ta nehisi coates the water dancer review

Hiram will always be property, despite the attributes that would make him a more desirable heir than his oafish half-brother.

Hiram thinks he’s been saved, but he is reminded that he shares only blood with Howell and Howell’s other son, Maynard. That man is Hiram’s father, Howell Walker, patriarch of Lockless, his ancestral plantation, and he moves the boy to his house to serve in less harsh conditions than the tobacco fields. One day, a white knight rides up to him and tosses him a rough-edged copper coin and a promise of security. Like a burgeoning X-Man, he knows he is special but lives in a world that will kill him for it. He retains information in an instant, whether faces, the curvature of handwriting or the coordinates on a map, but his excellence is something he must hide given his station as a slave. It is not a common ability, and those who possess it exhibit higher degrees of intelligence and memory retention than their peers. The more powerful and emotional the memory, the farther one can travel, but the yielder must use water as a conduit for their power.

It’s not time travel, but a utilization of the power of memory to travel greater distances. Water dancing, also known in the book as conduction, is a means of teleportation through memory. While this sounds like the perfect union of writer and subject, the book is more uneven than thrilling. But, it is also the origin story of a superhero, Hiram Walker, the Water Dancer. Set in antebellum Virginia, the book is part historical fiction, detailing the slave narrative and the Underground Railroad in unique ways.

The Water Dancer, Coates first foray into the novel, combines both these areas of expertise. Both occupations led to acclaim as a public intellectual and writer whose work spanned nonfiction essays and a gig writing Black Panther, and whether you agreed with his opinions or not, his thinking affected your own. But his feed was also a place to dissect superhero comic books, particularly the large events that consumed multiple titles throughout the history of Marvel Comics. Coates specialized in deconstructing popular mythologies surrounding race in America created by the institutions of white supremacist power, debating all-comers. One of the great difficulties of our era will be remembering that Twitter was once fun and one of the site’s great pleasures was the feed of one Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Ta nehisi coates the water dancer review