21st Century Literature discussion

Here is the place to discuss anything and everything about the book. I have a few things I'd love to hear people's opinions and interpretations of, but please bring up anything at all you found discussion worthy.

What did you think of unique narration? Was it 3rd person omniscient with extra glitter, or did Charlotte's voice combined with the spirits of ancestors significantly change the narrative?

Many reviewers have referred to the style as magic realism (a somewhat fraught term). How do you think the more fantastic elements worked with the narrative?

Why do you think Moore choose those particular gifts for her three main characters?

How well did the book convey a sense of place for its different settings? Do you think these were the best choices for conveying her themes? Which of the main narratives did you find most compelling?

Lots of good questions! At first I didn't really like the multiple narrations and Charlett's omnipresent voice. But maybe halfway though the book when their stories started merging, I enjoyed it quite a bit more.

I think my favorite character of the first half was Norman, but in the second half I really came to appreciate Gbessa's character the most.

Bretnie wrote: "Lots of good questions! At first I didn't really like the multiple narrations and Charlett's omnipresent voice. But maybe halfway though the book when their stories started merging, I enjoyed it qu..."

I agree. Gbessa was too passive for me initially, but when she finally found her voice, it was powerful! Part of the reason I liked Norman's was that I don't recall ever hearing about the Maroon wars and their treaties with the British. Moore certainly doesn't over romanticize, the Maroons brutalizing and returning escaped other escaped slaves was heartbreaking.

I forgot the Maroons's history was included in this book. I recently read The Book of Night Women which makes mention of the Maroons in connection with Jamaica. This caused me to do a bit of searching to see if there was some relationship between the Maroons of the two countries. It seems that "Maroons" is a term used for escaped African slaves in the Caribbean and West Africa.

Whitney wrote: "Many reviewers have referred to the style as magic realism (a somewhat fraught term). How do you think the more fantastic elements worked with the narrative? "

I thought this worked really well for the book, but I'm also one that enjoys a bit of the fantastic. I loved that it enabled our main characters to be more empowered and in control than they would have been otherwise.

I think it worked for me in the same way fiction works for me for telling true/historic stories. Sometimes truth is hard to digest, so adding something more fun (?) and unrealistic kept me going with the book when I might have put it down otherwise.

I did find myself constantly googling facts, which is always a sign of a good book. I knew that the U.S. outlawed bringing slaves over long before we actually ended slavery, but I hadn't realized it was soooo long. And how much illegal slave trade continued to happen.

Bretnie wrote: "Whitney wrote: "Many reviewers have referred to the style as magic realism (a somewhat fraught term). How do you think the more fantastic elements worked with the narrative? "

I thought this worke..."

For sure! I was constantly startled by things I *thought* I knew. I think Moore gets top honors for educating without being didactic. All the things about slavery, the founding of Liberia, the Maroons etc. were important plot developments rather than information dumps.

I also think you're right about the fantastic elements adding a bit of levity (and empowerment) to what are frequently unrelenting stories of brutality. I have thoughts about why each character was given their respective superpower, but I would like to hear yours and other people's as well.

Whitney wrote: "What did you think of unique narration? Was it 3rd person omniscient with extra glitter, or did Charlotte's voice combined with the spirits of ancestors significantly change the narrative? ..."

Charlotte: What a wild and wonderful creature. She is Goddess the Mother. A Ghost, a Goddess who mates with a mortal man and births a child. June Dey is a savior--the Son of Goddess. Continually rising from the dead.

And Charlotte is everywhere. An omniscient first person narrator. "IT WAS IN THIS WAY—after arriving on that coast and finding ubiquity, my gift—that I existed. In the wind, my spirit roamed the trees and hills, roamed the minds of my new world."

I was puzzled by her at first. I kind of figured it out by the end. But I found I needed to review the beginning of the book after finishing it, in order to make very critical connections.

