The Water Dancer

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Coates, Ta-Nehisi, Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Coates, Ta-Nehisi, Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Coates, Ta-Nehisi
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch, Traverwood Branch, Westgate Branch

"Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation family, Thena, his chosen mother, a woman of few words and many secrets, and Sophia, a young woman fighting her own war even as she and Hiram fall in love, he becomes determined to escape the only home he's ever known. So begins an unexpected journey into the covert war on slavery that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia's proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the deep South to dangerously utopic movements in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, all Hiram wants is to return to the Walker Plantation to free the family he left behind--but to do so, he must first master his magical gift and reconstruct the story of his greatest loss. This is a bracingly original vision of the world of slavery, written with the narrative force of a great adventure. Driven by the author's bold imagination and striking ability to bring readers deep into the interior lives of his brilliantly rendered characters, The Water Dancer is the story of America's oldest struggle--the struggle to tell the truth--from one of our most exciting thinkers and beautiful writers"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Powerful version of a slave narrative submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 20, 2020, 3:24pm This is at least the fifth fiction book I’ve read by an African-American author that intertwines some kind of mystical experience with an otherwise straightforward narrative. (The others include _Sing, Unburied, Sing_ by Jesmyn Ward, _Kindred_ by Octavia Butler, _Act of Grace_ by Karen Simpson, and _The Underground Railroad_ by Colson Whitehead.) I don’t generally like ghost stories and mystical powers inserted into what to me seem otherwise like straightforward narratives. They feel like an author cheating or finding a short-cut rather than doing the work to figure out how to tell the story without the fantasy/ghost twist… EXCEPT… then I saw the pattern. At least FIVE African-American authors all doing this. I MUST be missing something cultural (and I’m planning to do some work to learn about what that is).

SO! I’m setting aside my (white) reader expectation that a tale will be told without mystical adaptation and letting this story work on its own terms. And in and around and with the mystical piece, _The Water Dancer_ is mind-blowingly powerful. The first-person perspective on the life of an enslaved person takes a nuanced view of the complexity of relationships, community, freedom, loss, desire, safety, and risk. Hiram takes many kinds of journeys as we accompany him through growing up, from the field to the house, and across physical distances (I don’t want to spoil those), and through emotional and perspective changes that let us see a wide range of fictionalized views that the slave narratives invite us into. Coates is a master storyteller, crafting a tale that packs some solid punches both at US history and, if a reader is astute, at a few modern issues as well. (The commentary of the last few pages on the difference between white people’s involvement vs. Hiram’s own seems much bigger than just a commentary on the 1800’s, if you ask me.)

This is a powerful and brilliantly written book, like _Kindred_ a modern retelling of a slave narrative that will bring new insight and understanding to many who have not known. Highly recommended.

The Water Dancer submitted by garotagretta on July 26, 2020, 3:03pm This is the first book I've read by Ta-Nehisi Coates and eagerly look forward to reading more of his work. The writing is splendid and the story flowed well. This work of historical fiction and magical realism combined was a treat to read.

Prefer his non-fiction submitted by flemingj on July 7, 2021, 7:42pm I've read a number of slave narratives and this one is ceratinly an interesting read. I preferred Underground Railroad and Homegoing.