounty and international influence: “one made tools, the other retrieved them,” and “the two men ­were parts of the same system, serving a nation rising to its destiny.”84 As growing, producing, and distributing cotton become increasingly vital to the country, Ridgeway surpasses his ­father: the son “was not the smith, rendering order. Not the hammer. Not the anvil. He was the heat.”85 Thus finding his place in the new world order, the slave catcher is determined to keep every­thing in its place. Ridgeway, readers learn, prefers “the American spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription—­the American imperative.”86 Th ­ ese lines of dialogue, directed at Cora ­a fter Ridgeway captures her in North Carolina, proclaim the my­t hol­ ogy that drives the slave catcher. It is also the story line that makes its way through the novel. The real­ity of the under­ground railroad literally undergirds the world as Ridgeway understands it: blacks are a lesser race of ­people whose escape from states of slavery refuses uplift and subjugation. Extermination, then, is the option that remains. The North, in the context of Cora’s escape from slavery via the subway, is supposed to be the end of the line. If this place does not represent a state of freedom, it is certainly not a state of slavery. But South Carolina’s exploitation masked as uplift, North Carolina’s genocide as a cure for an unchecked black tide, and Indiana’s example of white response to disruptive blackness predetermine how Cora can perceive the northern location. Northern and southern regions of the United States, whitened by elite and cap­i­tal­ist intentions that demand exploited land and p­ eople, have no place for black freedom. The “Indiana” chapter depicts Valentine farm as a black utopia; however, an internal debate threatens its status as refuge, unsettling its f­ uture possibilities. The most contentious aspect of the debate centers around how a black community can and should be defined. Mingo advocates for an “end to relations with the [under­ground] railroad [and] the endless stream of needy negroes,” all to

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protect the deserving few.87 Elijah Lander speaks for a community of black ­people, made community b­ ecause “color must suffice”: “It has brought us to this night, this discussion, and it ­will take us into the ­future.”88 But whiteness poses the biggest threat to the space that is Valentine farm, the subjectivity defined by its antithesis and on whom privileges of the nation are bestowed. And Cora, with her precise vision, narrates a truth that is the undercurrent of t­ hese three positions: “The previous night in Tennessee, Ridgeway had called Cora and her ­mother a flaw in the American scheme. If two ­women ­were a flaw, what was a community?”89 She asks what, in the context of a nation made such through elitism, racist constructions, and capital gains, can it mean to refuse roles consigned by this scheme, w ­ hether as individuals or communities? In Indiana and on the Valentine farm, residual accretions left by enslavement on the Randall plantation and accrued in the months since Cora has separated herself from it begin to wear away. And yet traces remain. Headaches caused by Terrance Randall’s beating recur and debilitate Cora. Similarly, in a refuge for ­those who are escaping myriad forms of enforced servitude, vis­i­ble traces of slavery scatter across the farm. Nonetheless, as The Under­g round Railroad continually demonstrates, Cora’s distinct vision invites readers to consider her perspective closely. Royal, who wrests Cora from Ridgeway’s grasp in Tennessee, shares with her a railway station that defies logics established by previous stations. Its history, formation, and purpose are opaque and are sinister b­ ecause they are unclear. The story about this station is suspenseful ­because it is omnisciently narrated, “A notion crept over [Cora] like a shadow: that this station was not the start of the line but its terminus. Construction ­hadn’t started beneath the ­house but at the other end of the black hole. As if in the world ­there ­were no places to escape to, only places to flee.”90 U ­ ntil this point, the railway supports Cora’s moves away from states of slavery. This is the most literal expression that t­ here is no “escape to, only places to flee.” Only ever a passenger on the subway, the girl asks why Royal shares the ghost station with her: “That’s why,” he said. He rubbed his spectacles with his shirttail. “The under­ ground railroad is bigger that its operators—­it’s all of you, too. The small spurs, the big trunk lines. We have the newest locomotives and the obsolete engines, and we have handcars like that one. It goes everywhere, to places we know and ­those we ­don’t. We got this tunnel right h ­ ere, ­running beneath us, and no one knows where it leads. If we keep the railroad r­ unning, and none of us can figure it out, maybe you can.” She told him she ­didn’t know why it was t­ here, or what it meant. All she knew is that she d­ idn’t want to run anymore.91

Previous to the Valentine farm, Cora does not find freedom in any state. Neither can she escape to freedom, though she can flee enslavement. Still, Cora’s refusal to run anymore reconceptualizes where black freedom is and can be, thus

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offering readers clues to the resolution of the mystery of what freedom can mean for black ­people in the United States. In a chapter that represents the farm as a refuge but one that is rife with references to slavery and its terrors, Cora learns that she is no longer a fugitive: Terrance Randall is dead. Though ­there is no longer an enslaver for Cora to be returned to, Cora’s escape from Ridgeway in Tennessee emasculates the slave catcher and untethers him from community. Unable to return the girl to slavery, “his soiled reputation, coupled with Boseman’s death and the humiliation of being bested by n----- outlaws, turned him into a pariah among his cohort.”92 Cora is neither slave nor a fugitive from slavery, displacing the economic rationale for Cora (and enslaved black ­people) as f­ ree ­labor. Her new status does affirm the logic that defines Ridgeway’s place in the novel. A white posse descends on Valentine’s farm, murdering Elijah Lander and Royal. In the ensuing chaos, Ridgeway, with his young and black amanuensis, Homer, captures Cora. He declares his intention to return her to the Randall plantation, but he neither knows nor cares w ­ hether she is wanted t­ here. Homer alerts him to the possibility of uncovering an entrance to the under­ground railway, renewing for Ridgeway the thrill of the chase. The white man jumps at the chance to reorder the disorder that Cora’s fantastically black fugitivity represents. By gunpoint, he forces her to lead him to the ghost station. A consequence of the gang rape she survives when on the Randall plantation is that physical touch is abhorrent to Cora; and yet she commits to embracing Ridgeway to take charge of the descent into the station. Cora “waited ­until the slave catcher was on the third step” t­ oward the subway’s platform, and she “spun and locked her arms around him like a chain of iron”: “They fought and grappled in the vio­lence of their fall. In the ­jumble of collisions, Cora’s head knocked across the stone. Her leg was ripped one way, and her arm twisted u­ nder her at the bottom of the steps. Ridgeway took the brunt. Homer yelped at the sounds his employer made as he fell. The boy descended slowly, the lantern light shakily drawing the station from shadow. Cora untwined herself from Ridgeway and crawled ­toward the handcar, left leg in agony. The slave catcher ­didn’t make a sound. She looked for a weapon and came up empty.”93 Like the chapters that intervene between the dif­fer­ent states in and through which Cora travels (“Ajarry,” “Ridgeway,” “Stevens,” “Ethel,” “Caesar,” and “Mabel”), this quotation builds tensions initiated by the raid at the farm, heightening readers’ fears and delaying our hopes for definitive answers raised in the novel’s opening pages. Though Cora survives moves from state to state, the fall that her embrace puts into motion leaves tangible signs. With Cora injured and without weapons, the narrative leaves us in ­great fear for her safety. Yet what immediately follows the revelation of her powerlessness (her lack of weapon) is strangely disarming: Homer crouched next to his boss. His hand covered in blood from the back of Ridgeway’s head. The big bone in the man’s thigh stuck out of his trousers and

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his other leg bent in a gruesome arrangement. Homer leaned his face in and Ridgeway groaned. “Are you ­there, my boy?” “Yes, sir.” “That’s good.” Ridgeway sat up and howled in anguish. He looked over the station’s gloom, recognizing nothing. His gaze passed over Cora without interest. “Where are we?” “On the hunt,” Homer said. “Always more n-----s to hunt. Do you have your journal?” “Yes, sir.” “I have a thought.” Homer removed his notes from the satchel and opened to a fresh page. “The imperative is . . . ​no, no. That’s not it. The American imperative is a splendid ­thing . . . ​a beacon . . . ​a shining beacon.” He coughed and a spasm overtook his body. “Born of necessity and virtue, between the hammer . . . ​and the anvil . . . ​Are you ­there, Homer?” “Yes, sir.” “Let me start again . . .”94

Broken at the bottom of the stairs of the railway’s ghost station, Ridgeway appears “wounded but alive.”95 Though his prognosis appears dire, what is clear is the difference between the physical state of his body and the inviolability of the narrative he is determined to document. In this context, both bloody and broken, Ridgeway no longer sees Cora. As he has been committed to tracking her through the novel, she has long been in his sights. Now that he no longer sees her, it might be more accurate to say that he never did, since he committedly sees only what out-­of-­place blackness makes of white masculinity and the novel’s nation. What remains to be seen (vis­i­ble) is Ridgeway’s authorizing, racist narrative that Homer transcribes. Georgia defines slavery as an institution and establishes the capricious vio­ lence to which it subjects black ­people, South Carolina’s purpose is to develop black p­ eople’s compliance to the needs of the state, and North Carolina is committed to being white at all costs; however, Cora’s moves north and west solve the mystery of the literal subway: the railroad does not lead out of a state of slavery into states of freedom. Instead, it shifts the narrative ­toward truths that are located neither in geography nor in institutions. The truths the girl makes clear are more pernicious: denigrated blackness, but more dramatically, the utility of such, outlasts original mythologies. Cora reflects on this idea of unfreedom, narrating it persuasively while locked in the Wellses’ attic: What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway? Freedom was a ­thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest

140 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

is dense with trees up close but from outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Being f­ ree had nothing to do with chains or how much space you had. On the plantation, she was not ­free, but she moved unrestricted on its acres, tasting the air and tracing the summer stars. The place was big in its smallness. ­Here [in the attic], she was ­free of her master but slunk around a warren so tiny she ­couldn’t stand.96

In fictionalizing the nation through Cora’s complex persona, the The Under­ ground Railroad demands that readers re/consider what we know about states of slavery and states of freedom. In the chapter attributed to Cora’s grand­mother (“Ajarry”), the narrator characterizes the state of enslavement as lessons learned and then made praxis: “Since the night she was kidnapped she had been appraised and reappraised, each day waking upon the pan of a new scale. Know your value and you know your place in the order. To escape the boundary of the plantation was to escape the fundamental princi­ples of your existence: impossible.”97 Ajarry powerfully enumerates how “slave” is made and the lasting, psychic damage that is its legacy. This impossibility sets limits around who enslaved black ­people are and can be. But/and the last line of this quotation also reveals a nation. Ajarry’s words not only describe the profound difficulty of escaping slavery but also refer to the impossibly of escaping princi­ples of black existence made fundamental to the institution. In other words, “impossible” refers to “the fundamental princi­ples of your existence.” Still, Cora, who does escape the boundary of the plantation and the limits it prescribes for her, reconceives Ajarry’s view. Cora exists in a state of fugitivity ­because she insists on being the self she knows, a subjectivity that enslavement literally makes impossible.98 South and North Carolina deny that the under­ground railway can be a route to freedom, a claim that the state of Indiana affirms as true. Th ­ ese realities make it likely that The North w ­ ill deliver more of the same, despite the brief respite of Valentine farm. And yet Cora—­marked by her travels and her vision of the whitened nation—­remains fantastically black in that she is, and is in excess of, the nation’s foundational narrative.

Through a Glass Darkly The precise language Whitehead uses in his interviews supports my argument. Boris Kachka asks the author if the novel responds to the murder of Michael Brown, which occurred when Whitehead began his research. The author responds, I came of age in New York in the ’80s, when Yusuf Hawkins was beaten to death for being in the wrong neighborhood, Michael Stewart was beaten to death by cops for ­doing graffiti, Eleanor Bumpers was a mentally unstable ­woman killed by police. And so I was trained that whenever you leave the

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­ ouse ­you’re a target, even in lovely Manhattan. So I think we do get t­ hese h periodic eruptions and the conversation changes briefly to police brutality. ­There ­hasn’t been an uptick in it, just in p­ eople recording it. It’s not news to me and I ­don’t know how long our pre­sent conversation about the vulnerability of the black body w ­ ill continue. Since w ­ e’re not changing the under­lying ­causes, ­these moments are temporary, b­ ecause our attention has always shifted elsewhere.99

The Under­g round Railroad, embracing—­and defying—­literary form(s), foregrounds readers’ critical engagement with its content. The quirky, literalized under­ground railroad is the thread that unifies the nation, allowing readers to track the im/possibility of black freedom in the United States. TUR ends ambiguously, leaving readers to question ­whether the nation can be liberated from its foundations. As Cora moves through fictionalized U.S. states, her status as “black” and “slave” remains essentially unchanged no m ­ atter her geo­graph­i­cal location. She exists in narrative spaces as fodder for the plantation owner James Randall, specifically for his peculiar notions of self and ­family. Each of her physical moves ends in a state of immobility, marking the vari­ous national locations as locally nuanced versions of the Randall plantation where Cora is both enslaved and a Hob w ­ oman, Hob being the place where the most wretched of the wretched are banished. As she moves through the literal subway, she cannot approach states of freedom b­ ecause the novel’s geographies cannot sustain freedom—­for Cora or her kin. Whitehead’s mystery/thriller/suspense/fantasy novel speculates about racial narratives on which the U.S. nation was formed, who reaps its privileges, and who suffers for them. Cora’s status on the Randall plantation is defined by Hob: “Off to Hob with ­those who had been crippled by the overseer’ punishments, off to Hob with ­those who had been broken by the l­ abor in ways you could see and in ways you could not see, off to Hob with ­those who had lost their wits. Off to Hob with strays.”100 Hob is a space of extreme abjection, where Cora is both witness to and victim of slavery’s most horrifying atrocities. Hob pristinely exemplifies the climate on the Randall plantation, one that envelops the place and taints ­every person and ­every ­thing. This atmosphere makes anyone an agent of terror, particularly when enslaved ­people and especially enslaved ­women are targets. And yet . . . ​Cora has a feeling that s­ ettles over her twice in the novel’s opening chapters. Abandoned by her ­mother, banished to and the most durable tenant of Hob, Cora telegraphs the attitude that “you may get the better of me, but it ­will cost you.”101 Standing up to Blake (adult, male, with a body “and temperament honed for l­abor by nature”), however, reads as bravado ­until she uses her body to shield Chester.102 Though Cora is wounded in this shielding, the scar caused by Terrance Randall’s cane differently reappears at the end of the novel and in boldface to transmit its import:

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RAN AWAY from her ­legal but not her rightful master fifteen months past, a slave girl called cora; of ordinary height and dark brown complexion; has a star-­shape mark on her t­ emple from an injury; possessed of a spirited nature and devious method. Possibly answering to the name bessie. Last seen in Indiana among the outlaws of John Valentine Farm. She has ­stopped r­ unning. Reward remains unclaimed. she was never property. december 23103

The feeling that characterizes her ­human self, the same feeling that pitted her child self against adult Blake, is the novel’s framing analytic. The Under­ground Railroad depicts imaginably true scenes of black abjection, yet it would be a m ­ istake to read Cora and enslaved black characters only as spectacles of slavery’s vio­lence. Cora’s fugitivity requires a looking through: her character actively determines what and how readers see. As written, the girl embodies a black way of knowing that gifts readers with an undisciplined perspective on TUR, one that portrays truths that brand what is now the United States, as well as the purposes and benefits of its systematized/institutionalized founding.104 Between the choice that resulted in the scar and the “ran away” ad that describes Cora’s fugitive self is a narrative of a nation made white through black subjection. Though the fugitive ad at the end of the novel manifests the vision articulated at the beginning, its spectacular repre­ sen­ta­tion (conveyed through the ad’s boldface, capitalization, words/phrases, meanings of words/phrases) heightens the character’s import and her critical work. Cora’s is a black way of knowing, the dark that sees white in and through the constructedness and durability of the railroad. Consider, too, that she is intimately tied to her m ­ other (the enslaved w ­ oman who got away), which also ties her to Arnold Ridgeway, the slave catcher who actively makes himself white and male. Ridgeway then puts this made self in ser­vice of “The American Imperative.” Read through Cora, each step of the railway plots localized states that constitute this white man’s country. The Under­ground Railroad does not merely fictionalize a “negro’s story” which “may have started in this country with degradations, but [may one day] triumph.”105 Instead, it tells a story of black f­ utures, through Cora and “from h ­ ere.” In “Indiana,” the chapter that charts the rise and fall of “a place of refuge” for black p­ eople, Elijah Lander orates a central truth:

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“­Here’s one delusion: that we can escape slavery. We c­ an’t. Its scars ­will never fade. When you saw your ­mother sold off, your f­ ather beaten, your s­ ister abused by some boss or master, did you ever think you would sit h ­ ere ­today, without chains, without the yoke, among a new f­ amily? Every­thing you ever knew told you that freedom was a trick—­yet ­here you are. Still we run, tracking by the good full moon to sanctuary. “Valentine farm is a delusion. Who told you the negro deserved a place of refuge? Who told you that you had that right? E ­ very minute of your life’s suffering has argued other­w ise. By ­every fact of history, it ­can’t exist. This place must be a delusion, too. Yet h ­ ere we are. “And Amer­i­ca, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes—­believes with all its heart—­that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their b­ rothers. This nation ­shouldn’t exist, if ­there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet ­here we are.”106

Lander, described throughout “Indiana” as one whose vision of a black f­ uture is opaque, repeatedly returns to the refrain “­here we are.”107 This phrase is imbricated in the horrific motivations that define some p­ eople as “white” and “­free” ­because o­ thers are “black” and “slave.” The phrase, recurring in his speech, also expresses that which makes blackness fantastical: blackness knows self, feels and has feelings for self, with an insistence that exists in and in excess of antiblackness. Lander articulates Cora’s function in the novel and anticipates strategies for the f­ uture. Her only conversation with John ends this way: “ ‘I thought you ­were one of the smart ones,’ Valentine said. ‘­Don’t you know? White man ­ain’t ­going to do it. We have to do it ourselves.’ ”108 By affirming Cora’s function in the novel, Lander and Valentine also confirm what her black and fantastical vision allows readers to take away.

5

Fifth—­Fantasy, Short Story Fantastically Black W ­ oman: Nalo Hopkinson’s “A Habit of Waste” ­ on’t you celebrate with me w what i have s­ haped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and ­woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up ­here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed. —­Lucille Clifton, “­won’t you celebrate with me”

144

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Keeping the Black Female Body Pre­sent If extra literary realities demean a black ­woman’s sense of self, can fantasy lit­er­ a­ture’s abundance usefully intervene?1 For black ­women in the twenty-­first ­century, this question remains particularly meaningful—if Being Mary Jane’s “ugly black ­woman” episodes and media responses to them are any indication.2 The tele­vi­sion show uses actors’ bodies and movements, acting skills, and features of realist tele­vi­sion (script and script writers, directors, visual images, camera technicians and cameras, costuming and lighting choices, myriad behind-­the-­ scenes p­ eople, ­etc.) to engage popu­lar and visual imaginaries.3 Fantasy fiction is similarly connected to the popu­lar and deals in an affective register; however, if in it the “power to imagine is the first step in changing the world,” then fantasy’s activist impulse pushes individuals out of “­mental prison[s] . . . ​and . . . ​beyond into a world of [their] own creation.”4 I read Nalo Hopkinson’s short story “A Habit of Waste” through the activist context that Walter Mosley describes, as well as through literary fantasy’s unrestrained imaginings and its technique of defamiliarization, to illuminate denigrating effects of misogynoir and equally damaging narratives that privilege whiteness.5 The story depicts internalized biases (gender, race, national belonging) that determine how the black female protagonist sees and is seen; importantly, it offers the character and readers approaches to re/imagining perceptions of race and gender. Ultimately, fantastical blackness in Hopkinson’s story unsettles the weight of the female hero’s oppressions and highlights strategies she uses to re/make and re/imagine her black, female, and national selves. Mosley considers writers of science fiction (and its genre relatives) to be “destroyers-­creators” who envision new worlds by imagining beyond the ways ­things are. When successful, such authors unlock readers’ understandings, thus manifesting what popu­lar genres can do. This chapter tests fantasy lit­er­a­ ture’s imaginable possibilities by studying one topic—­misogynoir—in the popu­lar forms of blog, dramatic tele­vi­sion series, and fantasy story. With specific attention to fantasy’s defamiliarizing mode, Hopkinson’s “A Habit of Waste” captures the enormous impact of internalized misogynoir, antiblackness, and anti-­immigrant postulations in ways that tele­vi­sion and blog do not: by identifying and sitting with the story’s dark-­skinned, curvy, Trinidadian-­Canadian ­woman protagonist, readers experience the beliefs that push her into downloading her consciousness into a blond white w ­ oman’s thin body.

Misogynoir and Antiblackness in the Popu­lar Imaginary Defined as “a website that displays postings by one or more individuals in chronological order and usually has links to comments on specific postings” (Ameri­ can Heritage Dictionary) and as “an online journal” (Collins En­glish Dictionary), the “weblog” (or “blog”) straddles a line between formal and informal writing,

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the former defined by accepted publishing standards and peer review and the latter characterized by personal musings with or without supporting evidence. Perhaps the looseness of this definition results from bloggers’ interest in sharing their opinions to make their content attractive and, thus, persuasive to a broad audience. Psy­chol­ogy ­Today (PT), for example, asserts that “psychologists and ­mental health professionals read PT, as do curious and intelligent lay readers.”6 Kaja Perina, editor in chief for Psy­chol­ogy ­Today, claims that its blogs are written by professionals: “bloggers are credential[ed] social scientists and for this reason they are invited to post to the site on topics of their choosing.”7 Perina continues, speaking specifically about the blog written by Satoshi Kanazawa, “­B ecause [his] post was not commissioned or solicited by PT (in contrast to a magazine article), ­t here was no editorial intent to address questions of race and physical attractiveness.”8 I discuss the content of—­and controversy surrounding—­Kanazawa’s post shortly, but ­here I explore the distinction Perina makes between commissioned/solicited magazine pieces and unsolicited ones used on PT’s website. The editor suggests that the latter are not subject to the same standards as the former, though the distinction might be a specific response to Kanazawa’s post more than a fixed policy. Nevertheless, w ­ hether or not PT holds all contributors to the same standard, e­ very writer benefits from PT’s reputation and audience: “If you are a clinician, scientist, m ­ ental health expert, or writer who would like to publish regular pieces on a par­tic­u­lar theme or set of topics, please first consider making a blog proposal. Many of our magazine contributors begin as Psy­chol­ogy ­Today bloggers.”9 It also appears that contributors can vitiate Psy­chol­ogy T ­ oday’s reputation, if the magazine’s removal of Kanazawa’s blog post and its removal of the evolutionary psychologist from its list of bloggers are any indication. Despite the provocative title of Satoshi Kanazawa’s blog post (“Why Are Black ­Women Less Physically Attractive than Other ­Women?”), it claims to be a scientific study of unattractiveness based on race and gender.10 To support the “objectivity” of its thesis and evidence, the author draws from selected parts of an unrelated, previously published study and uses a methodology that claims to eliminate “all random mea­sure­ment errors that are inherent in any scientific mea­ sure­ment.” To concretize its scientific authority, Kanazawa writes, “Add Health mea­sures the physical attractiveness of its respondents both objectively and subjectively. At the end of each interview, the interviewer rates the physical attractiveness of the respondent objectively on the following five-­point scale: 1 = very unattractive, 2 = unattractive, 3 = about average, 4 = attractive, 5 = very attractive. The physical attractiveness of each Add Health respondent is mea­sured three times by three dif­f er­ent interviewers over seven years.” And he continues, “From ­these three scores, I can compute the latent ‘physical attractiveness f­ actor’ by a statistical procedure called f­ actor analy­sis. F ­ actor analy­sis has the added advantage of eliminating all random mea­sure­ment errors that are inherent in any scientific mea­sure­ment. The latent physical attractiveness f­ actor has a mean of

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0 and a standard deviation of 1.”11 With ­these words, Kanazawa pre­sents his Psy­chol­ogy ­Today post as methodologically sound and impartial. The closest the evolutionary psychologist comes to a subjective statement appears in the post’s final paragraph: “the only t­hing I can think of that might potentially explain the lower average level of physical attractiveness among black ­women is testosterone.”12 The viewpoint that underlies Kanazawa’s scientific/methodological assertions is astounding: the author writes as if black w ­ omen’s unattractiveness—as well as our low intelligence and high body fat—is not only a fact but a universal one: What accounts for the markedly lower average level of physical attractiveness among black ­women? Black ­women are on average much heavier than nonblack ­women. The mean body-­mass index (BMI) at Wave III is 28.5 among black ­women and 26.1 among nonblack ­women. . . . ​However, this is not the reason black w ­ omen are less physically attractive than nonblack ­women. Black ­women have lower average level of physical attractiveness net of BMI. Nor can the race difference in intelligence (and the positive association between intelligence and physical attractiveness) account for the race difference in physical attractiveness among w ­ omen. Black w ­ omen are still less physically attractive than nonblack ­women net of BMI and intelligence.13

What this quotation and the blog make clear is that the author does not intend to posit and then use evidence to prove that black w ­ omen are unattractive; instead, Kanazawa’s argument is a statement about why we are unattractive. As a universal truth, he does not need to offer supporting evidence to persuade. Kanazawa’s is, ­after all, a blog that offers “a look at the hard truths about ­human nature.”14 Yet despite the post’s certainties, tens of thousands of ­people rejected “Why Are Black ­Women Less Physically Attractive than Other ­Women?” so-­called hard truths: Psy­chol­ogy ­Today was inundated by more than seventy-­five thousand telephone messages, emails, and posts on Facebook and Twitter, as well as on other media, responses that directly challenged Kanazawa’s method, his use of racial science, his biased thesis, and the blog’s destructive implications.15 Latoya Peterson speaks to the blog’s use of antiblack tropes developed in nineteenth-­ century racial science: “Justifying racism using ‘science’ ­isn’t new, by any means. ­Every few years, it appears that someone needs to provide a rationale for bigotry, so they publish some sort of madness and hope most of the readers suffer from scientific illiteracy. The prob­lem is that even with a thorough debunking, ­people latch on to articles like this to confirm their own biases.”16 In citing how some may “latch on” to the post’s assertions, Peterson highlights a theme embedded in it: Kanazawa rehearses a durable bias that belies discipline and methodology, tapping into a global antiblack racism and misogynoir that have long and sordid histories.17 O ­ thers w ­ ere similarity motivated by the pernicious nature of ­these

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biases and responded emotionally . . . ​a nd po­liti­cally: “­People who ­hadn’t heard of Kanazawa ­were sharing the text in question, their hurt, their ire and disbelief that Psy­chol­ogy T ­ oday endorsed this piece. They demanded Kanazawa be fired. Students at [his] other day job, London School of Economics, have also called for [his] resignation.”18 Administrators at the London School of Economics (LSE), apparently motivated by the vociferous public response, conducted an internal review and disciplinary hearing. The former, no longer available on the school’s website, “concluded that some of the arguments used in the publication w ­ ere flawed and not supported by evidence, that an error was made in publishing the blog post, and that Dr. Kanazawa did not give due consideration to his approach or audience.” LSE also found that “some of the assertions put forward in the blog post ­were flawed and would have benefited from more rigorous academic scrutiny. The view was that the author ignored the basic responsibility of a scientific communicator to qualify claims made in proportion to the certainty of the evidence.”19 In appointing “a committee of se­nior academics to investigate the blog posting and its impact” and in preventing Kanazawa “from publishing in all non-­peer reviewed outlets for a year,” LSE’s administration appears to have read the blog post as both formal/academic (subject to accepted standards for evidence, method, publication) and informal (non-­peer-­reviewed, subjective). Capitulating to this pressure, Satoshi Kanazawa offered an apology for “the controversial post on [his] Psy­chol­ogy ­Today blog and the damage it has caused to the reputation of the School.”20 Although he extends apologies to PT and LSE, he does not speak to the damage he inflicted on the field of evolutionary psy­ chol­ogy, an omission that some of its members felt compelled to address. “A large number of scientists who apply an evolutionary approach to h ­ uman behaviour” challenged the quality of Kanazawa’s research and insisted, strongly, that it not “be taken as representative of the evolutionary behavioural science community.”21 Specifically, ­these scholars/scientists stated that Kanazawa “has repeatedly been criticised by other academics in his field of research for using poor quality data, inappropriate statistical methods and consistently failing to consider alternative explanations for his results.”22 Despite multiple challenges to the blog post and to Kanazawa’s qualifications, methodology, and intentions to date, he is still listed as an associate professor (reader) of management at LSE and has not addressed the misogynoir that grounds his thesis or the “damage [the post] caused” black ­women.23 When the Kanazawa post/controversy migrated to tele­vi­sion, a popu­lar genre more visually impactful than the blogosphere, it affirmed the traction that race and gender biases have outside academic and scientific communities. What TV adds, specifically what the drama Being Mary Jane adds, to assessments of the blog and its misogynoir are questions that neither blog nor academics’ responses adequately addressed: What are the consequences of misogynoir, and who advocates for black w ­ omen?

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Limits of Empathy: Being Mary Jane’s “Ugly Black W ­ oman” Episodes Being Mary Jane’s “Line in the Sand” episode (first aired on 31 March 2015) returned to the then-­four-­year-­old Psy­chol­ogy ­Today blog post, a choice that acknowledges that the post’s durable argument—­and its apparently acceptable violation of black w ­ omen—­continues to resonate in the popu­lar imaginary. Gabrielle Union plays the show’s protagonist, Pauletta Patterson (her professional name is Mary Jane Paul), who uses her platform as host of the fictional Satellite News Channel’s (SNC) Talk Back series to explore black w ­ omen’s unattractiveness a­ fter being called a “black bitch” and an “ugly black monkey” by a white, male motorist. The Talk Back episode featured a roundtable composed of Paul (TV journalist), singer/musician India.Arie, Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal, and self-­described “image activist” Micheala Angela Davis (cultural critic), the last three of whom are well known outside of Being Mary Jane’s fictional universe.24 Panelists collectively affirm black ­women’s myriad attractions and remark on the overwhelming number of black w ­ omen who volubly challenged both Kanazawa and his blog post. Panel members also pointedly remark on black men’s response to “Why Are Black ­Women Less Physically Attractive than Other ­Women?” and the lack thereof that Neal characterizes as a complicit silence. Although the Talk Back panel and the two episodes devoted to the topic increased Mary Jane’s—­and Being Mary Jane’s—­popularity, the question of black ­women’s inherent unattractiveness was not put to bed.25 The scene that gives rise to Being Mary Jane’s Talk Back roundtable illustrates the perversely negative assessments of black ­women; it also confirms how deeply this bias is held and, in Mary Jane’s reaction to the verbal assault, the myriad ways it can and does do harm. Blog, tele­vi­sion drama, and fictionalized talk show all suggest, as bell hooks observes, “­there is a direct and abiding connection between the maintenance of white supremacist patriarchy in this society and the institutionalization via mass media of specific images, repre­sen­ta­tions of race, of blackness that support and maintain the oppression, exploitation, and overall domination of black ­people.”26 Although Kanazawa’s blog fails to adhere to scientific or academic standards, it invokes both to weaponize a dominant cultural narrative circulated by t­ hose who “have disproportional control over both media and fashion.”27 Being Mary Jane’s Talk Back segment claims a popu­lar medium to advocate for black ­women, but the scene that gives rise to it visualizes the trauma that stems from beliefs in Kanazawa’s blog. Mary Jane Paul, in her new-­model Porsche, drives into the crowded parking lot of an upscale mall, to the left of a driver preparing to pull out of a space. Another motorist is already waiting on the right. The parking space is left vacant for several seconds while the driver on the right is apparently distracted by a phone call. ­A fter waiting for ­these several seconds, Paul drives into the parking space, and the other driver—­who the audience now sees is white and male—­pulls

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forward to accost Mary Jane for taking “his” spot. What viewers also see when this unnamed white man calls Mary Jane a “black bitch” and an “ugly black monkey” (his response to her refusal to vacate the space) is this: a slim black w ­ oman wearing her straightened hair in a loosely waved style; a w ­ oman with mocha-­ brown skin and flawlessly applied makeup; a w ­ oman dressed in a white, fitted jacket with peplum over a silky pale-­g ray shirt and light-­blue skinny jeans; a ­woman wearing red peep-­toe booties and carry­ing an embossed snake-­skin bag. Throughout the confrontation, ­there is a store sign in the background and directly above Paul’s head that reads, “swank.” Before the slurs, Mary Jane calmly explains why she took the parking space that the distracted motorist left vacant, even referring to the man as “sir.” The look of this scene makes the so-­called truths that Kanazawa avows (unattractive, low intelligence, obese, masculine) as well as the insults that the male motorist spews (“ugly,” “monkey,” the negatively connoted “black”) demonstrably untrue, yet Mary Jane Paul is still an “ugly black ­woman”: the scene ends with the camera panning through Paul’s luxurious home, then lingering on her as she sits on her closet floor among her recent purchases, sobbing. Mary Jane’s intense emotional response to the verbal assault envisions an intense wounding, one that her confident deportment in the parking-­lot scene and as Being Mary Jane’s lead should oppose. The “Line in the Sand” episode combines the deliberate visual images composed by the episode’s makers (producers, director, and actors) and the “real­ity” of Talk Back’s roundtable to advance a repre­sen­ta­tion of black womanhood that contests what appears in the Psy­chol­ogy ­Today post and si­mul­ta­neously draws attention to who (other than black ­women) challenged Kanazawa’s assertions. Mara Brock Akil, creator/producer of Being Mary Jane and coproducer of two other shows that prominently feature black w ­ omen leads, deliberately chooses topics of par­tic­u­lar concern to black w ­ omen, ones that are “being reduced, simplified, or altogether ignored in mainstream American hip hop” or that did not garner “national attention.”28 The TV producer/screenwriter had “­things [she wanted] to say . . . ​about bridging tele­vi­sion’s gap between entertainment and education.”29 Brock Akil’s intentions for her screenwriting and producing had—­and have—­ the potential to spread her entertaining-­educational content across the globe for as long as her shows circulate in syndication, inspiring visceral responses in myriad audiences for some time. The “Line in the Sand” parking-­lot scene proj­ects a familiar image of a black w ­ oman in pain (Mary Jane Paul sobbing), but the Talk Back roundtable stands as a unique response to that pain. And yet . . . In Being Mary Jane’s “Primetime” episode, viewers witness Mary Jane’s brand take off, an increase that enters the stratosphere when Paul is tapped to guest host for SNC’s primetime news show, PrimeTime News. In an interview with a white “education crusader” and charter-­school advocate, Elizabeth Foy, Paul asks pointed questions about Foy being used as a mouthpiece for right-­wing/ Republican c­ auses. Feeling ambushed, Foy drags Paul for thinking “the world

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sees you as an ugly black ­woman.” Paul responds by transforming “ugly black ­woman” from a denigrating signifier for black w ­ omen into a label that represents all oppressed w ­ omen. Paul tells Foy, “Just ­because ­you’re Caucasian d­ oesn’t make you immune from discrimination.” The host ends the interview by telling Foy, “When I look at you, when I see you, I see an ugly black ­woman too.” What begins as a visualization of Mary Jane Paul’s individual trauma sparks a global and multigenre response (talking back) and ends by diluting black w ­ omen’s unique experience of misogynoir. Viewers in Being Mary Jane’s universe, particularly female viewers, help to build Paul’s brand ­because they are all oppressed and, therefore, commiserate in the universality of gender-­based oppression. A ­ fter Being Mary Jane’s “ugly black ­woman” episodes, questions remain about what they challenge and can challenge. Kanazawa’s provocation and Mary Jane Paul’s visualization purportedly engage black ­women’s apprehensions, but in exploring the topic, they defer—­implicitly and explic­itly—to an influential, though absented, white and nonblack femaleness. By asking the wrong questions and not asking the right ones, ­these repre­sen­ta­tions and examinations of misogynoir display but do not strategize about how to live as self-­aware black w ­ omen in anti-­black-­woman contexts.30 Readers can read and viewers can see and hear misogynoir in weblog and televised spaces, but the barely vis­i­ble and, therefore, unseen must also be addressed. In a post that claims to share hard truths about black w ­ omen’s physical selves, Kanazawa writes, “it is very in­ter­est­ing to note that, even though black ­women are objectively less physically attractive than other ­women, black w ­ omen (and black men) subjectively consider themselves to be far more physically attractive than ­others.”31 Although he does not name this in­ter­est­ing fact, what Kanazawa observes is fantastical blackness: despite the “objective truth” of and “scientific” support for black ­women’s universally unappealing physical appearance, we know ourselves differently. Neither the TV drama nor the blog sits with this truth, and, therefore, they both leave it underexamined. Nalo Hopkinson’s “A Habit of Waste,” by contrast, uses fantasy’s form and defamiliarizing techniques to capture the trauma of misogynoir (among other inculcated oppressions) and imagine how a black and fantastical womanness can be claimed. As readers, we avail ourselves of the story’s imaginable truths when characters re/member how to live differently in oppressive contexts. In Hopkinson’s choice of forms, and in the short story’s fantastical content, protagonist and supporting characters resist gender-­, race-­, and immigrant-­based indoctrinations and their uses, demonstrating how readers might challenge the same in our extraliterary worlds.