I live in a very windy place, and am a big fan of the way a local artist depicts the wind. This is the way I visualize Charlotte as she roams, swirling, dipping, and rising.

Ginny, I love that visualization of Charlotte! What did you find when you revisited the beginning?

Whitney, I've been thinking about your question about why each character got their superpowers, but I can't think of anything more profound than it's what they each needed? To be bulletproof, to be invisible... How would you describe Gbessa's powers? Something more specific than she couldn't die. And if she couldn't die, what was your interpretation of the ending?

Sorry, more questions than answers!

Ginny wrote: "Whitney wrote: "What did you think of unique narration? Was it 3rd person omniscient with extra glitter, or did Charlotte's voice combined with the spirits of ancestors significantly change the nar..."

I came here to say I love that image, but Bretnie beat me to it. Who's the artist? Looks like you live in a desert area?

As you said that Charlotte was everywhere, this is what Moore said in an interview (I linked to it in the "general" discussion section):

"When Charlotte becomes a part of the wind she joins this voice of the ancestors. The narrator is an ancestor. That can be singular or plural. . . . I will admit that I did struggle with the wind and the narrator's voice. I went back and forth. The wind was initially in third person. I wanted to make it more intimate. I wanted to find a way to incorporate the ancestors. I wanted to find a way to incorporate religion into the overall experience of reading the story."

I think Moore would appreciate your description of Charlotte!

Whitney, Where did you get a name for the wind spirit? It's a reflection of the "blooming, buzzing confusion" I was in at the beginning of the story that I never attached a name to that first-person intrusion into the otherwise uniform second person narrative. I sure noticed it, though! It was clear that it was a sympathetic voice, and also supernatural.

I was shocked at the cruelty that was seen as normal by each of the three. While is is a commonplace that American race slavery was a vile and evil institution, it made it clear that there wasn't a magically wonderful homeland waiting in Africa. (I have known African immigrants that remembered growing up and celebrating "Massacre Day" when their village finally dominated the village across the river.) Moore also makes it clear how the people enmeshed in the separate cruelties in each of the places carved out personally rewarding niches for their individual spirits.

I think the most distressing point was when June Dey was carrying his adoptive mother away from the patrols. Once in a place of safety, he looked down to realize that the bullets he was proud to withstand as they bounced off his skin had killed the person he was trying to rescue.

I'm glad you liked the painting. I live in south-western Alberta, in the rain-shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Not yet a desert, but it can be very dry. The painting was of an autumn sky. Here, a photo of the area when things are a bit greener. The view from my deck.



The artist is https://www.janifercalvez.com/

Bretnie wrote: "Ginny, I love that visualization of Charlotte! What did you find when you revisited the beginning?..."

The scope of this novel is huge--so many different stories. I found it a bit disjointed on my first reading. The thread that connects--stitches together the quilt squares--is the narrator. Once I understood Charlotte's role, I could better see the whole picture. I often re-read, and this may be a novel that would improve with a re-read.

Ginny wrote: "I'm glad you liked the painting. I live in south-western Alberta, in the rain-shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Not yet a desert, but it can be very dry. The painting was of an autumn sky. Here, a pho..."

I'd find it hard to do any work with that view!

Mark wrote: "I think the most distressing point was when June Dey was carrying his adoptive mother away from the patrols. Once in a place of safety, he looked down to realize that the bullets he was proud to withstand as they bounced off his skin had killed the person he was trying to rescue.
"

Mark, that part crushed me too. At that point, we didn't know where the story was heading, and it just felt so heavy with everything we'd read up until that point.

Mark wrote: "Whitney, Where did you get a name for the wind spirit? It's a reflection of the "blooming, buzzing confusion" I was in at the beginning of the story that I never attached a name to that first-perso..."

I think it's a bit of a convenience; the wind spirit consisting of the ancestors was around long before Charlotte joined it in the June Day section. I think Moore makes Charlotte's voice the most prominent because she has the connection to June, and it's easier to refer to Charlotte than "the chorus of ancestors in the wind".

