Tuesday, October 27, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Will Do Magic For Small Change by Andrea Hairston



Will Do Magic For Small Change is a 2016 novel by author Andrea Hairston, which I missed out upon when it was originally published.  I loved Hairston's recent epic fantasy novel Master of Poisons (Reviewed Here), which was an absolute tour de force with fantastic characters, a tremendous setting, and a lot to say in its messages about human beings and our world.  So upon finishing it, I quickly searched for anything else from Hairston I could get my hands on, and managed to obtain this book via inter-library loan.*

*Sadly neither of Hairston's earlier two books are in print or available in ebook.

And it was worth it, because Will Do Magic For Small Change is tremendous.  It's an Afrofuturist novel that features two narratives - one that starts in 19th century Africa (Dahomey) and another in 1980s Pittsburgh - in which a young teenage girl, in the wake of tragedy, tries to search for love and truth through a science fiction or fantasy story involving an alien or magical wanderer and how it affects her as she grows up.  It's a story about love between family, between strangers, between friends, and between those who become more than that, despite a world that is cruel all over and that tries to beat people into becoming things/people they aren't, into forgetting their stories.  And it's oh so good, and so hard to explain, but well, that's my job in these posts, so well, let's give it a try.


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
1984, Pittsburgh - Cinnamon Jones, almost 13 years old, has suffered from consecutive tragedies.  First her father, Raven Cooper, threw himself in front of a bullet aimed by a homophobe at two women, just because the two dared to love each other.  Now Raven Cooper lies in a coma, unresponsive.  Then her half-brother Sekou overdosed....and at his funeral, her mom's family behaves utterly callous towards his memory, while her mother refuses to do or say anything in his defense.

But Sekou left Cinnamon with a gift, a book called The Chronicles of the Great Wanderer, and appointed her as a Guardian in his place.  As Cinnamon grows, learns, and learns to love, the Chronicles glows with new text, telling a story of the past:

1892, Dahomey, West Africa - The Wanderer comes into existence in the middle of a battle and chase, in which a woman warrior runs from her pursuers with a dying man slung over her shoulder.  The Wanderer follows that woman, Kehinde, as she attempts to honor a dying wish that connects her to a forgotten past and journeys across land and sea to places far and wide, with the Wanderer finding love and stories along the way...
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Will Do Magic For Small Change is honestly one of the hardest books I've ever had to try to summarize, so if the above plot summary seems underwhelming, well I'm sorry (The book's back cover summary presents a plot with a more clear momentum except I don't really think it fits the novel either).  The book alternates its telling between that of Cinnamon and that of the Wanderer, as Cinnamon (and later others connected to her) read the Wanderer's story in The Chronicles as new chapters appear over time.  The stories are both equally important, and do connect in the end, but not in a way you might expect. 

This story is one about life, and is thus one about people - about its characters and about others - and not one about plot.  If you're expecting a plot with a clear direction, a clear protagonist and antagonist matchup, or even just one where you have any idea where it's going, you will be disappointed - this is not that book.  Instead, we are following Cinnamon as she grows up from 12 to 16, learning to deal with it all, learning about friendship and love in a world that is setup to be against her - a Black girl in 1980s Pittsburgh with what seem like to be absent parents.  Similarly, while the Wanderer's story takes place over a longer period of time, and we read it through Cinnamon's readings, the Wanderer's story too is to learn about love and life as a person from Africa in a time - the end of the 19th century all the way through the "present" 1980s - in a world which not only stereotypes and caricatures people of color, but also tries to force those stereotypes onto people in place of their own histories and stories. 

And it works so well because all of the characters are tremendous.  For the modern day story, that is driven by Cinnamon who is just an absolutely lovely character I desperately wanted to find a happy ending.  She's a young girl inspired by her father's Native family - who also happen to be theatre people - but facing her mother's seeming callous treatment of what happened to her brother and father.  Even as a 12 year old, she's somewhat aware of adult behaviors - she walked in on her brother and his boyfriend having sex once and didn't blink - but she's still a kid, unable to believe that she herself can find friends or love, and when she does seem to find them, is always so paranoid about the idea that it's real.  She's a girl with questions about her own sexuality (she's Bi) and afraid of how others will think about her if they find out about her brother being gay or what her father tried to give his life for - given that this is the 80s, not an unreasonable fear - and so much of the back half of this book is her learning to treasure what she has and to find out it's real, and that she shouldn't be afraid to be who she herself wants to be.  And she needs to learn that how others respond to the same situation in various different ways, and that what she sees on the surface isn't all there is. 

Similar things show up in the tale of the Wanderer.  The Wanderer themselves is sort of a blank slate, as an alien/fantasy-being who shows up to gather stories, and has to learn to love and the horror of killing, etc.  But those around the Wanderer are tremendous, with stories that resonate with Cinnamon.  So you have Kehinde, who was kidnapped from her people by a rival African people and trained to be a warrior, only to be inspired to try to find her own past after a fatal encounter with her long lost brother - and who then searches for more out of the Africa that chewed her up and spit her out, and who makes a deal with the Wanderer to never leave them....but with all her killing can't believe in her own ability to love.  You have Bob, a Black man from America with a tragic past, who also grows to love the Wanderer (and vice versa) and only has negative ideas about he future as a result.  I could go on and on about the characters in the Wanderers' journey but they're all fantastic and all add to the themes until well, it ends.

These characters all add strength to the story's various themes - I know I keep talking about "love" and accepting who one is against others' conceptions of themselves, but it's the best way I can explain it.  "We write ourselves onto strangers, then see only who we’ve imagined” is a quote from the Wanderer, and that statement could form the thesis of this book - except it can also be reversed as well.  So the Wanderer watches Kehinde's identity first be forced behind the identity her kidnappers want for her as a warrior woman, and then watches the Westerners try to force her to fit the stereotype of fierce African warrior spectacle for their enjoyment.  So Cinnamon watches a play director only cast the white girl and white boy with little acting talent, because he can't accept the images of anything else like casting the girls of color.  And Cinnamon forces her own image of homophobic people who can't possibly love her onto the two friends she unexpectedly makes, and has to learn that well, that isn't who they are.  Learning to see others, and to see themselves, for who they truly are, and that it's okay to not only do that, but to love that, is what this book is showing, and that works well in place of any clear laid-out plot.

I'm kind of rambling now, and I'm not sure if any of the above makes sense, but anyhow the point is that when I say I love character-based fiction, this is pretty much at the pinnacle, and I highly recommend it, so you can see what it's saying for yourselves. 

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