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Dr. Greenberg CSULA 510 Gothic Novel Dean Ramser

Where is the White Racism in Afro Caribbean Science Fiction Writer Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring?

"I don't like movies when they don't have no niggers in 'em. I went to see, I went to see "Logan's Run,"

right. They had a movie of the future called "Logan's Run." Ain't no niggers in it. I said, well white folks

ain't planning for us to be here. That's why we gotta make movies. Then we['ll] be in the pictures."

--Richard Pryor in "Black Hollywood"

from Richard Pryor: Bicentennial Nigger (1976)

To frame the complications of a post- colonial, post-holocaust, futuristic fiction, science fiction,

African diasporic, Afro-Caribbean, Caribbean, Gothic, magic realist, and speculative fiction, suggests that

the identity of a piece of literature is as problematic as the identity of the author of that writing. In looking

at Nalo Hopkinson‟s novel Brown Girl in the Ring one finds those identities and several more: feminist,

Marxist, dystopia, anti-imperialist, Michael Foucault‟s “heterotopias”, folklore, literary, and nationalism.

Hopkinson comments on the history of science fiction in the introduction of So Long Been

Dreaming - “Arguably one of the most familiar memes of science fiction is that of going to foreign

countries and colonizing the natives, and as I‟ve said elsewhere, for many of us, that‟s not a thrilling

adventure story: it‟s non-fiction, and we are on the wrong side of the strange-looking ship that appears out

of nowhere. To be a person of color writing science is to be under suspicion of having internalized one‟s

colonialization.

In this context of external identities and internal voice in Brown Girl in the Ring, I pose the

question of where is the expected white racism in this Afro-Caribbean fiction? What does it mean for a

piece of writing to exist outside the of the traditional binary of white racism and black oppression?

Where is the significance of the Middle Passage, an important component of the modern diasporic

narrative? What I find interesting is the appearance of rewriting history through omission in the future

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setting of the story. It suggests possible narratives based on scientific logic in a speculative fictionalized

world (Novum theory- Darko Survin).

Thus stated, there are other forces at play in the drama – the song game (novel’s title) of

sexually nuanced mimicry in which children can rehearse adult courtship behavior in a socially approved

situation. What can be said about the fun circular dance game, in which one dancer is in the center of

the circle “who shares the dance briefly” and then is replaced by their replacement: “Brown Girl has

been reported as a favorite in Trinidad, Tobago, St. Kitts, Anguillas, and Jamaica, but not in the United

States nor elsewhere in the English-speaking world. Apparently, it is a genuinely original contribution by

Caribbean children” (Lomax). How does the role play mirror our protagonist T-Jeanne’s struggles with

her on/off boyfriend and father to her child? Like the game, it is continuous.

There is the atmosphere of “future text” authors, such as Ismael Reed, “we will make our own

future text,” and “and into post now/ post new” Amiri Baraka. Alondra Nelson explores future texts ,

acknowledging that Forecasts of a utopian (to some) race free future and pronouncement of the

dystopian digital divide are the predominant discourses of blackness and technology in the public

sphere.”

The relationship between technology and black identity is “constructed Blackness [in that Black

identity] gets constructed as always oppositional to technologically drives chronicles of progress. When

looking at the role of technology in Brown Girl in the Ring what is striking to me is not the proficiency of

medicine in the Burn, but rather the power of the Obeah in the family. The power struggle is about the

magic, not about the medicine or technology. This dynamic Lee Skallerup draws on in her essay Re-

Evaluating Survin: Brown Girl in the Ring, “the narrative focuses on minority communities in futuristic

inner-city Toronto, which have been cut off from the suberbs. Hopkinson, however, takes this dystopic

vision infuses it with elements of her own Afro-Caribbean heritage, a heritage that includes Magic. Magic

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plays an essential role in the narrative, and provides the force necessary to overcome the dystopic

situation […] Hopkinson‟s novel challenges the perceived notion of both dystopic and science fiction.”

Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert's essay "Colonial and postcolonial Gothic: the Caribbean" frames the

Obeah as part of the narrative, per other critics, yet in Halo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring though

African-derived magicoreligious practice is thematic in the post Holocaust novel, there appears to be an

absence of the white/black racism one might expect from Caribbean literature. Instead there is a class war,

partially by the privilege class's manipulation of the oppressed, and partially by those with power against

those without; and that power includes Obeah. How do contemporary issues of race, ethnicity, and gender

become free to operate within the multiplicity of themes in the [Gothic Magic Realism Science Fiction]

"speculative fiction" by Hopkinson? Her novel has many themes, but the white/black conflict appears to

be represented by a power struggle. Is this because the novel is futuristic Sci-Fi?

The battle between magic and science overshadows and almost romanticizes the friction between

other binaries. There is friction between heritage (or kinship) versus the controlling political forces. There

is friction between the male identity as represented by gang boss Rudy (and Ti-Jeanne‟s boyfriend Tony)

contesting the strength of female identity (Mami Gros-Jeanne and Ti-Jeanne). In Furistic Fiction &

Fantasy Gregory E. Rutledge states that these binary opposition‟s paradigm are reflective of the dual

(double) consciousness in the novel. Code-switching by Gros-Jeanne, the multiple identities of Ti-Jeanne

(mother, daughter, lover, and woman), and the link between Otherness and the otherworld phenomenon of

both fantasy and futuristic fiction is something with which many persons of African descent may identity.

In addition to the binary conflicts, and multiple identities, what happens in Brown Girl in the Ring is the

genre blurring. Tom Moylen states in Skallerup‟s essay, “By self-reflexively borrowing „specific

conventions from other genres‟, critical dystopias more often „blur‟ the received boundaries of the

dystopias form and thereby expand rather than diminish its creative potential for critical expression.”

This blurring of those identities I mentioned at the start of the paper is what I believe supports the novel‟s

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ability to operate outside of the paradigm of white racism often associated with fiction containing African

descent characters, themes, and/or written by an African descent author. This multiplicity of identities

complicates the old paradigms, as suggested by Peter G. Stillman, “critical dystopias provide a new world

in which the familiar is defamiliarized by being presented outside the dominant interpretive paradigms

from a new perspective and in a novel context.” Whereas Skallerup asserts that “magical aspects of the

neo-dystopias defamilarizes the reader”, I posit that the absence of the white racism structure is what truly

disrupts the reader.

The avalanche of Afro-Caribbean cultural identities in Brown Girl in the Ring is what pushes

away and forces out the typically dominant white culture. At the start of the novel, Douglas Baines, a

member of the dominant white culture, is attempting to persuade Rudy to procure a human heart from the

inner recess of the Burn area: “Baines had obviously never ventured into Rudy‟s neighborhood before.”

The stark contrast between the two characters, between the two cultures, between the two political

discourses, is obvious. It is in this dialogue that white racism is hinted at, winked at, but ultimately is

pushed out of the inner circle of the primary characters conflict. As with the song dance Brown Girl in the

Ring, white racism is pushed to the outer sphere of importance so the residing drama can play out:

“Baines sat, fiddling nervously with the case of his palm book, “We need a heart,” he repeated. For, ah,

an experiment. We‟re hoping that your people can help locate one.” Here we see not only Baines‟s

struggle to dominant Rudy, but we see the implied view he has of “your people” as a group, a tribe, with

Rudy as a spokesperson able to communicate with “them” and represent “them.”

I suggest that this action by Hopkinson is fairly radical („subversive‟ to use her words), given that

“before the emergence of the Black Futuristic Fiction & Fantasy tradition in the 1960‟s, the radical

politics of the society at large exerted a strong influence on the publication policies of the industry. Not

only were there no Black authors, but Black characters were a rarity”(Rutledge). This phenomenon was

not restricted to literature. In the film industry that I worked in for thirty years, Black actors, directors,

writers, crew, and producers was a rarity. CSULA‟s Pan-African professor Melvin Donalson‟s book

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Black Directors in Hollywood (2005) can attest to this fact. Black “urban” film production increased

during the first decade of this century, but always with white racism shadowing the themes: think of the

film “Crash‟(2004). Whereas this paper is focused on Hopkinson, the wave of Black writers (without

white racism) speculating on a utopian world where characters operate outside of the old European-

Imperialistic-Colonialist-Plantation dominance. Rutledge goes at great length to understand this

phenomenon, identifying the historical and social forum limiting Black identity – rejection of texts based

on Black characters; science alienating Black humanity; Black authors attempting to operate outside of

racial identity (labeled “passing”), think James Weldon Johnson.

