Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction

About 5 years ago, I was in my local science fiction paperback book store, now closed, when I found Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root while looking for something else. The subtitle “Caribbean fabulist fiction” was enough to grab my interest, and Nalo Hopkinson’s name on the spine had already guaranteed I’d buy the book. Then I saw this:

OH YEAH, SIGNED COPY! I was stoked. I quickly devoured the first few stories, then let life take me away while the book rested on the shelf patiently. This summer, as part of my Summer Reading List, I returned to it, and I’m glad I did. As Hopkinson says in the Foreword, these stories “invoke a sense of fable. Sometimes they are fantastical, sometimes absurd, satirical, magical, or allegorical.” As I read them, I was struck by how many wouldn’t be considered “science fiction” or “fantasy” by more genre-bound readers. At the same time, by stretching the boundaries of what counts as science fiction/fantasy, they speak directly to me as a Black reader who is looking for something more. The genre police use “the usual” to avoid interrogating why something is “usual.” These stories refuse to be just one thing, embracing a both/and philosophy and demonstrating how much fun fiction can be that centers the rest of us and our ways of storytelling. At around 300 pages printed (I’m so old school), the book is split into seven sections with subtitles like “‘Membah” and “The Broad Dutty Water.” The vernacular of the Caribbean is diffused through most of …