“A Habit of Waste” as Fantastically Black Praxis Walter Mosley writes that “science fiction and its relatives (fantasy, horror, speculative fiction, ­etc.) [are main arteries] for recasting our imagination” and that

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the popu­lar genres offer “an alternative where that which deviates from the norm is the norm.”32 The poet/activist Walidah Imarisha concurs: “Science fiction is the only genre that not only allows you to disregard every­thing that ­we’re taught is realistic and practical, but actually demands that you do.”33 The need to recast our imaginations and upend what is popularly considered “normal” is particularly significant for black ­peoples who are “cut off from their African ancestry by the scythe of slavery and from an American heritage by being excluded from history.”34 And literary fantasy, effectively written, demands that something be done—­that readers do something—­with its novel imaginings: “we make up, then make real.”35 The form’s imaginative potential, however, is ­limited when popu­ lar genres rehearse old conquest tropes: “In e­ arlier science fiction t­ here tended to be a lot of conquest: you land on another planet and you set up a colony and the natives have their quarters some place and they come in and work for you. ­There was a lot of that . . . ​let’s do Eu­rope and Africa and South Amer­i­ca all over again.”36 Nalo Hopkinson refuses t­ hese traditional repre­sen­ta­tions by using fantasy to unsettle colonialist and white-­supremacist narratives and their meanings. The perspective of a black, ­woman, and immigrant protagonist, centered in and making use of the hyperbole of fantasy fiction, re/imagines indoctrinated misrecognitions. Analyses that start in this centered/formalist place imagine misogynoir and the psychic trauma it visits on black ­women and then offer readers successful maneuvers to re/imagine and care for our extraliterary selves. “A Habit of Waste” is defined as a “short story” ­because of its length (“shorter than a novel”) and familiar characteristics (“dealing with few characters, . . . ​aiming at unity of effect, . . . ​concentrating on the creation of mood rather than plot” [Merriam-­Webster Online]). In the story, Hopkinson imagines her female hero struggling with internalized misogynoir and an alienating sense of Canadianness. The protagonist, Cynthia (or Cyn), the Canadian-­born ­daughter of black Trinidadian immigrants, downloads her consciousness into the body of a “Diana,” described in the “MediPerfiction” cata­logue as having “lithe muscles and small, firm breasts (‘boyish beauty’).”37 Readers also learn that her new body is white and blond.38 The reasons for her transubstantiation become clear when Cynthia encounters someone “wearing” her old body—­black and dark-­skinned, generous hips and buttocks, and tightly coiled hair. While on the streetcar, whitened Cynthia witnesses her old body from opposing vantage points of race (white and black), subject positions (insider and outsider), and locations (public and private) but clearly is not cured of the distorted self-­perception that instigated her transformation. Cynthia’s psychic damage manifests in her relationship with her new body and in her personal and professional dealings but begins to evolve over a foraged meal with John Morris, a Trinidadian immigrant and client of the food bank where she works. Ultimately, “A Habit of Waste” charts Cynthia’s evolution from an indoctrinated alienation from her black, immigrant ­woman self into self-­ acceptance, a pro­cess that unsettles the oppressions that haunt her. The story opens with an epigraph that proclaims,

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­ ese are the latitudes of ex-­colonised, Th of degradation still unmollified, imported man­ag­ers, styles in art, second-­hand subsistence of the spirit, the habit of waste, mayhem committed on the personality, and everywhere the wrecked or scuttled mind.39

By reworking “habit of waste” as the story’s title, Hopkinson connects the panoramic narrative of the global brutality of colonialism to individuals’ quotidian realities. The epigraph also situates Cynthia’s specific self-­alienations in this larger context. Though associated with historical truths (colonialism and colonial uses of colonized regions and p­ eoples), “A Habit of Waste” determines that history is not merely real­ity but also an experience that leaves devastating pre­sent and ­future traces. Fi­nally, through t­ hese opening maneuvers, the story’s epigraph creates a mood that frames the tale that follows. “A Habit of Waste” introduces Cynthia this way: “I was nodding off on the streetcar home from work when I saw the w ­ oman getting on. She was wearing the body I used to have! . . . ​It was my original, the body I had replaced two years before, same full, tarty-­looking lips; same fat thighs, rubbing together with ­every step; same outsize ass; same narrow torso that seemed grafted onto a lower body a good three sizes bigger.”40 In the public space of the streetcar, Cynthia describes intimate parts of her former body negatively, listing its “faults” in detail: the lips are “tarty,” and the “too big” thighs rub “together with e­ very step.” The protagonist also perceives her first body as imperfect ­because the torso is “poorly” matched to the lower body and her feet’s arches are fallen.41 Leaving no feature unexamined, Cynthia “hated what ­she’d done to the hair—­let it go natu­ral, for Christ’s sake, sectioned it off, and coiled black thread tightly around each section, with a puff of hair on the end of ­every stalk. . . . ​­There’s no excuse for that nappy-­headed nonsense. She had a lot of nerve, too, wrapping that b­ ehind in a flower-­print sarong mini­skirt. Sort of like making your ass into a billboard.”42 And ­after documenting the body’s unattractive features, Cyn muses that her perspective is apparently universal—­she cannot accept that anyone would choose such a body: “And now, h ­ ere was someone wearing my old castoff. She must have been in a bad accident: too bad for the body to be sal­vaged. If she ­couldn’t afford cloning, the doctors would have just downloaded her brain into any donated discard. Mine, for instance. Poor ­thing, I thought. I won­der how she’s ­handling that chafing prob­lem.”43 In the protagonist’s eyes, her first body’s abhorrent features are abhorrent to every­one. Her old body, therefore, was a choice that is no choice. And Cynthia’s assessment must be true, indicated by Kanazawa’s thesis and the available options in the MediPerfiction cata­logue: neither leaves room for the possibility of/for an attractive, curvy, dark-­skinned, black w ­ oman who wears

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her hair in its natu­ral state. Consider the cata­logue’s listed options: “Arrow-­Slim ‘Cindies’ had long, long legs (‘supermodel quality’). ‘Indiras’ came with creamy brown skin, falls of straight, dark hair, and curvaceous bodies (‘exotic grace’) . . . ​ [and] ‘Dianas,’ with their lithe muscles and small, firm breasts (‘boyish beauty’).”44 The impossibility of a beautiful dark-­skinned, curvy black ­woman weighs heavi­ly on Cynthia, as does her certainty about the attainability of universal physical perfection. All of this unfolds in the first five pages of the story’s twenty pages, a speed that short stories use to facilitate readers’ connection to character. As such, our impressions of Cyn’s first body come through the protagonist’s way of seeing, preparing readers to embrace her negative perception. The fantastical download solidifies this view since Cyn sees her old self from a doubly outside position: that of the dominant culture into which she is born and now through the eyes of a blond white w ­ oman. The protagonist’s perception of her self and her old body, both consequences of misogynoir, are physical and not always vis­ i­ble: the “swank” signage above Mary Jane Paul’s head as well as the confidence of the person who wears Cynthia’s old body (more on the latter shortly) do not do enough to dismantle narratives of black w ­ oman’s undesirability. And the protagonist’s trauma remains despite her whitening, making it clear that the damage is not located in her physical self. Cyn lives in/as Diana for two years yet still maintains ­limited perceptions of her black ­woman self as well as her black immigrant self. The transubstantiation offers no fix. The author’s neologism “MediPerfiction” speaks to a play between quantifiable realities and affective experience. The name of the com­pany that authorizes Cynthia’s transformation captures biases that transcend form and method and that result in a black ­woman rejecting her physical body so dramatically. The name subtly questions the “objectivity” of science (“Medi”) and its use to prescribe attractiveness (“Perfiction”), specifically its casting of black w ­ omen as neither attractive enough nor appropriately female b­ ecause we deviate from Western norms. That postdownload Cyn is right neither with herself nor with her Diana body evinces the fallacy of the perfection to which she aspires. ­A fter two years as a narrow, white-­skinned, straight-­haired, and blond w ­ oman, another identity crisis destabilizes how Cyn sees herself: she has nothing but disdain for how her Trinidadian immigrant parents live their Canadianness. Cyn’s awkward relationships to self, f­ amily, coworkers, and clients proj­ect her personal anx­i­eties into national space. The protagonist’s first body does not cause her predownload identity crisis: what Cynthia learns to believe—­learns and believes—­ about her “inadequacies” constitute her character. The very real consequences of antiblackness/misogynoir that circulate in a global imaginary seep into and shape Cyn’s essential self and manifest immediately a­ fter she witnesses the person in her old body: “Home at last, I stripped off and headed straight for the mirror. The boyish body was still slim, thighs still thin, tiny-­perfect apple breasts still perky. I presented my ­behind to the mirror. A ­little flabby, perhaps? I ­wasn’t sure. I turned around again, got up close to the mirror so that I could inspect my face.

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Did my skin have that glow that my old body’s had? And ­weren’t t­ hose the beginning of crow’s-­feet around my eyes? Shit. White p­ eople aged so quickly.”45 Continuing to diagnose her ailments as physical, Cyn considers her options: “I wondered if I should start saving for another switch. It’s ­really a rich p­ eople’s ­thing. I c­ ouldn’t afford to keep d­ oing it e­ very few years, like some kind of vid queen.”46 While the protagonist’s black body only presented negatively in her care, a­ fter the download, Cyn is hypervigilant about the Diana body’s potential to wrinkle, age, and lose muscle tone. Cynthia’s psychic trauma is so profound that it invades her flesh and ­will prob­ably invade what­ever flesh she inhabits. By fictionalizing Cyn’s maligned image of self and linking it to a similarly maligned view of Trinidadian immigrants in Canada, Hopkinson uses the short story form to capture “highly focused moments in the life of a vast and complex country.”47 When the protagonist sees her parents for the first time ­a fter the Diana download, they are horrified: “But Cyn-­Cyn, that ­ain’t even look like you!” My m ­ other’s voice was close to a shriek. Her next words w ­ ere for my dad. “What the child want to go and do this kind of stupidness for? Nothing ­ain’t wrong with the way she look!” A giggled response from my f­ ather, “True, she b­ ehind had a way to remain in a room long a­ fter she leave, but she get that from you, sweetheart, and you know how much I love that b­ ehind!” He’d aimed that dig for my ears, I just knew it. I’d had enough. . . . ​I hated it when they carried on the way they ­were d­ oing. All that drama. And I ­really wished t­ hey’d drop the Banana Boat accents. ­They’d come to Canada five years before I was born, for Christ’s sake, and I was now twenty-­eight.48

In t­ hese lines of combined dialogue and narration, Hopkinson communicates the depth of Cynthia’s disorders by showing how they traverse bodily and national borders. This is also the first reference to Cyn’s parents’ Trinidadian roots, making the protagonist first-­generation Canadian. Cynthia, born into Canadianness, holds a bias that determines what Canadians should look and sound like and that complements her misrecognition of her raced and gendered physical self. The protagonist’s parents thrive from contact with ­people from “back home,” a phrase that reflects both homeland and a state of immigration (in diaspora, Trinidadian m ­ other and ­father become “Ca­rib­bean”). Given an “inkling that someone’s from ‘back home,’ [both parents would] be on him like a dirty shirt, badgering him with questions: Which island you from? How long you been ­here in Canada? You have f­amily ­here? When last you go back home?”49 By contrast, Cyn distances herself from this kind of connection (“I’m not from ‘ back home,’” I almost said ”),50 placing self outside of f­ amily and familial communities. This last identity category solidifies how much the protagonist is alienated from self and place.

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Throughout “A Habit of Waste,” Cynthia suffers from an identity crisis that limits possibilities for her pre­sent and f­ uture selves. Her flawed self-­perception puts her outside the diasporic Trinidadian/Ca­rib­bean community into which she is born, as well as Canada’s (white and dominant) community. Even as her Diana self, Cyn is as uncomfortable in Canadian spaces and among its ­people as she is among immigrant space held by her parents and by the Trinidadian-­ Canadian food bank client Mr. John Morris. The depth of the central character’s overlapping alienations prepares us for her fantastical integration. The story’s mood begins to shift, and the lighter tone prepares us for what is to come. Hopkinson pre­sents MediPerfiction’s download pro­cess as an easy fix to what ails Cynthia. The story does not detail what science is involved in making a “Cynthia” into a “Diana”: “They downloaded me into her as soon as I could get the time off work. I was back on the job in four days, although my fine muscle control was still a ­little shaky.”51 Cynthia even remarks on the ease with which she can personalize her new body: “I’d made sure [it] would have the same vocal range as the old one, so when Mom and Dad heard my voice coming out of a stranger’s body, they flipped. D ­ idn’t even want to let me in the door, at first. Made me pass my new I.D. and the doctor’s certificate through the letter slot.”52 And ­these words conclude Cyn’s recollection of her transformation. The ease of the download deemphasizes the scientific authenticity of it, shifting attention to the fantastical imaginings of who the protagonist is and, ultimately, who she can be. Representing the download this way shifts readerly attention t­ oward the fantastical result of a self-­realized Cynthia. B ­ ecause the story downplays the technology required for the download, it highlights the fantastical aspect of Cyn’s being, dramatically revealed when she encounters her first body on the streetcar. The decidedly unexaggerated way that “A Habit of Waste” represents how Cynthia becomes Diana amplifies her disaffection with blackness (hair texture, skin color), curviness, and being a hyphenated Canadian. ­These—­unlike the transformative pro­cess itself—­have long-­lasting emotional and material impacts that are profoundly vis­i­ble to character and reader alike. That most characters in Hopkinson’s story are distinctly dif­fer­ent from the main character provides further evidence of Cynthia’s distinct disaffection. The protagonist knows that she has “been bitchy . . . ​­really down, you know?”: “No real reason. I ­don’t feel like myself.”53 But the person wearing her first body, the trolley driver, Cyn’s ­father, and Eleanor (the protagonist’s coworker) are more self-­possessed. Cynthia believes that the ­human (first described as “­woman” and “she,” then as “it”) wearing her cast-­off body only does so ­because ­there is no choice, but she reconsiders when the streetcar driver gives “it” “a melting smile.” Despite readers’ first introduction to Cynthia’s view of the person in her natal body, this person celebrates ­every bodily feature that Cyn despised when (and ­after) they ­were hers. The protagonist recalls,

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When it was my body, I always covered its butt in long skirts or loose pants. Her skirt was so short that I could see the edges of the bike shorts peeking out below it. Well, it’s one way to deal with the chafing. Strange, though; on her, the ­little peek of black shorts looked stylish and sexy all at once. Far from looking graceless, her high, round bottom twitched confidently with each step, giving her a proud sexiness that I never had. Her upper body was sheathed in a white sleeveless T-­shirt. White! Such a plain colour. To tell the truth, though, the clingy material emphasized her tiny waist, and the white looked r­ eally good against her dark skin. Had my old skin always had that glow to it? Such firm, strong arms . . .​54

Cyn’s f­ ather, who declares his appreciation for the figure she inherited from her ­mother, is the third person who likes big butts. The ­human who first appreciates the charms of Cynthia’s black body is the one who chooses it, an appreciation that her fashion and confidence telegraph. Far from indelible truths, what Cyn derides about her black and female self—in the universe of Hopkinson’s fantastical story—is uniquely her own. Distinctions between the protagonist’s inculcated prejudices and the human-­in-­Cyn’s-­body’s appreciation of her body-­ of-­choice confirm that Cynthia’s prob­lems are not located in her flesh. With each character who appreciates the first body, the story slowly deconstructs the foundations that support Cyn’s biases, chipping away at indoctrinations that make her body ugly. The story’s hero works at a food bank, where we see her interact with o­ thers. ­There, Cynthia “always sounded so artificial, but . . . ​­couldn’t help it. The food bank customers made [her] uncomfortable.”55 By contrast, her coworker Eleanor shows no sign of the obstacles that dog Cynthia, resulting in an ease with clients, demonstrated in her “cute banter” with Mr. Morris. The story’s main character holds ste­reo­t ypes about t­ hose who need food bank assistance: she describes them as financially poor and in poor health, ill-­fed, scavengers, and vaguely unclean p­ eople. She is equally detached from food bank volunteers, presuming a level of incompetence that only her pedantic self can correct. ­A fter two years living in the Diana body, Cyn’s damaged black w ­ oman self influences her psyche and ­thus every aspect of her life. Telling Cyn to “get over herself,” Eleanor instructs her to deliver Mr. Morris’s food bank rations and confirm that he has what he needs for the Thanksgiving weekend. Cynthia fi­nally concedes, and what she experiences over a foraged meal with a man from “back home” is a black-­and-­immigrant-­ness that upsets the degrading postulates she holds and provides her with tools to re/imagine a previously unimaginable self. Coerced into sharing a surprisingly delicious meal with Mr. Morris, Cyn “was so busy trying to figure out if he could have turned food bank rations into this feast, that [she] forgot all about calories and daily allowable grams of fat; [she]

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just ate.”56 Mr. Morris “loaded the t­ able with plate a­ fter plate of food: roasted chicken with a giblet stuffing, rich creamy gravy, tossed salad with exotic greens; huge mounds of mashed potatoes, some kind of fruit preserve.”57 Cynthia is convinced that the old man cheats the food bank by working off the books, but Morris schools her on foodways that derive from lack and on remembered Trinidadian and learned Canadian ones that bracket it. Morris’s journey from near suicide to a cared-­for self is nothing short of wondrous: “I see a ol’ w ­ oman sittin’ on a bench, wearing a tear-up coat and two dif­fer­ent one-­side boots. She was feedin’ stale bread to the pigeons, and smiling at them. That ol’ lady with she rip-up clothes could still find something to make she happy. “I went back home, and t­ hings start to look up a l­ ittle bit from then.”58

John Morris lives a­ fter the death of his wife, Rita, b­ ecause he witnesses the joy of a ­woman who is not supposed to be joyful (old and in a “tear-up coat and two dif­fer­ent one-­side boots”), a recognition that reminds him of his own ability to be joyous when extraordinary circumstance dictate other­wise. Morris characterizes the activist power of the imagination: a shift in consciousness and recollections of his Trinidadian boyhood results in behavioral changes, changes that solidify his claim on his Canadian self. Who Morris is and where he is are integral to his re/making: “I was eatin’ lunch one day, cheese spread and crackers and pop. One paipsy, tasteless lunch, you see? And I start thinkin’ about how I never woulda go hungry back home as a small boy, how even if I ­wasn’t home to eat me m ­ other food, it always had some kinda fruit tree or something round the place. . . . ​A nd I say to meself, ‘But eh-eh, Johnny, ­ain’t this country have plants and trees and fruit and t­ hing too? The squirrels-­them always looking fat and happy; they mus’ be eatin’ something. And the Indian people-­them-­self too; they must be did eat something e­ lse besides corn before the white p­ eople come and take over the place!’ “That same day, I find my ass in the library, and I tell them I want to find out about plants that you could eat. Them sit me down with all kinda book and computer, and I come to find out it have plenty to eat, right h ­ ere in this city, growing wild by the roadside. . . . “So I drag out all of Rita frying pan and cook spoon from the kitchen cupboard, and I teach meself to feed meself, yes!” He chuckled again. “Now I does eat fresh mulberries in the summer. I does dig up chicory root to take the bitterness from my coffee. I even make rowanberry jam. All ­these t­ hings all around we for ­free, and p­ eople still starving, oui? You have to learn to make use of what you have”59

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I quote this lengthy passage ­because it demonstrates that Morris is not merely a resilient immigrant intent on escaping his home country in search of “a better life.” He recalls what he has learned to unsee, diminish, or denigrate since arriving in Canada, slowly scraping away the accreted layers. Cynthia’s optic introduces Morris as old, poor, and unhealthy. ­A fter the foraged meal, we witness a fantastical transformation that unsettles Cyn’s perspective. Readers can then re/ member Canadian space. Occupying the place where he is—­living in Canada, living with the pain of Rita’s death, his lack a financial resources despite working most of his adult life, eating affordable yet nutritionally poor food, memories of a Trinidadian boyhood—­Morris’s Trinidadian-­Canadian self is a mélange of knowledges of self and places. The emphasis on re/membered experiences indigenizes him, and Mr.  Morris—­black, Trinidadian, el­derly, and maker of his own joy—­remembers to live in Canada in a Trinidadian way that upends external impositions of poverty, race, and immigration. A man violently assaults Cynthia as she leaves Morris’s apartment, but the old man’s foraging skill (“boulderstones” propelled from his slingshot) thwarts the attack. Making a physical intervention, Morris’s action also makes a psychic one; John’s black, male, and national knowledges (remembered and learned) are Cyn’s salvation. She says, “ ‘It’s okay, Mr. Morris; it’s not your fault. I’m all right. I’m just glad that you w ­ ere watching.’ I was getting a l­ ittle hysterical. ‘I come to rescue you with my food bank freeze-­dried turkey dinner, and you end up rescuing me instead!’ ”60 The protagonist learns how to feed (sustain) the soul that lives in the place—­and the body—­that it is in. Cynthia’s re/imagining of her character enables a fuller occupation of and claim on place and self. And for readers, the fantastical vision that re/sees decorative cabbage as flowering kale models how we can re/imagine ourselves. ­A fter the climax that is the foraged meal with Morris, Cynthia and readers gain tools that allow us to see the protagonist—­and our extra literary selves—­ differently. The protagonist’s first body’s so-­called negative features make ­those of the Diana body perfect. But the latter is thus revealed as “perfiction”: the story’s hero has to count calories to maintain its form and must be protected from wrinkles; and Cynthia is already anticipating her next download. A fantastically black lens reveals the body presented as perfect as a fiction made and maintained by the denigrated body of a black w ­ oman. Readers experience Cynthia’s transformation over the course of the story as we share in her shock at seeing someone wearing her natal body and witness her fantastical download. Fantastically, we see the transformation of Cynthia’s black ­woman self dramatized through Diana’s white body. “A Habit of Waste” does not include any other consciousness download, so Cynthia does what John Morris manifests: “make use” of what she has. Days a­ fter her visit with Mr. Morris, Cynthia arrives at her parents’ h ­ ouse to give thanks: “That Sunday, I drove over to my parents’ place for Thanksgiving dinner. I was wearing a beret, cocked at a

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chic ­angle over the cauliflower ear that the mugger had given me. No sense panicking my mom and dad. I had gone to the emergency hospital on Friday night, and ­they’d disinfected and ban­daged me. I was all right; in fact, I was so happy that two days ­later, I still felt giddy. So nice to know that ­there w ­ ouldn’t be photos of my dead body on the covers of the tabloids that week.”61 Determined to maintain Diana’s “MediPerfiction,” Cynthia counted calories and shunned Trinidadian foods that her parents prepared. ­A fter the Thanksgiving meal with Mr. Morris, however, she says to her ­mother, “I’m g­ oing to eat every­thing you put on my plate. If I get too fat, I’m just ­going to have to start walking to work. ­You’ve got to work with what ­you’ve got, ­after all.”62 The protagonist, steeped in the consciousness that made Diana a superlative choice, develops a fantastical blackness that learns to know self as irreducible to oppressions (misogynoir and citizen). “A Habit of Waste” ends with the protagonist remaining in the Diana body, but without the baggage that normalized whiteness and Eu­ro­pean Canadianness as perfection. She commits to “work[ing] with what you got, ­after all.”

A Body Freed from Conscription to Servitude Fantastical blackness enables Cynthia’s re/imagining of her black, ­woman, and Canadian selves, therefore rejecting the social forces “intent on conscripting [her] to servitude.”63 Although she remains in Diana’s body, she does so differently: the protagonist’s physicality is hers and no longer a signifier of ideal womanness or proper Canadianness. Cyn is fantastically black b­ ecause she refuses racist, sexist, and nationalist narratives; she learns “to be more than the hatred heaped upon [black ­people], to cultivate a deep self-­regard no ­matter what ­others may think, say, or do.”64 “A Habit of Waste” builds readers’ intimate relationship with Cynthia, allowing us to experience both the cause and effect of her psychic damage intimately. And thus, the story teaches a lesson that seeing blackness differently, through a fantastically black lens, benefits every­body.

Epilogue What does it mean to defend the dead? To tend to the Black dead and d­ ying: to tend to the Black person, to Black ­people, always living in the push t­ oward our death? It means work. It is work: hard emotional, physical, and intellectual work that demands vigilant attendance to the needs of the d­ ying, to ease their way, and also to the needs of the living. —­Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being What does it mean to want to imagine and to experience something ­else? It c­ an’t but be political—­simply to want to ­f ree one’s body from its conscription to servitude, to no longer be made a servant in the reproductive proj­ect of the world—­a ll of this is part of an abolitionist imaginary. We have been assigned a place in the racial cap­i­tal­ist order which is the bottom rung; the bottom rung is the place of the “essential” worker, the place where all the onerous reproductive l­ abor occurs. Not just reproductive ­labor in the terms of maintaining and aiding white families so that they might survive and thrive, but the reproductive work that nurtures and supports the psychic life of whiteness: that shores up the inviolability, security, happiness and sovereignty of that master subject, of man. —­Saidiya Hartman

The Work of Seeing Black This book reads blackness in BarbaraNeely’s mystery, Colin Channer’s urban romantica, Nalo Hopkinson’s science fiction/fantasy, and Colson Whitehead’s mixed-­genre novel as fantastical. Neely’s Blanche White chooses a fantastically 161

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black self, an option that allows her to define antiblack racism, sexism, and classism as crimes that her identity and work choices prepare her to fight. Readers claim the love lessons in Channer’s Waiting in Vain as tools that build a loveable black Jamaicanness. Hopkinson’s science fiction/fantasy novel Brown Girl in the Ring fantastically depicts national belonging that responds to extraliterary narratives that stipulate who can and cannot be Canadian. In Hopkinson’s fantasy story “A Habit of Waste,” the protagonist, Cynthia, can re/imagine her intersectional black, w ­ oman, Canadian self when she refuses to be governed by denigrating narratives. And Whitehead imagines Cora, a character in his mixed-­genre popu­lar novel, as a guide through the mechanics that undergird the American nation. Fantastical blackness is the thread that connects each chapter, an analytic that takes an undisciplined and multigenre approach to fiction by diasporic black authors. This critical approach is undisciplined ­because it is a blackened knowledge (“an unscientific method, that comes from observing that where one stands is relative to the door of no return and that moment of historical and ongoing rupture”)1 that is also grounded in my self (U.S.-­ based, immigrant, black w ­ oman with dark-­brown skin and 4b hair and a fan of popu­lar fictions). Diasporic blackness originates in the vio­lence of transatlantic slavery, but it cannot simply be defined by this history. My objective in this book is to sustain this truth, to testify to it by calling its name (fantastical blackness), and to center it by identifying it as an interpretive tool that manifests in the unrestrained hyperbole of genre fictions. Each of the previous chapters considers fantastical blackness in a dif­fer­ent popu­lar genre, a critical choice designed to highlight the range of possibilities for blackness in the Amer­i­cas. The exaggerations, idealizations, and abundance that distinguish mystery, romance, fantasy, multiple genre, and sci-fi novels and stories recognize multifaceted experiences of black p­ eople in dif­fer­ent geographies and amplify the possibilities that re/imagine blackness in unrestrained ways. As such, fictions that can portray blackness as convicted in the knowledge of self as both self-­defined and more than limiting ste­reo­types can also remind us to live in this fantastical truth. Philosophies of black being, in addition to historical, so­cio­log­i­cal, and popu­lar treatments of black experience in diaspora, frame this proj­ect’s literary critical orientation; however, disciplinary methods—­ even ­those determined by undisciplinarity—do not drive this proj­ect. I am—in an always revolving order—­black, ­woman, immigrant, and lover of popu­lar fictions, an intersectional self who affirmatively claims fantastical blackness, always, as a point of departure. Evidence of ­Things Not Seen thus privileges the unrestrained ways that blackness exists in genre fictions and focuses on t­ hese occurrences as strategic challenges to antiblackness in extraliterary contexts. This epilogue catechizes the work of the previous chapters by meditating on fantastical blackness in white/whiteness. Ruminating on Tobias Buckell’s “Spurn Babylon” highlights the purposeful work that a “whitey-­man” must do so that he can re/imagine his relationship to blackness.2 The fantasy story opens with a

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strangely preserved wooden ship “sucked . . . ​up from the silted bottom of Charlotte Amalie Harbor” and deposited onto a St. Thomas beach.3 “Dark-­skinned” locals greet this return as Revelation, caring for the relic and its brutal legacy of Ca­rib­bean slavery.4 For t­ hese locals, the physicality of the ship and the enormity of its heritage illuminate ­imagined possibilities of Zion.5 This perversity of meanings attach to the vessel as well as to Thomian passengers as they voluntarily commit to the refurbished ship’s fantastic voyage. The narrator, identified as “whitey-­man” by a Rastafarian elder, acknowledges feeling “a sense of history, the past talking to directly to [him]” through the ship, though he fears its presence and history.6 “Spurn Babylon’s” fantasy makes the disinterred slave ship and its enigmatic legacies available to African-­descended Thomians as well as to the whitey-­man narrator. In this context, the story imagines whiteness in relation to a fantastical blackness, a shared experience at which black and white arrive via dif­fer­ent routes. This reading of Buckell’s story reveals blacks’ complicated relationship to slavery, positions whiteness in relation to this complexity, and details the physical, intellectual, and emotional work whiteness must do to navigate its relationship to slavery’s complicated legacies. In a story written by a “light but not white” writer “born in the Ca­rib­bean,” “Spurn Babylon’s” fantastical blackness highlights an unsettled whiteness (light but not white) that l­ abors to be seen and to see black.7 A centered fantastical blackness directs the paths that this whiteness must take, thus making “Spurn Babylon” a most appropriate vehicle for Evidence of ­Things Not Seen’s final act.

The Work Genres Do Fantastical blackness re/frames how readers read normalized perceptions of blackness—­and thus of whiteness—in Buckell’s story. The author uses literary fantasy to “imagine a world beyond . . . ​­mental [prisons],” a choice of form that realizes blackness as complex, while recognizing extraliterary, antiblack environments. The world that Buckell builds, and the means through which literary fantasy makes it seen, underscores the vital relationship between form and content. The filmmaker Julie Dash, in describing her relationship to documentable history, is similarly attentive to the relationship between content and her chosen form. “I think,” she says, “we need to do more than try to document history. I think we need to probe. We need to have the freedom to romanticize history, to say ‘what if,’ to use history in a speculative way and create speculative fiction.”8 Dash’s use of the word “speculative” invokes its visual aspect, an interpretation advanced by the interviewer Julie Erhart’s turn to the word’s etymology: “Sharing a common root with expressions like specter, spectral, and spectacle, the etymology of ‘speculative’ bestows a sense of visuality, or visualness, upon the operation Dash is discussing.”9 The auteur deforms conventional visualizations to envision faceted African American stories. To put a finer point on it, she

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engages in this deformation in order to realize her vision of black life beyond ste­reo­type and with l­ ittle regard to nonblack lenses. Dash’s call for the speculative reads as a challenge to filmmakers and viewers alike, anyone committed to conventional forms that limit how blackness can be seen. The following quotation from Dash’s interview exemplifies why such committed attention to form is necessary: “[The film critic B. Ruby Rich noticed that] spectators of [‘Dash’s film, Looking for Langston, and Lourdes Portillo and Susana Muñoz’s La Ofenda: The Days of the Dead’] w ­ ere expecting each to focus on oppression and suffering, not splendor or grace, following an unspoken pattern that prescribed . . . ​that ‘poor Mexicans ­shouldn’t have rituals, black men ­shouldn’t have tuxedos, and Gullah Sea Islanders s­ houldn’t have fashion.’ That is, spectators, without necessarily even knowing it, ­were holding [the] films to a standard of social realism, and w ­ ere disappointed when the films did not employ such codes.”10 These auteurs visualized black and brown stories in forms they deemed appropriate for their chosen content, refusing prescriptions of social realist filmmaking. Their intentional formalist play, however, fell short of expectations for normalized brownness and blackness. Dash’s filmic choices “articulate a new way of seeing both by refiguring formal, visual conventions and by reclaiming real, historical apparatuses of vision for a community’s, specifically an African-­ A merican community’s, survival.”11 Erhart persuasively interprets Dash’s ­Daughters of the Dust by describing how vital the auteur’s speculative way of seeing African Americanness is. The critic clearly represents Dash’s formalist maneuvers, but by interpreting her form in this way, Erhart makes the complementary claim that spectators have to put in work so that we are open to witnessing form—­and content—­more expansively. By highlighting Dash’s creative work to develop an expressive vehicle best suited to her vision of black content, Erhart essentially makes a case for finding the right tool for the right job (Colson Whitehead also seeks “a tool you use for the right story at the right time”).12 Paule Marshall makes a similar argument in her exploration of the Bajan (Barbadian) term “beautiful-­ugly” and describes what a complementary blend of form and content looks like.13 The phrase derives from “the poets in the kitchen,” and Marshall uses it as a critical resource that both reflects and assesses this community. Marshall explains that the truths that the expression reveals cannot be seen in e­ ither adjective alone: And nothing, no ­matter how beautiful, was ever described as simply beautiful. It was always “beautiful-­ugly”: the beautiful-­ugly dress, the beautiful-­ugly ­house, the beautiful-­ugly car. Why the word “ugly,” I used to won­der, when the t­ hing they ­were referring to was beautiful, and they knew it. Why the antonym, the contradiction, the linking of opposites? It used to puzzle me greatly as a child. ­There is the theory in linguistics which states that the idiom of a p­ eople, the way they use language, reflects not only the most fundamental views they hold

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of themselves and the world but their very conception of real­ity. Perhaps in using the term “beautiful-­ugly” to describe nearly every­thing, my m ­ other and her friends w ­ ere expressing what they believed to be a fundamental dualism in life: the idea that a t­ hing is at the same time its opposite, and that t­ hese opposites, ­these contradictions make up the w ­ hole. But theirs was not a Manichaean brand of dualism that sees ­matter, flesh, the body, as inherently evil, b­ ecause they constantly addressed each other as “soully-­gal”—­soul: spirit; gal: the body, flesh, the vis­i­ble self. And it was clear from their tone that they gave one as much weight and importance as the other. They had never heard of the mind/body split. . . . Using everyday speech, the s­ imple commonplace words—­but always with imagination and skill—­they gave voice to the most complex ideas.14

Marshall observes in the language of her ­mother and her soully-­gals the lived truths that “a ­thing is at the same time its opposite, and that ­these opposites, ­these contradictions make up the w ­ hole.” Significantly, Marshall theorizes lived experiences that sustain the kitchen poets in their own terms. Beautiful-­ugly is the form through which Marshall can know her ­mother, soully-­gals, and how this community knows itself and approaches its real­ity. The phrase is a defining narrative of an intricate blackness, a black and w ­ oman Barbadianness in diaspora. Julie Dash offers a how-to for creatives who want to depict an unrestrained blackness, a pro­cess that Paule Marshall anticipates and refines by theorizing her community from the inside out. As a filmmaker and a creative writer, t­ hese ­women access blackness from dif­f er­ent parts of the African diaspora and in similar ways, both invested in the means through which to articulate black being and how blackness sees itself. As this book’s conclusion and with the foregoing affirmation of the benefits of form/content analyses, Tobias Buckell’s right-­tools-­ for-­the-­right-­job approach re/tells a story of slavery’s legacies and f­utures, in white and black.

