Skin Folk

by Nalo Hopkinson

A new collection of short stories from Hopkinson, including "Greedy Choke Puppy," which Africana.com called "a cleverly crafted West Indian story featuring the appearance of both the soucouyant (vampire) & lagahoo (werewolf)," "Ganger (Ball Lightning)," praised by the Washington Post Book World as written in "prose [that] is vivid & immediate," this collection reveals Hopkinson's breadth & accomplishments as a storyteller.

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Horror, Fiction, Science Fiction, Queer, Speculative Fiction

255 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2001

About the author

Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican-born writer and editor who lives in Canada. Her science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories often draw on Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling.

Reviews

[Elle (ellexamines on TT & Substack) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the only thing worse than fear is apathy. Fear makes us do horrible things to people. Apathy makes us allow horrible things to happen to them. When we act in fear, or when we don't act out of empathy, that is when we become the monster.

Oh my god this was brilliant. This short story collection is sci-fi fantasy and has so much to say about gender, and the Gaze, and Nalo Hopkinson's writing is honest to god so good.

I think Hopkinson sums up this collection quite well in this interview:

As a young reader, mimetic fiction (fiction that mimics reality) left me feeling unsatisfied. The general message that I got from it was "life sucks, sometimes it's not too bad, but mostly people are mean to each other, then they die." But, rightly or wrongly, I felt as though I'd already figured that out. I felt that I didn't need to read fiction in order to experience it.

It's a use of fantasy elements as something often horrifying, scary, yes, but something that leads to truth, catharsis, release.

Some quotes in this book that made me go absolutely wild:
Do you like people making you be not real?
The only time we seem to reach each other now is through our skins. So I bought something to make our skins feel more, and it’s still not enough.

I also want to mention before starting these reviews, that I essentially enjoyed every story here: a lot of my four-stars probably could’ve been five stars in any other collection; I just felt weird rating almost every story a five, so I was pickier than I usually would’ve been. My ratings came down to personal taste - I think every single story in this book is worth reading.

➽Riding the Red ★★★★★
About a grandmother, a wolf, the question of which is which, and a repeated story, revolving around each year. A haunting introduction.

➽The Money Tree ★★★★☆
About a sister, a brother, a golden table, a river, and the valuation of human life. This was a cool class discussion.

➽Something to Hitch Meat To ★★★★★
A story about reality and the colonial gaze. This was one of my favorites.

➽Snake ★★★★★
A story about justice. This was a lot. The ending is so good. TW for pedophilia.

➽Under Glass ★★★☆☆
A story about a glass wind. One of the most gorgeously written pieces. I don’t think I really got the message of this.

➽The Glass Bottle Trick ★★★★★
A story about womanhood and the power of ghosts and yes, reminded me a lot of Snake. I know what this was inspired by but I don’t want to say because it’s such a cool takeoff you should experience it. TW, domestic abuse.

➽Slow Cold Chick ★★★★★
A story about a giant bird, queerness, and the voicing of desire. This is so good, one of my absolute favorites.

➽Fisherman ★★★★☆
A story about gender. This is honestly like, 70% porn. The only one with no fantasy elements, but still feels suited to being here?

➽Tan-Tan and Dry Bone ★★★☆☆
A fairy tale-style story set in the world of Midnight Robber. Love Tan-Tan. I don’t think I got this.

➽Greedy Choke Puppy ★★★★☆
A story about greed, vampirism, and the reality of folklore. Very creepy. Relies about 75% on a twist that I saw coming.

➽A Habit of Waste ★★★★☆
A story about skin liminality, the rejection of the body due to racism and the gaze, and realizing your body can still be correct. I liked this one a lot.

➽And the Lillies-Them A-Blow ★★★★☆
A very haunting story about hearing the song of bones, and about different kinds of death.

➽Whose Upward Flight I Love
One page long story about trees. I'm not rating this until a time when I read more flash fiction and attempt to understand it, as a genre.

➽Ganger (Ball Lightning) ★★★★★
A story about a futuristic sex toy and submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known. The gender of it all. This is also like, 70% porn. However, the ending slaps so hard.

