How Long 'til Black Future Month

 

by N. K. Jemisin

I read Jemisin’s excellent essay of the same name online in 2013 (http://nkjemisin.com/2013/09/how-long-til-black-future-month/), so when I picked up this book I was expecting a collection of essays, but was surprised (and pleased) when it turned out to be a collection of short stories instead. And what a collection it is!

 There is Stone Hunger, an exploration of the ideas that would become The Broken Earth trilogy, and The City Born Great, which I believe is a similar exploration of an idea that became The City We Became, the first of Jemisin’s trilogy-in-progress. These are interesting stories on their own, but also give insight into how the author builds from short story to long, intricate novels, a peek behind the curtains that we as readers don’t often get to see.

The emotions of these stories run a wide gamut. There is the fairly grim, but ultimately optimistic opening tale, The Ones Who Stay and Fight, to the bittersweet story of power and race and history told in Red Dirt Witch. Then there is the playful magic realism of L’Alchemista.

One of my favourites was the final, longer story of magic and survival in New Orleans post-Katrina: Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters, with its layers of relationships between the survivors in the flooded city, who they once were, who they were in the aftermath, and who they could become.

There are 22 stories, all magical, sometimes veering closer to science fiction, sometimes further into fantasy, occasionally hewing next to realism. But regardless of the genre, all are stories about people and their relationships, whether between a mother and a daughter coming of age (and of responsibility) in Red Dirt Witch, or strangers becoming friends, allies, and more in The Effluent Engine, or striving to be the best even when everyone around tries to hold back in The Valedictorian, or missing someone so badly it becomes addictive in Cuisine des Memoires.

And, ultimately, it is those relationships that make the stories, and the book, so compelling.

 

Children of Ash and Elm

 

by Neil Price

I’m a gamer.  I play lots of video games, and one of my favourite series is Assassin’s Creed, a long and convoluted series of stories that are set in various historical time periods and places.  The games are meticulously researched: they go to great lengths to seek out the most recent scholarship on the people and places covered in a given game.  Previous games have covered medieval Rome, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Revolutionary America, Paris, and Industrial Age London.  Next up is the Viking Era, so I figured I’d try to learn a bit more which brought me to Children of Ash and Elm.

Vikings are most famous for being raiders.  Our popular images are of long ships filled with men wearing horned helmets wreaking havoc across northern Europe, pillaging their way through the villages of the Middle Ages. And yes, this is partly accurate: Vikings did raid.  They did kidnap people into slavery. Where they went, bloodshed followed. 

Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price argues that they were so much more than that.  There is a tendency to write them off as a simplistic people, but they lived in a time of change.  Christianity was being imported into the north, so they were in a confusing transition between the old Norse gods and the new faith. Men and women both fought and farmed, trying to keep their families alive and fed in a challenging environment.

Children breaks the usual routine of many history books by not telling the Viking’s story in a strict historical timeline.  Rather than going chronologically from 800 to 1000 AD, Price starts with describing the people as they were: the social structures, the family life, what kind of clothes they wore., as well as what they believed, and how they interacted with the rest of the world.  Even in the 900s they had access to luxuries from as far away as China, and they travelled themselves far south, all the way to what is now Istanbul, Turkey.

Part of my ancestry is Icelandic, so reading this book was interesting on an intellectual level, but also painted a picture of my long distant family history, going back a thousand years. Neil Price’s years of experience as an archaeologist and professor devoted to Vikings and Nordic history really comes through and he brings the Viking People to life, reminding us that behind every myth and legend is a real culture, full of the same nuances, the same wants and needs, as we have today.  

Moccasin Square Gardens

by Richard Van Camp

Many authors are known for just one type of fiction, but not Richard Van Camp. The award-winning novelist also pens comics, TV scripts (CBC’s ‘North of 60’), and is an internationally renowned storyteller. Steeped in the oral traditions of his people, the Tlicho (Tłı̨chǫ) of the Dene First Nations, Van Camp’s storyteller’s voice is wonderfully evident in his highly recommended short story collection, Moccasin Square Gardens.

Set primarily in the Northwest Territories, or Denedeh, Moccasin Square Gardens vividly evokes the rhythms and characters of small-town life 'north of 60'. While some tales bring to mind Stephen Leacock or Stuart McLean, those comparisons fail to capture the dazzling range of themes and genres in this collection. Family discord and reconciliation, environmental degradation, sexuality, fantasy, mythology, and even a smattering of horror is all found here. Yet, even the darker stories are permeated with the author's optimism and sense of humour.

Moccasin Square Gardens opens with 'Aliens’, a lyrical tale of budding romance and two-spirit identity. In 'Man Babies', a resourceful park ranger confronts the lay-about, videogame-obsessed son of the woman he's considering moving in with. In 'Super Indians', an embezzling band chief is hilariously held to account at a community sports day. In the haunting 'I Am Filled with a Trembling Light', the social ills of addiction and abuse are explored when a dying man tries to reclaim the home his father has lost to gambling debts. 

The outliers in the collection are the two 'Wheetago War' stories. Van Camp, a fan of Star Wars who also writes graphic novels, combines Indigenous myth and popular culture in the form of Zombie-like Wheetago monsters, brought back to life by global warming.

It's a cliché, but this clear-eyed, emotion-filled collection will have you laughing and crying, while at the same time contemplating questions of Indigenous and Canadian history and culture.

Richmond Public is offering a free, online discussion of Moccasin Square Gardens on July 29th, from 10:30 to 11:30am, on Zoom. To register, visit www.yourlibrary.ca/events-calendar/ and search for ‘adult summer reading', or phone 604-231-6413.