Whitey-­Man Works to Discover What Is Well Hidden “Spurn Babylon’s” form makes vis­i­ble black p­ eople’s beautiful-­ugly claim on an old disinterred ship, a vessel through which something is brought “back into awareness or prominence” (Merriam-­Webster Dictionary, s.v. “disinter”). Readers get a sense that what is disinterred cannot be explic­itly defined when the narrator describes the ship’s ultimate migration: Anchored in the air above the town was the ship. As I watched, it cast itself ­free and floated up over the hill. The long streamers of cloud that usually just scraped the tip of Crown Mountain, the highest point on the island, seemed to reach down and take the boat up into their depths and out of sight. It’s a dream, I told myself, grabbing the railing. The cold metal railing told me dif­f er­ent.15

166 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

I take this quotation from the story’s end, and out of contexts that make this fantastic journey imaginably true, to better parse interpretations of its forms (short story, literary fantasy). A sea vessel anchored in a body of ­water is familiar, as are clouds and mountains, even dreams. Yet this quotation shows how Buckell makes the familiar unfamiliar, representing one of fantasy fiction’s distinguishing features. A sea craft anchored in and then setting itself ­free to float through the air embraced by clouds makes readers question what we know about sea vessels and air travel. When reading literary fantasy, we willingly suspend belief to enjoy the story; however, when we read fantasy critically, its features offer us lenses through which the story’s content manifests dramatically, intensifying the meanings we make of it. An old ship that “cast[s] itself ­free” and that is held and borne by clouds introduces the idea that an inanimate object can have agency and proposes a dif­f er­ent relationship to the natu­ral world, and it does both while evoking an institution that denied enslaved black p­ eople ­these same possibilities. Making sense of this image requires interpretive work and, possibly, self-­ assessment to re/assess what is familiar and reasons why the story deforms it. The ship’s fantastical voyage demands that we ask questions: What does the ship ­free itself from, and why? How does the ship’s unfamiliar flight impel ­these questions? The evidence rooted in this quotation may not be quantifiable, yet its imaginable truth—­the possibility of agency in abject circumstances—is significant. With or without definitive answers, the scene provides readers with opportunities to re/think and, perhaps, embrace novel conclusions. When done well, literary fantasy persuades readers to believe in what it hyperbolizes. How, then, do we come to believe that descendants of enslaved African ­people care for a preserved vessel that signifies the terrors of the ­Middle Passage and slavery’s degradations? “Spurn Babylon” not only represents this relationship complexly but also casts it as foundational to the present/future of all its characters. The narrator’s description of the exhumed ship reveals its primary use and confirms its location. His first reference to it is purely descriptive: “a three-­masted square-­rigger lay lopsided on the waterfront’s concrete shoreline.”16 His first impulse is to photo­graph it, si­mul­ta­neously capturing it as image while maintaining distance from it. The mood and relation that this establishes distinguishes the narrator from the other characters. Black-­and brown-­skinned adults closely gather around the vessel, looking and poking at its hull; black-­and brown-­ skinned ­children climb on board and play in its hold. Immediately, ­every black character in the story is intimate with the ship. ­A fter the narrator’s descriptive introduction of the very old ship, his musings reveal more about it and more about the ­people who almost immediately care for it: Some of the wet planks w ­ ere pulled away to expose ribs. I could see the dim gleam of white inside. Skele­tons? It suddenly dawned on me that this was an old slave ship. Horrible. I shivered. St. Thomas had been one of the central

Epilogue • 167

points of the trade, being one of the best natu­ral harbors in the Ca­rib­bean. Had a pirate ship fired and sunk this slaver in the harbor? Divers often searched the bottom a­ fter large cruise ships stirred up the silt, looking for history. But h ­ ere it had been brought straight to land. I leaned over and tapped the driver, who was just as fascinated as I was. “What are they d­ oing?” I asked. “Taking care of it,” he said.17

Locals relate to the slaver in myriad ways: they are curious, they cry, they play and sing, they work determinedly, and by the end of the story, they enter it to command a present/future freedom. Yet through this diversity of relations, they all work to restore it. According to the old Rasta who names and befriends the whitey-­man narrator, the relic is the means through which black ­people of St. Thomas reject their known world: “U.S. Virgin Islands part of Babylon, is time for we to spurn Babylon.”18 Context makes the Rasta’s statement peculiar: the repurposed slaver is the conveyance that delivers descendants of enslaved Africans to Babylon. This choice puts t­ hese ­people and the fantastical ship (disinterred, strangely preserved, slaver, compelling, and, ultimately, airborne) into provocative relation. Readers are now charged with imagining why. Days a­ fter whitey-­man names the relic as a slave ship, he notices that “sometime during the night the bleached remains of the scattered skele­tons had been removed, but the chains and manacles still hung from the bulkheads and partitions, the iron blacker than the skin of the man standing next to [him].”19 The exposed ribs of the ship, the bleached bones of ­those who died in its hold, and the irons commissioned to transform ­humans into chattel signify slavery’s inherent terror. And yet, incredibly, the restraints “should have had barnacles on them, or been rusted, yet they gleamed at [the narrator] as new as the day they w ­ ere made.”20 That Thomians are drawn to the craft, are called to repair it, and—­ ultimately—­willfully “sleep zombie-­style” in its bowels ­until, as they say, “we ah come t­here” demonstrates slavery’s past-­in-­present as well as accreted meanings that the fantastic makes wholly comprehensible:21 black p­ eople re/make a slave ship and consent to re/engage a ­Middle Passage, all for the purpose of rejecting Babylon and claiming Zion: An old ­woman in a green shawl stood just u­ nder the forecastle. A young boy in a green and white uniform from the school just up the street stepped to the front of the deck. Her old withered hands reached out to give him a sip from the green gourd she held. He shivered and fainted, crumpling in on himself, then rolling onto the deck. I could see the tiny chest rise with a slowing rhythm of breath, u­ ntil the child fell still. My stomach flip-­flopped with memories of stories of mass suicides. The w ­ oman next in line, maybe his m ­ other, took the liquid just as calmly. ­Behind her a policeman waited his turn.

168 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

As soon as they lay limp on the deck two men would bear the unconscious down into the ship’s holds.22

That Thomians consent to travel “ ’till we ah come t­ here” is sublimely impor­tant in this fantasy story. The phrase upsets time and movement through space by inviting p­ eople to “come” to (rather than “go to”) a ­future place and, si­mul­ta­ neously, to go “­there” (rather than “­here”), not to a location but to a state of being, an abstraction (freedom). “We ah come t­ here” is disruptive, a beautiful-­ugly phrase that speaks a specific black community. The phrase is also at home in literary fantasy, where time/space disruptions are not only conceivable but welcome. And in “Spurn Babylon,” the fantastically Rastafari both/and-­ness of seemingly disparate spatial relations extends to temporal ones. Time and sea do not effect the slave ship’s iron shackles, a truth that proj­ects slavery’s past into the pre­sent and f­ uture and affirms its inheritances: ­people made “black” and “slave,” meanings attached to black bodies and black l­abor, dehumanized blackness that undergirds Western institutions—­and whiteness. This re-­merged slave ship and its con­temporary attendants can be read epige­ne­tically, which suggests that environmental traumas can change the ways genes perform and that ­these embodied changes can be heritable.23 “Spurn Babylon,” however, does not portray traumatized black bodies. Black Thomians, whose realities run a gamut, actively choose to travel in the vessel’s hold: “­Children, old ­women, a Rastafarian with long dreadlocks and tattered jeans; some of them wielded tools, scraping away at the ship. ­Others stood around, singing hymns, or just watching. Many had tears in their eyes.”24 Lived experiences leave traces, and Buckell’s story imagines t­ hese traces as manifold, as diverse as the ­people and emotional states congregating around the disinterred vessel: young and old, dark-­and light-­skinned, “some . . . ​stood around, singing hymns, or just watching.” Epigenet­ics describes reformed gene expressions, and fantastical lit­ er­a­ture imagines a next formation—­a re/reformation—of traumatic, embodied, and authoritative realities: “perhaps in using the term ‘beautiful-­ugly’ to describe nearly every­thing, [Paule Marshall’s] ­mother and her friends w ­ ere expressing what they believed to be a fundamental dualism in life: the idea that a ­thing is at the same time its opposite, and that ­these opposites, ­these contradictions make up the ­whole.” A hurricane returns the slave ship to shore, bringing to light a web of relations. And by choosing to enter the relic’s hold, descendants of enslaved ­people embody complex truths as expressions of their claim on Zion. From identification to refurbishment to ultimate flight, readers’ relationship to the slaver and its crew/passengers develops through the whitey-­man narrator. What, then, does the flight of the beautiful-­ugly Marcus Garvey (the name “someone had painted . . . ​on the rear” of the ship) mean for whitey-­man?25 Walter Mosley encourages ­people who are unsatisfied with the way ­things are to write

Epilogue • 169

science fiction ­because it “offers an alternative where that which deviates from the norm is the norm.”26 Christina Sharpe argues that black abjection and death in the Amer­i­cas is normalized. Fantasy, therefore, demands that we turn our critical gaze away from normalized black victimization (the way ­things are) so that we can see and make the fantastical blackness that “Spurn Babylon” imagines. Although the Marcus Garvey induces the whitey-­man narrator to participate in its reconstruction, he remains ambivalent about joining its fantastic voyage. Whitey-­man’s connection to the remnant ship and the pro­cess of its reconstitution reads as a coming to terms with his relationship to slavery and its submerged histories. In so ­doing, the narrator also comes to terms with his self and sense of belonging. As the story unfolds, the whitey-­man’s distance from the ship contracts, physically and psychically: “And yet, I still remained distant. Maybe ­because my ancestors ­were mixed, and I could never bring myself to identify with ­either side. It was the same strug­gle I had with deciding what race box to check off on paperwork, or applications. Black? Definitely some; ­there’s my unnaturally easy tan. White? During winter I would blend in with the average mall crowd, an easy anonymous decision. Or maybe even a ­little Latino, and some Oriental thrown in for good mea­sure. I was trapped in dispassion. In the end, I always chose ‘other.’ ”27 Whitey-­man’s understanding of race (his winter pallor and “unnaturally easy tan”) is unimaginative, particularly in the context of the Anglophone Ca­rib­bean. Anthony P. Maingot and H. (Harmannus “Harry”) Hoetink effectively represent race in the circum-­Caribbean region as si­mul­ta­ neously defined and difficult to define, unsettling the more binaristic (black/ white) notions of race that one might encounter in the United States.28 Hoetink makes a strong case for the relationship between varied historical and economic developments in dif­fer­ent parts of the Ca­rib­bean and their influence on evolving racial dynamics in ­these parts. Maingot affirms Hoetink’s analyses, but with emphases on power relationships and status that evolved out of the exploitation of enslaved Africans. In the Ca­rib­bean, therefore, multiple racial categories are or­ga­nized on a continuum, though privilege and power still attach to whiteness, “whiteness,” and light skin. By overemphasizing skin color and effacing power and privilege, whitey-­man highlights feelings that attach to racial ambivalences: alienation and being out of place. At last, his perception of self begins to solidify around feelings that draw him to the Marcus Garvey and its rebuilders. The narrator is compelled to participate in the slaver’s reconstruction. In light of the complexity of black Thomians’ relations to the vessel and its past/present/ future meanings, whitey-­man’s connection suggests a reclamation of more than his secreted blackness and more than the qualification of his whiteness (“whiteness” or whitish-­ness). Whitey-­man is in search of place and purpose and finds both in a mission that he at first finds curious, then all encompassing. ­Because “Spurn Babylon” characterizes the re/working and re/purposing of the Marcus

170 • Evidence of ­Things Not Seen

Garvey as the work of black Thomians, and the narrator as initially alienated from both l­ abor and laborers, it is not clear what ­either means for him. “It scared me,” whitey-­man says. “The wooden planks, the manacles, the calm intensity of the ­people working at restoration. Yet they ­didn’t plan to restore it. I would have understood restoration. I wanted to help with that, to rediscover a hidden part of myself, make peace with myself.”29 Readers might imagine this “hidden part” as his African ancestry (that which allows him to tan easily), except that unlike darker-­hued Thomians, whitey-­man’s route to Zion is dramatically difficult. The ­labor that he must perform is not only psychic but also physical. Black residents of St. Thomas, a­ fter their reclamation of the slave ship, peacefully sleep in its hold: “slowing rhythm of breath, ­until the child fell still. . . . ​The ­woman next in line . . . ​took the liquid just as calmly. . . . ​As soon as they lay limp on the deck two men would bear the unconscious down into the ship’s holds.” By contrast, backbreaking ­labor makes whitey-­man’s journey arduous even though he slowly lets go of the world he once knew: “The entire island had gotten into the boat yesterday and left. I understood that. Where they ­were g­ oing I still was not sure. I sat on the concrete rim of the waterfront, trying to explain to the wind why methane booster rockets w ­ ere more efficient than kerosene, but I ­couldn’t remember, and it ­didn’t ­matter ­really. The entire waterfront, loud and bustling, lay dead quiet. I remembered other busy cities I’d lived in. I remembered production deadlines and dirt-­free clean-­suits, laptops and cellular modems, and being asked to have the numbers on the desk by the next morning.”30 A ­ fter the Marcus Garvey unmoors itself and takes off, another vessel appears and appears ready for a dif­fer­ent—­and the same—­fantastic voyage: A tiny wooden skiff bumped up against the large truck tires hung off the edge of the concrete to protect the ferries. I looked down. The green, red, and yellow letters read ­Little Garvey. . . . The skiff had a bench in the m ­ iddle, two pegs on ­either side to put the oars between. It bobbed and it hit the tire in rhythm with the swell. I carefully clambered in, untying the hemp rope, and pushed off from the waterfront.31

Physical ­labor paves whitey-­man’s way to the present/future. He has to work harder—­note the emphasis on rowing the skiff—­and he must be fully conscious while he puts in the work. Referring to so-­called whites who benefit from black (social) death and victimization, Ta-­Nehisi Coates writes that the former choose to forget machinations that make their whiteness white and commit to institutions that maintain who they think they are and what they consider their due. Coates continues, “They have forgotten, b­ ecause to remember would tumble them out of the beautiful Dream and force them to live down ­here with us, down h ­ ere in the world. I am convinced that the Dreamers . . . ​would rather live white than live ­free.”32 Coates argues that living ­free takes work, effort that only white

Epilogue • 171

p­ eople can do for white ­people. The narrator of “Spurn Babylon” signs on to the physical l­abor of rowing his own skiff, a physical real­ity that is paired with his m ­ ental l­ abor: Somehow [­those who volunteered for Marcus Garvey’s passage] had all managed to subvert that horrible legacy, the slave ship and what it represented, from the past and take it with them proudly into a new f­ uture. How? I wanted to try. I set the oars between the two pegs, closed my eyes, and leaned back. The oars bit into the ­water, the small boat began to move. Trust, I figured, was impor­tant. And belief. I began to row.33

Buckell describes the narrator’s ­labor step by step: whitey-­man sets the oars, he closes his eyes, he leans back, he sinks the oars into the w ­ ater, and then he begins to row. Collectively, each step takes whitey-­man through a pro­cess of moving into a dif­fer­ent relationship to Babylon, to chattel slavery, and with black p­ eople. Even the passage of the Marcus Garvey is calm (it floats and is cradled by clouds) compared to the L ­ ittle Garvey, whose oars bite the ­water.

Putting in the Work . . . In Blanche on the Lam, the protagonist, Blanche White, chooses to be her own black/woman/domestic worker self, a choice that suits her “constitutional distaste for being any whiteman’s mammy.”34 By severing an intimate connection to Mumsfield, a man who may have been able to leap “across the gap between them and truly [know] what it [means] to be a black w ­ oman trying to control her own life and stand firm against having her brain vanillaed,” Blanche makes the hard choice intentionally.35 By “Spurn Babylon’s” end, the whitey-­man narrator claims ties to blackness and to place, histories, and their legacies. He knows, too, that he must do dif­f er­ent kinds of work to enter into community and move out of dispassion. The narrator’s active work propels him out of indifference and into unrestrained possibility. Choosing to engage fantastical blackness, claiming it with the strength of his actions, transforms the whitey-­man narrator into an agent invested in living ­free and not living white. Buckell’s whitey-­man, as he rows to Zion, visualizes the quality that has allowed blacks to create a ­people out of contexts that made us into a race.36

Acknowl­edgments Lit­er­a­ture scholars rarely engage in research collaborations, not like ­those in other disciplines anyway, but writing Evidence of Th ­ ings Not Seen and preparing it for publication made me re/think what “collaborative effort” means. I was committed to maintaining a “work-­life balance,” so I resisted bringing my very personal love of popu­lar fictions into my work life. But several ­things happened that changed this way of thinking. First, I learned about the study that found that only 2.1 ­percent of all tenured associate and full professors at United States colleges and universities ­were black ­women. A low number, to be sure, but then I began listing all of my black w ­ omen colleagues who are tenured; I know a significant number of this 2.1 ­percent. I also realized that I am the last associate professor in my gradu­ate school cohort: Giselle Anatol (University of Kansas), Ka­li Nicole Gross (Emory University), and Rhonda Y. Williams (Tulane University) are already full professors. I want join my friends. Second, my then Boston College colleague Régine Jean-­Charles (now full professor at Northeastern University) lit a fire ­under me: she believed that I should write a book about blackness in popu­lar fiction, in effect bringing what I loved to work. Régine believed long before I believed. And fi­nally, I succumbed to ­these calls and took an impor­tant first step on the road from drafted manuscript to completed book: I met with Kimberly Guinta, editorial director at Rutgers University Press, at the 37th Annual Meeting of the West Indian Lit­er­a­ture Conference at the University of Miami. Ms. Guinta was excited about this proj­ect from the moment I described Nalo Hopkinson’s short story “A Habit of Waste.” This was the enthusiastic encouragement I needed to remove Evidence of Th ­ ings Not Seen from my computer’s draft folder.

173

174 • Acknowl­edgments

I am indebted to every­one who pushed and pulled me through this pro­cess, especially t­ hose whose kind attentions helped me re/think and write vari­ous parts of the book: Cynthia Young, Christina Sharpe, Tracy  M. Thompson, Toby Lester, Amy Boesky, Christopher Wilson, Jonathan-­David McKinley Howard, Kyrah Malika Daniels, Angela Ards, Amey Victoria Adkins-­Jones, C. Shawn McGuffey, Allison Curseen, Rhonda  Y. Williams, Robin Lydenberg, Martin Summers, Leigh Patel, Katie Dalton Walsh, Marah Gubar, and Winnifred Brown-­Glaude. I am and w ­ ill always remain appreciative. Significant parts of this proj­ect w ­ ere first vetted as conference pre­sen­ta­tions, invited talks, or works-­in-­progress; I am grateful for the opportunities that ­these meetings and their organizers gave me. I presented a version of “Fantastically Black Blanche White: BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam” at “ ‘ The Endlessly Beckoning Horizon’: Afro-­A merican Lit­er­a­ture at the End of the Twentieth ­Century,” or­ga­nized by Professors Farah Griffin and Michael Awkward and hosted by the Center for the Study of Black Lit­er­a­ture and Culture (University of Pennsylvania, 30 September–2 October 1999). I delivered dif­fer­ent versions of “Making Black and Jamaican Love: Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain and Romance-­ified Diaspora Identities” at the annual meeting of the Ca­rib­bean Studies Association (Jamaica, 2009) and at “The Pre­sent ­Future of Ca­rib­bean Literary and Cultural Studies” symposium (University of Miami, 2011). I completed a working draft of “Fantastic Possibilities: Theorizing National Belonging through Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring” at Boston College’s Intersections Villa Faculty Writing Retreat and was greatly encouraged by the retreat or­ga­nizer, Burt Howell, and by fellow participant Michael Pratt (BC’s Carroll School of Management). I owe many thanks to Donette Francis (University of Miami), Michelle Rowley (University of Mary­land, College Park), Julie Crawford (Columbia University), and members of the Diaspora Seminar at Boston College (especially Min Hyoung Song and, again, Régine Jean-­Charles) for helping me think through my analyses of Ca­rib­bean diasporas and consider strategies for interpreting Amazon e-­commentaries. ­These ­people—­f riends, colleagues, mentors, and members of the family-​ I-­chose—­believed in this proj­ect more than I believed in it. They believed in me more than I believed in myself. I owe each of you much love and re­spect.

Notes Prologue Epigraphs: Octavia Butler, “Positive Obsession,” Bloodchild and Other Stories (New York: Four Walls Eight Win­dows, 1995), 134–135; Imani Perry, “Racism Is Terrible. Blackness Is Not,” The Atlantic, 15 June 2020, www​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­ideas​/­a rchive​ /­2020​/­06​/­racism​-­terrible​-­blackness​-­not​/­613039​/­​?­utm ​_ ­source​= s­ hare&utm​_­campaign​ =­share. 1 Octavia Butler, Wild Seed (New York: Popu­lar Library/Warner Books, 1988). 2 Painting by Wayne Barlowe, “Wild Seed, bookcover,” Wayne Barlowe’s website, July 2011, https://­waynebarlowe​.­fi les​.w ­ ordpress​.c­ om​/­2011​/­07​/­wild​-­seed​-­copy1​.­jpg. 3 I am a fan of Octavia Butler, as well as Samuel R. Delany and Walter Mosley, three stalwarts of their respective popu­lar forms. However, I do not feature their works in this study, though some of their novels support my argument. Though useful, each writer and their most popu­lar works have been the subject of extensive critical research. For example, Daylanne K. En­g lish writes that “an MLA bibliography search on 1 August 2006 yielded just nine critical articles on Neely’s Blanche White series but 31 on Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series.” En­g lish, “The Modern in the Postmodern: Walter Mosley, BarbaraNeely, and the Politics of Con­temporary African-­A merican Detective Fiction,” American Literary History 18, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 792n2, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.1­ 093​/a­ lh​/­ajl018: 794n12. Isaiah Lavender III notes, “Another revealing area has been the huge amount of critical attention focused on the work of the two best known black sf writers, Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler. Critiques and analyses of their work must be considered mainstays in sf. However, the body of criticism on ­these two writers is simply too large to engage with ­here in a cohesive fashion.” Lavender, Race in American Science Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 37. And André M. Carrington asserts, “The two undeniable stalwarts of Black science fiction, Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler, hardly appear in this book; this choice is deliberate, in light of the recognition that my comments on each of t­ hese writers would add l­ ittle to the conversations initiated by other critics.” Carrington, “Introduction: The Whiteness of Science Fiction and the Speculative Fiction of Blackness,” in Speculative 175

176 • Notes to Page x

Blackness: The ­Future of Race in Science Fiction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), Kindle ed., location 98. 4 A more thorough definition of “black” and “blackness” appears in the introduction (section 3), but h ­ ere I summon broad definitions of both and discuss why I choose not to capitalize e­ ither term. By “black” and “blackness,” I refer to the identity category that resulted from the historical and institutional formation of the transatlantic slave trade (“slave”), which ultimately coalesced into a racial category (“black”). I also invoke perceptions of “black” that manifest in the popu­lar imaginary and that have become a normalized postulate: physical characteristics (skin color, shape of facial features and bodies, hair texture), be­hav­iors and cultures (athletic abilities, musical styles, spiritual/religious per­for­mance, foodways), and ­people of African descent. I do not capitalize “black” when I use it to describe a group identity, but when I quote o­ thers, I honor their choice. I use “black” as a common noun (“a noun . . . ​that denotes any or all of a class of entities and not an individual”; Dictionary​.­com, my emphasis) and an adjective (“black ­people”) to describe p­ eople of African descent who have a shared experience of the West. I choose not use “Black” as a proper noun (“a noun that is used to denote a par­tic­u­lar person, place, or t­ hing”; Dictionary​.­com, my emphasis), ­because ­doing so suggests an imprecise homogeneity in circumstance (“African American” as “Black”). In other words, using “black” as a common noun and adjective should remind readers that the term references a diverse group of ­people who exist in and experience myriad circum­ stances but also a group affected by common perceptions that circulate in a global imaginary, perceptions s­ haped by a shared relationship to the West. 5 The 1987 cover of Octavia Butler’s Dawn, published by “Warner Books shows a white ­woman [reviving another white w ­ oman] from what appears to be a medical procedure of some kind. However, early in chapter 1 . . . ​we read this very clear description of Lilith, the main character, from her own point of view: ‘Once, they put a child in with her—­a small boy with long, straight black hair and smoky-­brown skin, paler than her own.’ ” Warner Books’ choice indicates the type of “marketing reasons” used to package novels for a white, male readership. Th ­ ese reasons are all the more telling—­and peculiar—­because Doubleday produced Kindred, a Butler novel that remains popu­lar, in 1979 with black ­women depicted on its cover. See Betsey Mitchell’s “Truth Is Change: The Evolution of Octavia Butler’s Cover Art,” The Portalist, updated 22 August 2018, https://­theportalist​.­com​/o­ ctavia​-­butler​-­cover​ -­art. Samuel R. Delany recalls his first encounter with racism when the Analog magazine publisher, John W. Campbell Jr., rejected the option to serialize Delany’s ninth novel, Nova: “Campbell rejected it, with a note and phone call to my agent explaining that, while he liked pretty much every­thing ­else about it, he ­didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character. . . . ​It’s just that I had, by pure happenstance, chosen to write about someone whose ­mother was from Senegal (and whose ­father was from Norway), and it was the poor benighted readers, out t­ here in Amer­i­ca’s heartland, who, in 1967, would be too upset.” Delany, “Racism and Science Fiction,” in Dark M ­ atter: A ­Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, ed. Sheree R. Thomas (New York: Aspect/Warner Books, 2000), 387. 6 I offer a precise definition of “genre fiction” in the introduction; ­here, however, I emphasize some key features. Genre fictions, and synonyms “category” and “popu­lar” fictions, are labels for fiction intended to “appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.” Wikipedia, s.v. “genre fiction,” last modified 22 February 2021, https://­en​.­wikipedia​.­org​/­wiki​/­Genre​_ ­fiction. What distinguishes

Notes to Pages x–xii  • 177

genre fiction from literary fiction, according to Christy Tillery French, is that the former is plot driven and has a large audience, compared to literary fiction’s “smaller, more intellectual audience.” French, “Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction,” AuthorsDen​.­com, accessed 18 August 2020, http://­w ww​.­authorsden​.­com​/­visit​/­viewArticle​ .­asp​?­id​=1­ 8884. 7 Stephen F. Soitos argues in his study of mystery/detective fiction by African American writers that this form traditionally promotes and upholds “a white, middle-­class mentality that defends a traditional, conservative worldview in terms of race, class, and gender.” Soitos, The Blues Detective: A Study of African American Detective Fiction (Amherst: University of Mas­sa­chu­setts Press, 1996), 53. Erin Smith makes a similar claim with regard to class in the United States. In Hard-­Boiled, she demonstrates how white working-­class and immigrant readers bought into the masculinity, consumerism, and citizenship prescribed in hard-­boiled stories published in genre magazines. See Smith, Hard-­Boiled: Working-­Class Readers and Pulp Magazines (Philadelphia: ­Temple University Press, 2000). And Sean McCann’s Gumshoe Amer­i­ca argues that writers of hard-­boiled detective fiction negotiated the divide between a truly demo­cratic, informed citizenry and the goals of New Deal Liberalism. See McCann, Gumshoe Amer­i­ca: Hard-­Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000). 8 See French, “Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction”; Lev Grossman, “Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology,” Time, 23 May 2012, https://­entertainment​.­time​.c­ om​/­2012​/­05​/­23​/­genre​-­fiction​-­is​-­disruptive​ -­technology​/­; and Arthur Krystal, “Easy Writers,” New Yorker, 21 May 2012, www​ .­newyorker​.­com​/­magazine​/2­ 012​/­05​/­28​/e­ asy​-­writers. 9 Yet this content and ­these audiences always existed. The epic fantasy writer NK Jemisin says, “science fiction and fantasy . . . ​and horror and interstitial stuff and all of the ­things that make up the speculative fiction genre . . . ​have been multicultural and multigendered and multiracial and so on basically since their inception. . . . ​It’s not ­really in dispute w ­ e’ve got the stories w ­ e’ve seen the proof. . . . ​The perception of science fiction though as painted in the popu­lar consciousness is a ­whole other ­t hing, . . . ​a nd that gets repeatedly reinforced by ­people in the genre and outside of it.” African American Policy Forum, “(Pt 15) ­Under the Blacklight: Storytelling While Black and Female: Conjuring Beautiful Experiments,” YouTube, 5 August 2020. See also Samuel R. Delany on how the common use of pseudonyms may have hidden early sci-fi writers’ racial identities. Delany, “Racism and Science Fiction,” 384. 10 Grossman, “Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle” (my emphasis). 11 When partnered with Isaac, Anyanwu shape-­shifts into a bird to protect him as he, in his h ­ uman form, flies. “Isaac hesitated. ‘That’s what the bright colors are for, I guess,’ he said fi­nally. ‘To distract attention from me. Yes, she’s been shot a c­ ouple of times. She falls a few yards, flops about to give me time to get away. Then she recovers and follows” (Butler, Wild Seed, 141). 12 Butler, 100. 13 Anyanwu momentarily considers Doro’s suggestion, but she quickly rejects it: “For an instant, she wondered . . . ​what such a switch might be like. She knew she could become an adequate man, but could this strange being ever be truly womanly? What if . . . ? No!” (Butler, 100). L ­ ater in the novel, Doro forces Anyanwu to breed with him while he “wears” a ­woman’s body, but her hatred for him prevents her from becoming erect naturally (158).

178 • Notes to Pages xii–2

14 Butler, 116. 15 Butler, 118. 16 Perry, “Racism Is Terrible. Blackness Is Not.” 17 Elizabeth Alexander, “The Trayvon Generation,” New Yorker, 22 June 2020, www​ .­newyorker​.­com​/­magazine​/2­ 020​/­06​/­22​/­the​-­trayvon​-­generation​?f­ bclid​=I­ wAR1nWJ vBidAjLuvOVRs3Ug3sz8WTkgrehUvtGRuSMHV8​_­P8G017rnznSUoQ. 18 Lucille Clifton, “­won’t you celebrate with me,” in Book of Light (Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 1993), www​.­poetryfoundation​.­org​/­poems​/­50974​/w ­ ont​-­you​ -­celebrate​-­with​-­me (accessed 11 August 2020). 19 Coined by Moya Bailey, “misogynoir” is a “word [she] made up to describe the par­tic­u­lar brand of hatred directed at black w ­ omen in American visual & popu­lar culture.” Bailey, “They A ­ ren’t Talking about Me . . . ,” Crunk Feminist Collective, 14 March 2010, www​.­crunkfeministcollective​.­com​/­2010​/­03​/­14​/­they​-­arent​-­talking​ -­about​-­me​/­. The term, theorized by Bailey and Trudy (aka @thetrudz), has come to represent a “historical anti-­Black misogyny and a problematic intraracial dynamic that had wider implications in popu­lar culture.” Moya Bailey and Trudy, “On Misogynoir: Citation, Erasure, and Plagiarism,” Feminist Media Studies, 13 March 2018, 2, https://­doi​.­org​/1­ 0​.­1080​/­14680777​.2­ 018​.­1447395. 20 See Grossman, “Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle.”