➽Precious ★★★★★
A story about being loved vs. being owned. This was one of my favorites in the book and an absolutely perfect ending.

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[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think a short story collection can sometimes be a great introduction to an intriguing author. This was my first Hopkinson book. She is fascinating and a bit "freaky" (freaky as in weird and as in Rick James "Super Freak"). This was a book of short stories ranging from Caribbean folklore, to horror to science fiction. Her stories are sensuous, seductive and yeah a bit salacious as well. She is a gifted storyteller with a command of language many people would appreciate.

Riding the Red - short, rather strange take on Little Red Riding Hood. Some assertion that grandma and the wolf are two sides of the same coin. 3 stars

Money Tree - Great story. A little Caribbean folklore about greed and evolution and destiny. 4 Stars

Something to Hitch Meat To - A strange tale about a young man looking to change his life. Steeped in magical realism, this one was odd. 2.5 stars.

Snake - Disturbed man gets his due at the beaks/wings of birds. Horror story. Subject matter was a bit too much for me (child molester). 1 Star

Under Glass - Hopkinson doeth bring the strange, This was a bizarre tale where glass shards make storms and are part of the weather and kill. A dystopian tale that is unclear whether it was scifi or fantasy. I like the way she writes. very vivid, but I definitely am confused by many of her stories. 3 Stars.

The Glass Bottle Trick- A magical realism story about a controlling self loathing man and his young bride who is expecting. 4 Stars

Slow Cold Chick - Well Hopkinson is definitely out of the box. Her tales are tilted/obtuse. This one was about the embodiment of anger and annoyances and unfilled desires coming to life in the form of a chick hatched from the last edible ingredient for cornbread she was making. Obviously allegorical and strangely entertaining. 4.5 Stars

Fisherman - an odd choice for this collection because it had no fantasy, sci fi or folklore elements. It was just erotic. Basically lesbian porn, but Hopkinson is a very good storyteller. 3.5 Stars

Tan Tan and Dry Bone - Back to some folklore. This tale is more horror than fantasy but lots of folktale elements. Hopkinson has a way of taking ordinary people and putting them in extraordinary situations. 4.5 Stars

Greedy Choke Puppy - A Trinidadian inspired folktale version entities that ingest the life force of people and of the spectre of death. 5 Stars

A Habit of Waste - This one had a more sci fi element than the other stories. A little bit about being comfortable with who you are. I liked it 4.5 Stars

And the Lilies Them a Blow - a reminder that signs of death (lilies) doesn't always portent death of the body. It could be an indication of the end of a dead-end path in life. 4 Stars

Whose Upward Flight I Love - A great example of flash fiction, the title is almost as long as the story. Nice sci fi piece about flying trees and the roots they left behind. Liked it 4.5 Stars

Ganger (Ball Lightning)- futuristic sex toy runs amok teaching a couple to be intimate without accoutrements. Seriously. And it was a good story... 5 Stars

Precious - a folktale about a woman who spit treasure from her mouth when she talked after being put under a spell. It made her wealthy but miserable. She broke the spell eventually by learning to value herself beyond the treasure. 4 Stars

The selection did contain a few stories that I did not like or worse, but on the whole this was an enjoyable read. One theme in several stories was that no good deed goes unpunished until the characters acknowledge their inherent value. A bit of subversive empowerment if you ask me. There is definitely more Hopkinson in my future.

4 Stars

Edited to add: Read the dead tree version from my personal library

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nalo Hopkinson writes with an invigorating imagination, and an impressive breadth of subject matter and approach. These stories alternate between whimsy, horror, eroticism, and modern interpretations of Caribbean folklore. Not every story lands as well as the best of them, but the best of them are wonderful.

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing collection of speculative short stories!

I almost loved this as much as Octavia Butler's collection Bloodchild, which is the best sf/fantasy short story collection ever, in my opinion.

Full review to come on Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian.

Here's the review!

