Friday, August 20, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Reconstruction by Alaya Dawn Johnson

 





Reconstruction is the first collection of short fiction by author Alaya Dawn Johnson, collecting 8 stories originally published in various publications from 2005-2014, along with two brand new stories.  Johnson has become one of my favorite long sf/f fiction authors over the last few years from her YA novel The Summer Prince (which I gave a perfect score) to last year's Trouble the Saints, an adult novel featuring on an alternate 1940s New York.  Her novels (which also include her Norton winning "Love is the Drug") deal heavily with serious issues and themes like race/class/generational divides and more, and are always really well done, and so when I found out about her putting out a short story collection, I was really eager to see if I could get a copy.  

And Reconstruction is full of really interesting stories with some really strong themes, hitting on a number of angles.  The ten stories within only feature one story that is kind of light in the end (although even that one is sort of serious in its concepts), and several of the older stories feel depressingly prescient.  And the stories range in themes and genres, from multiple vampire stories, an alien invasion-setting, several dystopian stories, and a few stories with settings inspired by or actually in Mexico, where Johnson currently lives.  It's a really good anthology that is worth your time if you're looking to pick up some short fiction.  

A Quick description of the 10 stories in this anthology - note that these descriptions do not fully convey the themes or twists involved, but just give you an idea of the basic setups:  

A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i: After vampires have conquered the earth, a middle aged human woman, who once fell in love with a vampire only to later become a collaborator finds herself picked by her former love to supervise a camp for prime humans and the potential for being turned.

They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass:  After an alien invasion made human life precarious, a pair of sisters must brave alien-patrolled lands when one becomes pregnant and does not want to keep the baby in a town without medical care.

Their Changing Bodies:  The year after Judy survived a weight-loss camp, she and the boy she liked both attend a normal summer camp....but the boy seems so different and the other boys turn out to be strange when they invite Judy and her friends out for a night...

The Score:  When Iraq War Protest Rocker Jake Pray, a man of Palestinian descent, dies in prison after a protest arrest, the woman who knew him and those who knew him only as an icon act to try to make his death mean something - for better or for worse - as the world heads to disaster. 

A Song to Greet the Sun: A young woman dares to love a man of another culture, resulting in her father killing her for his honor...and for his shot at a promotion, a killing that leaves emotional marks on all who knew her.  

Far and Deep:  When a Leilani's rebellious mother is murdered and the diver elders refuse to allow her funeral rites, Leilani takes a deeper look into her mother's life to see why someone would want to kill her, and finds more than she realized.

Down the Well:  A bureaucrat with a history in science comes with orders to shut down and take over a lab run by a biologist, which relies upon the incredible time-flow period within a wormhole to study evolution, and the bureaucrat himself having another crisis of faith.  

Third Day Lights:  A Demon who has formed a family with cast offs from other worlds, finds a strange human man at her door, a man not fazed by her appearance, and who might survive her three tests and earn a reward....but whom she cannot allow to win.  

The Mirages:*:  A Mexican Man, a former professor at a rogue university in a dying Mexico, comes home for his daughter's birthday, to find his wife and her new lover planning to take his daughter to the United States for a safer life, and ask him to help convince the daughter to go.  

Reconstruction:*  A black woman, laundress for the all black 1st South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War, learns and feels her rage at Rebels and the World as Blacks find themselves fighting for freedom.....and dying.  

*Both The Mirages and Reconstruction are stories that have never been published prior to this anthology.*

As I mentioned above the jump, the only one of these stories that is in any way light is "Their Changing Bodies", which deals with a bunch of teens at a summer camp fighting off a vampire infection in a very particular way....and yet even there there are serious themes dealing with fat-shaming and pressures to look good and to conform and how that leads to well - bad behavior (although not usually of the vampire variety).  

But the rest of the stories are full on serious, and often depressing to read in tone, and are rarely one note or predictable from the start.  Themes of race and injustice are pervasive, (obviously in Reconstruction, but also particularly in A Song To Greet the Sun)) as are themes of class and selfishness leading to destruction.  And even the older ones can be pretty prescient, such as The Score, in which a fictional rock star jailed for protesting the Iraq War finds his death in jail used by everyone in various ways (a "former left wing protestor" talks badly about him on Tucker Carlson, some treat him as a martyr, others blame him for a small amount of weed, and the scientist who was his lover finds herself spiraling into crazy beliefs about ghosts)....to the point where his message is sort of lost, as it proves incredibly true as the world spirals towards apocalypse.  

Honestly though the last two stories, the only ones new to this collection might be the best and most powerful.  The Mirage is especially brutal, featuring a Mexican professor in a world where the Mexican environment is toxic, and rich Americans (underground) can have safe healthier lives, and where his wife wants to take his daughter with her American lover to America to be safer, and wants him to help convince the daughter to go....which seems like it is going one way, with the left-wing Mexican professor protesting the injustice of it all....only to serve in a very different direction due to the hypocrisy of the point of view character, who is in fact the titular mirage.  And Reconstruction showcases the injustice done to Black men fighting for freedom in the civil war both during it and afterwards, while centering a black woman protagonist (based on a real life person) who feels her own brand of rage at it all and whom the men don't seem to understand why she should, and why she is the bravest of them all as a result.  

But all of these stories are really strong, all go in different directions, and all are very worth your time.  An excellent collection from an excellent author, definitely worth your time.  
 

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