Introduction Charles R. Saunders, critic and f­ ather of “sword and soul” fiction, died “somewhere between May 2 and May 15,” 2020. This loss was particularly heartbreaking b­ ecause most ­people ­were unaware of Saunders’s death u­ ntil January 2021. Neil Genzlinger, “A Black Literary Trailblazer’s Solitary Death: Charles Saunders, 73,” New York Times, 25 January 2021, www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2021​/­01​/­21​/­books​/­charles​-­saunders​-­dead​.­html. A GoFundMe page raised over $17,000 to purchase Saunders’s headstone and start a small scholarship fund. See “Help Us Honour Charles R. Saunders, Black Author,” GoFundMe, accessed 11 August 2021, www​.­gofundme​.­com​/­f​/­help​-­us​-­buy​-a­ ​-­tombstone​ -­for​-­charles​-­r​-­saunders. Epigraphs: Ta-­Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Random House, 2015), 149; Walter Mosley, “Black to the F ­ uture,” New York Times Magazine 1 November 1998, 32. 1 This proj­ect uses definitions of “antiblack” and “antiblackness” (and the variant “antiblack racism”) shared on the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) platform. “Antiblack” is defined as “a two-­part formation that both voids Blackness of value, while systematically marginalizing Black ­people and their issues. The first form of anti-­Blackness is overt racism. . . . ​Beneath this anti-­black racism is the covert structural and systemic racism [that] categorically predetermines the socioeconomic status of Blacks in [the United States].” Antiblack racism “describe[s] the unique discrimination, vio­lence and harms imposed on and impacting Black p­ eople.” M4BL, “A Vision for Black Lives: Glossary,” 2017, https://­justleadwa​.­org​/­wp​ -­content​/­uploads​/2­ 019​/­08​/­R EJIGlossary​.­pdf. I also understand “antiblackness” as an umbrella term u­ nder which the following can be placed: individual prejudices against black ­people; institutions that benefit (intentionally or not) from the exploitation of black ­people; antiblack ste­reo­t ypes and denigrations of black ­people’s bodies, hair, and skin. 2 I invoke Perry, Alexander, and Clifton in the prologue but add Fred Moten’s description of fugitivity ­here and ­later in this chapter. Imani Perry, “Racism Is

Notes to Pages 2–4  • 179

Terrible. Blackness Is Not,” The Atlantic, 15 June 2020, www​.­theatlantic​.­com​/i­ deas​ /­archive​/­2020​/­06​/­racism​-­terrible​-­blackness​-­not​/­613039​/­​?­utm​_ ­source​=s­ hare&utm​ _­campaign​= s­ hare; Elizabeth Alexander, “The Trayvon Generation,” New Yorker, 22 June 2020, www​.­newyorker​.­com​/m ­ agazine​/­2020​/­06​/­22​/­the​-­trayvon​-­generation​ ?­f bclid​=I­ wAR1nWJvBidAjLuvOVRs3Ug3sz8WTkgrehUvtGRuSMHV8​ _­P8G017rnznSUoQ; Lucille Clifton, “­won’t you celebrate with me,” in Book of Light (Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 1993), www​.­poetryfoundation​.­org​/­poems​ /­50974​/­wont​-y­ ou​-­celebrate​-­with​-­me (accessed 11 August 2020); Fred Moten, “The Case of Blackness,” Criticism 50, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 179. 3 The “fantastical” in “fantastical blackness” is not merely imaginative or fanciful; it does not only exist in imagination, and it is not perversely or irrationally ­imagined (OED Online). 4 See Lev Grossman, “Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology,” Time, 23 May 2012, https://­entertainment​.­time​.­com​/­2012​ /­05​/­23​/­genre​-fi ­ ction​-­is​-­disruptive​-­technology​/,­ and my discussion of this article in the prologue. 5 Race remains a durable postulate, despite evidence to the contrary. Responding to a question about why the findings of the H ­ uman Genome Proj­ect (2000) (it “found that ­there was no race other than the ­human race, no distinct races at the ge­ne­tic level”) failed to dispense with beliefs about inherent racial differences, Chenjerai Kumanyika says, “We’ve got to accept that race i­ sn’t real. It’s remarkably durable as an institution, you know, but then it’s unstable as a concept.” John Biewen, host, “Skulls and Skin,” part 8 of “Seeing White,” Scene on Radio (podcast), episode 38, 17 May 2017, www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​/e­ pisode​-3­ 8​-s­ kulls​-­and​-­skins​-­seeing​-w ­ hite​-­part​-­8​/­. 6 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Repre­sen­ta­tion (Boston: South End, 1992), 2. 7 Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 15. 8 hooks, Black Looks, 1. 9 Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2015), 135. See also Kate Kellaway, “Claudia Rankine: ‘Blackness in the white imagination has nothing to do with black p­ eople,’ ” The Guardian, 27 December 2015, www​ .­theguardian​.­com​/­books​/­2015​/­dec​/­27​/­claudia​-­rankine​-­poet​-­citizen​-­american​-­lyric​ -­feature. 10 Sarah Crompton, “Interview: Playwright Lynn Nottage: ‘We are a country that has lost our narrative,’ ” The Guardian, 2 December 2018, www​.­theguardian​.­com​/s­ tage​ /­2018​/­dec​/­02​/­lynn​-­nottage​-­interview​-­play​-­sweat​-­america. See also PublicTheaterNY, “Lynn Nottage on the Origins of SWEAT: The Public Theater,” YouTube, 2 August 2018, https://­youtu​.­be​/ Y ­ cReO9Wf WeQ. 11 Crompton, “Interview: Playwright Lynn Nottage.” 12 Crompton; see also Olga Khazan, “Middle-­Aged White Americans Are ­Dying of Despair,” The Atlantic, 4 November 2015, www​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­health​/­archive​ /­2015​/1­ 1​/­boomers​-­deaths​-­pnas​/­413971​/­; and Ta-­Nehisi Coates, “The First White President,” The Atlantic, October 2017, www​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­magazine​/­archive​ /­2017​/­10​/­the​-­first​-­white​-­president​-­ta​-­nehisi​-­coates​/­537909​/­. 13 Perry, “Racism Is Terrible. Blackness Is Not.” 14 Nalo Hopkinson articulates a similar sentiment: “the stories we tell ourselves are about ourselves, and have resonance in the real world that may be utterly, vitally impor­tant to readers.” Mary Anne Mohanraj, “Interview: Nalo Hopkinson,” StrangeHorizons​.c­ om, 1 September 2000, http://­strangehorizons​.­com​/n ­ on​-­fiction​ /­articles​/i­ nterview​-­nalo​-­hopkinson​/.­

180 • Notes to Pages 4–6

15 David Scott, “The Re-­enchantment of Humanism: An Interview with Sylvia Wynter,” Small Axe 8 (September 2000): 146–147, https://­a rchive​.­org ​/­stream​/​ ­TheReEnchantmentOfHumanismAnInterviSylviaWynter​/­The%20Re​-­Enchant​ ment%20of%20Humanism ​_­%20An%20Intervi%20​-­%20Sylvia%20Wynter​ _­djvu​.­txt. 16 Walter Mosley states that “­there are few concepts or inventions of the 20th ­century—­ from submarine to newspeak—­that w ­ ere not first fictional flights of fancy. We make up, then make real” (“Black to the ­Future,” 32). 17 “Hyperbole” is defined as “obvious and intentional exaggeration” and “an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally” (Dictionary​ .­com). It is also “a figure of speech consisting in exaggerated or extravagant statement, used to express strong feeling or produce a strong impression, and not intended to be understood literally” (OED Online). I cull parts of each to arrive at my working definition: “hyperbole” in popu­lar fictions is an intentional, embellished expression that magnifies its subject, allowing readers to focus on and develop strong impressions about fantastical blackness and to do so in and in excess of lived extraliterary realities. 18 The phrase “seeing black” is my reworking of the title of John Biewen’s “Seeing White” series on the Scene on Radio podcast. Biewen’s title highlights whiteness as raced and an unseen but prevalent real­ity. I use “seeing black” to center par­tic­u­lar repre­sen­ta­tions of blackness but also to attend to a par­tic­u­lar “unseeing” of blackness. John Biewen, host, “Seeing White,” parts 1–14, Scene on Radio (podcast), episodes 31–45, www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​/s­ eeing​-­white​/­. 19 “[The filmmaker] Julie Dash has made her recourse to speculative fiction explicit, invoking the term’s expansive meaning to describe the ways in which her work envisions formative situations in Black culture that are obscured by a realist frame of reference. Haunted states and spaces of negation characterize t­ hese works, but the power of knowledge that is irreconcilable with everyday life also lends itself to tropes like ancestry, pregnancy, destiny, and prophecy.” Julie Erhart, “Picturing What If: Julie Dash’s Speculative Fiction,” Camera Obscura 13, no. 2 (1996): 117–118. 20 Christina Sharpe does not explic­itly define “un/imaginable” (“In short, I mean wake work to be a mode of inhabiting and rupturing this episteme with our know lived and un/imaginable lives”; In the Wake, 18), but in light of her usage and the content of In the Wake, its meaning merges: what is/can be ­imagined, what has/ has been/has not been i­ magined, what could be i­ magined, what (­because of the overimagining of blackness as terror and social death) blocks imaginings about black social life. My use of the term embraces this amalgamation. 21 Science fiction, for example, purports to “transcend convention and ste­reo­t ype.” Charles R. Saunders, “Why Blacks Should Read (and Write) Science Fiction,” in Dark M ­ atter: A ­Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, ed. Sheree R. Thomas (New York: Aspect/Warner Books, 2000), 398. But in practice, as per David Hartwell, “a lot of it was xenophobic, elitist, racist, and psychologically naïve.” Gregory E. Rutledge, “Futurist Fiction and Fantasy: The Racial Establishment,” Callaloo 24, no. 1 (2001): 241 22 Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” 32. 23 Kalí Tal, “ ‘That Just Kills Me’: Black Militant Near-­Future Fiction,” Social Text 20, no. 2 (71) (2002): 67. 24 Rutledge, “Futurist Fiction and Fantasy,” 238. In my estimation, an example of what not centering blackness looks like can be seen in Ernest C. Withers’s I Am A Man (1968), the black-­and-­white civil rights photo­graph of dozens of black men holding

Notes to Pages 7–12  • 181

white signs with the phrase “I Am A Man” written in bold, black letters. This image centers and privileges ­those for whom the fact of black masculinity must be stated and affirmed. 25 Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the ­Middle Passage,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14, nos. 2–3 (2008): 199. Tinsley continues, stating, “The queer black Atlantic I discuss h ­ ere navigates t­ hese crosscurrents as it brings together enslaved and African, brutality and desire, genocide and re­sis­tance. ­Here, fluidity is not an easy meta­phor for queer and racially hybrid identities but for concrete, painful, and liberatory experience” (192–193). 26 André M. Carrington, Speculative Blackness: The F ­ uture of Race in Science Fiction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), chap. 2, Kindle ed. 27 David Wallace, “Fred Moten’s Radical Critique of the Pre­sent,” New Yorker, 30 April 2018, www​.­newyorker​.­com​/­culture​/­persons​-­of​-­interest​/­fred​-­motens​-­radical​ -­critique​-­of​-­the​-­present; Moten, “Case of Blackness,” 179. 28 Frank B. Wilderson III, interview by C. S. Soong, “Blacks and the Master/Slave Relation,” in Afro-­Pessimism: An Introduction (Minneapolis: racked & dispatched, 2017), 20–21, https://­libcom​.­org​/­library​/­afro​-­pessimism​-­introduction. 29 Wilderson, 18. 30 Wilderson, 21. Also note that Wilderson constructs blackness and whiteness in antithetical relation: “One of the points that [Orlando] Patterson makes at a higher level of abstraction is that the concept of community, and the concept of freedom, and the concept of communal and interpersonal presence, actually needs a conceptual antithesis. In other words, you c­ an’t think community without being able to register non-­community” (21). 31 John Biewen, host, “Made in Amer­i­ca,” part 3 of “Seeing White,” Scene on Radio (podcast), episode 33, 16 March 2017, transcript, www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​/w ­ p​-­content​ /­uploads​/­2017​/­11​/S­ eeingWhite​_ ­Part3Transcript​.­pdf. 32 John Biewen, host, “Citizen Thind,” part 10 of “Seeing White,” Scene on Radio (podcast), episode 40, 14 June 2017, transcript, www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​/­wp​-­content​ /­uploads​/­2018​/­01​/­SeeingWhite​_ ­Part10Transcript​.­pdf. 33 Biewen. 34 Biewen. 35 hooks, Black Looks: Race and Repre­sen­ta­tion (Boston: South End, 1992), 2. 36 Wilderson, “Blacks and the Master/Slave Relation,” 19. 37 Wilderson, 18 (my emphasis). 38 Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic,” 198. 39 Wilderson, “Blacks and the Master/Slave Relation,” 21. 40 Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic,” 199. 41 However, the recently published novel by Robert Jones Jr., The Prophets (New York: Putnam, 2021), is grounded in this confluence. Lauren Michele Jackson notes that much of the reception of the novel lingers “on two points in par­tic­u­lar: the revelatory import of its same-­sex love story, which pulls queer love from out of the hidden—or suppressed—­depths of antebellum conjecture, and its Baldwinian, Morrisonian rhythms, by which, I think, p­ eople mean an assumed orality in Jones’s prose.” Jackson, “The Prophets, a Novel of Queer Love during Slavery, Burdened by History,” New Yorker, 3 February 2021, www​.­newyorker​.­com​/­books​/­under​-­review​ /­the​-­prophets​-­a​-­novel​-­of​-­queer​-­love​-­during​-­slavery​-­burdened​-­by​-­history. 42 Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic,” 193. 43 Tinsley, 192.

182 • Notes to Pages 12–17

44 Tinsley, 199. Carrington, quoting Kara Keeling, advances a similar claim: “Appraising Eve’s Bayou and Haile Gerima’s Sankofa, critic Kara Keeling addresses the specter of the Black femme as a figure who exists outside the limitations of the hegemonic mind, where her survival defies common sense.” Carrington, Speculative Blackness, introduction. 45 Mati is a Surinamese Creole word “­women use for their female lovers: figuratively mi mati is ‘my girl,’ but literally it means mate, as in shipmate—­she who survived the ­Middle Passage with me” (Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic,” 192). Gloria Wekker writes, “In dif­fer­ent parts of the Diaspora the relationship between p­ eople who came over to the ‘New’ World on the same ship remained a peculiarity of this experience. The Brazilian ‘malungo,’ the Trinidadian ‘malongue,’ the Haitian ‘batiment’ and the Surinamese ‘sippi’ and ‘mati’ are all examples of this special, non-­biological bond between two p­ eople of the same sex.” Quoted in Tinsley, 198; translated from Dutch to En­g lish by Tinsley. 46 Tinsley, 199. 47 Sharpe, In the Wake, 18. 48 Sharpe, 4. 49 Sharpe, 4. 50 Sharpe, 14. 51 Sharpe, 15. 52 Sharpe, 50. 53 Sharpe, 13. 54 Sharpe, 10–11. 55 Sharpe, 22 (my emphasis). 56 Sharpe, 22. 57 Sharpe, 21. 58 Moten, “Case of Blackness,” 179. Jonathan Howard concurs: “if [Gaston] Bachelard is correct, then beyond merely signaling black abjection or social death, M ­ iddle Passage should also be recognized as having staged a longstanding and culturally defining meditation on the physiopoetic properties of ­water, and the ocean in par­tic­u­lar. Read in this way, the ocean may be understood, beyond the status of spatial wound or unmarked grave, to furnish the African Diaspora with the . . . ​ material imagination of blackness.” Howard, “Swim Your Ground: ­Toward a Black and Blue Humanities,” Atlantic Studies, forthcoming, 27. He continues by saying, “within what we sometimes have occasion in black studies to appraise as their ‘social death,’ we have yet and further to recognize a profound practice of black ecological life incarnate in t­ hese forerunners of the blue ­human” (29). 59 Biewen, “Skulls and Skin,” transcript, www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​/w ­ p​-­content​/­uploads​ /­2017​/­12​/­SeeingWhite​_ ­Part8Transcript​.­pdf. 60 Teo N., “Nina Simone—­Four ­Women (1966),” YouTube, 17 July 2016, https://­youtu​.­be​ /­EWWqx​_­Keo1U. 61 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 35 (my emphasis). Adapted from queries raised in three William E. Massey Sr. Lectures delivered and an American lit­er­a­ture course taught at Harvard University, Morrison’s Playing in the Dark examines how blackness is used in early US lit­er­a­ture. 62 Morrison, 48. Generally understood as Eu­ro­pean in origin (representative examples set during the late-­medieval or gothic period) and spanning the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries, gothic literature/gothic romance is defined by its bleak medieval setting; horrific, suspenseful, and gloomy atmosphere; and mysterious and

Notes to Pages 17–20  • 183

violent occurrences. This type of lit­er­a­ture is also imbued with a sense of irrationality. Twentieth-­century U.S. writers embraced the genre as a vehicle suited to expressing a southern U.S. real­ity. The works of Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, and Carson McCullers fall into the gothic tradition. See “Southern Gothic Lit­er­a­ture,” in Twentieth-­Century Literary Criticism, ed. Janet Witalec, vol. 142 (Detroit: Gale, 2003), Lit­er­at­ ure Resource Center, http://­link​.g­ alegroup​.­com​.­proxy​.­bc​.­edu​/­apps​/d­ oc​/­H1410001028​ /­LitRC​?­u​=m ­ lin​_­m​_­bostcoll&sid​=L ­ itRC&xid​= 6 ­ 1398021. 63 Morrison, Playing in the Dark, x; see also 33. 64 See Morrison, 45. 65 Morrison, 49. 66 Consider, too, how Ishmael Reed anticipates Morrison’s critical stance when he satirizes both the objectification and use of blackness in Flight to Canada. Stray Leechfield, captured and returned to his former “master” Arthur Swille, does not understand why Swille refused his repayment-­for-­self. ­Uncle Robin explains, “[Swille] wanted the slave in you. When you defied him, took off, the money was no longer the issue. He c­ ouldn’t conceive of a world without slaves.” Reed, Flight to Canada (New York: Scribner, 1998), 177. Swille cannot be in a world with a ­free Stray Leechfield: Swille cannot be “master” without “slave,” “white” without “black,” h ­ uman without the commodified not-­human. Thus, in Reed’s, and Morrison’s, hands, genre fictions persuasively advance complicated racial analyses. 67 Ursula Rucker, “I/We,” Silver of Lead (Studio!K7, 2003), CD. 68 Wilson Harris, “History, Fable, and Myth in the Ca­rib­bean and the Guianas,” in Selected Essays of Wilson Harris: The Unfinished Genesis of the Imagination, ed. Andrew Bundy (New York: Routledge, 1999), 159. 69 hooks, Black Looks, 6. 70 Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” 32. 71 M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong! As Told to the Author by Setaey Adamu Boateng (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), 189. For contrast, see Michelle Commander’s functional (perfunctory?) summary of the Zong massacre in Afro-­Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 1–2. 72 Philip, Zong!, 191 (my emphasis). 73 Philip, 194 (my emphasis). 74 bell hooks, citing James Baldwin, concurs: “The more painful the issues we confront the greater our inarticulateness. James Baldwin understood this. In The Fire Next Time, he reminded readers that ‘­there has been almost no language’ to describe the ‘horrors’ of black life” (Black Looks, 2). 75 Philip, Zong!, 190; see also 191, 194. 76 ­There are several videos of performative readings of Zong! posted on the author’s website. The first one, titled “Zong! Collective Durational Reading & Per­for­mance/ b current studio, 601 Christie St/Toronto, November 29, 2013,” captures the chaotic, religious fervor of my experience at a University of Miami–­sponsored reading in 2018. See M. NourbeSe Philip, “Zong! Recent Readings,” Philip’s website, accessed 18 October 2020, www​.­nourbese​.­com​/­zong ​/­; and PEN Amer­i­ca, “Miami Performs: A Living Memorial for Victims of the Zong Massacre,” 4 October 2018, https://­pen​.­org ​/­event​/­miami​-­performs​-­l iving​-­memorial​-­victims​ -­zong​-­massacre​/­. 77 Philip, Zong!, 183. 78 Philip, xii.

184 • Notes to Pages 20–24

79 Richard Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popu­lar Culture in the Post-­Civil Rights Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 148. This analy­sis resonates with Mark Dery’s mandate to seek black voices “in unlikely places, constellated from far-­flung points.” Dery, “Black to the ­Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose,” in The Discourse of Cyberculture, ed. Mark Dery (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 182. 80 See Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic, chap. 6, “Round Trips on the Black Star Line,” for an application of his argument in Ca­rib­bean and African locations. 81 Iton, 3–4. 82 Iton, 16. 83 Iton, 289–290. 84 Iton, 17 (also quoted in Commander, Afro-­Atlantic Flight, 19). 85 Iton, 11 (my emphasis) 86 Iton, 23. 87 Iton, 192–193, 372n120. 88 Iton, 19 (my emphasis). 89 Iton, 11. 90 Iton, 14. 91 By this, he writes that “the apparent absence of a thickly transformative dialectic within modernity’s matrix . . . ; its seeming inability to shake itself f­ ree of its embedded sexism and racism; it primal tendency to read issues that make race salient as pointing ­toward ­either the premodern or antimodern; and the ways it makes, excludes, and yet exploits and contains black bodies, raise doubts about the feasibility of any simplistic reconciliation of the modern and the black (however constructed), and the more superficial depictions of the Afro-­modernity and Afro-­modernism proj­ects” (Iton, 13). 92 “Examples of popu­lar culture’s ability to focus attention on a specific issue would include, in the American context, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ­Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stevie Won­der’s ‘Happy Birthday,’ and Spike Lee’s 4 ­Little Girls. More broadly, one might consider the work of Baaba Maal, Ousmane Sembène (Moolaade), and Alice Walker (Warrior Marks and Possessing the Secret of Joy) that has raised awareness regarding the topic of female genital mutilation” (Iton, 302n53; my emphasis). 93 Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” 32. 94 See Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic,” 193. 95 See Mosley, “Black to the F ­ uture”; Charles R. Saunders, “Why Blacks Should Read (and Write) Science Fiction,” in Thomas, Dark ­Matter, 398–404; Rutledge, “Futurist Fiction and Fantasy”; Tal, “That Just Kills Me”; and Nalo Hopkinson, Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Ca­rib­bean Fabulist Fiction (Montpelier, VT: Invisible Cities, 2000). 96 Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” 32. 97 Tal, “That Just Kills Me,” 68. 98 Saunders, “Why Blacks Should Read (and Write) Science Fiction,” 398; Tal, “That Just Kills Me,” 67. 99 Saunders, “Why Blacks Should Read (and Write) Science Fiction,” 404. 100 Hopkinson, Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root, xii. 101 Hopkinson, xii–­xiii (my emphasis). 102 Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” 33. 103 Mosley, 32; see also Ytasha L. Womack, Afrofuturism: the World of Black Sci-­Fi and Fantasy Culture (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2013), 36.

Notes to Pages 24–26  • 185

104 I critically use and engage definitions of specific genres in subsequent chapters and tweak ­these definitions using specific aspects of selected primary fictional works. 105 M. Jacqui Alexander, Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 292. 106 Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic,” 194. See also Kevin Young, who states, “I am interested in the ways in which black folks use fiction in its vari­ous forms to ­free themselves from the bounds of fact.” Young, The Grey ­Album: On the Blackness of Blackness (Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2012), 19. 107 CBC Arts, “Sci-­fi: Why It’s Radical for Black ­People to Imagine the ­Future,” YouTube, 8 February 2018, https://­youtu​.­be​/­cjWYBXCgX6Y. Ideologically speaking, Afrofuturism acknowledges that black p­ eople w ­ ill exist in the f­ uture, that this existence ­will be recognizable in remarkable aesthetic styles (fashion, hair, lit­er­a­ture, ­music, visual arts), and both of t­ hese truths are significantly informed by African and diasporic African histories and cultures. Afrofuturism also claims the fact of black f­ utures by foregrounding the role of technologies (broadly defined) in rendering them. In its cultural emphases, this conceptual ideology is largely celebratory (resilient) in its depiction of black pasts and black f­ utures. In popu­lar contexts, the term vaguely deploys dif­fer­ent arrangements of key words: “black,” “African,” “science fiction,” “­f uture,” “culture,” “aesthetic.” See, for example, “Afrofuturism is a type of cultural aesthetic that explores the intersection of African culture with technology and futurism.” Kat Tenbarge, “Octavia E. Butler: Why the Author Is Called the ­Mother of Afrofuturism,” Inverse, 22 June 2018, www​.­inverse​ .­com​/a­ rticle​/4 ­ 6330​-o­ ctavia​-­e​-­butler​-­why​-­she​-s­ ​-­referred​-­to​-­as​-­the​-­mother​-­of​ -­afrofuturism​?­f bclid​=I­ wAR3JInGgd7UnwOWTBtUMoLcN​_ ­l loLx8cyeJh5​ _­dwHBilpD2H9Q8​-­5​-­A mtCM. 108 Dery, “Black to the ­Future” 180, 182. 109 Dery, 182–183. 110 See Daylanne K. En­g lish, “Afrofuturism,” Oxford Biblio­g raphies, 26 July 2017, www​ .­oxfordbibliographies​.­com​/­view​/­document​/­obo​-9­ 780190221911​/o­ bo​-­9780190221911​ -­0004​.­xml. En­g lish’s definition seems to compete with what some p­ eople are beginning to define as “Africanfuturism,” a term coined by creative writer Nnedi Okorafor. Okorafor distinguishes “Africanfuturism” from “Afrofuturism” in that the former is set specifically on the African continent, exclusively uses African cosmologies, and does not engage the West or the African diaspora. She states, “Africanfuturism, which is a form of science fiction, is not linked to classic science fiction. . . . ​That’s not how I started writing it and ­those a­ ren’t my inspired authors. The authors who inspire me w ­ ere African authors, so I came to science fiction in a dif­fer­ent way.” DeAsia Paige, “Author Nnedi Okorafor Talks Origins of Storytelling ­Career at Liberty Hall,” University Daily Kansan, 9 November 2018, www​ .­kansan​.­com​/a­ rts​_ ­and​_c­ ulture​/­author​-­nnedi​-­okorafor​-­talks​-o­ rigins​-­of​-­storytelling​ -­career​-­at​-­liberty​/­article​_­ed6d09c2​-­e464​-­11e8​-­bf4a​-­4bc3eb43119c​.­html; see also Okorafor, “Africanfuturism Defined,” Nnedi’s Wahala Zone Blog, October 2019, http://­nnedi​.­blogspot​.­com​/­2019​/­10​/­africanfuturism​-­defined​.­html. Päivi Väätänen, a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki, writes, “What makes this [Okorafor] story Africanfuturist is that Africans in the ‘­Mother of Invention’ are in charge of their own technological advances and their own technological m ­ istakes. When international collaboration is invoked in the context of combatting the poisonous GM grasses, it is with China and not any of the Eu­ro­pean or American nations. Furthermore, ‘­Mother of Invention’ does not need to engage in redefining notions of blackness, as in the African context of the narrative, blackness is the default.” She

186 • Notes to Pages 27–28

continues, “Africanfuturist narratives like “­Mother of Invention” take one step further: when writing their own stories, they can cut ties with the West, with the ‘real­ity’ that needs to be ‘inverted,’ and establish a new normalcy that is not dependent on comparisons with Eurocentric, racist and colonialist traditions of Anglo American science fiction.” Väätänen, “Afro-­versus Africanfuturism in Nnedi Okorafor’s ‘The Magical Negro’ and ‘­Mother of Invention,’ ” Vector: From the British Science Fiction Association, 13 October 2019, https://­vector​-­bsfa​.­com​/­2019​/­10​ /­13​/­afro​-­versus​-­african​-­f uturism​-­in​-­nnedi​-­okorafors​-­the​-­magical​-­negro​-­and​-­mother​ -­of​-­invention​/­. 111 Ira Glass, “623: We Are in the ­Future,” This American Life (Chicago Public Media), 18 August 2017, www​.­thisamericanlife​.o­ rg​/­707​/w ­ e​-­are​-­in​-­the​-­f uture. Drumming’s nuanced way of seeing Afrofuturism, however, is punctuated by voice-­overs by Ira Glass, the first of which observes, “Old-­school stuff, like Parliament-­Funkadelic’s pimped-­out trippy rides to outer space, which predates the term by twenty years.” Glass’s voice-­overs reduce Drumming’s spectacular insights, and the narratives they foreground, to a superficial commentary on the style in Parliament-­Funkadelic’s per­for­mances. This kind of the framing continues through the episode and becomes more restrictive. Immediately following George Clinton’s phantasmagoric, lyrical assessment of a black future/past—­“All right, Starchild. Citizens of the universe, recording angels, we have returned to claim the pyramids. Partying on the mothership. I am the mothership connection” (my emphasis)—is another of Glass’s consequential voice-­overs: “And lately you see lots of famous black ­people excited about Afrofuturism. Rihanna and Solange appear in black space-­age fashion.” Glass, in both voice-­overs, passes on opportunities to consider/ruminate on a complex definition of “Afrofuturism”; instead, he opts for its most available aspects: styles worn by popu­lar black musical artists and vague generalizations of Parliament’s lyrical/musical oeuvre. Clinton’s word choices, for example, conjure an unspeakable black experience, one of effaced histories and denied privileges of citizenship that, at the same time, affirm a recognizable belonging and citizenship (“Citizens of the universe”). Clinton, as singer/musician/lyricist, remarks on the quintessentially significant being in the power to rec­ord black experience (“recording angels” who rec­ord experience: musically, scribally). 112 Quoted in Isaiah Lavender III, Race in American Science Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 35. 113 See Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic, 3; see also 14, 15. 114 According to McCann, if classic mysteries of the nineteenth c­ entury represented the genius-­detective as triumphantly reasserting late-­Victorian l­ egal and social order over and against the lawlessness of individual desires, the 1930s Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe novels represent the philosopher-­detective as cynically discovering that the modern l­ egal and social order is neither redemptive nor consolatory. In fact, it may be both incompetent and malignant, particularly ­toward vulnerable individuals. See McCann, Gumshoe Amer­i­ca: Hard-­Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 89–91. See also Daylanne En­g lish on McCann: “In Gumshoe Amer­i­ca, Sean McCann describes hard-­boiled fiction as a Depression-­era ‘cultural complaint’ (5) about the ‘poverty of liberal theory’ (16). Arising out of ‘populist cynicism and its air of fatality’ (3), it exposes ‘the classic mystery tale’ as ‘a po­liti­cal myth . . . ​[that] no longer corresponded to the complex realities of an urban, industrial society’ (10).” En­g lish, “The Modern in the Postmodern: Walter Mosley, BarbaraNeely, and the Politics of Con­temporary African-­A merican

Notes to Pages 28–33  • 187

Detective Fiction,” American Literary History 18, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 792n2, https://­doi​.­org ​/­10​.­1093​/­a lh​/­ajl018. 115 Erin Smith, Hard-­Boiled: Working-­Class Readers and Pulp Magazines (Philadelphia: T ­ emple University Press, 2000), 11–12. Smith also, according to Alfred Jan, “concludes that the hard-­boiled hero, and readers who identified with him, was struggling to retain the autonomous artisanal work ethic in the face of scientifically managed mass production factories.” Jan, review of Hard-­Boiled: Working-­Class Readers and Pulp Magazines, by Erin A. Smith, reprinted from The Pulpster #11 (2001), Black Mask, 5 September 2017, https://­blackmaskmagazine​.c­ om​/­blog​ /­review​-o­ f​-h ­ ard​-­boiled​-­working​-­class​-­readers​-­and​-­pulp​-­magazines​-­by​-­erin​-­a​-­smith​/­. 116 Young, Grey ­Album, 24. 117 Young, 15. 118 Young writes, “When confronted with African American writing, too many seem to focus on its reception, on how many men signed Phillis Wheatley’s proof of authorship, without examining the myriad ways in which black writers, even Wheatley herself, predict, parody, and make pos­si­ble white authentication of their own work. What if Wheatley’s meeting with the men who judged her writing was not the primal moment of black lit­er­a­ture? What if it was instead the moment Wheatley, a slave in a foreign land who c­ ouldn’t fly home, dared to pick up the quill? What if it was the writing, in other words, and not the judging?” (28). 119 Young, 34–35. 120 Howard Rambsy II notes in his review of The Grey ­Album that “increasing numbers of scholars of African American lit­er­a­ture have produced specialized studies focusing on distinct historical periods rather than all-­encompassing books like The Grey ­Album. Young’s book f­ avors breadth over an extended length of time and dozens of artists, whereas t­ hose specialized studies ­favor more in-­depth treatments of more condensed moments in literary history.” Rambsy, review of The Grey ­Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, by Kevin Young, African American Review 46, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 181, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1353​/­afa​.­2013​.­0032. 121 Young, Grey ­Album, 56. 122 Young, 54. 123 “African” is my shorthand for Commander’s description of locations in the Amer­i­cas that purportedly have stronger ties to African cultures and traditions than do other diasporic locations: Bahia, Brazil, and islands off the coast of South Carolina. 124 Commander, Afro-­Atlantic Flight, 6. 125 Commander, 5. 126 Commander, 15. 127 Commander, 15 (“While the fact of diasporic longing attends to the emotive, this examination is concerned more with what follows yearning”), 18, 19. 128 Commander, 3; see also 20. 129 Commander, 6. 130 Commander, 3. 131 Carrington, Speculative Blackness, introduction. 132 Carrington, introduction. 133 Carrington, introduction. 134 Carrington, introduction. 135 Brian Donahue, “Pulitzer Prize–­Winning Author Junot Diaz Tells Students His Story” NJ​.­com, 21 October 2009, www​.­nj​.­com​/l­ edgerlive​/­index​.­ssf​/­2009​/­10​/­junot​ _­diazs​_­new​_ ­jersey​.­html.

188 • Notes to Pages 34–38

136 Kiese Laymon, Heavy: An American Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2018). 137 George S. Schuyler, Black No More: A Novel, Black Classics (London: X Press, 1998). 138 A version of chapter 2 was published as “Making Jamaican Love: Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain and Romance-­ified Diaspora Identities,” Small Axe: A Journal of Ca­rib­bean Criticism 17, no. 3 (42) (November 2013): 63–84. 139 Christy Tillery French, “Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction,” AuthorsDen​.­com, accessed 18 August 2020, http://­w ww​.­authorsden​.­com​/­visit​/­viewArticle​.­asp​?­id​=1­ 8884. 140 Alondra Nelson, Thuy Linh N. Tu, and Alicia Headlam Hines, “Introduction: Hidden Cir­cuits,” in Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life (New York: NYU Press, 2001), 8. The Antiguan writer Jamaica Kincaid, responding to a question about “magical realist” influences on her work, countered by invoking geography: “I’m not ­really a very imaginative writer, but the real­ity of my background is fantastic.” See Allan Vorda, “An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid,” Mississippi Review 20, nos. 1–2 (1991): 13.