I’ve really been spoilt by fantastic short story collections this summer, and Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson is no exception. When I say fantastic, I mean it in more than one sense: these stories are remarkable, especially wrapped as they are in Hopkinson’s slim but lively prose, but they’re also fantastical: some fairy tales, some fantasy, and some science fiction. If you enjoy language that’s beautiful but gets to the point and surreal but sounds like real people (“crinkling her face like running a fork through molasses”)—you need to pick up Skin Folk. In particular, this book’s diverse settings and characters allow Hopkinson to show off her remarkable command of different dialects. Skin Folk is certainly one of the best collections of fantastic short fiction I’ve ever read, on par with Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild and Other Stories (but happily, with more sex); in fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the best collections of short fiction period that I’ve ever read....

See the whole review here: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wor...

[Bogi Takács]

My review is now online on Tor.com:
https://www.tor.com/2018/08/13/quiltb...

Source of the book: Bought with my own money (Library book sale)

[Jaanaki · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Skin Folk",is an anthology of fifteen short stories based on Caribbean myth,culture ,tradition and folklore .Some of the stories are fabulist ,some have magical realism blended in ,some are based on folklore and some are pure science fiction.I will say that this is the best short story collection I have read this year and I am very happy to have discovered Nalo Hopkinson 😀.
The writing is vivid,intense ,rich and creative . The reader can literally breath these stories.There were actually one or two moments when I caught my breath and found it difficult to continue reading .Sample this -"Beatrice watched the red lumps of flesh part under the knife .Crimson liquid leaked into the cutting board ".After reading ,"Under the glass",I swear I can never look at glass the same way again and I actually felt glass spiking me all over.Her writing is that good.❤️❤️
🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼
What I love most about her writing is that she discusses topics like race,bisexuality,queerness ,cruelty and love courageously with no holds barred in all her stories .All the stories are truly feminist and talks about women in particular. Our fear of growing old,our fear of never being loved properly,our fear of always being taken for granted,the unhealthy relationship most of us have with food (a little extra will make us put in weight😅),our quality of always finding faults with how we look and the repressed sexuality and the danger it holds.All the women in her stories are set free at the end by their individual spirits and the desire to find their own happiness ..
🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼
However,the tricky part is this. I will not recommend Nalo Hopkinson for everyone.If you are a feminist and you are really comfortable with open discussions on female sexuality and LGBTQ literature ,please do not MISS this wonderful writer.I ,for one have already included her "Salt Roads " ,on my TBR this year.

[Lata · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I didn't like all of the stories here, this collection gave me a good sense of Nalo Hopkinson's earlier writing style, and I can't believe it's taken me so long to read her work! Her work ranges from speculative fiction to almost regular fiction, with generous doses of Caribbean folklore, some Canadian flavour, and some somewhat explicit sex. A few of the stories made me uncomfortable, but these left me thinking:
-Snake
-The Glass Bottle Trick
-Slow Cold Chick
-A Habit of Waste
-Fisherman
-Tan-Tan and Dry Bone
-Greedy Choke Puppy
-Precious

[C.S. Malerich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of fantasy's appeal is that it takes you some place unfamiliar. Yet Ursula Le Guin has rightly criticized the bias of much fantasy literature to assume that characters ought to be white and the world ought to look like medieval Europe. Even contemporary fantasy reverts to the European fairy tale model so often that, while Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimms are awesome, I find myself craving something different. So browsing through my library's eBook collection, when the words "Caribbean folklore" caught my eye, I checked out Skin Folk and discovered a skilled & intelligent writer in Nalo Hopkinson.

Like most collections, there are high points and low points, but Hopkinson's writing and imagination are unique and do something I rarely expect from folk tales, with their tried-and-true tropes and near-universal patterns: these stories surprised me. Like, if the Snow Queen took place inside an Etch-a-Sketch. Or orgasm-heightening sex suits became sentient. Or a cockatrice grew out of a fertilized chicken egg and ate the sleazy guy next door. That's the kind of story Hopkinson thinks of and works out.

