I've been super busy with work this month, neglecting my blog as a consequence, but I had so much to say about this that I couldn't help but pull up my chair and get writing about the book Lion’s Blood by Steven Barnes.
Having just finished The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, another work of speculative fiction focusing on bigotry, rights issues, and ultimately, redemption and overcoming, I was thirsty for more. I wanted something delicious, magnificent, challenging — and well, just as enjoyable. (The Testaments was spectacular; I read it in a few days, something that’s exceptionally rare for me now. It’s no slender volume; even my cheap paperback had to resort to small print and thin margins to make the hundreds
Having just finished The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, another work of speculative fiction focusing on bigotry, rights issues, and ultimately, redemption and overcoming, I was thirsty for more. I wanted something delicious, magnificent, challenging - and well, just as enjoyable. (The Testaments was spectacular; I read it in a few days, something that's exceptionally rare for me now. It's no slender volume; even my cheap paperback had to resort to small print and thin margins to make the hundreds of pages fit.
And every page was worth it. I've come away with many new insights, but it was also just a rich and pleasurable read. In terms of prose, it is window-like and not overly florid or purple, but there are many lush and detailed, evocative descriptions. Characters are rendered well, even those from many different factions and backgrounds - I can't even imagine how much research went into this, but I assume the answer is "all of it."
I think of important books, podcasts, documentaries, and articles as "vegetables," things which are important and vital for health, if sometimes less than pleasurable to ingest, but this book requires a new category: "fruit," things which are as delightful to partake in as they are enriching for the mind. The fact that I enjoy it might sound surprising, because, well...
Yes. Yes it is. And not in the (rather disgusting and misleading) way that term is used currently to depict human trafficking, but in a correctly alternate-historical concept of chattel slavery. And it goes into detail about Irish culture, even using bits of Gaelic - which my own insufficient studies could only comprehend piecemeal, but I was still pleased and impressed by the attention and meticulousness of depicting a culture not ravaged by Christian conquests.
Now, I've read Octavia Butler's Kindred, and I'm glad I had that in my system first, because there was some horrifying brutality demonstrated towards the slaves that, as I unaware of such practices in detail, would have been very upsetting. It wasn't easy anyway, but with my admittedly less than perfect knowledge, it seems both accurate and maybe a tiny bit gentler than actual slavery and transportation was on Black people.
One of the biggest things about this book is that seeing white characters in a position of true subjugation - without the cultural dominance we enjoy and benefit from in this world and setting - made the struggles of Black folks so much clearer. As I read the narrative, and watched Aidan O'Dare's family and friends suffer in the holds of cargo ships and in the teff fields of New Bilalistan, my mind constantly superimposed the realities of our own world over it.
If you've ever wondered what it's like for Black people, this book answers some parts of that endless and nuanced question in so many painful ways.
Oddly enough, no. I'm far from a newcomer to Black fiction and Afrofuturism in general, and I've trained myself to focus on Black characters as protagonists, so that definitely helped - but it's also just a damned good book and an emotionally compelling read.
However, I think the biggest relief for me was that the story isn't gleeful in depicting white subjugation, because that would have been an easy (and disturbing) tactic. Rather, the perspectives espoused really made some things about our own history clearer to me, and gave me new insights and things to think about.
Recently, the movie Harriet was released, and met with controversy because it followed a path that many books, movies, and narratives about slavery do: providing a significant role for a Good White Person (usually a man) and a Bad Black Man. In a movie about Harriet Tubman, that's particularly egriegous, but it speaks to that shadow-demon, white guilt, who begs and cajoles us white folks to think, "Well, I would have been 'One of the Good Ones..."
This thought is often a comfort to people watching or enjoying any sort of traditional narrative set in the antebellum South; the idea of being a "good master," and thereby enjoying both moral comfort and the expected privilege and wealth. White people don't usually fantasize about being a poor landholder or even a Union soldier; no, it's being a privileged person who stoops to help the downtrodden that we fetishize.
But Lion's Blood portrays Black characters in this role - as moral people of faith, who have ethical discussions and who are well-educated, just as white slave-owners perceived themselves to be - and it really busted a hole in that entire concept.
