Nalo Hopkinson‘s Brown Girl in the Ring (1998) has been in my “to be read” pile for a while. I can say I’m really glad I got to it, as it’s a very solid, enjoyable, and well-executed bit of YA fiction.
Most notably, it captures a cultural mix of Caribbean immigrant communities with integrity and skill, managing to simultaneously embrace a wide variety of linguistic slang and patois without ever veering towards being unreadable to outsiders (like me). The protagonist is a young, 3rd generation immigrant, abandoned in a post-apocalyptic Toronto to the care of her grandmother, who is struggling to carry on herb traditions in a strange land with strange plants.
That is complicated by the particular flavor of apocalypse: in this case, a plague that led to a near total abandonment of the city center in favor of the distant exurbs. The vacuum of social power has been filled by a mixture of barter exchanges between individuals and the inevitable rise of various petty crime lords, fueled by the sale of a highly addictive, new narcotic.
The current ruler of the area has an extra power at his disposal, however: a literal zombie, created through a set of Vodun rituals. The version of Vodun presented is sophisticated enough to pass my filters, but not so much as to overwhelm those less familiar with the practices, and the challenges of the protagonist to accept, learn, and take advantage of her heritage are well drawn and engaging.
It’s not a profound book, but it is a very enjoyable one.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
The patois thing. In order to do it well, you really have to know the source language, and have it roll through your brain quite naturally. It’s not just a matter of sprinkling some terms and phrases into the text.