Bretnie wrote: "Mark wrote: "I think the most distressing point was when June Dey was carrying his adoptive mother away from the patrols. Once in a place of safety, he looked down to realize that the bullets he wa..."

I didn't get that the bullets had bounced off June Dey into Darlene. I reread the section after these comments, and I still don't believe the bullets bounced off him and killed Darlene. The two time bullets are mentioned hitting June Dey, Moore specifically say they fell to the ground. And the passage in question reads "even after the bullets that could not penetrate June Dey had burrowed into her skin", which I read as his recognition that she wasn't protected from the bullets as he was. Still a horrible moment, and one to produce survivor's guilt, but not a direct death of Darlene as a result of him being saved.

I don't see the ricochet reading as consistent with the rest of the novel, either. Moore is presenting throughout that survival and thriving results from community and cooperation; having June Dey live at Darlene's expense doesn't fit with that. (And, from a purely ballistics stand point, it would be a bouncing bullet worthy of the grassy knoll).

Yes, I did not read that passage as the bullets having ricocheted off June.

Much later in the book, he does lament having to use his powers and violence against his own color:

“Before, it seemed, he had been fighting a color. Always a color that was an enemy. But in that moment, he battled something else. He fought, startled that the flesh that covered the breaking bones at the end of his fists matched the twilight of his skin. Startled, but what could he do? It had not been a color that he fought, but a spirit. Greed. Perhaps the warriors he fought with in previous weeks had foresight enough to reject this spirit, which extinguishes as much as it enriches, never one without the other. It was greed—that soulless, bottomless thing that killed mothers. Killed would-be lovers. Would not let him be.”

In general, I found the pacing very awkward in this book. I believe the word “disjointed” was used above. The supernatural elements gave Liberia’s origin story a mythological status. Some of the fight scenes reminded me of an MCU movie (Avengers: Liberia Begins)—I didn’t mind this in any way but certainly didn’t expect it. It elevated the tension/drama.

Whitney wrote: "Moore is presenting throughout that survival and thriving results from community and cooperation"

Great insight!

I've seen a few comments about the magical realist elements in the text being a bit jarring. I wonder how much of this is cultural. Garcia-Marquez, the Godfather of magical realism, said magical realism was a term applied by the west to things that were just real life in Latin America. Moore has said that those elements in her book wouldn't strike her Liberian mother as fantasy, but just normal elements of a story. In one interview she also said that western audiences tend to ask her about the speculative aspects of the book, while African audiences tend to ask her about the humanistic themes like love and betrayal.

Whitney, that's super interesting! I'm not one to get stuck on the realistic nature of books, so I always appreciate a bit of the fantastic and unexplainable.

I feel like it's easy to roll your eyes at unrealistic things, and at the same time ignore unrealistic things in our own society. Maybe wading into tricky territory, but so much of religion is belief in ideas and stories that when you break them down, don't have much base in reality.

Maybe all stories come with a bit of "magic" that helps us understand the past and how we got to where we are today.

Bretnie, yes, magic is always present in stories. As a story begins, the author has the power to "set the rules" for her world. Moore did that well, and the flow of the story benefits from that foundation.

Whitney, I saw the moral of Charlotte's death as showing the implacable brutality of nature, like the snake that bites Gbessa. Charlotte dies because Dey is holding her, and the patrol's bullets, aimed at Dey, go through his mother.

This has been an interesting discussion. I meant to participate more but for various reasons I didn't greatly enjoy the book, and I didn't want my negativity about it to overshadow the discussion. For me the magic realist elements got in the way of telling the history so much that I felt I learned almost nothing about the real Liberia, but clearly straight history was never Moore's authorial intention,

Yes, good discussion. Thanks to everyone who participated. If anyone else has more insights, complaints, or random thoughts, please feel free to add them.