1. First—­Mystery BarbaraNeely was born on 30 November 1941 and died on 2 March 2020. In her honor and in recognition of her lifetime achievement, the Mystery Writers of Amer­i­ca named her 2020 G ­ rand Master. Blanche on the Lam won the Agatha Award (1992) and the Anthony Award (1993) for best first novel and the Macavity Award for best first mystery novel (1993). “BarbaraNeely, Activist Turned Mystery Writer, Dies at 78,” New York ­ ytimes​.­com​/­2020​/­03​/­11​/­books​/­barbara​-­neely​-­dead​.­html. Times, 11 March 2020, www​.n Epigraph: Richard Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 18–19 1 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), 1. The other novels in the Blanche White series are Blanche among the Talented Tenth (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), Blanche Cleans Up (New York: Viking Penguin, 1998), and Blanche Passes Go (New York: Viking Penguin, 2000). 2 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 1. 3 I invited BarbaraNeely to Boston College to pre­sent to students in my black ­women writers classes (2000 and 2002). While chatting with her during the first visit, she shared that she did not like the idea of being named by someone other than herself and de­cided to choose a new name. This decision was met with some re­sis­tance from ­family members who ­were particularly attached to the name Barbara. Neely compromised by removing the space between her first and last names, changing “Barbara Neely” into “BarbaraNeely.” In this proj­ect, I honor her choice. Frankie Y. Bailey has also noted that “this author’s name appears on her books and in her copyrights as one word ‘BarbaraNeely.’ ” Bailey, “Blanche on the ­ oman Speaks,” in Diversity and Detective Fiction, ed. Lam, or the Invisible W Kathleen Gregory Klein (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popu­lar Press, 1999), 202n1. 4 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 5; see also references to white and elite criminals who do not face punishment for their crimes (133, 162). And Blanche on the Lam ends with the murderer sidestepping the criminal justice system, though the possibility of justice in the court of public opinion is high (203). 5 Blanche is not only unseen by the judge: at Aunt Emmeline’s summer home, “she hides in plain sight, working in the stately home of a wealthy white ­family with close ties to the county sheriff, the person from whose custody Blanche has escaped,

Notes to Pages 38–40  • 189

who frequently visits. Blanche can hide in plain view, stay on the lam in her own town, ­because none of the white ­people who surround her can r­ eally see her.” Maureen T. Reddy, Traces, Codes, and Clues: Reading Race in Crime Fiction (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 65–66. 6 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 135. 7 BarbaraNeely, 1. 8 BarbaraNeely, 1. 9 BarbaraNeely, 4. See the discussion of the black working class and class invisibility in Blanche on the Lam in Bailey, “Blanche on the Lam, or the Invisible W ­ oman Speaks,” 191–198. 10 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 5. 11 Stephen F. Soitos, The Blues Detective: A Study of African American Detective Fiction (Amherst: University of Mas­sa­chu­setts Press, 1996), 237n1. Some critics, however, “have identified Neely’s Blanche White novels as examples of ‘cozy’ detective fiction, a subgenre defined as mystery novels in which ­little harm comes to the detective or other characters (other than the initial murder), t­ here is ­little sex or vio­lence, and the setting consists of a confined, often rural place wherein the characters know one another.” Daylanne K. En­g lish, “The Modern in the Postmodern: Walter Mosley, BarbaraNeely, and the Politics of Con­temporary African-­A merican Detective Fiction,” American Literary History 18, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 792n2, https://­doi​.­org​ /­10​.­1093​/­a lh​/­ajl018. Cozy mystery, however, does not precisely describe the first Blanche White novel since several characters die and Blanche and her community suffer myriad racial, gendered, and physical traumas. En­g lish concurs: “The fact that [Blanche] is physically assaulted at least once in ­every novel and has been raped means that the books r­ eally cannot be considered ‘cozy,’ even if they match some of the subgenre’s characteristics. I would argue that they partake of both hard-­boiled (Same Spade) and cozy (Miss Marple) conventions” (792n2). “Mysteries,” Christy Tillery French says, “focus on a crime committed, usually murder. One rule of thumb to remember: the dead body should show up within the first three chapters; some publishers like it within the first three pages. The action in a mystery ­will center on the attempts of a detective or investigator to solve the crime. The mystery is a ‘puzzle’ and engages the brain.” French, “Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction,” AuthorsDen​.­com, accessed 18 August 2020, http://­w ww​.­authorsden​.­com​/­visit​ /­viewArticle​.a­ sp​?­id​=1­ 8884. 12 mateo52, “The mystery is on the lam as well . . . ,” 23 November 2001, 3-­star review, www​.­amazon​.­ca​/­g p​/­customer​-­reviews​/­RUX85XOXY3GPX​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_­arp ​_­d​ _­viewpnt​?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​= ­0140174397#RUX85XOXY3GPX. 13 TJ Stepp, “Not that good, but, sometimes unpredictable,” 1 July 2019, 2-­star review, www​.­amazon​.­com​/­gp​/­customer​-­reviews​/­R3MJ4FZNBNCBCG​/­ref​= ­cm​_c­ r​_ ­getr​_­d​ _­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­UTF8&ASIN​=1­ 941298389. And, “The book had a bit of a slow start and the mystery d­ idn’t ­really get moving u­ ntil well into the second half. The mystery itself is not complex or difficult to solve.” Sassypants, “A cozy mystery without the usual suspects,” 28 February 2019, 3-­star review, www​.­amazon​.­com​/­gp​/­customer​ -­reviews​/­R 1EHXPDV5G66JE​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_­arp ​_­d​_­viewpnt​?­ie​=­UTF8&ASIN​ =­1941298389#R1EHXPDV5G66JE. And also, “­didn’t finish the book, slow plot and not enough interest for a mystery.” sewing lady, “Three Stars,” 19 April 2016, 3-­star review, www​.­amazon​.­com​/­gp​/­customer​-­reviews​/­RU22OU0G9MSNN​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​ _ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­UTF8&ASIN​=1­ 941298389. Once again, “Unfortunately, much of the story was about racial tension in the South, both past and pre­sent, not a murder. I read to 48% and the murder still h ­ adn’t taken place. I fi­nally gave up.”

190 • Notes to Pages 40–42

ShyReader, “2.5 Stars Blanche on the Lam,” 16 February 2016, 3-­star review, https://­ www​.­amazon​.­com​/­gp​/­customer​-­reviews​/­R 23AJGEOSLLEAL​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_­arp ​_­d​ _­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­UTF8&ASIN​=B ­ 00KBCHOQ0​.­. “The book, though short, is slow to develop; it’s half over before anything happens.” sweetmolly, “Blanche Triumphant,” 17 December 2000, 2-­star review, www​.­amazon​.­com​/­g p​/­customer​-­reviews​ /­R 1YEY8M77PETB3​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­UTF8&ASIN​=1­ 941298389. And fi­nally, “Note: ­Don’t expect a lot of Sue Grafton/Patricia Cornwell paced detective action. The murder ­doesn’t even occur u­ ntil around page 120 in a 220 page book.” B. Shelton, “Above average but a bit preachy,” 30 April 1998, 3-­star review, www​.­amazon​.c­ om​/­gp​/­customer​-­reviews​/­R83ZR1TP5IEUU​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_­arp ​_­d​_­r vw​ _­ttl​?­ie​=­UTF8&ASIN​=1­ 941298389. 14 BarbaraNeely has stated that she wrote Blanche on the Lam to use a popu­lar form to advance a critique of racism, sexism, and classism in the U.S. South, thus the novel’s criminal offenses (the revision of Emmeline’s ­w ill [52–58], the revelation of the real Emmeline’s murder [99], the sheriff’s murder [118], Nate’s murder [148], and Blanche’s attempted murder [185]) occur late in the novel. 15 En­g lish, “Modern in the Postmodern,” 774. In arguing that “con­temporary literary and cultural theory, social science, and bioge­ne­tics have undone race itself ” and that, “as a result, the nature of modern and postmodern African-­A merican identity has become an increasingly irresolvable mystery, one that invites use of the detective form” (774), En­g lish reads Walter Mosley and BarbaraNeely as attempting to respond to mysteries around race. Thus, the mystery form, as En­g lish see it, articulates “the continued frustration of black community throughout Neely’s Blanche White novels and the continued interracial injustice in the Easy Rawlins’s novel [resulting in] an incomplete recovery of African-­A merican and American po­liti­cal, intellectual, and ­family histories” (791). Though En­g lish’s critique of how and why BarbaraNeely and Mosley use the detective form is compelling, my proj­ect is differently motivated. While we both use literary formalist analyses to assess race, I am concerned with fantastical blackness as hyperbolic, a prolific self-­k nowledge that popu­lar literary forms amplify and disseminate, resulting in an instructive resource. 16 Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016); Kiese Laymon, Heavy: An American Memoir (New York: Scribner, 2018). 17 John Biewen, host, “Seeing White,” parts 1–14, Scene on Radio (podcast), episodes 31–45, www​.­sceneonradio​.o­ rg​/­seeing​-­white​/­. 18 John Biewen, host, “Made in Amer­i­ca,” part 3 of “Seeing White,” Scene on Radio (podcast), episode 33, www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​/­seeing​-­white​/­. 19 Sharpe, 13. 20 En­g lish asserts that “it is no coincidence that the very first African-­A merican detective fiction emerged at the turn of the twentieth c­ entury in the short stories of Pauline Hopkins and then flourished in the 1920s with the novels and short stories of Rudolph Fisher and George Schuyler—­both periods when the nature of African-­ American subjectivity was being intensively investigated and reconstructed by African-­A mericans themselves” (“Modern in the Postmodern,” 774). Note that Blanche on the Lam was published one year ­a fter Rodney King was brutally beaten by members of the Los Angeles Police Department (he was assaulted by police on 3 March 1991) and in the same year that the acquittal of three of the four abusive cops triggered the 1992 insurrection in Los Angeles. 21 En­g lish, 783.

Notes to Pages 42–47  • 191

22 See Sharpe, In the Wake, 13. 23 Sharpe, 11. 24 Sharpe, 10–11. 25 Sharpe, 22 (my emphasis). 26 Sharpe, 22. 27 Sharpe, 21. 28 Laymon, 66. 29 “I heard the words ‘be’ and ‘meager’ and ‘murmur’ and ‘nan’ and ‘gumption’ in Grandmama’s voice. All t­ hose words sounded like love to me” (Laymon, 157). 30 Laymon, 76. 31 CaShawn Thompson created the Twitter hashtag “BlackGirlsAreMagic” in 2013, its popularity evolving into #BlackGirlMagic, a hashtag ultimately “used for just about every­thing that shows positive images of black ­women.” However, this proliferation and uncritical cele­bration of all ­things BlackGirl left ­behind a critical aspect of Thompson’s intention. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Thompson explained why she used the word “magic”: “­because it’s something that ­people ­don’t always understand, . . . ​[­because] sometimes [black w ­ omen’s] accomplishments might seem to come out of thin air, b­ ecause a lot of times, the only ­people supporting us are other black ­women.” Dexter Thomas, “Why Every­one’s Saying ‘Black Girls Are Magic,’ ” Los Angeles Times, 9 September 2015, http://­latimes​.­com​/­nation​/­nationnow​ /­la​-­na​-­nn​-e­ veryones​-s­ aying​-b­ lack​-g­ irls​-­are​-­magic​-2­ 0150909​-­htmlstory​.­html. 32 Laymon, Heavy, 155. Laymon also writes, “I’d spent the last four years of my life reading and creating art invested in who we w ­ ere, what we knew, how we remembered, and what we i­ magined when white folk ­weren’t around” (167). 33 Laymon, 69. 34 Laymon, 75. 35 Laymon, 78–79. 36 Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic, 6. 37 Raymond Chandler, “The S­ imple Art of Murder,” in The S­ imple Art of Murder (New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1988), 2. 38 Frankie Y. Bailey, Out of the Woodpile: Black Characters in Crime and Detective Fiction (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1991), 117. 39 Robert Crooks, “From the Far Side of the Urban Frontier: The Detective Fiction of Chester Himes and Walter Mosley,” in Race-­ing Repre­sen­ta­tion: Voice, History, and Sexuality, ed. Kostas Myrsiades and Linda Myrsiades (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 175–199. 40 Gloria A. Biamonte, “Detection and the Text: Reading Three American ­Women of Mystery” (PhD diss., University of Mas­sa­chu­setts, 1991). 41 En­g lish, “Modern in the Postmodern,” 780. The critic also observes that while “the Victorian novels on which [D. A. Miller] bases his argument ­were being published at the same time as the earliest African-­A merican novels, . . . ​both the genealogies and the criticism for the two sets of texts have been and generally remain quite separate, and only a handful of critics have targeted Miller’s thesis in the context of his narrow racial, national, and temporal textual se­lections” (781). 42 Kay Bourne, “Black Writers Follow Himes to Explore Detective Novel Genre,” Bay State Banner, 11 March 1994, 50. 43 En­g lish, “Modern in the Postmodern,” 787. 44 Kathy Phillips, “Mystery ­Woman,” ­Women’s Review of Books 17, nos. 10–11 (July 2000): 43. See also Christy Tillery French on the cozy mystery and amateur sleuths (“Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction”).

192 • Notes to Pages 47–50

45 Lev Grossman, “Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction Is Disruptive Technology,” Time, 23 May 2012, https://­entertainment​.­time​.­com​/­2012​ /­05​/­23​/­genre​-­fiction​-­is​-­disruptive​-­technology​/­. 46 En­g lish, “Modern in the Postmodern,” 791. 47 Soitos, Blues Detective, 31. 48 Robin Morgan, cover blurb for BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam. 49 Stephen Soitos identifies “African American detective tropes” or “tropes of black detection,” derived from black U.S. expressive and religious cultures, as defining features of African American detective novels. “Through the use of black detective personas, double-­consciousness detection, black vernaculars, and hoodoo creations,” Soitos writes, “African American detective writers signify on ele­ments of the detective genre to their own ends” (Blues Detective, 3). 50 Daylanne En­g lish states, “[Walter] Mosley and Neely, along with a number of other African-­A merican writers, have chosen a past genre b­ ecause it suits their literary and po­liti­cal purposes. First, in writing crime novels, con­temporary black writers are enacting a kind of literary-­generic anachronism in order to comment on a distinct lack of pro­gress regarding race within l­ egal, penal, and judicial systems in the US” (“Modern in the Postmodern,” 773). 51 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam 7. 52 BarbaraNeely, 30. 53 BarbaraNeely, 59. 54 BarbaraNeely, 59–60. 55 BarbaraNeely, 67. 56 In this first Blanche White novel, t­ hese spaces are North Carolina and New York, urban, suburban, and country. Subsequent novels add parts of Boston, Mas­sa­chu­ setts, and a fictionalized Martha’s Vineyard to ­these spaces. 57 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 19. 58 ­After Rosalie, Blanche’s ­dying and widowed ­sister, asks Blanche to care for her niece and nephew, “Blanche had agreed, almost in the belief that by d­ oing so she was warding off the inevitability of Rosalie’s death” (BarbaraNeely, 66). Though she spends a year r­ unning away from this responsibility, by the start of Blanche on the Lam, the protagonist’s love for her charges is definite. 59 BarbaraNeely, 65. As a domestic worker, Blanche White is part of a tradition of similar characters in detective fiction. Jupiter, one of only a few black characters in Edgar Allan Poe’s detective oeuvre, is typical in early detective lit­er­a­ture. “In ‘The Gold Bug,’ Jupiter is not fantastic in appearance, but like the ste­reo­t ypical comic slave of minstrel shows, Jupiter is prone to malapropisms and misunderstandings” (Bailey, Out of the Woodpile, 4). Poe, deploying social conventions in his repre­sen­ta­tion of black p­ eople, derives Jupiter’s name from a tradition common among enslavers, that of naming enslaved blacks from biblical, classical, or literary sources. The author’s approximation of black speech also came to be representative, as many readers “undoubtedly accepted Jupiter’s speech as representative of all Black speech” (Bailey, 4). Depicting Blanche as a shapely ­woman characterizes her near the “nurturing Earth ­Mothers” side of a continuum of black female characters that ­people detective fiction. According to Bailey, “black w ­ omen range along a continuum from nurturing Earth M ­ others to mean and ­bitter bitches.” The critic continues, “At her best, a black ­woman is tough, in­de­pen­dent, stalwart, and more than capable of taking care of herself and her young. At her worst, she is an immoral, lying, betraying slut who is an expert at emasculating men. . . . ​Black females are also portrayed as natu­ral servants. . . . ​It

Notes to Pages 50–55  • 193

was in this role of servant that black w ­ omen made their first appearance in crime and detective fiction” (102). 60 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 4. 61 BarbaraNeely, 86. 62 Blanche White follows both historical and literary traditions of black ­women in domestic ser­vice. Bailey notes that in mystery fiction written by white writers, black servants ­were often ste­reo­t yped, but this characterization developed when domestics w ­ ere included in texts written by black writers (“Blanche on the Lam, or the Invisible ­Woman Speaks,” 188–189). Black w ­ omen who w ­ ere domestic workers have also been subjects of social histories and black feminist criticism (Bailey, 192–194). ­These contexts allow me to read White’s choice to do domestic work, and her pride in the work she does, as blackened. 63 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 21. 64 Caroline Reitz, “Do We Need Another Hero?,” in Multicultural Detective Fiction: Murder from the “Other” Side, ed. Adrienne Johnson Gosselin (New York: Garland, 1999), 225. 65 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 7. En­g lish approaches this same scene from a perspective of a cross-­class co­a li­tion of black p­ eople, formed into a co­a li­tion b­ ecause of a shared knowledge of police and policing: “Even when they ­don’t ‘call the cops,’ black ­people, Blanche knows, must always view their own be­hav­ior from the perspective of the police. As she says in the first novel of the series: ‘A r­ unning black person was still a target of suspicion’ (Blanche on the Lam 6)” (“Modern in the Postmodern,” 782). 66 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 16. Soitos characterizes this detection-­via-­ masking as an “essential split in personality [that] is a trademark of [early] detective fiction: the double nature of [the] detective character necessary to solve crimes” (Blues Detective, 17). He continues by describing this feature as one “expropriated by black writers. Black detectives use their own blackness to mask their true identities as detectives, connecting the trope of double consciousness to the trickster tradition” (18). 67 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 14. 68 BarbaraNeely, 16. 69 BarbaraNeely, 143. 70 BarbaraNeely, 153. 71 BarbaraNeely, 39. 72 BarbaraNeely, 98. Also consider Blanche’s views on black survival in the United States: “This is how w ­ e’ve survived in this country all this time, by knowing when to act like we believe what w ­ e’ve been told and when to act like we know what we know” (73). 73 BarbaraNeely, 185. 74 BarbaraNeely, 89. 75 BarbaraNeely, 126. 76 BarbaraNeely, 111–112. 77 Sharpe, In the Wake, 13. 78 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 77–78. 79 BarbaraNeely, 12. 80 BarbaraNeely, 12–13. 81 BarbaraNeely, 148. 82 BarbaraNeely, 149. 83 BarbaraNeely, 92.

194 • Notes to Pages 55–58

84 BarbaraNeely, 92. 85 BarbaraNeely, 92–93. 86 BarbaraNeely, 155. The horror of Grace’s recollection is amplified when “Blanche flinched from the possibility that Nate had lived long enough to know that he was about to die for trying to help someone who’d never seen him as anything but a dog’s midwife” (195). 87 The novel’s hero frequently calls on networks of black people/workers who help her in myriad ways (BarbaraNeely, 80–81, 93, 95, 96–97), specifically the griot Miz Minnie; Blanche’s best friend, Ardell (168); vari­ous f­ amily members; and Blanche’s ­mother, Ms. Cora (72). Robert Crooks writes that “the prob­lems of racism and oppression cannot be thought through in the personal, individualistic terms that conventional narrative offers, but rather in terms of collective practices that invisibly link disparate individual stories” (“From the Far Side of the Urban Frontier,” 195). For a persuasive study of community in Blanche on the Lam and Blanche among the Talented Tenth, see also Reitz, “Do We Need Another Hero?” 88 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 115. 89 BarbaraNeely, 140. 90 “Even if their vision is not perfect, Blanche White and Easy Rawlins see more clearly than did Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe—at least when it comes to solving our national, genealogical mysteries and diagnosing our early-­t wenty-­first-­century social ills” (En­g lish, “Modern in the Postmodern,” 791). 91 Nate, who knows Lucille/Lucinda is not Emmeline, deliberately withholds this information from Blanche, deciding that it is too much for her to know (BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 57–58). 92 Biamonte, “Detection and the Text, 33. 93 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 3. 94 BarbaraNeely, 150. 95 BarbaraNeely, 119. 96 BarbaraNeely, 135. 97 BarbaraNeely, 158. 98 See BarbaraNeely, 144, 156, 174, 186. 99 BarbaraNeely, 184. 100 BarbaraNeely, 184. 101 Sharpe, responding to how scholars can critically examine the afterlives of slavery and the diasporic blackness that ensues, writes, “We must become undisciplined. The work we do requires new modes and methods of research and teaching; new ways of entering and leaving the archives of slavery, of undoing the ‘racial calculus and . . . ​po­liti­cal arithmetic that ­were entrenched centuries ago’ and that live into the pre­sent (In the Wake, 13, quoting Saidiya Hartman, “A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route,” Narrative, https://­w ww​.­narrativemagazine​.­com​/i­ ssues​ /­winter​-­2007​/n ­ onfiction​/­journey​-a­ long​-a­ tlantic​-s­ lave​-­route​-s­ aidiya​-­hartman. 102 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 45. Blanche’s belief, like her second sight, is composed from diverse (diasporic) parts as well as t­ hose that feel right to her. She observes itchy hands and a cracked w ­ ater glass as signs (3), attends to the tone and mood of the h ­ ouses in which she works (35), and recognizes intuitive connections to the ­people she loves (22–23, 45–46). 103 BarbaraNeely, 181–182. 104 Maureen Reddy notes Mumsfield’s and Blanche’s invisibility—­Mumsfield has a form of Down Syndrome (BarbaraNeely, 70), and Blanche is black, a w ­ oman, and a

Notes to Pages 59–63  • 195

domestic worker in spaces that denigrate each—as a commonality that unites them (Reddy, Traces, Codes, and Clues, 66). Though some characters (Grace, Everett) use ­these features as excuses to treat Blanche and Mumsfield poorly, their shared invisibility neither explains sympa nor makes them ­family. “[Their] alliance, however, falls short of friendship and has its own prob­lems. Blanche . . . ​worries that she w ­ ill fall into the old ‘Mammy Trap’ of being a black ­woman caretaker of a white man” (Reddy, 66; see also BarbaraNeely, 76). 105 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 210–211. 106 BarbaraNeely, 212. 107 BarbaraNeely, 213. 108 BarbaraNeely, 182. 109 BarbaraNeely, 214. 110 Blanche is intent on claiming self and work, before and a­ fter she is raped when caught taking a bath in a h ­ ouse she was hired to clean (BarbaraNeely, 63). Miz Minnie tells the protagonist about Lucille/Lucinda’s m ­ other, the black domestic in the Car­ter ­house­hold and Aunt Emmeline’s half s­ ister (207). Thus, the novel reveals histories of sexual abuse of black w ­ omen domestic workers (105). 111 Crooks, “From the Far Side of the Urban Frontier,” 181. 112 Crooks, 195. 113 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam, 215. 114 George Schuyler, Black No More, Black Classics (London: X Press, 1998). 115 Danzy Senna, “George Schuyler: An Afrofuturist before His Time,” New York Review of Books, 19 January 2018, www​.­nybooks​.­com​/­daily​/­2018​/­01​/­19​/g­ eorge​ -­schuyler​-­an​-­afrofuturist​-­before​-­his​-­time​/­. 116 Schuyler, Black No More, 10. 117 See Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White P ­ eople (New York: Norton, 2011); Ibrahim X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in Amer­ic­ a (New York: Bold Type Books, 2017); Biewen, “Seeing White”; Cheryl I. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (1993): 1707–1791, www​.­jstor​.o­ rg​/­stable​/­1341787; Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, ed. Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas (New York: New York Press, 1995), 276–291; James E. Barrett and David Roediger, “How White P ­ eople Became White,” in White Privilege, ed. Paula S. Rothenberg (New York: Worth, 2005), 35–39. 118 Senna, “George Schuyler.” 119 See Biewen, “Seeing White.” 120 Senna, “George Schuyler.” 121 Schuyler, Black No More, 185. 122 Schuyler, 187. 123 Helen Givens, ­daughter of a prominent white supremacist, learns that she and her ­family are not as purely white as they once believed, making them white-­ish. See Schuyler, 158. 124 Schuyler, 188. 125 Isaiah Lavender III, Race in American Science Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 6. 126 Schuyler, iv 127 Comparing two Schuyler novels, Black No More and Black Empire (collected and reissued in 1993), Lavender states, “Although the notion of racial assimilation is the heart of Schuyler’s first answer to the prob­lem of the color line, his second answer is

196 • Notes to Pages 64–67

an entirely opposite response. In Black Empire Schuyler champions a black militant separatism that willfully engages in genocidal warfare” (Race in American Science Fiction, 109). 128 Sharpe, In the Wake, 22 (my emphasis). 129 Quoted in Elizabeth Blakesley Lindsay, ­Great ­Women Mystery Writers, 2nd ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007), 188. 130 See Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Baby: An American Grammar Book,” Diacritics 17, no. 2 (Summer 1987): 65, 66.

2. Second—­Urban Romantica Epigraphs: Colin Channer, Waiting in Vain (1998; repr., New York: One World/Ballantine, 2007); Janice A. Radway, Reading the Romance: ­Women, Patriarchy, and Popu­lar Lit­er­a­ture (1984; repr., Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); “Deborah Brown,” “Waiting in Vain—­Fire and light in multi-­faceted gem,” Amazon, 28 December 1998, www​ .­amazon​.c­ om​/­Waiting​-­Vain​-­Novel​-­Colin​-­Channer​/­product​-­reviews​/­0345430123​/­ref​=­cm​ _­cr​_­arp ​_­d​_­viewopt​_­kywd​?­ie​=­UTF8&reviewerType​=a­ ll​_­reviews&sortBy​=­bySubmission ­ asculinity. DateDescending&pageNumber​=1­ &filterByKeyword​=m 1 Kim Butler, in theorizing “diaspora,” explains a defining characteristic that is applicable ­here. To distinguish diaspora from other types of movements, she argues that “identity is . . . ​a vital component of diasporas; it transforms them from the physical real­ity of dispersal into the psychosocial real­ity of diaspora.” Butler, “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 207. 2 Channer, Waiting in Vain, 267; Faith Smith, “ ‘ You Know ­You’re West Indian If . . .’: Codes of Authenticity in Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain,” Small Axe 10 (September 2001): 52; see also 51. Smith reads Channer’s novel alongside prose novels that imaginatively explore Jamaica’s sociopo­l iti­cal and historical contexts and the identities ­shaped by them. For example, Smith compares Waiting in Vain to novels that depict “a period [in the late 1960s and the 1970s] of perceived ideological authenticity in the Ca­rib­bean context—­the Non-­A ligned Movement, kareba suits and caftans, the I-­Th rees” (41). Read against works that imagine po­l iti­cally and historically informed Jamaican identities, Waiting in Vain reveals differently influenced subjectivities: ­those ­shaped by good sex, love, status/class, ambition, and consumerism. In this context, Smith finds that Channer’s novel offers identity codes for “a global Ca­rib­bean community, located in Brooklyn, Bridgetown, Brixton and other spaces,” that strug­g les to embrace twentieth-­ century realities while distinguishing itself from o­ thers in the African diaspora (41). As she sees it, Ca­r ib­bean émigrés disconnected from “the rituals of home” want “a narrative that responds to displacement by offering the possibility of grounding, of certainties that have been lost” (43). “If an ­earlier era required hardline po­l iti­cal responses that in retrospect seemed to allow no room for difference or for plea­sure,” Smith writes, “the pre­sent moment, which some despairingly call apo­l iti­cal, acknowledges (even requires) that one can be po­l iti­cally astute and look good” (45). Waiting in Vain’s pre­sent portrays a hierarchy of authenticity: some characters, more than o­ thers, are better at knowing how to look good—­a nd to be good. 3 Channer, Waiting in Vain, 6. 4 Smith, “You Know ­You’re West Indian If,” 57.

Notes to Page 68  • 197

5 Curdella Forbes, “X Press Publications: Pop Culture, ‘Pop Lit’ and Ca­rib­bean Literary Criticism: An Essay of Provocation,” Anthurium: A Ca­rib­bean Studies Journal 4, no. 1 (2006): article 2, http://­doi​.o­ rg​/1­ 0​.­33596​/­anth​.­61. 6 Forbes, 1; see also 16n3. Forbes describes Waiting in Vain’s critical reception this way: “This is seen . . . ​in the acad­emy’s critical reception of Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain, . . . ​which merges mass market and Hollywood style pop appeal (sex, romance) with traditional Ca­rib­bean referents to produce a per­for­mance text that could be described as halfway between jamette and mainstream ‘play’ ” (1). With regard to novel approaches to the academic study of blackness, see Christina Sharpe on an “undisciplined” approach to the field, in In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), and addressed in my introduction. 7 As of January 2019, Amazon recorded 364 reviews of the novel’s hardcover and paperback editions. Of t­ hese, 88 ­percent assigned the novel five stars (the site’s highest rating), 10 ­percent rated it at four stars, 1 ­percent gave it a three-­star rating, and 1 ­percent gave the novel Amazon’s lowest rating of one star (few ranked the novel two stars). Amazon, reviews for Waiting in Vain, by Colin Channer, accessed 4 January 2019, www​.­a mazon​.­com​/ ­Waiting​-­Vain​-­Novel​-­Colin​-­Channer​ /­product​-­reviews​/­0345430123​/­ref​= ­cm ​_­cr​_­dp ​_ ­a ll ​_ ­helpful​?­ie​=­U TF8&coliid​ =­&showViewpoints​=1­ &colid​= ­&sortBy​=­bySubmissionDateDescending. When a version of this chapter was published in 2013, Waiting in Vain had 446 reviews posted on Amazon. See Rhonda Frederick, “Making Jamaican Love: Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain and Romance-­ified Diaspora Identities,” Small Axe 17, no. 3 (November 2013): 63–84. While revising this chapter, I saw that the total number of reviews had dropped to 364 (and while editing in March 2021, the number of reviews dropped to 279). Research on pos­si­ble reasons for this reduction showed that “Amazon uses a robotic system, based on several algorithms that they ­don’t share publicly,” and “­these algorithms [spot] potential prob­lems and [pull] book reviews.” Also, “as the algorithm keeps changing, Amazon reviews may dis­appear and then reappear onto your page.” Penny Sansevieri, “Amazon’s Disappearing Reviews: The Surprising Reason Why Book Reviews Are Getting Pulled (and How to Fix It),” Author Marketing Experts, 26 June 2018, www​ .­amarketingexpert​.­com​/­disappearing​-­reviews​-­amazon​-­pulling​-­reviews​/­. Additionally, some reviews may disappear/reappear ­because they may have been tagged as “incentivized reviews” (­those posted for some kind of gain). Amazon has sought to address “a subculture geared t­ owards driving sales through reviews” with more or less success. See Mary Hanbury, “Amazon Has an Under­ground Subculture That Trades Reviews for Deals—­and the Com­pany Is Fi­nally Cracking Down,” Business Insider, 9 April 2018, www​.­businessinsider​.­com​/­amazon​-­bad​-­review​-­practices​ -­crackdown​-­2018​-­4; see also Alex Newton, “Why Has Amazon Removed My Review?,” k-­lytics, accessed 29 February 2020, http://­k​-­lytics​.­com​/­amazon​-­removed​ -­my​-­review​/­. Note that this chapter has retained discussion of useful reviews even though they may no longer be available on the website. ­These are distinguished by access dates prior to 2013. 8 See Christo Petrov, “47 Amazon Statistics to Bedazzle You in 2021,” 7 December 2021, https://­techjury​.­net​/­blog​/­amazon​-s­ tatistics​/­#gref. 9 Forbes, “X Press Publications,” 1. 10 For a discussion of people/“­people” who write reviews, see David Streitfeld, “The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy,” New York Times, 25 August 2012, www​ .­nytimes​.­com​/­2012​/­08​/­26​/­business​/­book​-r­ eviewers​-­for​-­hire​-­meet​-­a​-­demand​-f­ or​ -­online​-r­ aves​.­html​?­​_­r ​=1­ . See also Scott Allan, “How to Get Book Reviews on

198 • Notes to Pages 69–73

Amazon: Our Method for ­Free Book Reviews,” Self​-­Publishing​.­com, 4 August 2021, https://­self​-­publishingschool​.­com​/­amazon​-­reviews​/­. 11 “Todd Hampton’s” four-­star review indicates, “So why no five stars, well it’s small nitpicky ­things like the fact that the main character Fire was a l­ ittle too perfect. I liked the relationship between Fire and Sylvia, t­ here ­should’ve been more interraction [sic] betwen [sic] them. Also the ending while satisfying nded [sic] a ­little too neat. Real life usually ­doesn’t come together in nice neat l­ ittle corners.” “Todd Hampton,” “More than a love story . . . ,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 17 January 2001, www​.­amazon​.­com​/­g p​/­customer​-r­ eviews​/­R KEC3PR5C3DOB​/­ref​ =­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​= ­0345430123. In a two-­star review, “Uchenna C. Ikonne” writes, “Its protagonist, Fire, is the sort of perfect man that a lot of w ­ omen like to fantasize about: handsome, smart, educated, funny, talented, always always sensitive . . . ​Therein lies the prob­lem. The man has no apparent faults.” “Uchenna C. Ikonne,” “Well-­written, but simpleminded and naive,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 29 December 1999, www​.­amazon​.c­ om​/g­ p​/c­ ustomer​ -­reviews​/R ­ 2CQEONGELLIJY​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​ =­0345430123. One anonymous five-­star review describes all the characters, including Fire, this way: “I loved all the characters—­a ll h ­ uman with flaws. Yes, even Fire had flaws. He was insecure.” Anonymous, “WOW—­Jamaica ­Here I come!,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 23 August 1999, www​.­amazon​.­com​/g­ p​ /­customer​-­reviews​/­R 2VD26MODECF5G​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​ =­U TF8&ASIN​= ­0345430123. 12 Smith reads this same range of descriptors as an indication of the novel’s diverse constituency (“You Know Y ­ ou’re West Indian If,” 42). 13 Butler, “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse,” 193. 14 Butler, 193–194. 15 Butler, 195. 16 Butler, 205. 17 Butler, 191. 18 Butler, 205. 19 Butler, 205 (my emphasis). 20 Butler, 207–208. 21 Butler, 207; see also note 1 above 22 Butler writes, “anthropology, migration studies, sociology, and po­liti­cal science, among other fields, have contributed greatly to the understanding of diasporan relations with their hostlands” (206). I am interested in literary studies as one of ­these “other fields” that contribute to t­ hese understandings. 23 Christina Sharpe argues for undisciplined methodologies necessary for the study of black diasporas (In the Wake, 13). 24 John Biewen, host, “Skulls and Skin,” part 8 of “Seeing White,” Scene on Radio (podcast), episode 38, 17 May 2017, www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​/­seeing​-­white​/­. 25 Milton Vickerman, “Tweaking a Monolith: The West Indian Immigrant Encounter with ‘Blackness,’ ” in Islands in the City: West Indian Migration to New York, ed. Nancy Foner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 237. 26 Jill M. Humphries, “Resisting ‘Race’: Organ­izing African Transnational Identities in the United States,” in The New African Diaspora, ed. Isidore Okpewho and Nkiru Nzegwe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 271. 27 Channer, Waiting in Vain, 90. 28 Romance Writers of Amer­i­ca (RWA), “About the Romance Genre,” accessed 5 January 2019, www​.­r wa​.o­ rg​/­Online​/R ­ esources​/­About​_ ­Romance​_ ­Fiction​/­Online​