In some cases, yes, the stories are reworkings of European stories or concepts: Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, the aforementioned Snow Queen and cockatrice. Awesome reworkings and thoroughly unique, though. I'd never, for one, thought about what Red Riding Hood was like for Grandma. In other stories, Caribbean and African figures dominate (fan favorite Anansi makes two appearances), and there are still other stories that are straight-up, near-future sci-fi, like those sentient sex suits. Themes of gender, race, and colonialism loom large here. Female characters are struggling to get along and assert themselves in a patriarchal world; dark-skinned characters deal both with the stereotypes others put on them and with internalized racism--not always successfully. A few of the tales are told in Caribbean dialect, which I know will annoy some readers, but they should probably get over themselves and deal.

The author has lived in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Canada (and a slew of other places I can't recall), which may account for her ability to evoke very different settings and characters who more or less fit into them. Most of the protagonists are misfits and outsiders in some way. There is a lot of the bizarre, the violent, and some explicit sex here. Hopkinson also plays with story structure, switching POV, jumping forward and backward in time, and never quite ending the story where I'd expect the resolution. I'm sure I'll be picking up one of her novels in the future, to see how she handles a sustained narrative. I'll also check out the sci-fi anthology, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Visions of the Future, which she co-edited.

[Kaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing collection. Nalo Hopkinson writes in gorgeous, vivid prose that manages to bring all of her characters and settings to life in only a few pages. My favorite story was "Fisherman," which non-coincidentally was also the queerest story of the collection.

Themes of skin, identity, and appearance play a major role in many of these stories, although the book spans a wide range of ideas and moods - creepy, erotic, hopeful, tragic. There are a number of beautifully ambiguous endings and stories that manage to capture multiple moods at once. Another significant uniting thread is around storytelling and legends (interestingly, this thread also runs through another Canadian book I finished today).

[ambyr · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard for me to say whether the stories in this collection improved as I went along, or whether it just took me a while to grow used to the rhythms of Hopkinson's prose. The first five stories didn't do much for me; I found "Riding the Red" difficult to follow, "Money Tree" too obvious, "Something to Hitch Meat To" rambling, "Snake" cliched, and "Under Glass" too high-concept. But then, suddenly, things started to click. "Slow Cold Chick" and "Chase" both tell a story I've heard before, but with unusual imagination and verve; "Greedy Choke Puppy" satisfyingly mixes sweet and brutal, "Whose Upward Flight I Love" was charming. If I hadn't looked at the copyright page, I'd conclude this was a case of Hopkinson growing as a writer, but all of these stories were written in a fairly narrow span of time. Regardless, I'm glad I powered through the openers and made it to the meat.

[Gabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of fairy tale and folklore re-tellings in a modern form. True to the title the stories deal with characters who try to shed their skins or have to get accustomed to their skins in a metaphorical sense. The contributions range from subtle to explicitly sexual, from horror to SF (in small amounts). Each story is told in a daringly blunt voice, each character is down-to-earth and authentic (even the mystical ones). Nalo Hopkinson's writing style is one I dearly love, freed from prudery or embarrassingly flowery euphemisms when it comes to erotic passages.

Not all stories hit the mark with me, some were quite uncomfortable to read (but not the worse for that … I was just glad that I didn't eat while I was reading them), but most of them had a satisfying take on the respective topic.

My two favourites were "Under Glass", with its beautiful prose and a refreshingly new take on one of H.C. Andersen's famous fairy tales, and "A Habit of Waste", which excelled with its melancholic and thoughtful topic.

A wonderful collection.

