Ta-Nehisi Coates

When a truly harrowing story reads like dreamy and immersive poetry, it can be a little bit jarring, but cognitive dissonance may be Ta-Nehisi Coates's goal here. After all, The Water Dancer is about fragmentation—fragmented memory, fragmented identity, fragmented land, and fragmented family. The book follows Hiram, a boy torn between two worlds. His mother is a slave in Virginia, but he can't remember her, and his father is his white master. Gifted with a photographic memory, Hiram sees his intelligence as his ticket to a better life. His ensuing journey is thrilling and poignant.

The narrative doesn't offer optimism on a systemic or political level, which is unsurprising given how Coates—like many others active in the field of Critical Race Theory—is sometimes skeptical of hope (with good reason). This suspicious view of hope and progress is highlighted by the fact that in the story, civil rights seem to be eroding from one generation to the next. Hiram's father is no beacon of abolitionist thought, but he at least wants to believe he's making an effort to help his slaves, even if his motives are mostly to assuage his own guilt. His son, on the other hand, Hiram's brother, has no qualms whatsoever with slavery. This regression can be seen as a microcosm for what has happened in the United States for decades: one step forward followed by two steps back. It's a cynical view of civil rights, though accurate.

However, on an individual level, the novel does shed some of its cynicism in order to celebrate familial and community bonds. It also celebrates various forms of resistance, whether successful or not. Therefore, while the story is dark, jaded, and heartbreaking in ways that might be difficult for some readers to digest, it is also fiercely and radically humanizing.… (meer)