🚀 go-pugleaf

Reason for crosspost: Nalo Hopkinson is a Toronto author.


From: wshaffer@uclink4.berkeley.edu (Wendy Shaffer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: _Brown Girl in the Ring_, by Nalo Hopkinson
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 21:48:53 -0700
Message-ID: <wshaffer-1710982148540001@kirsch1.berkeley.edu>
References: <ro1pvbto1o4.fsf@jackfruit.Stanford.EDU>
<36274d05.2554874@enews.newsguy.com> <3627C3BD.CBF@comstar.net>

In article <3627C3BD.CBF@comstar.net>, Michael Dayton
<mdayton@comstar.net> wrote:

> I bought a copy based on the rave reviews I read, and just hated it. 
> (Actually I hated the first 4 chapters and every third page to the end
> of the book).  You can have my copy.
> 
> In the book's defense:  every single review I have read has been
> positive.  Maybe I just didn't get it.
> 
> I do know that in the one writing class I ever took, the professor (a
> published fantasy and horror author, Brad Strickland, btw) warned
> "dialect is easy to overuse.  Be careful with it."  Too bad Nalo wasn't
> in there with me...
> 
> [Actually, I thought that the dialect was so thick, the characters so
> type-cast, uneducated and (most of them) evil, that if an anglo had
> written the book she would have been decried as a racist.  Like I said,
> I didn't get it.]
> 
   I didn't think that the dialect was that thick. Then again, I read
_Brown Girl in the Ring_ right after reading _Trainspotting_, which
has _really_ thick dialect.  So perhaps my dialect sensors were way
out of wack.  
   I also don't think that the use of dialect is necessarily "racist."
Particularly since many of the characters in the book are perfectly
capable of speaking standard English, and in fact do so when they are
adressing people of non-Carribean descent.  The dialect is simply part
of their culture, not a signal for ignorance or lack of education.  

   What made you see the characters as type-cast?  I'll admit that 
the bad guy (I forget his name - Rudy?) veers close to caricature
at times.  But I thought that at least the characters of Ti-Jeanne
and Tony were pretty 3-dimensional.  In fact, I thought Hopkinson
did a good job of portraying Tony as a basically good person
who gets trapped by his weaknesses into doing the wrong thing.  It 
would have been very easy for her to just make him into a complete
bastard, but he would have been much less interesting and believeable
that way.  

   Overall, I liked the book, though perhaps not as much as its
rave reviews would have led me to hope.  It's an interesting blend
of genres - there are elements of science fiction, mystery/thriller,
and fantasy woven together.  I kind of wish the book had spent more
time exploring its science fictional and fantasy elements - I would
have liked to see more of the near future society in which the 
book is set, and more exploration of the voodoo/magic stuff.  

----wendy

-- 
Wendy A. Shaffer
wshaffer@uclink4.berkeley.edu