[Iryna K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Збірка розповідей, присмачених карибським фольклором, мовою і персонаж_ками.
Розповіді досить різні за жанром - тут є перекази казок, манія, вписана у сучасний світ, трохи фантастичних елементів.
Загалом це був досить незвичайний читацький досвід (у хорошому сенсі), і я спробую систематизувати те,що мені сподобалося:
По-перше, незнайома культура і міфологія (власне, припускаю, що через незнайомість я не прочитала ці тексти так глибоко, як могла б, і тепер хочеться більш системно познайомитися з цим світом)
По-друге, карибська англійська - деякі розповіді написані нею, і це дуже цікаво і гхм автентично? читається. По-третє, кілька розповідей (насамперед Fisherman) дуже квірні, мені прямо сподобалося.
По-четверте, тут дуже незахідна тілесність, колір шкіри та форми, що відрізняються від пропонованих маскульутрою білих худих манекенів, нормалізація цих неманекенних тіл - такого треба більше.
По-п'яте, теми сексизму і расизму, жіночого досвіду, проблематизовані дуже не в лоб, а граційно і тонко.
Інколи читання було повільним, воно не затягує і не тримає тебе в полоні до ранку, поки не закінчиш, але попри це я точно можу порадити цю книжку.

[2TReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hopkinson's stories are always informed by her experiences of a certain time, place, people, and she uses her vivid imagination to craft stories that call forth the familiar, strange, and exhilarating.

It is absolutely impossible to not find oneself drawing parallels from our reality to the scapes and characters within her stories, whether they are joyous, frightening, or otherworldly. These stories incorporate folklore, tales, and songs, superstitions and practices, the mundane and the extraordinary; all wrapped in Hopkinson's imaginative prowess.

Nalo always leaves a piece of herself, her history, culture, her experiences in everything she writes, which makes picking up her works that much easier. I know that I will become immersed in familiarity, that what she writes will reflect what I know and even if it doesn't, she makes it feel a little bit like home.

[Merl Fluin · Rating 3 out of 5]

42 SHORT STORIES IN 42 DAYS*

DAY 8: Riding The Red
The rewriting of "fairy tales" in general and Little Red Riding Hood in particular is a well-worn trope in feminist fiction, but this was really well done – sexy, and darkly mysterious.

*The rules:
– Read one short story a day, every day for six weeks
– Read no more than one story by the same author within any 14-day period
– Deliberately include authors I wouldn't usually read
– Review each story in one sentence or less

Any fresh reading suggestions/recommendations will be gratefully received 📚

[Migdalia Jimenez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't usually like short stories but I absolutely adored this collection by one of my favorite authors, Nalo Hopkinson. In the vein of Octavia Butler, Hopkinson is a able to create wholly original science fiction/fantasy narratives that are rooted deeply in the lives of women of color. The tales in this book range from futuristic stories where racism persists in new forms, modern takes on fairy tales and disturbing narratives that are impossible to forget.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Throughout the Caribbean, under different names, you’ll find stories about people who aren’t what they seem. Skin gives these skin folk their human shape. When the skin comes off, their true selves emerge. They may be owls. They may be vampiric balls of fire. And always, whatever the burden their skins bear, once they remove them—once they get under their own skins—they can fly. It seemed an apt metaphor to use for these stories collectively.

This collection of short stories by Nalo Hopkinson comprises a heady mix of Caribbean folklore, urban fantasy, and outright horror. Very rarely does one find such an intoxicating concoction.

A native of the Caribbean Islands, being the descendant of slaves, is already a historically displaced person. When she moves to a country like Canada, she becomes an immigrant - thus, twice displaced. The myths of the country of her origin, which have already followed her to the Caribbean and transformed to adapt themselves to the new surroundings, changes further to accommodate the sensibilities of her country of residence - and becomes a mirror to the angst of the modern expatriate.

I summarise my evaluation of the individual stories below.

1. Riding the Red: A retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Mildly interesting, but nothing to write home about.

2. Money Tree: A surrealist tale about a sister trying to process her younger brother's disappearance. Well-written, but this is the only story in the collection which didn't really speak to me.

3. Something to Hitch Meat to: A truly weird story where an extremely well-known character from African folklore makes an appearance. I loved it.

4. Snake: Familiar tale of a hunter who suddenly becomes the hunted. A Taste of Your Love by Eddy C. Bertin and Popsy by Stephen King immediately come to mind. Pretty predictable, but a satisfying tale all the same.

5. Under Glass: What did I just read? A weird and surrealistic story which defies understanding, but which still keeps the reader glued to the page.