Here's the thing about the idea of "the good master" - one cannot truly live up to ideals of equality and ethics if one owns or enslaves people, or treats other humans as objects. (I'm not going to get into animal rights discussions here because that's another issue, but suffice to say the topic was also on my mind.) As much as Wakil Abu Ali and his sons Ali and Kai are admirable men, there is a missing stair in their ethics. Yes, they treated their slaves and servants mercifully a lot of the time, letting them keep their culture, keeping families together, and not enforcing their religion on them - but they still kept them as slaves.
Unfortunately, dominant culture trains us to handwave this. (By us, I mean everyone, but it's definitely easier to handwave for those of us born into whiteness.) We forgive the Good Master, because after all, it was just like that in those days, wasn't it? But if Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius could look at real, live enslaved people on their streets, then turn away and consider "enslavement of the mind" more important, because "some people are born to slavery," and if Neitzsche could hold the same idea, then perhaps we should not be chary of asking what the devil our ancestors were thinking. Slavery is bad, was bad, and was never justified, even when it was a cultural norm, and we need to stop excusing justifications of it based on contemporary normalization.
Our ancestors - mine very much included - may have "tamed" the land, and built impressive things, but they also subjugated, tormented, and slaughtered people. Admiration and humility in the face of that legacy have to go hand-in-hand. Some white folks retreat into the comforting fiction of white supremacy or the beguiling vagueness of denial, but cowardice begets no change. It damages the spirit and leaves others in amendable, preventable suffering. There are a lot of problems to fix that have resulted from the historical legacies of colonialism, but by God, let us at least admit they exist!
However, this book was about a flipped history, a lavish tapestry of an alternate world. (Yes, there are airships, but they're not as big a deal as you'd think, so don't get hung up on them.) A lot more interesting stuff happens and awaits the reader. And yet, of course, that central preoccupation kept haunting my mind, as I can only assume it will dart into the minds of anyone who so much as glances at the back cover blurb.
Short answer: thankfully, no.
Long answer: This question was on my mind from page one onward, but over all, the answer is "no." It would have been all too easy to use the setting to delve into other conflicts and never touch on slavery and liberation, but this is still a narrative about rights and liberation. The story's graceful back does not bend and stoop to lie in Vengeance's soft bed. In fact, it's a theme in the book - acting out of spite and vengeance does not feed the soul, and in fact, destroys the person who enacts it. It's like Dostoevsky, but actually readable. (Sorry, Feodor; I love ya, but reading your books is masochistic.)
Rather than depicting what most white people would expect and/or fear from such a story, he crafts a narrative of liberation shot through with beautiful philosophical threads and fellowship. This is true of most Black philosophers and cultural figures reflecting on enslavement and inequality in general; at worst, most Black people want to be left alone by whites. In all the time I've spent researching and interacting with Black people and people of colour online, I've seen exactly one (like, maybe two? Maybe?) person who actually felt that punishment and violent vengeance should truly be turned back on white folks. (And that person was extremely into Mao and a gross Democratic People's Republic of Korea apologist, so like, not exactly a credible opinion in the first place.)
Barnes' depictions of various characters both historical and invented is unflinchingly balanced. He's frank in depicting the utilitarian and daring cruelty of Shaka Zulu; the warrior is depicted with awe, but various military characters are clearly portrayed as troubled by their actions in war, and sometimes beset with what looked like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. War, even in an alternate history, is still hell.
As I read the book, my mind superimposed Black struggle narratives on the white characters, and vice versa, back and forth between the text and history, and in the end, there was judgement - but mostly mercy and comprehension. The ability of a Black author to see through white eyes and understand the tension of privilege and blind spots in what's normally portrayed as a heroic narrative (that of the Good Master) is very humbling. But it's significant that when the characters dream of a peaceful future, all they want is to drink coffee and watch their children to play together in peace.