Notes to Page 73  • 199

/­Romance​_­Genre​/­About​_ ­Romance​_­Genre​.a­ spx​?­h key​= ­dc7b967d​-­d1eb​-­4101​-b­ b3f​ -­a6cc936b5219#The​_ ­Basics. Janice A. Radway describes RWA as an organ­ization “founded by several Texas w ­ omen in the spring of 1981” and one that “developed rapidly as a national organ­ization that draws together writers and editors [and some readers] of romances” (Reading the Romance, 218). 29 “Romance Novel,” Wikipedia, accessed 5 January 2019, http://­en​.­wikipedia​.­org​ /­wiki​/­Romance​_­novel. I am aware of the taint that adheres to Wikipedia as a supplemental source. However, my ­limited use of it is quite deliberate. First, it serves a supporting role: its definitions cull from and expand on ­those found on the RWA website and ­those used in Radway’s research. Second, Wikipedia—as “the ­free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”—­complements my critical interest in and use of Amazon reviews. Both sites are open to interventions from diverse contributors. Wikipedia, “Welcome to Wikipedia,” accessed 5 January 2019, http://­en​.­wikipedia​ .­org​/­wiki​/­Main​_ ­Page. Consider, too, that “the Amazon Community provides vari­ous features for engaging other users and sharing au­then­tic feedback about products and services—­positive or negative.” In addition, “to contribute to Customer features (for example, Customer Reviews, Customer Answers, Idea Lists) or to follow other contributors, you must have spent at least $50 on Amazon​.­com using a valid credit or debit card in the past 12 months.” See Amazon, “Community Guidelines,” accessed 5 January 2019, www​.­amazon​.­com​/­g p​/­help​/­customer​/­display​ .­html​?­nodeId​=­201929730. 30 Publishers are also financially motivated to “give readers what they want”: “a subtle but nonetheless power­f ul inducement to identify and fulfill audience expectations was therefore built into the mass-­market editorial pro­cess ­because editors became responsible for acquiring titles that would make money” (Radway, Reading the Romance, 29). Readers also can have an impact in the financial arena by voting with their money: by supporting par­tic­u­lar writers and specific types of fiction with selected purchases, readers tell publishers what they want (see Radway, 38, 49). 31 “­W hether staying at home, working from home or working in an office, many ­women turn to romance novels for some entertainment, escape and relaxation at the end of the day.” Ma­ya Rodale, “Who Is the Romance Novel Reader?,” Huffington ­ ho​-­is​-t­ he​ Post, updated 6 December 2017, www​.­huffingtonpost​.­com​/­maya​-­rodale​/w -­the​-­romance​-­novel​-­reader​_­b​_­7192588​.­html. 32 “Surrounded by corn and hay fields, the midwestern community of Smithton . . . ​is nearly two thousand miles from the glass-­and-­steel office towers of New York City where most of the American publishing industry is ­housed” (Radway, Reading the Romance, 45–46). Dorothy “Dot” Evans was instrumental in Radway’s research since Dot’s newsletter and work at a local bookstore or­ga­nized Smithton ­women into a self-­selected “community” of readers of romance fiction. Dot and her community w ­ ere Radway’s research subjects. 33 Radway, 64. 34 Radway’s research subjects said they “read . . . ​­because they [needed] temporary relief from the constant physical and emotional demands of being a wife and m ­ other.” Janice A. Radway, “Identifying Ideological Seams: Mass Culture, Analytical Method, and Po­liti­cal Practice,” Communication 9 (1986): 111. See also Radway’s introduction to Reading the Romance’s 1991 edition, “Introduction: Writing Reading the Romance,” 1–18. Seemingly a response to criticism that her conclusions in 1984 overshadowed t­ hose of her research subjects, Radway’s “Identifying Ideological Seams” and Reading the Romance’s 1991 introduction distinguish between the Smithton ­women’s interpretations of their romance reading practices

200 • Notes to Pages 73–75

and her own. The article and 1991 introduction attempt to put the critic and Smithton w ­ omen in conversation and propose some po­liti­cal possibilities for this kind of collaboration. Radway’s ethnographic method, attention to a specific group of romance readers, and investment in critics’/readers’ interpretive collaborations are most useful to this proj­ect. 35 Radway, Reading the Romance, 64. 36 Radway, 198. 37 Radway, 11. 38 Radway, 81. 39 Radway, 83 (my emphasis). 40 “Romance Novel,” Wikipedia, accessed 12 December 2021, https://­en​.­wikipedia​.­org​ /­wiki​/­Romance​_­novel 41 See, for example, the definition of the “multicultural romance.” “Romance Novel: 5.9, Multicultural Romance,” Wikipedia, accessed 5 January 2019, http://­en​ .­wikipedia​.o­ rg​/­wiki​/­Romance​_­novel; see also Radway, Reading the Romance, 64. Beyond the scope of this chapter but central to current debates about who can write and read romance fiction, see Madison Malone Kircher, “Unpacking the Racist Drama Roiling the World of Romance Writers,” Vulture, 2 January 2020, https://­ www​.­vulture​.c­ om​/­2020​/­01​/­r wa​-­racism​-­controversy​-­with​-­courtney​-­milan​-­explained​ .­html; see also Lois Beckett, “A Romance Novelist Spoke Out about Racism. An Uproar Ensued,” Guardian, 31 December 2019, www​.­theguardian​.c­ om​/­books​/­2019​ /­dec​/3­ 1​/­romance​-­novel​-­industry​-u­ proar​-­discipline​-­author​-­racist​-­courtney​-­milan​ ?­f bclid​=I­ wAR1kjRlX9UZHCm4uz4J7wzrpGG​_­Y​-­W YeCk95II6wtM​48u9xUtha​ LNMfca ​_­4. 42 In 2017, RWA commissioned a survey that found that 82 ­percent of readers of romance lit­er­a­ture identified as female and 18 ­percent identified as male. ­These readers ranged from thirty-­five to thirty-­nine years old, and an overwhelming majority of them identified as “white/Caucasian” (73 ­percent) and “heterosexual” (86 ­percent). See RWA, “The Romance Reader,” accessed 13 December 2021, www​ .­r wa​.­org​/O ­ nline​/­Resources​/­About​_ ­Romance​_ F ­ iction​/­Online​/­Romance​_G ­ enre​ /­About​_ ­Romance​_­Genre​.­aspx​?­hkey​= ­dc7b967d​-­d1eb​-­4101​-­bb3f​-a­ 6cc936b5219​ #Romance​_ ­Reader. 43 Radway interpreted the ­women’s “intense reliance on t­ hese books [as a strong indication] that [the genre helps] to fulfill [the w ­ omen’s] deeply felt psychological needs” (Reading the Romance, 58–59). 44 Radway, 188–189. 45 “Romance Novel: 5:10, Erotic Romance,” Wikipedia, accessed 5 January 2019, http://­en​.­wikipedia​.­org​/­wiki​/­Romance​_­novel#Erotic​_­romance. 46 See Forbes, “X Press Publications,” 7. 47 Sami Schalk identifies difficulties that progressive repre­sen­ta­tions of race and disability encounter when they breach romance fiction’s normalized race, ability, and gender narratives. Yet black writers are increasingly taking up the genre, as it might “hold impor­tant potential for individuals historically excluded from the genre while also interrogating the social, literary, and market structures that facilitate such exclusion.” Schalk, “Happily Ever ­A fter for Whom? Blackness and Disability in Romance Narratives,” Journal of Popu­lar Culture 49, no. 6 (2016): 1243. 48 “Colin Channer,” in Con­temporary Authors Online (Detroit: Gale, 2008), Lit­er­a­ture Resource Center, http://­link​.g­ alegroup​.­com​.­proxy​.­bc​.­edu​/­apps​/d­ oc​/­H1000151531​ /­GLS​?­u​=m ­ lin​_­m​_­bostcoll&sid​= ­GLS&xid​= ­00bf66ed.

Notes to Pages 75–80  • 201

49 As “Deborah Brown” avers in this chapter’s epigraph, the plethora of writing in the “black love story genre” is proof of the obvious: “the existence of a long-­deprived, but only recently discovered market, hungry for works that reflect the black experience in love and life.” See “Deborah Brown,” “Waiting in Vain.” And André M. Carrington concurs: “The paranormal romance novels by the late L. A. Banks [are] a significant example of the Black public’s interest in paraliterary works responsive to their desires.” Carrington, Speculative Blackness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), Kindle ed., loc. 546. 50 Butler, “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse,” 193. 51 Butler, 207. 52 Channer, Waiting in Vain, 5. 53 Channer, 248. Note that previously, Fire asserts his black self as not (ste­reo­t yped) African American (Sambo; see 90), while h ­ ere he makes a similar claim by citing not (ste­reo­t yped) African American expressive culture along with Eu­ro­pean references. 54 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 224. Hall cites Frantz Fanon, “On National Culture,” in The Wretched of the Earth (London: 1963), 170. 55 From Channer, Waiting in Vain, 151–152: He began to suspect she was Ca­rib­bean, and further, from one of the English-­ speaking territories. But from where? It was hard to say on looks alone. . . . “Trinidad?” he asked. She might be part East Indian. “No,” she said. “Let’s put it this way, I c­ ould’ve been your next-­door neighbor.” “­You’re Jamaican?” “Yeah, man.” 56 Channer, 122. 57 Channer, 74. 58 Smith, “You Know ­You’re West Indian If,” 41. 59 “Suzzanne Scott” (novtraco@cwjamaica​.­com) (Jamaica), “#1 on the jamaican bestsellers list,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 25 September 1999, www​ .­amazon​.­com​/­g p​/c­ ustomer​-­reviews​/­RCYZJEJI39O8E​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_­arp ​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​ ?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​= ­0345430123. 60 “Suzzanne Scott.” 61 “Suzzanne Scott.” 62 Channer, Waiting in Vain, 243. 63 “A Customer,” “a must read. this book ­w ill feed your soul,” review of Waiting in Vain Amazon, 28 October 1999, www​.a­ mazon​.c­ om​/r­ eview​ /­R 1CF67Y19FUEAI​/­ref​= ­cm​_­srch​_­res​_­rtr​_­a lt​_­1. 64 “A Customer,” “Compelling. Engrossing. An exploration of the ­human psyche,” review of Waiting in Vain Amazon, 22 September 1999, www​.­amazon​.­com​/­g p​ /­customer​-­reviews​/­R 163TVFDP3H36G​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​ =­U TF8&ASIN​= ­0345430123. 65 “RoniLynn” (Birmingham, AL), “Beautiful!,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 30 November 1999, www​.­amazon​.c­ om​/­gp​/­customer​-r­ eviews​/­R 2VAZYGAGOW72U​ /­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­UTF8&ASIN​=­0345430123. 66 “Makeeta” (Portland, OR), “Unbelievable!!,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 5 May 2002, www​.­amazon​.c­ om​/­g p​/c­ ustomer​-­reviews​/­R3BKASN4RUIBSN​/­ref​= ­cm​ _­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​= ­0345430123.

202 • Notes to Pages 80–84

67 Channer, Waiting in Vain, 292. 68 “Makeeta,” “Unbelievable!!” 69 “Akelia Bennett” (United Kingdom), “A gift from a sis,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 21 January 2002, www​.­amazon​.­com​/g­ p​/­customer​-­reviews​/­R 2XVO​ 8HA2BYKXL​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​= ­0345430123. 70 “Denis T.” (Tacoma, WA), “A feast of words, food, culture and sensuality,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 29 October 2001, www​.­amazon​.­com​/­g p​/­customer​ -­reviews​/R ­ 39YHB0L42KWU9​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​ =­0345430123. 71 “A Customer,” “a must read for west indians and african-­americans,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 20 September 1999, www​.­amazon​.­com​/­review​ /­R36R1IOQCJJI4W​/­ref​= ­cm​_­srch​_­res​_­rtr​_­a lt​_­2. 72 “A Customer.” 73 Janice Radway, for example, observes that romance writers and readers are engaged in a “storytelling cycle”: From the perspective of its participants . . . ​romance reading might be characterized as the reception of a completed tale offered to a reader by a writer who not only “speaks” the same language but similarly understands the conventions of romantic storytelling and the significance of romance as an archetypal event in a ­woman’s life. This form of interaction between two parties who are established as equals creates the illusion of a spontaneous, unmediated communication between individuals capable of telling and receiving a story about themselves whose meaning is not only unambiguous but already known by both parties ­because they have “heard” it before. (Radway, Reading the Romance, 198). 74 “SeKaRa,” “Fire is always hot . . . ,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 5 August 2004, www​.­amazon​.­com​/g­ p​/­customer​-r­ eviews​/­RTH4ABG1OO5XU​/­ref​ =­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​= ­0345430123. “SeKaRa” signs off in a way that makes explicit her sense of intimate connection with the writer: “[Jah] Bless you Colin Channer. Signed: Obvious Fan for Obvious Reasons.” 75 “Michelle” (Toronto, ON), “Maximum Real­ity,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 21 October 2002, www​.a­ mazon​.­com​/­g p​/­customer​-r­ eviews​ /­R PMLKW5SAJC1N​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​= ­0345430123. 76 “Amazon Customer,” “A Vivid Visit to the Non-­tourist Ca­rib­bean,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 12 September 2002, www​.­amazon​.­com​/­g p​/­customer​ -­reviews​/­R3PF66SYQCO1AK​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​ =­0345430123. 77 “Chantal Miller” (Charlestown, Saint Kitts and Nevis), “Magnificent,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 18 January 2001, www​.­a mazon​.­com​/­g p​/­customer​ -­reviews​/­R 2XZNGUTT7WI8L​/­ref​= ­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​ =­0345430123. 78 “In most r­ ecipes you can use green onions and scallion interchangeably. Both are immature, mild-­tasting onions that are harvested before full-­grown bulbs form. Escallions are a bit younger and milder with straight white bases while green onions are left in the ground longer to form miniature bulbs.” Fay & Angela, “Jamaican Ingredients: Escallion,” Cook Like a Jamaican, 24 October 2012, https://­ cooklikeajamaican​.c­ om​/­amp​/­ingredient​-­of​-­the​-w ­ eek​-­escallion​/­. 79 “A Customer [Mikie Bennett],” “refreshingly au­then­tic and sensious [sic],” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 22 January 1999, www​.­amazon​.­com​/ ­Waiting​-­Vain​-­Novel​ -­Colin​-­Channer​/­product​-­reviews​/0 ­ 345430123​/­ref​=­cm​_­cr​_­arp ​_­d​_­viewopt​_­kywd​?­ie​=­​

Notes to Pages 84–89  • 203

UTF8&​reviewerType​=a­ ll​_­reviews&sortBy​=­bySubmissionDateDescending&page Number​=1­ &filterByKeyword​=s­ terio. 80 The site The Romance Reader featured a 27 June 1999 conversation between Jeri Wright and her husband, Terry. Responding to a question about Dominic, the hero of Mary Jo Putney’s historical romance The Wild Child (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999), Terry said, “No, he was real. One of my first comments, a­ fter I got into the book, is that ‘I was Dominic.’ I liked seeing myself as the dashing En­g lish [gentleman] riding around on his fine steed.” Jeri Wright and Terry Wright, The Romance Reader, accessed 20 September 2012, www​.­theromancereader​.­com​ /­hesaidshesaid5​.­html. 81 “A Customer,” “A superbly written, incredibly sensuous reading experience,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 23 August 1998, www​.­amazon​.c­ om​/­review​/­R 1I041K2​ QGR97​/r­ ef​= ­cm​_ ­srch​_­res​_­rtr​_ ­a lt​_­2 (my emphases). 82 Channer, Waiting in Vain, 200–201. 83 “Denis T.,” “A feast of words, food, culture and sensuality.” 84 “Denis T.” 85 “Sophia” (Atlanta, GA), “Not Just Another Read,” review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 30 November 2000, www​.­amazon​.­com​/­gp​/c­ ustomer​-­reviews​/­R 2YC2​W BU​ 6BHZFT​/­ref​=­cm​_­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­UTF8&ASIN​=­0345430123. 86 For references to class in Waiting in Vain, see Channer, Waiting in Vain, 267; and Smith, “You Know ­You’re West Indian If,” 42. 87 Channer, Waiting in Vain, 65. 88 “Asantewa19” (Asantewa19@aol​.­com; Manhattan, New York), “Channer shows that ­there is more to Jamaicans than weed . . . ,’ review of Waiting in Vain, Amazon, 28 May 1999, www​.­amazon​.­com​/g­ p​/c­ ustomer​-­reviews​/­R3JCL88RENPTSI​/­ref​= ­cm​ _­cr​_ ­getr​_­d​_­r vw​_­ttl​?­ie​=­U TF8&ASIN​= ­0345430123. 89 Channer, Waiting in Vain, 45. 90 Channer, 46; see also 174, 175. In short, Sylvia lives most of her life as part of Jamaica’s U.S. diaspora and befriends African Americans and a Dominican. Smith describes Sylvia as “both an African American and a diasporic Ca­rib­bean subject, as well as newly middle-­class, in contrast to Fire’s Jamaican and solidly upper-­middle-­ class status” (“You Know Y ­ ou’re West Indian If,” 50). 91 Smith, “You Know ­You’re West Indian If,” 48. 92 Channer, Waiting in Vain, 26 (iguana), 116 (yam), 4, 140, 185 (molasses). With regard to the existence of a uniquely Jamaican sex/sexuality, Forbes writes, “[Baby ­Father’s] protagonists’ way of speaking/narrating En­g lish is infused with Jamaican language, filtered quite often through a par­tic­u­lar male Jamaican ethos of sexuality (dialogue around ‘grinding,’ ‘slackness,’ ‘[h]ood,’ ‘hardness and stiffness’ abounds)” (“X Press Publications,” 7). 93 Channer, Waiting in Vain, 78. 94 Channer, 78. 95 Channer, 47. 96 “He cupped her head and stroked her side and began to love her up, his bottom undulating fluidly like a fist directing a pen across a page, the movement subtle, the pressure slight, a ­grand expression of thought and feeling, like a poem or an essay, or a preliminary sketch for a painting. But still her skin broke out in beads of fear. She began to stiffen beneath him and she asked if he could hold her for a while” (Channer, 182). 97 Channer, 183.

204 • Notes to Pages 89–96

98 Channer, 311. 99 Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” 225. 100 Bettelheim, quoted in Radway, Reading the Romance, 100.

3. Third—­Fantasy Epigraphs: Wilson Harris, “History, Fable, and Myth in the Ca­rib­bean and the Guianas,” in Selected Essays of Wilson Harris: The Unfinished Genesis of the Imagination, ed. Andrew Bundy (New York: Routledge, 1999), 159; Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2001), 18–19; Ralph Ellison, quoted in Richard Kostelanetz, “Ralph Ellison: Novelist as Brown Skinned Aristocrat,” Shenandoah: The Washington & Lee University Review 20, no. 4 (1969): 74. 1 Walter Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” New York Times Magazine, 1 November 1998, 32. 2 M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong! As Told to the Author by Setaey Adamu Boateng (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), 189. 3 Philip, 191 (my emphasis). 4 Philip, 194 (my emphasis). 5 Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 13. 6 Richard Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 17. 7 Iton, 11. 8 Iton, 286. 9 Iton, 286. 10 Iton, 284. 11 Iton, 287. 12 Philip, Zong!, 190; see also 191, 194. 13 Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic, 407n5. 14 Iton, 23. 15 Iton, 14. 16 Nalo Hopkinson, Brown Girl in the Ring (New York: Aspect/Warner Books, 1998). 17 Minister of Justice, “Canadian Multiculturalism Act,” R.S.C., 1985, c. 24 (4th Supp.), current to May 27, 2014, last amended 1 April 2014, https://­laws​-­lois​ .­justice​.­gc​.­ca​/­eng​/­acts​/­c​-­18​.­7​/­page​-­1​.­html. 18 I turn to Chris Baldick’s Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms for my working definition of “literary fantasy.” He defines it as “a general term for any kind of fictional work that is not primarily devoted to realistic repre­sen­ta­tion of the known world. The category includes several literary genres (e.g. dream vision, fable, fairy tale, romance, science fiction) describing i­ magined worlds in which magical powers and other impossibilities are accepted.” Baldick, “Fantasy,” in Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ProQuest. A pithy and supremely useful definition of “science fiction” is “fiction based on ­imagined f­ uture worlds portraying scientific or technological changes.” Concise Oxford En­glish Dictionary, 11th ed., ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), s.v. “science fiction,” ProQuest. 19 Paul Barrett claims, “Canadian multiculturalism is about the stories Canadians tell themselves about their nation, and this language of Canadian multiculturalism sets out the imaginative terrain from which Canadians narrate their nation from both

Notes to Page 97  • 205

the centre and the margin.” Barrett, Blackening Canada: Diaspora, Race, Multicul­ turalism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 4. 20 Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” 32. 21 Barrett, Blackening Canada, 6. 22 Hopkinson’s protagonist lives a faceted Canadian identity in an uncomplicated way. This depiction stands in contrast to that which Barrett pre­sents in his interpretation of a scene in Austin Clarke’s 2008 novel More. The critic assesses protagonist Idora’s response to a “cheerful white w ­ oman”: “ ‘You ­don’t talk like a Negro-­Canadian!’ the ­woman said in a pleasant voice” (Clarke, More, 154, quoted in Barrett, Blackening Canada, 7). This character persists in her observation despite Idora’s unambiguous assertion of her Canadian birth. Implicit in this fictionalized interaction is the white character’s certainty that Canadianness could only be “not black,” “not immigrant.” Unlike Idora, Ti-­Jeanne does not question her belonging in another’s terms. 23 Barrett, Blackening Canada, 8. Wonderful work has been done on Hopkinson’s 1998 novel, research that usefully puts it in conversation with extraliterary Canadian realities: Derek Newman-­Stille’s “Speculating Diversity: Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring and the Use of Speculative Fiction to Disrupt Singular Interpretations of Place,” The Ca­rib­bean Fantastic in Focus: New Perspectives, ed. by Allan Weiss (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Com­pany, Inc.: 2014), 146–158, doi 10.3828/extr.2005.46.3.3; Michelle Reid’s “Crossing the Bound­a ries of the ‘Burn’: Canadian Multiculturalism and Ca­r ib­bean Hybridity in Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring,” Extrapolation, vol. 46, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 297–314; and Sarah Wood’s “ ‘Serving the Spirits’: Emergent Identities in Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring,” Extrapolation, vol. 46, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 315–326. Newman-­Stille argues that “speculative fiction can propose an alternative reading to the landscape and allow a space for diversity” and that Hopkinson uses her novel “as a space for the assertion of the idea of home for ­people in diaspora” (“Speculating Diversity,” 157). Persuasively, Newman-­Stille’s writes, Hopkinson “uses the text of Brown Girl in the Ring to suggest an alternative reading of the Toronto environment, injecting it with . . . ​Ca­rib­bean myth to illustrate the Canadian myths of single nationhood that are imprinted on the city” (149). Reid interprets the Burn (composed of recently arrived and multiethnic p­ eoples) as “a positive model for a new interdependent form of Canadian multiculturalism based on local involvement and participation [and] the re­introduction of centralised government support” (“Crossing the Bound­aries,” 312). Fi­nally, Wood reads Brown Girl as a work of syncretic science fiction that “attempts to offer a localized re­sis­tance to imperialist assumptions that can be found in sf ” (“Serving the Spirits,” 316). Unlike t­ hese critical works, this chapter interprets the novel’s form as a critical tool and argues that it intervenes in contexts of historical erasures of Canadian blackness and disrupts how blackness occupies the nation’s imaginary. Seeing Canada through the novel’s form and content highlights imaginable truths that complicate and challenge how we have come to understand—­a nd perhaps live—­ideas of belonging to a Canadian nation. Whereas the aforementioned articles emphasize Caribbeanness-­in-­Canada, suggest a hyphenated Canadianness, or put the novel’s form in conversation with science fiction’s dominant/oppressive ideologies, I read Brown Girl as offering a fantastic opportunity to imagine Canadianness through a fantastically black/immigrant lens and represent Canadianness fantastically. 24 Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic, 11.

206 • Notes to Pages 98–99

25 Vilna Francine Bashi, “Globally Incorporating and Marginalizing the Black Ca­rib­bean,” in Survival of the Knitted: Immigrant Social Networks in a Stratified World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 38, 44–45. 26 David Fitzgerald avers, Bashi’s main point is that West Indian migration is networked in a par­tic­u­lar way that the existing lit­er­a­ture on mi­g rant social networks does not capture. Migration scholars have always noted that new mi­grants tend to depend on veteran mi­grants, and that initial migration from a community begets more migration as chains of friends, f­ amily, and co-­workers form and share information about how to enter the new country and generally make one’s way in novel surroundings. Bashi criticizes the meta­phor of the mi­grant chain in ­these accounts, with its implication that each link is in a dyadic relationship with ­those next to it and all links are more or less the same. She advances the alternative meta­phor of “hubs” and “spokes,” where hubs are a small group of influential individuals who control the informational and material resources that are the spokes’ source of international social mobility. Fitzgerald, “Survival of the Knitted: Immigrant Social Networks in a Stratified World by Vilna Francine Bashi,” American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 4 (January 2008): 1189–1191 www​.­journals​.­uchicago​.­edu​/­doi​/­full​/­10​.­1086​/­533555​?­mobileUi​=­0. 27 Bashi, “Globally Incorporating and Marginalizing,” 35. 28 Bashi, 44. 29 Bashi, 50. 30 Bashi, 51. Bashi documents the recurrence of this pattern in Canada well into the twentieth ­century. She writes, “in the period of world wars that overwhelmed Western nations and economies, policymakers strug­g led to balance disdain for black entry with the need for combatants and laborers” (54; see also 66). Movements of black immigrants between Canada, the United States, and E ­ ngland ­were also impacted by each nation’s antiblack immigration policies. “Anglophone nations,” for example, “demonstrated codependent racial relations—­ Western legislators in one country monitored and reacted to racial changes in ­others” (59). “During the Second World War,” Bashi continues, “West Indians ­were cut off from ­going into Britain and turned to Canada as an alternative. Canada again turned away black volunteers at the beginning of World War II, and college students from the West Indies w ­ ere turned away from officer training ­because training program administrators interpreted ‘British subjects’ to mean whites” (55). 31 Bashi, 55. 32 Lloyd Wong, “Multiculturalism and Ethnic Pluralism in Sociology: An Analy­sis of the Fragmentation Position Discourse,” Canadian Ethnic Studies / Études ethniques au Canada 40, no. 1 (2008), 29n1. 33 Joseph Garcea, “Postulations on the Fragmentary Effects of Multiculturalism in Canada,” Canadian Ethnic Studies / Etudes ethniques au Canada 40, no. 1 (2008): 153 (my emphasis). See also Barrett, Blackening Canada, 201n2. 34 Garcea, “Postulations,” 142; see also Barrett, Blackening Canada, 7. 35 Barrett, Blackening Canada, 5. 36 Garcea, “Postulations,” 157n3. “Postulation” is also defined as “an unfounded or disputable unproved assumption; a hypothesis, a stipulation, an unproven theory” (OED Online, s.v. “postulate, n.2”). 37 Garcea, “Postulations,” 153. 38 Garcea, 142–143.

Notes to Pages 100–104  • 207

39 Karim H. Karim, “Press, Public Sphere, and Pluralism: Multiculturalism Debates in Canadian English-­Language Newspapers,” Canadian Ethnic Studies / Études ethiques au Canada 40, no. 1 (2008): 57–78. 40 ­There have been numerous critical studies on multiculturalism in Canada; however, this book’s argument and intention finds Barrett’s Blackening Canada particularly useful. Additionally, ­because of their disciplinary emphases, timeliness, and content, articles in the Canadian Ethnic Studies / Etudes ethniques au Canada special issue—­Garcea’s, Karim’s, and Wong’s specifically—­usefully serve my purposes (described in the body of the chapter). The following is a se­lection of recent book-­length studies of Canadian multiculturalism: Phil Ryan, Multiculip­ hobia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010); Sneja Gunew, Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms (London: Routledge, 2004); ­Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (London: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1996); Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 1994). 41 Minister of Justice, “Canadian Multiculturalism Act,” 1, 2. 42 Minister of Justice, 1. 43 Minister of Justice, 2. 44 Minister of Justice, 1. 45 Minister of Justice, 4 (my emphases). 46 Minister of Justice, 5. 47 Robert Michael Smith, “The History of St. Catherine’s Folk Arts Council 1969–2000: A Case Study in Canadian Multiculturalism Policy and Its Impact on an Ethnocultural Organ­ization” (PhD diss., SUNY Buffalo, 2001), 1. 48 Karim H. Karim, “Press, Public Sphere, and Pluralism, 58. 49 Karim, 58. 50 Karim, 61, 70; see also 67, 68, 69. 51 Karim, 58. 52 Karim, 61. 53 Karim, 62. 54 Karim, 64. 55 Barrett, Blackening Canada, 6. 56 Barrett, 1. 57 “1996 Canadian Census,” Wikipedia, accessed 2 March 2020, https://­en​.­wikipedia​ .­org​/­wiki​/­1996​_­Canadian​_­Census#Visible​_­minorities. See also Ann Milan and Terry Tran, “Blacks in Canada: A Long History,” Canadian Social Trends, Spring 2004, 3, for the 2001 percentages; and Statistics Canada, “Census Profile, 2016 Census,” accessed 2 March 2020, www12​.­statcan​.­gc​.­ca​/­census​-­recensement​/­2016​ /­dp​-­pd​/­prof​/­details​/­page​.­cfm​?­Lang​=E ­ &Geo1​=­PR&Code1​= ­01&Geo2​=­PR&Code2​ =­01&Data​= C ­ ount&SearchText​= ­Canada&SearchType​=B ­ egins&SearchPR​ =­01&B1​=V ­ isible%20minority&TABID​=1­ . A black person in Canada is defined as a “vis­i­ble minority”: “a vis­i­ble minority group as defined by the Employment Equity Act . . . ​The Employment Equity Act defines vis­i­ble minorities as ‘persons, other than Aboriginal p­ eoples, who are non-­Caucasian in race or non-­white in colour.’ The vis­i­ble minority population consists mainly of the following groups: South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Arab, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean and Japa­nese.” Statistics Canada, “Census Profile, 2016 Census.” 58 Milan and Tran, “Blacks in Canada,” 2, 3. 59 Milan and Tran, 7.

208 • Notes to Pages 104–108

60 See The Agenda with Steve Palkin, “Being Black in Canadian Culture,” YouTube, 18 February 2012, https://­youtu​.­be​/­I0lf​_­f1p3gM. 61 Milan and Tran, “Blacks in Canada,” 5. 62 Milan and Tran, 5. 63 Milan and Tran, 6. 64 Althea Prince, “Racism Revisited: Being Black in Toronto in the 1960s,” in Being Black: Essays (Toronto, ON: Insomniac, 2000), 34. 65 Prince, 34. 66 Prince, 35. 67 See this chapter’s epigraph: Brand, Map to the Door of No Return, 18–19. 68 Barrett, Blackening Canada, 10. 69 Alondra Nelson, “Making the Impossible Pos­si­ble: An Interview with Nalo Hopkinson,” Social Text 20, no. 2 (71) (Summer 2002): 101. 70 Hopkinson, Brown Girl, 3. 71 Hopkinson, 10–11. 72 Hopkinson, 4. 73 Whereas I interpret the Burn as a cite of an indigenized and black Canadianness, Michelle Reid reads it as a diasporic Ca­rib­bean site: “The novel focuses on three generations of a ­family who emigrated to Canada from the Ca­rib­bean, and who now have to combine their cultural heritage and current Canadian context to help them survive in Toronto’s degenerated inner city. This ­family forms the centre of a localised community that provides the support and ser­vices that are other­wise lacking in the Burn. This community is based on a Ca­rib­bean model of hybridity which develops out of necessity and the need to combine all available resources: social, cultural, and spiritual. T ­ owards the end of Brown Girl in the Ring the communal model formed by the Burn residents is seen as a potential means of reintegrating and regenerating Canadian society” (“Crossing the Bound­aries,” 298). 74 Hopkinson, Brown Girl, 240. 75 Hui-­chuan Chang, “Critical Dystopia Reconsidered: Octavia Butler’s Parable Series and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake as Post-­apocalyptic Dystopias,” Tamkang Review 41, no. 2 (2011), 17 76 Citing John R. Hall’s Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity and Lorenzo DiTommaso’s “At the Edge of Tomorrow: Apocalypticism and Science Fiction,” Chang defines “post-­apocalyptic dystopia” lit­er­a­ture as that which “portrays not just ‘the end of the world’ but rather, according to Hall, ‘the end of the world as we know it.’ ” Chang continues: this lit­er­a­ture “extends, along with what remains of humanity, into a post-­apocalyptic period” (Chang, “Critical Dystopia Reconsidered,” 11–12) 77 Hopkinson, Brown Girl, 111 (my emphases). 78 The ­century Hopkinson evokes ­here predates large-­scale immigration of non-­ European ­peoples as well as the time when the country failed to recognize indigenous ­peoples. See “Immigration: The Postwar Era and the Removal of Racial and Ethnic Barriers,” in The Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed 2 March 2020, www​ .­thecanadianencyclopedia​.­ca​/­en​/t­ imeline​/­immigration: “At war’s end [1945], Canadian immigration regulations remained unchanged from the restrictive prewar years. But with a g­ reat demand for ­labour, Canada gradually re-­opened its doors to Eu­ro­pean immigration; first to immigrants Canada traditionally preferred—­those from the United Kingdom and Western Europe—­but eventually to the rest of Eu­rope as well. Immigration from Eastern Eu­rope came to a halt, however, as borders to the west ­were closed by the Soviet Union and its Cold War allies.” See

Notes to Pages 108–117  • 209

Vilna Bashi, “Globally Incorporating and Marginalizing,” for a historiography of the need for but legislative acts that blocked black immigration to Canada. 79 Hopkinson, Brown Girl, 34. 80 Hopkinson, 95. 81 Hopkinson, 50–51. 82 Hopkinson, 93–96. 83 Hopkinson, 9. 84 Hopkinson, 10. 85 Hopkinson, 218–219. 86 Hopkinson, 35. 87 Hopkinson, 141. 88 Hopkinson, 67. 89 Hopkinson, 67. 90 Hopkinson, 68. 91 “The CN Tower was built in 1976 by Canadian National [Railway] who wanted to demonstrate the strength of Canadian industry by building a tower taller than any other in the world.” La Tour CN Tower, “Astounding,” accessed 30 December 2018, www​.­cntower​.­ca​/­en​-­CA​/A ­ bout​-­Us​/­History​/­Astounding​.­html. 92 La Tour CN Tower, “Astounding.” 93 Hopkinson, Brown Girl, 3. 94 Hopkinson, 221. 95 Hopkinson, 236–237. 96 Bashi, “Globally Incorporating and Marginalizing,” 61–62 (my emphasis). 97 Hopkinson, Brown Girl, 239–240. 98 Hopkinson, 240. 99 Garcea, “Postulations,” 156. 100 Nelson, “Making the Impossible Pos­si­ble,” 101. 101 Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” 32.