6. The Glass Bottle Trick: Retelling of a creepy fairy tale from a feminist point of view - with the addition of the 'duppy', a Caribbean spirit.

7. Slow Cold Chick: A familiar beast from European mythology makes a visit to a corner of Canada which has been mysteriously converted to Jamaica, with fantastic results.

8. Fisherman: The only story without a supernatural element in this collection. A powerful portrayal of unbridled sexuality from a woman's point of view.

9. Tan-tan and Dry Bone: Dry Bone is a truly creepy character, built on the lines of Sindbad's 'Old Man of the Sea'. This is a brilliant retelling of a Caribbean folktale.

10. Greedy Choke Puppy: A soucouyant is from Trinidad/ Guyana: the Caribbean equivalent of the vampire myth. She sheds her skin at night, changes into a ball of fire, and sucks out the life from newborns. A straightforward horror story, this one.

11. A Habit of Waste: In a futuristic society where people can change their skins, a young woman learns to control the habit of waste. A story which starts off in one direction and then changes course drastically. It's a bit all over the place, but compelling.

12. And the Lilies-Them A-Blow: A modern-day wage slave discovers the magic which set her ancestors free.

13. Whose Upward Flight I Love: A surreal vignette about sentient trees on the surface, this story talks about the need to fly free embedded in the female psyche.

14. Ganger (Ball Lightning): A frightening tale set in the future, about skintight electric suits which enhance sexual pleasure. Just take care that they don't give birth...

15. Precious: A cynical, modern-day take on the princess from whose lips gold and precious stones fell, when she spoke.

[Savior Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Skin Folk" by Nalo Hopkinson is a mesmerizing collection of stories that weave together Caribbean folklore, speculative fiction, and raw human experiences. 🌿🔮📚

In this collection, Hopkinson demonstrates a remarkable ability to blend the fantastical with the everyday. The stories are set against the backdrop of rich Caribbean culture and are infused with a sense of the supernatural that is both unique and intriguing. The narratives explore themes like identity, sexuality, and power, often through the lens of magical realism.

Pros:
👍 Cultural Depth: The stories are deeply rooted in Caribbean culture, giving a fresh perspective to the speculative fiction genre.
👍 Engaging Storytelling: Hopkinson's writing is vivid and immersive, drawing readers into her world with ease.
👍 Variety of Themes: The collection covers a wide range of topics, ensuring that there's something for everyone.
👍 Strong Character Development: Characters are well fleshed out, adding depth to the stories.

Cons:
👎 Uneven Pacing: Some stories may feel rushed or underdeveloped compared to others.
👎 Complex Language: The use of dialect and non-linear storytelling can be challenging for some readers.
👎 Dark Themes: Some stories deal with heavy and potentially distressing themes.
👎 Niche Appeal: The specific cultural context may not resonate with all readers.

Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

I rate "Skin Folk" 4 out of 5 stars. It’s a powerful testament to Hopkinson’s talent as a storyteller and her ability to infuse the speculative genre with rich cultural heritage.

Reading Suggestions Similar to This Book:
1. "The Thing Around Your Neck" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: A collection of short stories that explore various themes through a culturally rich lens.
2. "Kabu Kabu" by Nnedi Okorafor: A similar blend of African culture and speculative fiction.
3. "Chantilly" by Savior Sullivan : Ideal for readers who enjoy exploring complex themes through a speculative and culturally rich narrative.

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

wonderful folklorish vibes ! Lots of compelling stories

[Sierra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this collection is a little uneven, its best stories are powerful and sexy and indelible. Nalo Hopkinson is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful; her stories and novels mix postcoloniality, fabulism and queer studies in consistently entertaining and thought-provoking ways. I hesistate to make comparisons, but if you miss Octavia Butler dearly, and always sort of wish she was a little younger and Canadian/Jamaican and touchy-feely, Nalo Hopkinson's your woman. You should also read her most recent book, The New Moon's Arms (still in hardback) and The Salt Roads (out in pb).

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I LOVED this short story collection!

Hopkinson centers this collection around Caribbean folklore, with some stories set in Canada following the lives of immigrants. Her writing is weird, but I like weird! She blends horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and literary fiction--and she does it well.