And that - more so than even gory, superbly detailed battles, torture scenes, and the deaths of characters I liked - brought tears to my eyes.
 |
| You can also find it on non-Amazon links via Goodreads, here. |
Having just finished The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, another work of speculative fiction focusing on bigotry, rights issues, and ultimately, redemption and overcoming, I was thirsty for more. I wanted something delicious, magnificent, challenging — and well, just as enjoyable. (The Testaments was spectacular; I read it in a few days, something that’s exceptionally rare for me now. It’s no slender volume; even my cheap paperback had to resort to small print and thin margins to make the hundreds
Having just finished The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, another work of speculative fiction focusing on bigotry, rights issues, and ultimately, redemption and overcoming, I was thirsty for more. I wanted something delicious, magnificent, challenging - and well, just as enjoyable. (The Testaments was spectacular; I read it in a few days, something that's exceptionally rare for me now. It's no slender volume; even my cheap paperback had to resort to small print and thin margins to make the hundreds of pages fit.
And every page was worth it. I've come away with many new insights, but it was also just a rich and pleasurable read. In terms of prose, it is window-like and not overly florid or purple, but there are many lush and detailed, evocative descriptions. Characters are rendered well, even those from many different factions and backgrounds - I can't even imagine how much research went into this, but I assume the answer is "all of it."
I think of important books, podcasts, documentaries, and articles as "vegetables," things which are important and vital for health, if sometimes less than pleasurable to ingest, but this book requires a new category: "fruit," things which are as delightful to partake in as they are enriching for the mind. The fact that I enjoy it might sound surprising, because, well...
"But it's about white slavery!"
Yes. Yes it is. And not in the (rather disgusting and misleading) way that term is used currently to depict human trafficking, but in a correctly alternate-historical concept of chattel slavery. And it goes into detail about Irish culture, even using bits of Gaelic - which my own insufficient studies could only comprehend piecemeal, but I was still pleased and impressed by the attention and meticulousness of depicting a culture not ravaged by Christian conquests.
Now, I've read Octavia Butler's Kindred, and I'm glad I had that in my system first, because there was some horrifying brutality demonstrated towards the slaves that, as I unaware of such practices in detail, would have been very upsetting. It wasn't easy anyway, but with my admittedly less than perfect knowledge, it seems both accurate and maybe a tiny bit gentler than actual slavery and transportation was on Black people.
One of the biggest things about this book is that seeing white characters in a position of true subjugation - without the cultural dominance we enjoy and benefit from in this world and setting - made the struggles of Black folks so much clearer. As I read the narrative, and watched Aidan O'Dare's family and friends suffer in the holds of cargo ships and in the teff fields of New Bilalistan, my mind constantly superimposed the realities of our own world over it.
If you've ever wondered what it's like for Black people, this book answers some parts of that endless and nuanced question in so many painful ways.
"Was it hard to read?"
Oddly enough, no. I'm far from a newcomer to Black fiction and Afrofuturism in general, and I've trained myself to focus on Black characters as protagonists, so that definitely helped - but it's also just a damned good book and an emotionally compelling read.
However, I think the biggest relief for me was that the story isn't gleeful in depicting white subjugation, because that would have been an easy (and disturbing) tactic. Rather, the perspectives espoused really made some things about our own history clearer to me, and gave me new insights and things to think about.
The White Savior Hiding in Black Stories
Recently, the movie Harriet was released, and met with controversy because it followed a path that many books, movies, and narratives about slavery do: providing a significant role for a Good White Person (usually a man) and a Bad Black Man. In a movie about Harriet Tubman, that's particularly egriegous, but it speaks to that shadow-demon, white guilt, who begs and cajoles us white folks to think, "Well, I would have been 'One of the Good Ones..."
This thought is often a comfort to people watching or enjoying any sort of traditional narrative set in the antebellum South; the idea of being a "good master," and thereby enjoying both moral comfort and the expected privilege and wealth. White people don't usually fantasize about being a poor landholder or even a Union soldier; no, it's being a privileged person who stoops to help the downtrodden that we fetishize.
But Lion's Blood portrays Black characters in this role - as moral people of faith, who have ethical discussions and who are well-educated, just as white slave-owners perceived themselves to be - and it really busted a hole in that entire concept.