4. Fourth—­Multigenre Epigraphs: Pamela Paul, “Book Review Podcast: Colson Whitehead and Jeffrey Toobin Talk about Their New Best Sellers,” New York Times Book Review Podcast, 12 August 2016, www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2016​/­08​/­14​/­books​/r­ eview​/­colson​-­whitehead​-a­ nd​-­jeffrey​ -­toobin​-­on​-­inside​-­the​-n ­ ew​-y­ ork​-­times​-b­ ook​-­review​.­html; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1967), 135; Colson Whitehead, The Under­ground Railroad (New York: Doubleday, 2016), 117. 1 Benedict Page, “Whitehead Shortlisted for Arthur C. Clarke Award,” Bookseller, 3 May 2017, www​.­thebookseller​.­com​/n ­ ews​/w ­ hitehead​-­shortlisted​-­arthur​-­c​-­clarke​ -­award​-­545691; Alex Preston, “The Under­g round Railroad by Colson Whitehead Review—­Luminous, Furious and Wildly Inventive,” The Guardian, 9 October 2016, www​.­theguardian​.­com​/b­ ooks​/2­ 016​/­oct​/­09​/­the​-­underground​-­railroad​-­colson​ -­whitehead​-­revie​-­luminous​-­f urious​-­wildly​-­inventive; Emma Brockes, “Interview: Colson Whitehead: ‘To Deal with the Subject with the Gravity It Deserved, Was Scary,’ ” The Guardian, 7 July 2017, www​.­theguardian​.c­ om​/­books​/­2017​/­jul​/­07​ /­colson​-­whitehead​-u­ nderground​-r­ ailroad; Pulitzer Prizes, “The 2017 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Fiction: The Under­g round Railroad, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday),” accessed 13 March 2021, www​.­pulitzer​.o­ rg​/­winners​/­colson​-­whitehead; Alison Flood, “Colson Whitehead Adds Arthur C. Clarke Award to Growing Prize Haul,”

210 • Notes to Pages 117–119

The Guardian, 27 July 2017, www​.­t heguardian​.­com​/­books​/­2017​/­jul​/­27​/­colson​ -­whitehead​-­adds​-­a rthur​-­c​-­clarke​-­award​-­t he​-­u nderground​-­railroad; Stephanie Li, “Genre Trou­ble and History’s Miseries in Colson Whitehead’s The Under­ ground Railroad,” MELUS: Multi-­Ethnic Lit­e r­a­ture of the U.S. 44, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 5. 2 The following is a list of The Under­g round Railroad’s awards and honors: 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, 2017 Arthur C. Clarke best science fiction lit­er­a­ture, long listed for 2017 Man Booker Prize, 2017 Andrew Car­ne­g ie Medal for Excellence, 2016 National Book Award for fiction. 3 Glen C. Strathy, “What Is Genre Fiction?,” How to Write a Book Now: Tools to Empower Aspiring Authors, accessed 14 March 2021, www​.­how​-­to​-­write​-­a​-­book​ -­now​.­com​/­what​-­is​-g­ enre​.­html; Christy Tillery French, “Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction,” AuthorsDen​.­com, accessed 18 August 2020, http://­w ww​.­authorsden​.­com​ /­visit​/­viewArticle​.­asp​?­id​=1­ 8884. 4 Brockes, “Interview: Colson Whitehead.” 5 Boris Kachka, “In Conversation with Colson Whitehead,” Vulture, August 2018, www​.­vulture​.c­ om​/­2016​/­08​/­colson​-­whitehead​-­author​-­of​-­the​-­underground​-­railroad​ -­c​-­v​-r­ ​.­html. 6 Li, “Genre Trou­ble,” 5. 7 In this, Li compares Whitehead’s lauded novel favorably to “Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave [winning] the Acad­emy Award for Best Picture, the first time a black-­produced and black-­directed film was so honored. Despite this significant achievement, critics questioned ­whether the film’s success was premised on its depiction of black bodies in all too familiar positions of oppression and abjection” (Li, 20). 8 French defines “suspense/thriller” as “tense and exciting with ingenious plotting, swift action, and continual suspense. Dominated by action with a constant threat and a protagonist pitted against an ominous villain . . . ​The thriller is all about the chase and engages the senses, unlike the mystery, which is about figuring out the puzzle.” “Mysteries,” French says, “focus on a crime committed, usually murder. One rule of thumb to remember: the dead body should show up within the first three chapters; some publishers like it within the first three pages. The action in a mystery ­will center on the attempts of a detective or investigator to solve the crime. The mystery is a ‘puzzle’ and engages the brain” (“Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction”). 9 Li, “Genre Trou­ble,” 1. 10 Richard Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 11. 11 Fred Moten, “The Case of Blackness,” Criticism 50, no. 2 (2008), 179. David Wallace describes Moten’s neologism in this way: “For Moten, blackness is something ‘fugitive,’ as he puts it—an ongoing refusal of standards imposed from elsewhere.” Wallace, “Fred Moten’s Radical Critique of the Pre­sent,” New Yorker, 30 April 2018, www​.­newyorker​.­com​/­culture​/­persons​-­of​-i­ nterest​/f­ red​-­motens​-­radical​-­critique​-­of​ -­the​-­present. 12 Fred Moten, Stolen Life (Consent Not To Be a Single Being) (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), chap. 3, Kindle ed., location 2865 13 Matthew Dischinger interprets Cora’s moves from Georgia to the North as a search “for the possibility and promise of the nation, but [she] comes to understand the idea of freedom as evasive and spectral.” Dischinger, “States of Possibility in Colson Whitehead’s The Under­ground Railroad,” Global South 11, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 93–94.

Notes to Pages 119–122  • 211

14 Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the ­Middle Passage,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14, nos. 2–3 (2008): 192. 15 “The focal length range of a lens is expressed by a number, and that number tells you how much of the scene your camera w ­ ill be able to capture. Smaller numbers have a wider a­ ngle of view and show more of the scene; larger numbers have a narrower a­ ngle of view and show less.” MasterClass, “Photography 101: Understanding Camera Lenses Basics,” 8 November 2020, https://­w ww​.­masterclass​.­com​ /­a rticles​/­basic​-­photography​-­101​-­understanding​-­camera​-­lenses#what​-­is​-­a​-­camera​ -­lens. 16 “Now that she had run away and seen a bit of the country, Cora w ­ asn’t sure the [Declaration of In­de­pen­dence] described anything real at all. Amer­i­ca was a ghost in the darkness, like her” (Whitehead, Under­g round Railroad, 180). 17 Whitehead, 33–34 (my emphases). 18 Whitehead, 298. 19 Li, “Genre Trou­ble,” 17, 16. 20 See this chapter’s epigraph: Paul, “Book Review Podcast.” 21 As Cora recovers from the beating, She knew why she had rushed to protect Chester. But she was stymied when she tried to recall the urgency of that moment, the grain of the feeling that possessed her. It had retreated to that obscure corner in herself from where it came and ­couldn’t be coaxed. To ease her restlessness she crept out to her plot and sat on her maple and smelled the air and listened. Th ­ ings in the swamp whistled and splashed, hunting in the living darkness. To walk in t­ here at night, heading north to the ­Free States. Have to take leave of your senses to do that. But her ­mother had. (Whitehead, Under­g round Railroad, 39–40) 22 Li assesses Cora as slave, a way of seeing that cannot understand the action the character takes: “Cora’s attempt to protect Chester from Terrance’s wrath is described as ‘obvious madness’ (36), an ‘incomprehensible action’ (37), and, indeed, the action is inexplicable. While slaves might challenge other slaves with some hope of satisfaction, to c­ ounter a master is hopeless. The sheer illogic of Cora’s act is captured by the vague use of the word ‘feeling.’ Twice in this passage, the ‘feeling’ is described as ‘settling’ on her, but no precise description is provided. Is this rage? Or something so beyond our recognition that Whitehead cannot even find the language to portray it?” (“Genre Trou­ble,” 16–17). 23 See this chapter’s epigraph: Fanon, Black Skin, 135. 24 Whitehead, Under­g round Railroad, 152–153. 25 Whitehead, 156. 26 Whitehead, 161. 27 “In death,” muses the medical student/resurrection man Stevens, “the negro became a ­human being” (Whitehead, 139). 28 “­A fter a lull in white arrests, some towns increased the rewards for turning in collaborators. Folks informed on business rivals, ancient nemeses, and neighbors, recounting old conversations where the traitors had uttered forbidden sympathies. ­Children tattled on their parents, taught by schoolmistresses the hallmarks of sedition. Martin related the story of a man in town who had been trying to rid himself of his wife for years, to no avail. The details of her crime did not hold up ­under scrutiny, but she paid the ultimate price” (Whitehead, 166–167). 29 Whitehead, 166. 30 Whitehead, 168.

212 • Notes to Pages 123–126

31 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 35 (my emphasis). 32 Morrison, 48. 33 See Morrison, 33. 34 Morrison, 45. 35 Morrison, 49. 36 “Podcast” is a twenty-­first-­century portmanteau that combines “iPod” and “cast” (denoting a broadcast; OED Online). Content and also tools of effective storytelling make a podcast “good”: sounds (of voice[s], musical se­lections, clips, ambient noise), narratives that draw listeners in, personal as/and po­liti­cal content, turns of phrase, colloquial language. 37 John Biewen, host, “Made in Amer­i­ca,” part 3 of “Seeing White,” Scene on Radio (podcast), episode 33, 16 March 2017, transcript, www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​/w ­ p​-­content​ /­uploads​/­2017​/­11​/S­ eeingWhite​_ ­Part3Transcript​.­pdf. John Biewen, host, “Seeing White,” parts 1–14, Scene on Radio (podcast), episodes 31–45, 15 February–24 August 2017, www​.s­ ceneonradio​.o­ rg​/­seeing​-­white​/­. ­Here and throughout this chapter, I use transcripts of selected “Seeing White” episodes that are available on the Scene on Radio website. When necessary, I have made adjustments to represent meaningful pauses or editorial corrections of the written text by comparing the audio version to the transcript. 38 Biewen, “Made in Amer­i­ca,” part 3 of “Seeing White,” Scene on Radio (podcast), episode 33, 16 March 2017, transcript, www​.s­ ceneonradio​.­org​/­wp​-­content​/­uploads​ /­2017​/­11​/S­ eeingWhite​_ ­Part3Transcript​.­pdf. 39 Biewen narrates that “it was only more in the last few hundred years that, at the same time that you had the Enlightenment and p­ eople to some degree having higher standards for how ­human beings treated each other, that then it seems that it became more necessary to have a justification to dehumanize folks before you—​ to justify enslaving them.” John Biewen, host, “How Race Was Made,” part 2 of “Seeing White,” Scene on Radio (podcast), episode 34, 1 March 2017, transcript, www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​/w ­ p​-­content​/u­ ploads​/­2017​/­11​/­SeeingWhite​_ ­Part2​Tran​ script​.­pdf. 40 Series producers made cited works and a bibliography available on the podcast’s website. The downloadable bibliography is at www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​/s­ eeing​-w ­ hite​ /­seeing​-­white​-­bibliography​/­. 41 “Study Guide: Seeing White,” Scene on Radio (podcast), 15 December 2021, www​ .­sceneonradio​.­org ​/­seeing​-­white​/­seeing​-­white​-­study​-­g uide​/­. 42 Racial Equity Institute, “About: Our Team,” accessed 18 March 2021, www​ .­racialequityinstitute​.­com​/­ourteam. 43 In minutes from 9 July 1640, the name of the “Scotchman” was recorded as James Gregory, and the Dutchman was recorded as Victor. See H. R. McIlwaine, ed., Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial V ­ irginia, 1622–1632, 1670–1676 with Notes and Excerpts from Original Council and General Court Rec­ords, into 1683, Now Lost (Richmond, VA, 1924), 466, Internet Archive, accessed 14 August 2021, https://­archive​.­org ​/­details​/­minutesofcouncil00virg ​/­page​/­466​/­mode​/­1up​?­view​ =­theater. 44 Biewen, “Made in Amer­i­ca,” transcript, www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​/w ­ p​-­content​ /­uploads​/­2017​/­11​/S­ eeingWhite​_ ­Part3Transcript​.­pdf (my emphases). 45 Biewen’s guest Chenjerai Kumanyika, summarizing the ­Virginia Slave Codes, observes, “You know, and it says actually the master, owner and ­every other such person giving correction ‘­shall be ­free and acquitted of all punishment and

Notes to Pages 126–133  • 213

accusation.’ So, now you just have the ability of slave holders to just torture black slaves with like, with impunity, basically, and know that ­they’re not g­ oing to face any punishment” (Biewen). 46 Biewen. 47 “Study Guide: Seeing White.” 48 Biewen says, “It’s one of the main features, I think, of, of whiteness and of being an American, and of this story we tell ourselves. It requires a lot of willful forgetting, and ­we’re very good at it. We have lots of practice” (“On Crazy We Built a Nation”). 49 Biewen, “Made in Amer­i­ca.” 50 John Biewen, host, “On Crazy We Built a Nation,” part 4 of “Seeing White,” Scene on Radio (podcast), episode 34, 30 March 2017, transcript, www​.­sceneonradio​.­org​ /­wp​-c­ ontent​/­uploads​/­2017​/­11​/­SeeingWhite​_ ­Part4Transcript​.­pdf. 51 Whitehead, Under­g round Railroad, 69. On Cora’s third trip on the railway, she describes the deliberately absent station agent in a way that applies to all the novel’s agents: “he was another person of subterranean inclinations” (259). 52 Whitehead, 70. Once in South Carolina, Cora remembers the first leg of her journey in the subway: “Months l­ ater, Cora still ­didn’t know how she had survived the trip from Georgia. The darkness of the tunnel quickly turned the boxcar into a grave” (90). 53 Whitehead, 65. 54 Caesar, by inviting the girl to join him in escaping the Randall plantation, describes Cora’s role in the novel: “she w ­ asn’t a rabbit’s foot to carry with you on the voyage but the locomotive itself ” (Whitehead, 234). 55 Whitehead, 261. 56 Whitehead, 262. 57 Whitehead, 262–263. 58 Whitehead, 304. 59 Whitehead, 66–67. 60 Lumbly answers Caesar’s question with a question (Whitehead, 67). 61 The two most common ways to dig a railroad are the cut-­and-­cover and deep-­boring methods. Before high-­tech boring devices w ­ ere created, subways ­were constructed using extreme levels of manual ­labor. “Making a Railroad, How to Build a Subway (The Two Methods of Subway Construction),” LiveAbout, accessed 2 March 2020, www​.­liveabout​.­com​/­methods​-o­ f​-­subway​-c­ onstruction​-­2798523; “Types and Methods of Construction,” chap. 2 in The New York Subway: Its Construction and Equipment (New York: Interborough Rapid Transit Com­pany, 1904), www​ .­nycsubway​.­org​/­wiki​/­The​_ N ­ ew​_­York​_ S­ ubway:​_­Chapter​_0 ­ 2,​_­Types​_ ­and​ _­Methods​_o­ f​_­Construction (accessed 2 March 2020). 62 Whitehead, Under­g round Railroad, 68–69. 63 A ­woman named Gertrude “ran through the green near the school­house. She was in her twenties, of slender build, and her hair stuck up wildly. Her blouse was open to her navel, revealing her breasts. For an instant, Cora was back on Randall and about to be educated in another atrocity” (Whitehead, 105; see also 91). 64 Plantation owner “Terrance Randall provided a model for a mind that could conceive of North Carolina’s new system, but the scale of the vio­lence was hard to ­settle in [Cora’s] head” (Whitehead, 172). 65 Whitehead, 261. 66 Whitehead, 105–106. 67 Whitehead, 109. 68 Whitehead, 116. 69 Whitehead, 110.

214 • Notes to Pages 133–142

70 Whitehead, 117. 71 Whitehead, 219. In dialogue with Cora, Ridgeway refers to Lovey (208) and Caesar (219) as “it.” 72 Whitehead, 234. 73 Whitehead, 161. 74 Whitehead, 161. 75 Whitehead, 162, 163. 76 Whitehead, 163. 77 Whitehead, 172. 78 Whitehead, 188. 79 Whitehead, 187. 80 Whitehead, 74. 81 Whitehead, 79–80. 82 In “Mabel,” readers learn that Cora’s ­mother dies before she can return to claim her ­daughter. 83 Whitehead, 74. 84 Whitehead, 76. Ridgeway maintains that ­there is a distinct difference between patroller and slave catcher, significant ­because the job makes the man (see 78, 162). 85 Whitehead, 80. 86 Whitehead, 221–222. 87 Whitehead, 279. 88 Whitehead, 286. 89 Whitehead, 265. 90 Whitehead, 257. 91 Whitehead, 267. 92 Whitehead, 270. 93 Whitehead, 302. 94 Whitehead, 302–303. 95 Dischinger, “States of Possibility,” 93. 96 Whitehead, Under­g round Railroad, 179. 97 Whitehead, 8. 98 Stephanie Li disagrees. She interprets the impossibility of escape for enslaved ­people and reads Cora’s character simplistically: “Cora gains nothing but pain and sorrow from her attempt to protect Chester. Caesar had already invited her to join him, and at the end of ‘Georgia,’ they board a subterranean train. They arrive to the bewildering sight of a South Carolina sky-­scraper. The ‘true disposition of the world’ (Whitehead, Under­g round 110) does not include hidden platforms and con­ve­niently placed vehicles, and in fact it rarely ended in freedom. Even as the conclusion of the first chapter of the book (‘[t]o escape the boundary of the plantation was to escape the fundamental princi­ples of your existence: impossible’ [8]) affirms the impossible circumstances of historical real­ity, ‘Georgia’ indulges in all manner of impossibilities: the impossibility of a mid-­nineteenth-­century skyscraper, the impossibility of an ­actual under­ground railroad, and, most importantly, the impossibility of escape” (“Genre Trou­ble,” 17). 99 Kachka, “In Conversation with Colson Whitehead” (my emphasis). 100 Whitehead, Under­g round Railroad, 16. 101 Whitehead, 20. 102 Whitehead, 17. 103 Whitehead, 298 (boldface in the original).

Notes to Pages 142–146  • 215

104 In Orly Clerge’s so­cio­log­i­cal study of middle-­class African Americans, Jamaicans, and Haitians in the suburbs of New York, she reassess homogeneous narratives about race (specifically blackness) from the perspective of “Black p­ eople’s ways of knowing their world and themselves.” Clerge writes, “Similar to the attempts to strip [Edmond] Albius [a twelve-­year-­old boy enslaved in the French colony of Reunion] of recognition for his revolutionary [technique for hand-­pollinating vanilla], White society erases recognition of Black p­ eople’s ways of knowing their world and themselves. Albius traveled the island d­ oing workshops to share his technique, making Madagascar and Reunion the world’s main vanilla exporters. Yet he died in poverty. . . . ​This chapter reclaims vanilla’s silenced Black history in order to push aside the veil that obscures the breadth and depth of the Black diaspora’s knowledge production and micro-­practices around race.” Clerge, The New Noir: Race, Identity and Diaspora in Black Suburbia (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019), 163–164. 105 Whitehead, Under­g round Railroad, 260. 106 Whitehead, 285. 107 Whitehead, 265. 108 Whitehead, 278.

5. Fifth—Fantasy, Short Story Epigraph: Lucille Clifton, “­won’t you celebrate with me,” in Book of Light (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 1993), 25. 1 Claudia Rankine asks, “How do you keep the black female body pre­sent and how do you own value for something that society ­won’t give value to?” Paula Cocozza, “Poet Claudia Rankine: ‘The Invisibility of Black W ­ omen Is Astounding,’ ” The Guardian (U.S. edition), 29 June 2015, www​.­theguardian​.­com​/­lifeandstyle​/­2015​/j­ un​/­29​/­poet​ -­claudia​-­rankine​-­invisibility​-­black​-­women​-­everyday​-­racism​-­citizen​?­CMP​=­share​ _­btn​_ ­link. 2 Being Mary Jane, “Line in the Sand,” season 2, episode 9, original airdate 31 March 2015; Being Mary Jane, “Primetime,” season 2, episode 10, original airdate 7 April 2015. Being Mary Jane is a drama that first aired on Black Entertainment Tele­vi­sion (BET) in January 2014. 3 The director Rob Hardy says of the actor Gabrielle Union’s scenes, “I need her to be real and raw in her emotions so it would feel like real life.” Nina Terrero, “Being Mary Jane Director Rob Hardy Says Portraying Racism on TV Is ‘Raw,’ ” Entertain­ ment Weekly, 31 March 2015, www​.e­ w​.­com​/­article​/2­ 015​/­03​/­31​/­being​-­mary​-­jane​ -­director​-­rob​-h ­ ardy​-­says​-­portraying​-r­ acism​-­t v​-­raw. 4 Walter Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” New York Times Magazine 1 November 1998, 32, 33. 5 Nalo Hopkinson, “A Habit of Waste,” in Skin Folk (New York: Aspect/Warner Books: 2001), 183–202. 6 “Writer’s Guidelines,” Psy­chol­ogy ­Today, accessed 6 March 2021, www​.p­ sychology​ today​.­com​/­us​/­writers​-­g uidelines. 7 Hilary Moss, “Satoshi Kanazawa C ­ auses Firestorm ­a fter Claiming Black W ­ omen Are Less Attractive.,” Huffington Post, 17 May 2011, updated 17 July 2011, www​ .­huffingtonpost​.­com​/2­ 011​/­05​/­17​/­satoshi​-­kanazawa​-­black​-­women​-­less​-­attractive​_­n​ _­863327​.h ­ tml.

216 • Notes to Pages 146–148

8 Hilary Moss, “Satoshi Kanazawa C ­ auses Firestorm ­a fter Claiming Black W ­ omen Are Less Attractive,” Huffington Post, 17 May 2011, updated 17 July 2011, www​ .­huffingtonpost​.­com​/­2011​/­05​/­17​/­satoshi​-­k anazawa​-­black​-­women​-­less​-­attractive ​_​ n_­863327​.h ­ tml. 9 “Writer’s Guidelines.” 10 Satoshi Kanazawa, “Why Are Black ­Women Less Physically Attractive than Other ­Women?,” ­Human Biological Diversity, accessed 6 March 2021, www​ .­humanbiologicaldiversity​.­com​/­articles​/­Kanazawa,%20Satoshi​.­%20%22Why%20 Are%20Black%20Women%20Less%20Physically%20Attractive%20Than%20 Other%20Women%3F%22%20Psychology%20Today,%20May%2015,%202011​.­pdf. Kanazawa’s blog originally posted on PT’s website on 15 May 2011 but was “quickly removed from the site, but not before screenshots made their way onto BuzzFeed” (Moss, “Satoshi Kanazawa C ­ auses Firestorm”). 11 Kanazawa. The Add Health study examined “the health of adolescents and their be­hav­ior and health in young adulthood.” David Folkenflik, “Blogger’s ‘Ugly’ Conclusions Anger Some in the Black Community,” NPR, 17 May 2011, www​.­npr​ .­org​/­sections​/­thetwo​-w ­ ay​/­2011​/­05​/1­ 7​/­136399684​/­bloggers​-­ugly​-­conclusions​-­anger​ -­some​-­in​-­the​-­black​-­community. See also Add Health: The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, “About,” accessed 6 March 2021, www​.­cpc​ .­unc​.­edu​/­projects​/­addhealth​/­about. 12 Kanazawa, “Why Are Black W ­ omen . . . ?” 13 Kanazawa. 14 Kanazawa (my emphasis). 15 “His article and unqualified research on unattractive black w ­ omen sent off a fury of protests online. 75,000 ­people blew up Psy­chol­ogy ­Today via email, Twitter and Facebook. Some even rang Psy­chol­ogy ­Today’s telephones off the hook.” This overwhelming response led to “Psy­chol­ogy ­Today [instituting] new rules to prevent inflammatory content in the f­ uture.” cganemccalla, “Psychologist Fired for ‘Why Black W ­ omen Are Unattractive,’ ” NewsOne​.­com, 6 June 2011, http://­newsone​.­com​ /­1285085​/­satoshi​-­kanazawa​-­fired​-­psychology​-­today​/­. 16 Moss, “Satoshi Kanazawa ­Causes Firestorm.” 17 Ka­li Gross notes, “Racial science had the potential to become a more effective regulatory institution than enslavement b­ ecause it could assert and, ideally, prove biological differences between the races. This scholarship . . . ​could further attest to the superiority of whiteness ­under the guise of scientific neutrality.” Gross, Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Vio­lence in Amer­i­ca (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 16. During U.S. slavery, Melissa Harris-­Perry writes, “the myth of black ­women as lascivious, seductive, and insatiable was a way of reconciling the forced public exposure and commoditization of black w ­ omen’s bodies with the Victorian ideals of ­women’s modesty and fragility.” Harris-­Perry, ­Sister Citizen: Shame, Ste­reo­types, and Black W ­ omen in Amer­i­ca (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 55. Harris-­Perry concludes by saying, “The modern, the civilized, and the evolved w ­ ere defined over and against [myths of black w ­ omen]” (58), and the Jezebel ste­reo­t ype/myth “advances specific economic, social, and po­liti­cal motives, . . . ​profit-­driven and casual sexual exploitation of black w ­ omen” (56; see also 57). 18 cganemccalla, “Psychologist Fired.” 19 London School of Economics, “Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa—­Findings of Internal Review and Disciplinary Hearing,” September 2011, www​.­lse​.­ac​.­u k​/­newsAndMedia​ /­news​/­archives​/­2011​/0 ­ 9​/­Kanazawa​.­aspx. LSE’s findings are no longer available on

Notes to Pages 148–149  • 217

the school’s website. Kanazawa, reader in the London School of Economics’ Management Department, ­later “apologised for bringing his institution into disrepute.” Jack Grove, “LSE Scholar Admits Race Analy­sis Was ‘Flawed,’ ” Times Higher Education, 15 September 2011, http://­web​.­archive​.­org​/­web​/­20121027143911​ /­http://­w ww​.­timeshighereducation​.­co​.­u k​/s­ tory​.­asp​?­sectioncode​=­26&storycode​ =­417449&c​=1­ . 20 London School of Economics, “Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa.” 21 Wesley Yang, “Kanazawa’s Bad Science Does Not Represent Evolutionary Psy­chol­ ogy,” Scribd, 29 March 2016, www​.­scribd​.­com​/­document​/­231350957​/­Kanazawa​ -­Statement. ­Others rallied in support of Kanazawa’s qualifications since, they argued, the peer-­review pro­cess approved the publication of over seventy of his articles. See “Sinned Against, Not Sinning,” Times Higher Education, 16 June 2011, www​.­timeshighereducation​.­co​.­uk​/­416527​.­article. In It’s Okay to Be Smart: A Blog about Science . . . ​and Other Interestingness, Joe Hanson notes that among this latter group are champions of eugenics and selective ­human breeding, an anti-­immigration/ antidiversity scholar, and a speaker who stated that Islam’s “prob­lem” is ge­ne­tic. Hanson, “Kanazawa and His Crap Defenders,” accessed 11 May 2015, www​.­itsokay​ tobesmart​.­com​/­post​/­6622717976​/k­ anazawa​-­and​-­his​-­crap​-­defenders. 22 Yang, “Kanazawa’s Bad Science.” 23 London School of Economics, “Dr Satoshi Kanazawa,” accessed 6 March 2021, www​.­lse​.­ac​.­u k​/­management​/­people​/­academic​-­staff​/­skanazawa​?­from​_­serp​=1­ ; see also Kanazawa’s CV at London School of Economics, “Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa: Reader in Management,” accessed 6 March 2021, http://­personal​.­lse​.­ac​.­u k​ /­kanazawa​/­. 24 Michaela Angela Davis, image activist and CNN commentator (https://­t witter​ .­com​/­michaelaangelad); India.Arie, singer/songwriter (www​.­soulbird​.­com); Mark Anthony Neal, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African and African American Studies, Duke University (https://­scholars​.­duke​.­edu​/­person​/­man9). 25 Episodes 9 and 10 of Being Mary Jane, among adults aged eigh­teen to forty-­nine, ­were rated 0.8 and 0.6, respectively. See TV by the Numbers, “Tuesday Cable Ratings,” 1 April 2015, http://­t vbythenumbers​.­zap2it​.­com​/­2015​/­04​/­01​/­tuesday​ -­cable​-­ratings​-­19​-­kids​-­and​-­counting​-­wins​-­night​-­real​-­housewives​-­of​-­beverly​-­hills​ -­justified​-­cougar​-­town​-m ­ ore​/3­ 82697​/;­ and TV by the Numbers, “Tuesday Cable Ratings,” 8 April 2015, http://­t vbythenumbers​.z­ ap2it​.c­ om​/­2015​/­04​/­08​/­tuesday​ -­cable​-­ratings​-­real​-­housewives​-­of​-­beverly​-­hills​-­tops​-­night​-­19​-­k ids​-­and​-­counting​-­tosh​ -­0​-­more​/­386143​/.­ 26 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Repre­sen­ta­tion (Boston: South End, 1992), 2. 27 Mikhail Lyubansky, “Beauty May Be in Eye of Beholder but Eyes See What Culture Socializes,” Between the Lines (blog), Psy­chol­ogy ­Today, 16 May 2011, www​.­psycho​ logytoday​.­com​/­blog​/­between​-­the​-­lines​/2­ 01105​/­beauty​-­may​-­be​-­in​-­eye​-­beholder​-­eyes​ -­see​-­what​-­culture​-­socializes. Lyubansky boldly asserts, The point is that ­there are also group differences, not in attractiveness (as Kanazawa claims), but in cultural messages about what is and is not attractive. Standards of beauty, like most other beliefs, are socialized and change not only from place to place but also over time. In both the United States and ­England (where Kanazawa lives and works), standards of beauty are essentially “White” standards, ­because Whites comprise the majority of the population and have disproportional control over both media and fashion. And while it is not just White respondents who are socialized this way (internalized racism has been well documented), it is certainly the case that White Americans and Eu­ro­pe­ans (who

218 • Notes to Pages 150–160

are less likely to have received more positive messages about Black beauty) would show the strongest anti-­Black bias. 28 Nghana Lewis, “Prioritized: The Hip Hop (Re)Construction of Black Womanhood in Girlfriends and The Game,” in Watching While Black: Centering the Tele­vi­sion of Black Audiences, ed. Beretta E. Smith-­Shomade (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 157. 29 Lewis, 157. 30 Lewis finds, in her study of TV shows with prominent black female leads, “­These negotiations serve not so much to countervail as to complicate the reduced projections of Black female subjectivity and sexuality in mainstream hip hop” (158). 31 Kanazawa, “Why Are Black W ­ omen . . . ?” 32 Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” 32. 33 Kristian Williams, “Demanding the Impossible: Walidah Imarisha Talks about Science Fiction and Social Change,” Bitch Magazine, 13 April 2015, http://­ bitchmagazine​.­org ​/­post​/­demanding​-­the​-­impossible​-­walidah​-­imarisha​-­talks​-­about​ -­science​-­fiction​-a­ nd​-­social​-c­ hange. Imarisha, “poet, journalist, documentary filmmaker, anti-­prison activist, and college instructor,” is coeditor, with adrienne maree brown, of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Move­ ments (Oakland, CA: AK, 2015). 34 Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” 32. 35 Mosely, 32. 36 Randall Kenan, “An Interview with Octavia E. Butler,” Callaloo 14, no. 2 (1991): 498. 37 Hopkinson, “Habit of Waste,” 184. 38 Hopkinson, 186, 187. 39 Slade Hopkinson, from “The Madwoman from Papine: Two Cartoon with Captions,” Hopkinson, 183. 40 Hopkinson, 183. 41 Hopkinson, 185. 42 Hopkinson, 184. 43 Hopkinson, 184. 44 Hopkinson, 184. 45 Hopkinson, 185. 46 Hopkinson, 188. 47 Clarence Major, introduction to Calling the Wind: Twentieth ­Century African-­ American Short Stories (New York: HarperPerennial, 1993), xv. 48 Hopkinson, “Habit of Waste,” 187–188. 49 Hopkinson, 186. 50 Hopkinson, 192. 51 Hopkinson, 184. 52 Hopkinson, 187. 53 Hopkinson, 188. 54 Hopkinson, 184–185. 55 Hopkinson, 186. 56 Hopkinson, 194. 57 Hopkinson, 193. 58 Hopkinson, 197. 59 Hopkinson, 198–199. 60 Hopkinson, 200–201. 61 Hopkinson, 201. 62 Hopkinson, 201.

Notes to Pages 160–168  • 219

63 Catherine Damman, “Interviews: Saidiya Hartman,” Artforum International, 14 July 2020, www​.­artforum​.­com​/­interviews​/s­ aidiya​-h ­ artman​-­83579. 64 Imani Perry, “Racism Is Terrible. Blackness Is Not,” The Atlantic, 15 June 2020, www​ .­theatlantic​.­com​/­ideas​/­archive​/­2020​/­06​/­racism​-­terrible​-­blackness​-­not​/­613039​/­.