Certainly the use of “magic,”or Obeah is a strong theme in Brown Girl in the Ring, as is Black

feminism. Ti-Jeanne asserts agency, learning medical skills (science), motherland, and she learns “the

African powers, child. The spirits, The Loas. The Orishas. The oldest ancestors”(126). This acquisition of

“magic” is prompted when she has visions, which her Mami Gros-Jeanne recognizes as a sign that “your

education starts now”(48). Ti-Jeanne learns from watching her Mami transform as she communicates with

the spirit world. This power is inherited; it is part of her family (96-97). Tony, on the other hand has

limited access to the spirit world. This is due partially because “he was city boy, had been born in Port of

Spain, Trinidad; bustling capital, and had come to Toronto when he was five. He‟d probably never

handled a farm animal”(84). He proves himself humorously incapable of capturing the chicken for the

ritual to call forth the spirits to help with the battle Ti-Jeanne is beginning to wage.

The use of magic provokes security and passage, even though Rudy misused it. Mami explains to

Ti-Jeanne the history of magic, while simultaneously keeping white racism outside the experience: “From

since slavery days we people get in the habit of hiding we business from we own children even, in case a

child open he mouth and tell somebody story and get them in trouble. Secrecy was survival, oui?”(50).

It is possible to frame Brown Girl in the Ring with the postcolonial Gothic lens. Philip Holden

posits that ghosts (spirits in Hopkinson‟s novel), are used to “challenge the dominant humanist discourse”

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(354). The spirits and magic are used by characters to challenge and create the power structure. Rudy uses

the power to create his own empire of thugs/zombies. Gros-Jeanne and Ti-Jeanne use the power to

subvert Rudy‟s power structure. What occurs could be argued as a “particular brand of colonial politics

[that] works toward constructing differences”(354). Earlier I wrote about the blurring of identities and

themes because of the multiplication. Holden reasserts that “the issue of Gothic Studies devoted to the

Post-Colonial Gothic…the Gothic „is, and always has been, post-colonial „ in that the Gothic elements in

colonial texts have the capacity to corrupt, to confuse or redefine the boundaries of power, knowledge and

ownership”(354).

Rutledge interviewed Nalo Hopkinson in 1999 for African American Review. In the talk

Hopkinson acknowledges how other authors, like Octavia Butler and Samuel Delaney (“Chip”)

successfully challenged existing paradigm for „speculative fiction.‟ She notes that “science fiction has

always been a subversive literature. It‟s been used to critique social systems well before the marketing

label of sf got stuck on it” (591). In reference to the absence of white racism, I think Hopkinson‟s

comment on Walter Mosley‟s view speaks volumes: “Excellence in the work of black writers is judged by

how well we write about „being black in a white world‟, which is obviously only one part of our lived

experience.”

When we look at the conflict in Brown Girl in the Ring, its paradigm flips white racism out of the

universe of this community. Each character operates autonomously, without an overt binary relationship

to the white structure. This is significant, I think. Hopkinson comments on how a writer‟s retreat she was

attended even suggested that she include some of the dominant white culture‟s idiom, so as to not alienate

some white readers. Certainly the white structure existed, exists, yet my hunch is that it is not essential to

good writing to include discourses from the dominant European culture. Hopkinson comments, “When I

read the work of African American realist writers, there‟s always the awareness of the white world in

which the characters live; there has to be if the fiction is representative of the real world”(592).

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Obviously the enormity of the inhumanity of colonial slavery and cultural oppression exists. Yet

what Hopkinson does strikes me as truly avant-garde. She disrupts time, history, place, and space. She

rearranges the existence of characters to create a bold statement. Edward W. Soja asserts in ThirdSpace

that “whenever you read a sentence[of fiction] that empowers history, historicality, or the historical

narrative, substitute space, spatiality, or geography and think of the consequences” (Soja, 182-3).