Here's the thing about the idea of "the good master" - one cannot truly live up to ideals of equality and ethics if one owns or enslaves people, or treats other humans as objects. (I'm not going to get into animal rights discussions here because that's another issue, but suffice to say the topic was also on my mind.) As much as Wakil Abu Ali and his sons Ali and Kai are admirable men, there is a missing stair in their ethics. Yes, they treated their slaves and servants mercifully a lot of the time, letting them keep their culture, keeping families together, and not enforcing their religion on them - but they still kept them as slaves.
Unfortunately, dominant culture trains us to handwave this. (By us, I mean everyone, but it's definitely easier to handwave for those of us born into whiteness.) We forgive the Good Master, because after all, it was just like that in those days, wasn't it? But if Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius could look at real, live enslaved people on their streets, then turn away and consider "enslavement of the mind" more important, because "some people are born to slavery," and if Neitzsche could hold the same idea, then perhaps we should not be chary of asking what the devil our ancestors were thinking. Slavery is bad, was bad, and was never justified, even when it was a cultural norm, and we need to stop excusing justifications of it based on contemporary normalization.
Our ancestors - mine very much included - may have "tamed" the land, and built impressive things, but they also subjugated, tormented, and slaughtered people. Admiration and humility in the face of that legacy have to go hand-in-hand. Some white folks retreat into the comforting fiction of white supremacy or the beguiling vagueness of denial, but cowardice begets no change. It damages the spirit and leaves others in amendable, preventable suffering. There are a lot of problems to fix that have resulted from the historical legacies of colonialism, but by God, let us at least admit they exist!
There is no “Good Master” as long as someone proclaims themselves an owner of other human beings. Perhaps they are less evil, but being less evil is not goodness.
However, this book was about a flipped history, a lavish tapestry of an alternate world. (Yes, there are airships, but they're not as big a deal as you'd think, so don't get hung up on them.) A lot more interesting stuff happens and awaits the reader. And yet, of course, that central preoccupation kept haunting my mind, as I can only assume it will dart into the minds of anyone who so much as glances at the back cover blurb.
Okay, but the white slavery thing though...is it wish fulfillment?
Short answer: thankfully, no.
Long answer: This question was on my mind from page one onward, but over all, the answer is "no." It would have been all too easy to use the setting to delve into other conflicts and never touch on slavery and liberation, but this is still a narrative about rights and liberation. The story's graceful back does not bend and stoop to lie in Vengeance's soft bed. In fact, it's a theme in the book - acting out of spite and vengeance does not feed the soul, and in fact, destroys the person who enacts it. It's like Dostoevsky, but actually readable. (Sorry, Feodor; I love ya, but reading your books is masochistic.)
Rather than depicting what most white people would expect and/or fear from such a story, he crafts a narrative of liberation shot through with beautiful philosophical threads and fellowship. This is true of most Black philosophers and cultural figures reflecting on enslavement and inequality in general; at worst, most Black people want to be left alone by whites. In all the time I've spent researching and interacting with Black people and people of colour online, I've seen exactly one (like, maybe two? Maybe?) person who actually felt that punishment and violent vengeance should truly be turned back on white folks. (And that person was extremely into Mao and a gross Democratic People's Republic of Korea apologist, so like, not exactly a credible opinion in the first place.)
Barnes' depictions of various characters both historical and invented is unflinchingly balanced. He's frank in depicting the utilitarian and daring cruelty of Shaka Zulu; the warrior is depicted with awe, but various military characters are clearly portrayed as troubled by their actions in war, and sometimes beset with what looked like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. War, even in an alternate history, is still hell.
As I read the book, my mind superimposed Black struggle narratives on the white characters, and vice versa, back and forth between the text and history, and in the end, there was judgement - but mostly mercy and comprehension. The ability of a Black author to see through white eyes and understand the tension of privilege and blind spots in what's normally portrayed as a heroic narrative (that of the Good Master) is very humbling. But it's significant that when the characters dream of a peaceful future, all they want is to drink coffee and watch their children to play together in peace.
And that - more so than even gory, superbly detailed battles, torture scenes, and the deaths of characters I liked - brought tears to my eyes.
***
Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and Max the cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.
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