Epilogue Epigraphs: Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016); Catherine Damman, “Interviews: Saidiya Hartman,” Artforum International, 14 July 2020, www​.­artforum​.­com​/­interviews​/­saidiya​-­hartman​-8­ 3579. 1 Sharpe, In the Wake, 13. 2 Tobias Buckell, “Spurn Babylon,” in Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Ca­rib­bean Fabulist Fiction, ed. Nalo Hopkinson (Montpelier, VT: Invisible Cities, 2000), 39–49. 3 Buckell, 41. 4 Buckell, 43. 5 In Rastafarian belief, Zion is a black space, a promised land for diasporic African ­peoples (specifically Ethiopia, generally the African continent). Zion is also “drawn from the biblical tradition.” Elizabeth A. McAlister, “Rastafari,” Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 23 July 2020, www​.­britannica​.­com​/­topic​/­R astafari. 6 Buckell, “Spurn Babylon,” 43. 7 Tobias Buckell, “Paneling While Light, but Not White,” Tobias Buckell’s website, accessed 12 March 2021, https://­tobiasbuckell​.­com​/p­ aneling​-­while​-­light​-­but​-­not​ -­white​/­. 8 Julie Erhart, “Picturing What If: Julie Dash’s Speculative Fiction,” Camera Obscura 13, no. 2 (1996): 118. 9 Erhart, 118. 10 Erhart, 121. 11 Erhart, 118. 12 Emma Brockes, “Interview: Colson Whitehead: ‘To Deal with the Subject with the Gravity It Deserved, Was Scary,’ ” The Guardian, 7 July 2017, www​.­theguardian​.­com​ /­books​/2­ 017​/­jul​/­07​/­colson​-w ­ hitehead​-­underground​-­railroad. 13 Paule Marshall, “From the Poets in the Kitchen,” New York Times, 9 January 1983, www​.­nytimes​.­com​/­1983​/­01​/­09​/­books​/­from​-­the​-­poets​-­in​-­the​-­k itchen​.­html . 14 Marshall (my emphasis). 15 Buckell, “Spurn Babylon,” 47. 16 Buckell, 39. 17 Buckell, 42–43. 18 Buckell, 45. 19 Buckell, 44. 20 Buckell, 44. 21 Buckell, 46. Locals also describe the ship’s destination as a “Land of milk an’ honey . . . ​Or anywhere ­else. A new place” (46). 22 Buckell, 46. 23 What Is Epigenet­ics, “Epigenet­ics: Fundamentals,” accessed 12 March 2021, www​ .­whatisepigenetics​.­com​/­f undamentals​/­: Epigenet­ics is the study of potentially heritable changes in gene expression (active versus inactive genes) that does not involve changes to the under­lying DNA sequence—­a change in phenotype [the observable physical traits or biochemical

220 • Notes to Pages 168–171

characteristics of an organism based on a combination of the organism’s genes and environmental f­ actors] without a change in genotype [the inherited ge­ne­tic makeup of a cell]—­which in turn affects how cells read the genes. Epige­ne­tic change is a regular occurrence but can also be influenced by several f­ actors including age, the environment/lifestyle, and disease state. Epige­ne­tic modifications can manifest as commonly as the manner in which cells terminally differentiate to end up as skin cells, liver cells, brain cells, e­ tc. Or, epige­ne­tic change can have more damaging effects that can result in diseases like cancer. 24 Buckell, “Spurn Babylon,” 42. 25 Buckell, 46. 26 Walter Mosley, “Black to the ­Future,” New York Times Magazine 1 November 1998, 32. 27 Buckell, “Spurn Babylon,” 43–44. 28 Anthony P. Maingot and Harry Hoetink have written extensively on race and ethnicity in the Ca­rib­bean, U.S.-­Caribbean relations, and Ca­rib­bean development. I rely on the following articles as they contain ideas central to their oeuvre. H. Hoetink, “ ‘Race’ and Color in the Ca­rib­bean,” in Ca­rib­bean Contours, ed. Sidney W. Mintz and Sally Price (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 55–84; Anthony P. Maingot, “Race, Color, and Class in the Ca­rib­bean,” in Amer­i­cas: New Interpretive Essays, ed. Alfred Stepan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 220–247. 29 Buckell, “Spurn Babylon,” 45. 30 Buckell, 48. 31 Buckell, 48. 32 Ta-­Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Random House, 2015), 143. 33 Buckell, “Spurn Babylon,” 48–49. 34 BarbaraNeely, Blanche on the Lam (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), 214. 35 BarbaraNeely, 214–215. 36 Coates, Between the World and Me, 149.

Index abundant blackness, 34, 40, 43–45, 47 Adrian J. Heath (Fire) (fictional character), 66–67, 69, 72, 75–79, 82–90 African Americans, 31, 89, 163–164; authors, of detective fiction, 46–47; blackness, culture and, 32; Ca­rib­bean Americans and, 85; crime and race, in fiction by, 45–46; West Indians and, 81 African diaspora, 7, 19, 26, 41, 64, 96; black characters and, 7; blackness and, 165; fantastical blackness and, 36; religious and spiritual traditions of, 109, 111; in U.S., 29–31 African immigrants: to Canada, 104–105; to U.S., 72 Africanist persona, 17, 123 African spiritual traditions, 24–25, 109, 111, 114 Afro-­Atlantic Flight (Commander), 30–31 Afrofuturism, 25–27, 36, 185n107, 185n110, 186n111 Afropessimism, 8, 11–12, 15, 36 Alexander, Elizabeth, xiii, 1–2 Alexander, M. Jacqui, 24–25 alternative history, 117 antiblack narratives, 2, 5, 8, 26, 43, 69 antiblackness, 178n1; blackened consciousness against, 42; blackness and, 13, 20, 32, 40; in Canada, 98; criminality of, 34; fantastical blackness and, 2, 4, 93; “A Habit of Waste” on, 145; hate crimes of,

2–3; misogynoir and, 145–148; whiteness, white supremacy and, 1 antiblack racism, 18, 29, 32, 48, 63, 147, 161–162 antiblack ste­reo­t ypes, 20, 50–51 antiblack vio­lence, 41, 52–53, 55, 60 anti-­immigration, 98, 145 Anyanwu (fictional character), ix–­xiv, 12, 16, 177n11, 177n13 Bailey, Frankie Y., 46, 193n62 Bajan, 164–165 Baldick, Chris, 204n18 Baldwin, James, 183n74 Barbadian, 164–165 Barbados, 82, 104 BarbaraNeely, 46–47, 188n3, 190n15. See also Blanche on the Lam (BarbaraNeely) Barlowe, Wayne, x, xiv Barrett, Paul, 99, 103–104, 106, 204n19 Bashi, Vilna, 97–98, 113, 206n26, 206n30 beautiful-­ugly, 164–165, 168 Being Mary Jane, 145, 148–151 Bettelheim, Bruno, 90 Between the World and Me (Coates), 1, 170–171 Biamonte, Gloria, 46 Biewen, John, 41, 62, 124–126, 180n18, 212n39, 212n45

221

222 • Index

black: blackness and, 8–9, 176n4; Blanche White and, 47–61; class, gender and, 45–47; h ­ uman and, 8; seeing black, 7, 40, 53, 161–163; slave and, 11–12, 120–122, 126, 141, 168, 176n4; white and, 41, 125–126, 132, 134–135, 142, 163, 165 black Americans, 29, 31–32, 61–62. See also African Americans black artists, black politics and, 21–22, 94 “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic” (Tinsley), 11–13 black being, 36, 45; in Canada, 112, 115; in diaspora, 15, 162, 165; imaginable, 18, 23, 33; Sharpe on, 12–15, 42; unspeakable, 18–19 black body, 12, 36, 141; “A Habit of Waste” on, 145, 152, 155–157, 159–160; “Spurn Babylon” on, 168 black characters: American identity and, 123; in detective fiction, 42, 192n59; in genre fictions, 7; in mystery fiction, 193n62; in science fiction, 31–32 black consciousness, 116, 121 black death, 14, 42, 64, 93–94, 121, 134, 169–170 black diaspora, 31–32, 105–106 blackened consciousness, 14–15, 30, 40–45, 53, 64 black freedom, 136–141 #BlackGirlMagic, 191n31 black humanity, 8, 15 black identity, 34, 66, 75, 91 black immigrants, 98, 104–105, 107–108, 112–113, 152, 154, 157, 206n30 black Jamaicanness, 66–69, 72, 75–78, 87–91, 162 Black Lives ­Matter, 2, 40 Black Mask (Smith, E.), 28 black men, 55, 81, 84, 91, 149, 159 blackness: abundant, 34, 40, 43–45, 47; African American culture and, 32; African diaspora and, 165; Afrofuturistic, 27; American identity and, 123, 126; antiblackness and, 13, 20, 32, 40; black and, 8–9, 176n4; blackened consciousness on, 42–43; black writers on, 6–7, 13, 33; in Blanche on the Lam, 42–43, 49–50, 56, 60, 64; Canadian, 32, 97–100, 104–115, 156; in Ca­rib­bean, 32; criminalization of, 42, 47; diasporic, 2, 7–8, 13–14, 18, 43,

103–104, 162; disruptive, 42, 94–95, 136; ­doing, fantastically, 25–28; gender and, 81; in genre fictions, white patriarchy and, 6–7; imaginable possibilities of, 33; imaginable truths of, 1, 12, 20, 23, 53, 93, 112; imagination and, 4–5; imagining and reimagining, 7–16, 18, 97, 162–163; imaginings of, genre fictions and, 16–25; in popu­lar fictions, 5, 15–16, 23, 27–28; race and, 13; repre­sen­ta­tions in popu­lar literary forms, 1; science fiction and, 31–32; slavery and, 8–9, 11–13; ste­reo­ typed, 123, 134–135; as technology, 15–16, 71–72; in U.S., 20, 32, 49; in Waiting in Vain, 68–69, 72, 75–76, 81–82, 90–91; whiteness, 9–11, 31–32, 42, 119, 121–123, 130–131, 135–136, 139, 163; white patriarchy and, 6–7; white privilege and, 3–4, 9–10; white supremacy and, 2–3, 10. See also fantastical blackness Black No More (Schuyler), 34, 61–64 black politics, 23; black artists and, 21–22, 94; fantastically ­imagined, 93–97 black queerness, 7, 11–12 black repre­sen­ta­tion, black politics and, 21 black self, 5, 29, 159; black w ­ omen and, 145, 157, 159; in Blanche on the Lam, 42–43, 59; diasporic, 35, 70–75; fantastical, 12, 161–162; Jamaican, 66–69, 72, 75–78, 87–91; national self and, 85; in Waiting in Vain, 34, 66–78, 85, 87–88, 90–91 black self-­k nowledge, 2, 53, 56 black social death, 41–43 black solidarity, 105 black subjectivity, xiii, 20, 26, 33 black womanness, xiii–­xiv, 5, 151 black w ­ omen, ix–­xiv, 216n17; Being Mary Jane on, 145, 148–151; Blanche on the Lam on, 48–50, 53–54, 58–61, 171, 192n59, 193n62; fantasy fiction and, 145, 151–152; “A Habit of Waste” on, 151–157, 159–160, 162; immigrants, 152; PT blog on, 146–148, 153–154; selves of, 145, 157, 159; Thompson on, 191n31; trauma and, 151–152, 155. See also misogynoir black writers, 192n50; on blackness, 6–7, 13, 33; mystery and detective fiction by, 42, 45–47; romance fiction by, 200n47 Blanche on the Lam (BarbaraNeely), 37–40; on abundant blackness, 34, 40, 43, 45, 47;

Index • 223

on antiblack ste­reo­t ypes, 50–51; on antiblack vio­lence, 52–53, 60; on blackness, 42–43, 49–50, 56, 60, 64; Black No More and, 34, 61–64; on black self, 42–43, 59; on black self-­k nowledge, 53, 56; on black w ­ omen, 48–50, 53–54, 58–61, 171, 192n59, 193n62; fantastical blackness in, 34, 40, 43, 45, 47–50, 52–54, 56, 58, 60–61, 161–162; on police vio­lence, 52–53; on race, gender, and class, 52–54, 58, 60; on race and class, 51–55, 64; on race and gender, 47–50, 64; on racism, sexism, and classism, 34, 39, 52, 64, 161–162, 190n14; on slavers and slavery, 60; on white men, 49–50, 53, 57, 59–61; on white ­women, 57 Blanche White (fictional character), 37–40, 42–43, 45, 47–61, 161–162, 171, 189n11, 192n59 blog, 27, 145–151, 153–154 Brand, Dionne, 11–12, 92, 103–106 Brent, Linda, 130 Brock Akil, Mara, 150 Brown, Michael, 140–141 Brown Girl in the Ring (Hopkinson), 35, 93; on black immigrants, 107–108, 112; Canada and Canadianness, 95–96, 99–100, 103, 106–115; on Canadian blackness, 97, 99–100, 106–115; Canadian multiculturalism and, 102–103, 106, 108, 114; fantastical blackness in, 95–97, 99, 106–115, 162; fantasy, science fiction and, 96–97, 99, 114–115; on Trinidad and Trinidadians, 34–35, 96, 108–109 Buckell, Tobias, 35–36, 162–163, 165–171 Butler, Kim, 70–71, 90, 196n1, 198n22 Butler, Octavia, ix–­xiv, 16, 18, 175n3, 176n5 Calhoun, John C., 41 Canada: African immigrants to, 104–105; antiblackness in, 98; black being in, 112, 115; black immigrants in, 98, 104–105, 107–108, 112–113, 152, 206n30; Ca­rib­bean and, 108–109; Ca­rib­bean immigrants to, 96, 104–105, 107, 156; citizenship in, 107–108; enslaved Africans in, 104; enslaved black p­ eople in, 98; immigrants to, 96, 98, 102, 104–105, 107–113, 152, 155–159, 208n78; Jamaican immigrants to, 104, 111–112; languages of, 100–103;

multiculturalism in, 35, 96–103, 106, 108, 114–115, 204n19; race and racism in, 96–97, 100–101, 103–104, 106–108 Canadian blackness, 32, 97–100, 104–115, 156 Canadian Multiculturalism Act, 96–103, 106, 108 Canadianness, 95–96, 102–115, 154–155, 160 Ca­rib­be­an: African spirituality and, 109, 114; blackness in, 32; Canada and, 108–109; race in, 169; Waiting in Vain on, 68–69, 72, 78, 82–90 Ca­rib­bean Americans, 85 Ca­rib­bean diaspora, 11–12, 71, 75, 82–83, 86–87, 89, 208n73 Ca­rib­bean immigrants, to Canada, 96, 104–105, 107, 156 Ca­rib­be­anness, 68–69 Carrington, André M., 8, 31–33, 175n3 category fictions: black characters and cultures, in early, 7; blackness and slavery in, 12–13; by black writers, “unspeakable” black being in, 18–19; fantastical blackness in, 12–13, 17, 33–34; hyperbole in, 23; readers of, 16; social concerns ­imagined in, 7; on white fears, 6. See also genre fictions Caucasian, 10 Chandler, Raymond, 46–47 Channer, Colin, 34–35, 65–66, 82–83. See also Waiting in Vain (Channer) Chappelle, Dave, 95 chattel slavery, 11, 93, 171 citizenship, 14, 28, 64; Canadian, 107–108; immigrants and, 126; privileges of, whiteness and, 124, 126; U.S., 9–10, 41–42, 46, 124 Clarke, Austin, 103–104, 205n22 class: gender, black and, 45–47; gender, race and, 46–47, 52–54, 58, 60, 64; race and, 51–56, 64, 72, 135; U.S. whiteness and, 41, 135; in Waiting in Vain, e-­commentary on, 86 classism, 48, 53, 61; racism, sexism and, 34, 39, 52, 64, 161–162, 190n14 Clerge, Orly, 215n104 Clifton, Lucille, xiii, 1–2, 144 Clinton, George, 186n111 Coates, Ta-­Nehisi, 1, 170–171 colonialism, 72, 152–153 colonization, 11, 77

224 • Index

Commander, Michelle, 30–31, 33 Cora (fictional character), 35, 119–123, 126–143, 162, 211nn21–22, 214n98 Crooks, Robert, 46, 60, 194n87 Cullors, Patrisse, 2 cultural identity, 9, 77, 90 Cynthia (fictional character), 35–36, 153–160 Dash, Julie, 163–165, 180n19 ­Daughters of the Dust, 164 Dawn (Butler, O.), 176n5 defamiliarization, 5, 7, 108, 145, 151 “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse” (Butler, K.), 70–71 Delany, Samuel R., 175n3, 176n5 Dery, Mark, 25–26 detective fiction, x, 28, 45–48, 50, 56; black characters in, 42, 192n59; on segregation and crime, 60 Diary of Anne Frank, The (Frank), 130 diaspora: African, 7, 19, 26, 29–31, 36, 41, 64, 96, 109, 111, 165; black, 31–32, 105–106; black being in, 15, 162, 165; Butler, K., on, 70–71, 90, 196n1, 198n22; Ca­rib­bean, 11–12, 71, 75, 82–83, 86–87, 89, 208n73; identity formation in, 76; Jamaican/ Ca­rib­bean, 71, 75, 85–89; Jamaican self in, 66, 68–69, 72, 85 diasporic blackness, 2, 7–8, 13–14, 18, 43, 103–104, 162 diasporic black self, 35, 70–75 diasporization, 70, 75–76 Diaz, Junot, 33 disruptive blackness, 42, 94–95, 136 Doro (fictional character), xi–­xiii Drumming, Neil, 26–27, 186n111 Ellison, Ralph, 92, 97 En­g lish, Daylanne K., 26, 46, 175n3, 190n20, 191n41; on BarbaraNeely and Mosley, 190n15; on black writers, of crime novels, 192n50; on Blanche on the Lam, 193n65; on Blanche White, 189n11 enslaved African ­people, 9, 11–13, 93, 95, 104, 124–126, 166 enslaved black p­ eople, 27, 98, 131, 134, 138, 141, 166 enslavement, 11, 124, 137, 140 enslavers, 11, 60, 120, 138, 167 Erhart, Julie, 163, 164

fabulist fiction, 23 Fanon, Frantz, 77, 116 fantastical blackness, xiv, 1–2, 6; African diaspora and, 36; Afrofuturism and, 25; antiblackness and, 2, 4, 93; black diaspora and, 105–106; in Black No More, 61–62; black politics and, 93–97; black self and, 12, 161–162; in Blanche on the Lam, 34, 40, 43, 45, 47–50, 52–54, 56, 58, 60–61, 64, 161–162; in Brown Girl in the Ring, 95–97, 99, 106–115, 162; Canadian blackness and, 106–114; in category fictions, 12–13, 17, 33–34; ­doing, 25–28; as extraliterary activist strategy, 8; in genre fictions, 4–5, 15, 18, 23, 27, 32–34, 162; in “A Habit of Waste,” 35–36, 145, 151–160; imagining, 7–8, 12–13, 15–16, 33, 70–75; Iton on, 13–14, 20–23; Kanazawa blog and, 151; in national imaginary, 99; slavery and, 9, 13–14; in “Spurn Babylon,” 35–36, 162–163, 169, 171; in TUR, 35, 119–123, 126–129, 138, 140, 143, 162; in Waiting in Vain, 67–68, 70–75, 78–91 fantasy fiction, 23–24, 117, 141, 163, 166, 204n18; black w ­ omen and, 145, 151–152; fantastical blackness in, 169; misogynoir and, 145, 151; romance fiction and, 73–74, 76; science fiction and, 24, 96–97, 99, 114–115 Fitzgerald, David, 206n26 Flight to Canada (Reed), 183n66 Forbes, Curdella, 68, 197n6 formerly enslaved ­people, 104, 131, 133 “Four ­Women,” 16 Frank, Anne, 130 fugitivity: transgressive, 119; in TUR, 119–121, 126–127, 130, 138, 142; ungovernable, 35, 119 futurist fiction, 23–24 Garcea, Joseph, 98–99, 103, 114–115 Garza, Alicia, 2 gender: blackness and, 81; class, black and, 45–47; class, race and, 46–47, 52–54, 58, 60, 64; national identity and, 84; race and, 7, 48–50, 111, 146; in Wild Seed, xi–­xiii genocide, 121, 134, 136 genre: black, class, gender and, 45–47; fan-­generated forms and, 31–32;

Index • 225

multigenre, 35–36, 126, 151, 162; Whitehead on, 117–118; work of, 163–165 genre fictions, 63; black characters, in early, 7; black experience and, 5; by black writers, blackness in, 7, 33; fantastical blackness and, 4–5, 15, 18, 23, 27, 32–34, 162; Grossman on, xi; hyperbole in, 24; in imaginings of blackness, 16–25; literary fiction and, 117, 176n6; mixed, 117, 141, 161–162; race and gender in, 7; white patriarchy and, 6–7 genre tele­vi­sion, 8, 32 Glass, Ira, 186n111 gothic romance, 17–18, 123, 182n62 Grey ­Album, The (Young), 29–30, 187n120 Gross, Ka­li, 216n17 Grossman, Lev, xi, 2, 16, 47 Gumshoe Amer­i­ca (McCann), 28 “Habit of Waste, A” (Hopkinson): on black body, 145, 152, 155–157, 159–160; on black ­women and black womanness, 151–157, 159–160, 162; fantastical blackness in, 35–36, 145, 151–160; on immigrants to Canada, 152, 155–159; on misogynoir, 151, 154 Hall, Stuart, 77, 90 Haney López, Ian, 10 Hard-­Boiled (Smith, E.), 177n7 Harris, Wilson, 18, 92 Harris-­Perry, Melissa, 216n17 Hartman, Saidiya, 161 Heavy (Laymon), 34, 43–45 Henwood, Dawn, 103 Himes, Chester, 46–47 Hoetink, Harry, 169, 220n28 hooks, bell, 3, 10, 18, 149, 183n74 Hopkinson, Nalo, 23–24, 26–27. See also Brown Girl in the Ring (Hopkinson); “Habit of Waste, A” (Hopkinson) Howard, Jonathan, 182n58 ­human: black humanity and, 8, 15; slave and, 18–19, 93, 120–121 Humphries, Jill M., 72 Hurricane Katrina, 94–95 hyperbole and hyperbolic, xiv, 1–2, 4–5, 16, 23–24, 28, 33–34, 115, 180n17 identity formation, 76–77, 89–90 imaginable black being, 18, 23, 33

imaginable selves, xiv imaginable truths, of blackness, 1, 12, 20, 23, 53, 93, 112 Imarisha, Walidah, 152 immigrants, 85–86; of African descent, 72, 104–105; black, 98, 104–105, 107–108, 112–113, 152, 154, 157, 206n30; to Canada, 96, 98, 102, 104–105, 107–113, 152, 155–159, 208n78; Ca­rib­bean, 96, 104–105, 107, 156; citizenship and, 126; Jamaican, 104, 111–112; Trinidadian, 152, 154–155, 158–159 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Brent), 130 In Search of the Black Fantastic (Iton), 13, 20, 94 international migration, 97–98 intersectionality, 11–13 In the Wake (Sharpe), 13–15, 40–43, 64, 161, 180n20, 194n101 Iton, Richard, 37, 93, 184n91; on black fantastic, 13–14, 20–23; on formal politics, 97; on popu­lar media, 20–23, 46, 94–95 “I/We” (Rucker), 18 Jackson, Lauren Michele, 181n41 Jamaica: slavery and, 4, 72; Smith, F., on novels about, 196n2; ste­reo­t ypes about, 81; in Waiting in Vain, 34–35, 66–69, 72, 75–91 Jamaican/Ca­rib­bean diaspora, 71, 75, 85–89 Jamaican immigrants, to Canada, 104, 111–112 Jamaicanness, black, 66–69, 72, 75–78, 87–91, 162 Jamaican self-­in-­diaspora, 66, 68–69, 72, 85 Jemisin, NK, 177n9 Jones, Robert Jr., 181n41 Kachka, Boris, 140–141 Kanazawa, Satoshi, 146–151, 153–154, 216n15, 217n27 Karim, Karim H., 99–100, 102–103 Kindred (Butler, O.), 176n5 Kumanyika, Chenjerai, 41, 71–72, 179n5, 212n45 Lara, Maurine, 11–12 Lavender, Isaiah III, 175n3, 195n127 Laymon, Kiese, 34, 40–45, 64

226 • Index

Li, Stephanie, 118, 210n7, 211n22, 214n98 literary fiction, genre fictions and, 117, 176n6 literary forms: popu­lar, 1, 23, 27; racial discourse and, 2; TUR and, 117–123, 141 London School of Economics (LSE), 148 Lyubansky, Mikhail, 217n27 magical realism, 117 Maingot, Anthony P., 169, 220n28 Marshall, Paule, 164–165, 168 Martin, Trayvon, 2, 40 masculinity, 68–69, 73–74, 81–82, 139 McCann, Sean, 28–29, 186n114 McWatt, Tessa, 103–104 ­Middle Passage, xii, 12, 166–167, 182n58 mi­grants and migration, international, 97–98 misogynoir, 16, 48; antiblackness and, 145–148; fantasy fiction and, 145, 151; “Habit of Waste, A” on, 151, 154; trauma and, 151–152 mixed-­genre fictions, 117, 141, 161–162 mixed race, 63, 72 Morrison, Toni, xiii, 17, 123, 127, 183n66 Mosley, Walter, 1, 18, 46–47, 103, 175n3, 190n15; on science fiction, 23, 93, 96–97, 145, 151–152, 168–169 Moten, Fred, 1–2, 8–9, 119 multiculturalism: in Canada, 35, 96–103, 106, 108, 114–115, 204n19; Canadian newspapers on, 102; as public philosophy and public policy, 98–99 multigenre, 35–36, 126, 151, 162 mystery fiction, 28, 39–40, 42, 46–48, 56, 141; black characters in, 193n62 Naturalization Act of 1790, 126 NdegéOcello, Me’Shell, 21–22 Newman-­Stille, Derek, 205n23 Nichols, Nichelle, 8, 32 Nottage, Lynn, 3–4 Okorafor, Nnedi, 185n110 Ozawa, Takao, 9–10 Pan-­A fricanism, 30–31 Parliament-­Funkadelic, 186n111 patriarchy: white, 6–7; white supremacist, 3, 10, 149 Perina, Kaja, 146

Perry, Imani, xiii, 1–2, 5 Peterson, Latoya, 147 Philip, M. NourbeSe, 18–20, 27, 93–95 Phillips, Kathy, 47 Playing in the Dark (Morrison), 123, 127 Plihcik, Suzanne, 125–126 Poe, Edgar Allan, 192n59 poetry, 93–94 police vio­lence, 52–53, 140–141 popu­lar literary fictions, 4; blackness in, 5, 15–16, 23, 27–28; slavery in, 16–17 popu­lar literary forms: on blackness in the Amer­i­cas, 23; depictions of blackness in, 27; repre­sen­ta­tions of blackness in, 1 popu­lar media, 29; Iton on, 20–23, 46, 94–95 post-­apocalyptic dystopia, 107 post-­civil-­rights era, 20 Prince, Althea, 105–106 Psy­chol­ogy ­Today (PT), 146–151, 153–154, 216n15 Punch, John, 41, 125–126 queer blackness, 11–12 queer studies, Eurocentric, 11 race: black body and, 152; blackness, whiteness and, 9; blackness and, 13; in Canada, 96–97, 100–101, 103–104, 106–108; in Ca­rib­bean, 169; citizenship and, 124, 126; class and, 51–56, 64, 72, 135; crime and, African-­A merican fiction on, 45–46; gender, class and, 46–47, 52–54, 58, 60, 64; gender and, 7, 48–50, 111, 146; Kumanyika on, 179n5; mixed race, 63, 72; in romance fiction, 200n47; in U.S., 9–10, 48, 53, 61–64, 124–125; whiteness and, 124 raced bodies, 64 Race in American Science Fiction (Lavender), 195n127 Racial Equity Institute (REI), 125 racism: American, 72; antiblack, 18, 29, 32, 48, 63, 147, 161–162; in Canada, 100, 103–104; sexism, classism and, 34, 39, 52, 64, 161–162, 190n14; whiteness and, 124 Radway, Janice A., 65, 73–75, 90, 199n30, 199n32, 199n34, 202n73 Rambsy, Howard II, 187n120 Rankine, Claudia, 3–4 Reading the Romance (Radway), 73–74

Index • 227

Reddy, Maureen, 194n104 Reed, Ishmael, 183n66 Reid, Michelle, 208n73 Robson, John, 102–103 romance fiction, x, 34–35, 72, 80–84, 86, 89; black identity in, 91; by black writers, 200n47; fantasy and, 73–74, 76; gothic, 17–18, 123, 182n62; Radway on, 65, 73–75, 90, 199n30, 199n32, 199n34, 202n73; urban romantica, 66, 74–75, 90–91 Ross, Diana, 53–54 Rucker, Ursula, 18 Rutledge, Gregory, 23–24 Sag Harbor (Whitehead), 117–118 Saunders, Charles, 23 Scene on Radio, 71–72, 180n18 Schalk, Sami, 200n47 Schuyler, George, 34, 61–64, 195n127 science fiction, ix–­x; black consumers of, 32; black experience and, 5, 31; blackness and, 31–32; fantasy and, 24, 96–97, 99, 114–115; Mosley on, 23, 93, 96–97, 145, 151–152, 168–169; whiteness of, 31–32 seeing black, 7, 40, 53, 161–163, 180n18 “Seeing White” podcast, 41, 62, 71–72, 124–126, 130, 180n18 Senna, Danzy, 62 sexism, 34, 39, 52, 64, 161–162, 190n14 Sharpe, Christina, 3, 29, 169; In the Wake by, 13–15, 40–43, 64, 161, 180n20, 194n101 short story, 28, 152, 154–155 Simone, Nina, 16 slave: black and, 11–12, 120–122, 126, 141, 168, 176n4; ­human and, 18–19, 93, 120–121; racial science and, 124; TUR on, 117, 119–123, 129, 132, 138, 140–142; vio­lence against, 10–11, 19, 133, 142 slavery, 152; Afrofuturism and, 27; afterlife of, 13–14; blackness and, 8–9, 11–13; Blanche on the Lam on, 60; chattel, 11, 93, 171; fantastical blackness and, 9, 13–14; Jamaica and, 4, 72; in popu­lar fictions, 16–17; Punch and, 125–126; social death and, 9, 11; in “Spurn Babylon,” 35–36, 163, 166–171; in TUR, 35, 117–119, 122–123, 127–140, 142–143; whiteness and, 121, 126, 133–134, 136, 142; white privilege, white supremacy and, 9–11; Wild Seed on, x–xi, xiii; Zong! on, 93, 95

Smith, Erin, 28–29, 177n7 Smith, Faith, 67, 70, 196n2 social death, 1, 9, 11, 41–43, 170 Soitos, Stephen F., 177n7, 192n49, 193n66 Speculative Blackness (Carrington), 32 “Spurn Babylon” (Buckell), 35–36, 162–163, 165–171 Star Trek, 8, 31–32 steampunk, 117 ste­reo­t yped blackness, 123, 134–135 suspense fiction, 117, 141, 210n8 Sutherland, George, 10 Tal, Kalí, 23–24 Thind, Bhagat Singh, 9–10 This American Life, 186n111 Thompson, CaShawn, 191n31 thriller fiction, 117, 141, 210n8 Ti-­Jeanne (fictional character), 96, 100, 106–112 Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha, 7, 11–15, 25, 181n25 Tometi, Opal, 2 Traces, Codes, and Clues (Reddy), 194n104 transatlantic slave trade, 9, 82–83; Afro-­ Atlantic flights and, 31; Afrofuturism and, 26–27; antiblack narratives of, 26; ­Middle Passage, xii, 12, 166–167; Wild Seed on, x–­xi; in Zong!, 18–20 transgressive fugitivity, 119 transnationalism, 98 Trinidad and Trinidadians, 34–35, 96, 108–109, 152, 155–156, 158 Trinidadian immigrants, 152, 154–155, 158–159 12 Years a Slave, 210n7 Uhura (fictional character), 8, 32 Under­g round Railroad, The (TUR) (Whitehead), 116; on black freedom, 136–140; on blackness and whiteness, 119, 121–122, 130–131, 135–136, 139, 142; fantastical blackness in, 35, 119–123, 126–129, 138, 140, 143, 162; formalist intentions for, 117; fugitivity in, 119–121, 126–127, 130, 138, 142; literary form of, 117–123, 141; Sag Harbor and, 117–118; slave and slavery in, 35, 117–123, 127–143; on whiteness, 119, 121, 123, 130–137, 142

228 • Index

ungovernable fugitivity, 35, 119 Union, Gabrielle, 149 United States (U.S.): African-­A merican fiction on, 45–46; African diaspora in, 29–31; blackened consciousness and, 30; black freedom in, 141; blackness in, 20, 32, 49; citizenship, 9–10, 41–42, 46, 124; formal and informal black politics in, 21; Naturalization Act of 1790, 126; race and class in, 48, 53; race and racial categories in, 9–10, 48, 53, 61–64, 124–125; racism, African immigrants and, 72; Schuyler, on “Negro prob­lem” and, 61–63; South, 34; whiteness in, 35, 40–41, 61–63, 119, 123–124, 126, 135, 140; white supremacy, in founding of, 126 unspeakable, the, 18–19, 21, 27–28, 95 urban romantica, 66, 74–75, 90–91 Väätänen, Päivi, 185n110 Vickerman, Milton, 72 Waiting in Vain (Channer): black identity and black self, 34, 66–78, 85, 87–88, 90–91; on black Jamaicanness, 66–69, 72, 76, 87–88, 90–91, 162; blackness in, 68–69, 72, 75–76, 81–82, 90–91; on Ca­rib­bean and Ca­rib­be­anness, 68–69, 72, 78, 82–90; on class, 86; on diasporic self, imagining fantastically, 72, 75; e-­commentaries and online reviews of, 34–35, 65–66, 68–69, 75–87, 89–91, 197n7, 198n11; fantastical blackness in, 67–68, 70–75, 78–91; on immigrants, 85–86; on Jamaica and Jamaicanness, 34–35, 66–69, 72, 75–91, 196n2; on masculinity, 68–69, 73–74, 81–82; new aesthetic criteria and, 66–69; as urban romantica, 66, 74–75, 90–91 wake work, 14, 41–42 weblog, 27, 145–151, 153–154 Wekker, Gloria, 182n45 West, Kanye, 94–95 West Indians, 67, 69–70, 93–84, 206n30 Wheatley, Phillis, 29, 187n118

Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root (Hopkinson), 24 white: black and, 41, 125–126, 132, 134–135, 142, 163, 165; Caucasian and, 10; f­ ree and, 170–171 white fears, 6 Whitehead, Colson, 35, 116–118, 164; on police vio­lence, 140–141. See also Under­g round Railroad, The (TUR) (Whitehead) white imagination, 2–4 white men and white maleness, 49–50, 53, 57, 59–61, 127, 142 whiteness: blackness and, 9, 31–32, 42, 119, 121–123, 130–131, 135–136, 139, 163; Black No More on, 61–63; Caucasian and, 10; citizenship and, 124, 126; class and, 41, 135; elite status of, 45, 49–50, 53, 56–57, 59–61, 136; imagination of itself, 2; privileges of, 1–4, 9–11, 40, 42, 124, 126, 133, 135, 169; race, racism and, 124; of science fiction, 31–32; slavery and, 121, 126, 133–134, 136, 142; TUR on, 119, 121, 123, 130–137, 142; in U.S., 35, 40–41, 61–63, 119, 123–124, 126, 135, 140 white patriarchy, 6–7 white supremacist patriarchy, 3, 10, 149 white supremacy, 1–3, 6–7, 152; slavery and, 9–11; terror, 12, 123; in U.S. nation, founding, 126; vio­lence against black ­people and, 13 white w ­ omen, 57, 154 “whitey-­man” (fictional character), 35–36, 162–163, 165–171 whitish and whitishness, 35–36, 169 Wilderson, Frank B., III, 8–13, 181n30 Wild Seed (Butler, O.), ix–­xiv, 16 Wong, Lloyd, 98 Wynter, Sylvia, 4 “You Know ­You’re West Indian If . . .” (Smith, F.), 67, 70 Young, Kevin, 29–30, 33, 187n118, 187n120 Zong! (Philip), 18–20, 93–95

About the Author teaches Anglophone Ca­rib­bean and African diaspora lit­ er­a­tures at Boston College, where she is also a core faculty member in the African and African Diaspora Studies Program. Her research interests include con­temporary pop­u ­lar/speculative fiction (fantasy, science fiction, horror, thriller/suspense, detective/police procedural, mystery), lit­er­a­tures of the African diaspora, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, and narratives of migration. She is the author of “Colón Man a Come”: Mythographies of Panamá Canal Migration and articles published in peer-­reviewed journals and anthologies. RHONDA  D. FREDERICK