In particular I liked "Riding the Red" and "Greedy Choke Puppy." Hopkinson just gets what fairy tales and folk tales are all about, which I would generalize as fear and sex. Most of her stories look at those two themes, and often she combines them to craft some incredibly compelling stories.

This was my first Hopkinson book, and I can't wait to dig into more of her backlist.

[Emily M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short story collection is great. In the tone and the way it riffs on fairytales and folklore it reminds me of Neil Gaiman's work - but from a different gender and cultural perspective.
Full review: https://ajungleoftales.blogspot.com/2...

[lauraღ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You must know the things that nourish you. Sometimes you have to reach out for them.”

My average rating for all of these short stories came up to a 3.75, but I'm still rating this a solid 4 stars, because the stories I loved were SO good. Midnight Robber is one of my favourite books, so it's a shame it's taken me this long to read more from Nalo Hopkinson. This is a fantasy anthology with a few scifi and horror elements thrown into the mix. It takes inspiration from, or seeks to retell, a bunch of fairytale stories and folklore; mostly West Indian folklore. Hopkinson has roots all over the Caribbean, and it's apparent in how musical and natural the prose is, how beautifully rendered the dialect is. Some of these stories made me feel so literally at home, in such a personal way. There were a few here and there that kinda went over my head, but the majority were excellent. 

I'm going to keep my majority of my notes to myself, but I'll share my ratings and brief thoughts on each story.

Riding the Red - 2.5 stars. Eh. Red Riding Hood retelling, too short to do anything for me. 

Money Thee - 3.25 stars. Mama Dlo story, very original. Kinda wish it had been about sisters. 

Something to Hitch Meat To - 4 stars. Lots to love; I always eat up a Nansi story. I wish the ending had spelt things out LESS tbh.

Snake - 3 stars. Okay! Didn't love following a predator, but I loved the old people and I loved the ending.

Under Glass - 3 stars. Interesting concept and tech. But a lot of this flew over my head.

The Glass Bottle Trick - 3.75 stars. I liked it mostly for the novelty of reading a Jamaican blue beard. Lots of little interesting cultural details too.

Slow Cold Chick - 4 stars. Okay, this was fun! Metaphor for repression and desire, queer, some weird body horror.

Fisherman - 4.25 stars. No notes! Delightful queer discovery. Especially loved the dialect in here.

Tan-Tan and Dry Bone - 5 stars. Tan-Tan, my beloved. This made me emotional!!

Greedy Choke Puppy - 4.5 stars. Made me happy because it was so close to home, and such a different kind of soucouyant story.

A Habit of Waste - 4.5 stars. Loved this, the discussion of food and foraging, the Trini roots, and seeing the protagonist come back to herself. 

And The Lillies-Them A-Blow - 3.5 stars. I liked it, I wanted more backstory and character work, to get the full effect of the protag coming into her power.

Whose Upward Flight I Love - 3.75 stars. I read this twice to make sure I got the full effect. One of the few micro stories I think I love. 

Ganger (Ball Lightning) - 3.25 stars. I liked this? The concept of the suits, especially. But the formatting made it a little confusing.

Precious - 4 stars. Retelling of a classic fairytale. Loved it, I wish it had been bloodier.

Listened to the audiobook as read by Bahni Turpin, and it was... fine? But if I wish I'd just read it. I really wish they could have gotten a narrator from Jamaican or Trinidad, or at least had different narrators for the stories that took place on the islands. Turpin's Caribbean accents are bad and I don't like them, and every time she mispronounced a word or phrase, it made me more annoyed. And to be fair, there was a lot that she got right? But again, I just wish we could have had a Caribbean narrator. There were also stories where the POV would switch, and it wouldn't really be apparent in the audiobook when it happened.

Really excellent overall; I need to read more of Hopkinson's backlist.

Content warnings: child sexual assault, body horror, gore, child death

Scholars, more brilliant than I could hope to be, 
advised that if I valued poetry, 
I should eschew all sociology.

