The style of The Water Dancer doesn’t appeal to me. Many will pan this book for the lyrical nature of Coates prose, and honestly, I agree with them. Monica’s review says that this book “demands that you take your time and sit with what Coates is exposing you to,” and I couldn’t agree more. In this way, Coates tries to illustrate for modern readers the complex, conflicting dynamics of abolitionist and Underground movements. However, his brush with freedom doesn’t last forever, for he discovers that the pursuit of abolition and the freeing of slaves are not always synonymous. Hiram eventually becomes involved with elements of the Underground (Railroad), even meeting Harriet Tubman. Coates doesn’t really explain the nature or functioning of this power for most of the book, and even when we get details, they remain vague. Traumatized at a young age by the sale of his mother, Hiram eventually discovers he has an eidetic memory linked to a mysterious power for translocation called Conduction. Hiram Walker is a slave on a plantation in Virginia. The Water Dancer is a first-person narrative with a frisson of the fantastic. But I would be remiss if I didn’t knowledge my peculiar positionality, not only in terms of my race but also the fact that I am Canadian, and therefore I’m reading this book as an outsider to the history it inhabits. I do have an opinion, of course, and that is what this review is about. I finally found a review by Monica Reeds, and so I recommend you check that out (and like it on Goodreads!). Never has it been more starkly evident to me that we need to boost and promote the voices of book reviewers of colour. Unforunately, as I browsed reviews of The Water Dancer on Goodreads, I was dismayed to see that the majority of them are from white people (mostly judging by avatar), and particularly white women. This is a book by a Black man about slavery in the United States, and I wanted to open this review by boosting the thoughts of Black reviewers-after all, their take on this book is going to be more salient than the opinion of a white woman like me.
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