Hopkinson applies this disruption to her narratives quite successfully through the blurring of multiple

identity themes. She admits that “speculative fiction allows me to experiment with the effects of that

cancerous blot, to shrink it by setting my worlds far in the future (science fiction) or to metonymize it so

that I can explore the paradigms it‟s created (fantasy). I could even choose to sidestep it altogether into

alternate history. Mosley says that sf makes it possible to create visions which will “shout down the

realism imprisoning us behind a wall of alienating culture”” (592).

It is the imaging “our future” that stands the white culture on its head. The white structure exists

as a partition, and not the superstructure of the writing. This is dynamic! It is the operating within and

outside of descriptive [limiting] labels such as “speculative fiction” that Brown Girl in the Ring soars.

The traditional gender politics are there in the story. In Hollywood storytelling paradigms there are three

story lines: boy gets girl; boy loses girl; and boy gets girl back. Yet here Ti-Jeanne transforms, whereas

Tony‟s character suggests that male identity is dependent on female agency. Rudy needs a younger host

body to function. Tony needs Ti-Jeanne and Mami Gros-Jeanne to battle the forces of Rudy. This

suggests, that though there is a traditional story line of character‟s objective contesting the obstacles in

their way, what really is at play in the drama is the disruption of presumptions by this Afro-Caribbean

author. I think it is profound!

In the interview with Alondra Nelson (2002), Hopkinson was asked about the “thinly veiled

metaphor for racial others [in sf] – monsters, and aliens, for example.” She retorted that “white people

[…] we call them pioneers” ignores the existence of Natives who lived „there‟ before it was discovered by

white Europeans. [So] she reconciles her affinity for the genre with its tacit racial politics by writing from

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within the realities of racialized other. We will inhabit, but what will that future mean to us who have a

history of being racialized? …sometimes [I] refuse to write yet another plea to the dominant culture for

justice, and instead [she] simply set[s] the story of the “othered” people front and center and tell about

their [our] lives and their concerns” (101). Hopkinson adds, “I think it‟s vitally important to write about

that [racial slavery and its cruel injustice]. We need to continue writing about it; in fact that‟s one of the

things that the novel that I‟m currently writing is about” (102).

In another interview with Dianne D. Glave (2003) asked Hopkinson about themes of landscape

and environment and her writing: “Brown Girl in the Ring begins on the corner of the street near where I

used to live. I was walking home one night, passed, passed a junkie in a doorway, and he mumbled at me,

“We have to get to know one another better, you know.” That is one of the first lines in Brown Girl in the

Ring [song]. The song‟s thematic connection to the story is evident as characters, primary and distant

(such as spirits) move in and out of the narrative. In the same interview Hopkinson responds to a question

continuing the “primarily by and about white men” construct in sf publishing in general – “science fiction

and fantasy writers have a solid tradition of interrogating that very trope [traveling to strange and exotic

new worlds and colonizing the natives]. And on the topic of subversion of the dominant language

[culture] – “I think code-switching [does that] …sometimes I code-switch, sometimes I don‟t.” For

example, Gros Ti-Jeanne code-switches (to survive) and to dominant, as when she talks with the street

children. The trope of racism in publishing was indicated earlier in the same interview, “understand that

the received wisdom in the science fiction community is that “race doesn‟t matter.” [they are] generally

pretty forward thinking people trying to be color-blind in all that they do so no one gets excluded. That‟s

very important. It‟s a political strategy arrived at inclusivity in a world where to many of us were judged

to be freaks in the regular world, and we don‟t want to ostracize anyone that way” (150-1).

In Dr. Greenberg‟s course The Gothic Novel at California State University, Los Angeles, we

looked at several pieces of fiction, some obviously „Gothic,” and some writing blended the genres. Toni

Morrison‟s Beloved was one of those. Hopkinson commented in the Glave interview “when I read Toni

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Morrison‟s Beloved, she blends African-American women and speculative fiction literature, while

making a powerful statement concerning racism and slavery in the United States” (151). I think that

Brown Girl in the Ring attempts to cover some of the issues Beloved tackled: family, feminism,

matriarchy and patriarchy, colonialism, to name a few:

In Brown Girl in the Ring, my main characters started to come alive for me when I began thinking about what their family and economic configurations might be. It’s common in working-class and poor black communities for the mother to leave her child with her mother while she goes to seek her fortune elsewhere, because the area they’re in is too economically depressed for there to be much opportunity. That’s not exactly what happened with Ti-Jeanne’s mother in Brown Girl in the Ring, but it was the thinking behind the way I set up her family. (153)

Whereas the dynamics of historical change in Beloved was in the magic of the character Beloved, in

Brown Girl in the Ring the change occurs because “something fundamental about the nature

of humans or human understanding has to change. That‟s one of the places where science fiction and

fantasy can be really exciting, where they can envision how that change might come about. Octavia Butler

talks about this a lot in her work” (153). In the interview with Jene Watson-Aifah (2003), the blurring of

identity, genre, talked about earlier is expanded:

When Brown Girl in the Ring came out, a lot of people who are used to conventional science fiction asked

me why I was mixing science fiction with fantasy. My answer has always been that that‟s what you do in

everyday life. You might be a heart surgeon and deal with impressive technology and biology, but you

might say a prayer before you cut into somebody. You don‟t leave out that hope that there is something

bigger than you that can help you along. I think that much of the Western world is sort of embarrassed,

reluctant to talk about the unseen.(168)

This blended narrative of technology and spiritually is part of the subversion occurring in Brown Girl in

the Ring. It challenges the readers‟ position on rarely openly discussed issues. Racism and race are one of

those issues. In “Race and Racism: A Symposium”(1995), Robin D.G. Kelley commented: “A world

where race doesn't matter? Why should this be a difficult thing to imagine? After all, didn't Franz Boas

and others prove that race is just a myth?”

To extend this argument, I include Jillana Enteen‟s "On the Receiving End of the Colonization":'

Nalo Hopkinson's 'Nansi Web

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Recognizing that these social and ideological obstacles span the digital divide, Hopkinson renders visible

the master codes that lie at the foundation of current strategies for technological development that continue

to exclude, disregard, or exploit marginalized peoples. Her rewriting of cyberpunk bridges the chasm by

centering Caribbean descendants and their creolized cultures in her version of a technology-laden

future.(264)

What happens in Brown Girl in the Ring is “blending” as a stylistic device, deliberately disruptive the

standard narratives, not only sf fiction, so that the reader experiences characters [free as possible] of the

colonial baggage that entraps and promulgates old regimes. This is the genius of Nalo Hopkinson‟s

writing technique, as she pushes white racism to the outside of the circle of the communities, and placing

front and center the narrative of the Caribbean story set in a post holocaust Toronto.

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Work Cited

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Enteen, Jillana. "On the Receiving End of the Colonization": Nalo Hopkinson's 'Nansi Web. Science

Fiction Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, Afrofuturism (Jul., 2007), pp. 262-282 PRINT Published by: SF-TH IncStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241525

Hawes, Bess Lomax. Brown Girl in the Ring: An Anthology of Song Games from the Eastern Caribbean.

Pantheon; 1ST edition. New York. 1997. PRINT Hopinson, Nalo. Brown Girl in the Ring. Grand Central Publishing. New York. 1976. PRINT

---Midnight Robber. KINDLE --The New Moon’s arms. KINDLE ---The Salt Roads. KINDLE ---Skin Folks. KINDLE

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Hopkinson, Nalo. “An Interview with Nalo Hopkinson.” Interview by Dianne D. Glave. Callaloo, Vol. 26,

No. 1 (Winter, 2003), pp. 146-159 PRINT Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3300637

Hopkinson, Nalo. “Speaking in Tongues: An Interview with Science Fiction Writer Nalo Hopkinson.”

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Hopkinson, Nalo. “Making the Impossible Possible”: An Interview with Nalo Hopkinson.” Interview by

Alondra Nelson. Social Text, 71 (Volume 20, Number 2), Summer 2002, pp. 97-113 (Article) PRINT PROJECT MUSE March 5, 2011. <http://muse.jhu.edu.mimas.calstatela.edu/journals/social_text/v020/20.2nelson02.pdf> Published by Duke University Press

Hopkinson, Nalo and Uppinder Mehan. Eds. So Long Been Dreaming; Ppostcolonial Science Fiction &

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