[Taylor Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love Nalo Hopkinson. She infuses so much culture and imagination in every story. Each chapter was so unique.

[Dessi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an anthology of short stories that mix fantasy, sci-fi, horror and Caribbean folklore, and deal with issues of colonialism, race, class, gender, body image, womanhood and sexuality. I had this on my tbr for some years (I think it must have been a pick in Emma Watson’s book club?) and finally decided to read it for Short Story September last year. But at 15 stories, and having read other short stories that month, I was feeling like they were all beginning to blur into one another, so I took a break and finished it in December.

My overall impression was that it was a lot. Some stories were hard to follow and lost my attention, while others attempted realspeak in ways that came off as annoying and infantilizing imo.

That said, my favourite stories were:

❇️ Snake: This follows a pedophile’s POV so it was tough to read, but it has a satisfying ending.

❇️ The Glass Bottle Trick: Really good retelling of Blue Beard exploring womanhood, gender roles and domestic abuse.

❇️ Fisherman: Smutty exploration of sexuality and gender.

❇️ Greedy Choke Puppy: Creepy folkloric story about the vampiric soucouyant and the consequences of greed.

❇️ A Habit of Waste: Features body-hopping to explore issues of body image and racism, and how sometimes changing your appearance will never be enough.

❇️ Precious: A retelling of the fairytale story of the girl who was blessed to pour out gold and gems whenever she opened her mouth.

[Andrea Blythe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hopkinson's eerie and haunting collection of short stories influenced by her life and roots, both her Caribbean cultural heritage and her experiences living in Canada. With powerful, vivid prose, Hopkinson unveils strange, unsettling worlds in which an ordinary eggs give birth to strange, deformed monsters, glass storms cut up everything in their path, and trees take flight. Many of these stories explore darkness. "Snake" is an absolutely terrifying tale from the point of view of a child molester and killer, "Tan Tan and Dry Bone" tells the story of a girl weighed down and burdened by not only her own guilt, but by a horrible creature bent on sucking out the last of her happiness, while my favorite, "The Glass Bottle Trick" is a Caribbean spin on the bloody Bluebeard folktale. But no matter how unsettling or terrifying, the stories are bolstered by beautiful imagery and prose that slips between the surreal and the realistic. A fabulous collection.

[Jenni · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful short story collection. I loved the seamless jumps from realism to sci-fi to folklore. "Fisherman" came as a surprise, because it was very much erotica. Very well written, compelling erotica though.
I've been trying to branch out with the type of authors I read, and this was a wonderful change of pace. I picked it up because so many people compared Ms. Hopkinson to the late Octavia Butler, and I was not disappointed. I'll be reading more of Nalo Hopkinson in the future for sure.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to only one of the stories in this anthology- "Money Tree" on LeVar Burton Reads. In this particular story a brother and sister listen to Caribbean folklore about their family's connection to the water with a mamadjo/mermaid mother and a tale of lost pirated gold. This allegorical tale makes connections between greed and familial relations, and incorporates the transformative value of water with the sister in healing from her grief.

[Dawn F · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag for me. Most of the stories I couldn’t really get into, and there was way too much gratuitous sex. I don’t care to read about sex between characters I don’t know or aren’t invested in, where there’s no build-up and release of tension, it’s as interesting as describing their wardrobe. I do love her writing, though, but perhaps she works better for me in novels where she gets to unfold fully.

[Melanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

While there's a couple of stories that aren't re-tellings, the rest of the volume is nearly evenly split between Caribbean and European folklore. And even the European based tales had a heavy Caribbean flavor.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely adored this inventive collection of short stories. Hopkinson’s writing is very exciting to me and I look forward to reading more. In this collection she draws inspiration from Caribbean folklore, explores amusing turns of phrase, and turns tropes on their heads. A couple of these stories were surprisingly sexy, but those stories were no less hard hitting than the rest. Some of the stories made me work for them as the reader, but I found the rewards rich each time. Hopkinson crafts wonderful characters, I have all these people in my heart from less than 20 pages each, quite the feat.