Environmental Activism Through Speculative Fiction

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OUT WITH THE “I” AND IN WITH THE “KIN”: ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM

THROUGH SPECULATIVE FICTION

Mailyn Abreu Toribio

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, FL

May 2019

ii OUT WITH THE "I" AND IN WITH THE "KIN":

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM THROUGH SPECULATIVE FICTION

Mailyn Abreu Toribio

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Ian P. MacDonald, Department of English, and has been approved by all members of the supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

Ian P. MacDo aid, Ph.D. Thesis Advisor------

Carol McGuirk, Ph.D.

Eric L. Berlatsky, Chair, Department of English ,z d;=L Michael J. ~well, Ph.D. Dean, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters ~.5~ Khaled Sobhan, Ph.D. Interim Dean, Graduate College April 30,2.019 Date

111

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to express sincere gratitude to her committee members for all of their guidance and support, and special thanks to my advisor Dr. Ian P. MacDonald for his inspiration, patience, and encouragement during the typing of this manuscript. The author also wishes to thank those who were instrumental in her success. Among these are the author’s family, friends, and fellow FAU GTA’s who were always there offering their invaluable advice. This manuscript is also dedicated to her little sister Marcia and late mother Yolanda.

ABSTRACT

Author: Mailyn Abreu Toribio

Title: Out with the “I” and in with the “Kin”: Environmental Activism Through Speculative Fiction

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Ian P. MacDonald

Degree: Master of Arts

Year: 2019

Non-Anglophone voices in literature can lead to a better understanding of the intricate relationships shown by Ashley Dawson tying capitalism, slow violence, and uneven development to climate change. There is skepticism that science fiction (sf) in particular can properly present climate issues in the anthropocentric era that we live in today, but scholars such as Shelley Streeby argue against such perceptions. Science fiction writers that use magical realism, such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Nalo Hopkinson, as ecological sf have already accomplished the task of creating speculative works that fit in perfectly under the umbrella of “serious fictions.” These writers work from a non-

Anglophone perspective or from a minority group within a Western society, allowing for different modes of thinking to play a part in these bigger discourses. Writers, educators, and other scholars need to reestablish humanity’s kinship with nature.

OUT WITH THE “I” AND IN WITH THE “KIN”: ENVIRONMENTAL

ACTIVISM THROUGH SPECULATIVE FICTION

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 2: DAWSON, GHOSH, AND STREEBY: THE NEED FOR KINSHIP ...... 1

CHAPTER 3: WIZARD OF THE CROW AS A NATION’S CRY FOR HELP ...... 12

CHAPTER 4: MIDNIGHT ROBBER AS A WARNING ABOUT OUR FUTURE

AND THE POTENTIALITY OF CARIBBEAN MULTIPLICITY ...... 26

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ...... 36

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 50

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Climate fiction traces the effect on climate that humans have had throughout

history and Ashley Dawson’s Extinction: A Radical History, identifies hierarchical

societies, capitalism, and uneven development as key factors. Our own era, the

Anthropocene is the time in which “the transformative impact of humanity on the Earth’s atmosphere” has become so immense that it marks a new geological epoch (Dawson 19).

Dawson also proposes solutions to the effects of the Anthropocene Age, which conceptually I will argue, can be tested out through the use of speculative fictions. The term houses branches of the fantastic imagination such as sf, fantasy, climate fiction (cli- fi), and literary styles such as magical realism, surrealism, satire, and the grotesque.

Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson lie

under the umbrella of speculative fiction, employing elements from all the subgenres

specified, but need to be further identified as ecological science fictions, rather than

squarely cli-fi or sf. These novels are not portraying natural climate events as one would

in a cli-fi text, but rather they show the mechanisms that exacerbate extreme weather. The

value of studying these texts in the context of climate change is best identified in their

ability to present the cultural, sociopolitical, and economic elements that have separated

the human from nature in the dominant discourse of Western development. Ngugi and

Hopkinson are able to have discussions that highlight environmental concerns such as

climate change by indicting the ideals that have led to the Anthropocene age, and through

that indictment humanity can work to reestablish kinship with the natural world and all

living things labeled “other” or non-human within it.

Recognizing humanity as part of nature and reclaiming that identity is vital to climate change, economic, and sociopolitical discussion, as Ngugi and Hopkinson’s novels will display. As Amitav Ghosh discusses in The Great Derangement: Climate

Change and the Unthinkable, authors need to be writing works that can show the reality of climate change to an audience that continuously sees these natural weather events as improbable, uncanny, and unusual “because to treat them as magical or surreal would be to rob them of precisely the quality that makes them so urgently compelling--which is that they are actually happening on this earth, at this time” (27). I believe that speculative fictions break through realist literary conventions and allow people to look at and past climate change to the “what if” stage. Ngugi and Hopkinson’s works include glimpses at alternate ways of living that require kinship with nature predicated on respect, conservation, and preservation. They are also the perfect places for writers to imagine the future of climate change from a perspective that allows for the writer to look at the situation beyond the human.

The dominant narrative that we call “history” revolves around human agency set higher than the non-human, including flora and fauna, as well as communities of peoples who have been dehumanized and consequently exterminated or displaced. Although grounded in science and the arts, this rational way of thinking has led to the exclusion of environmental conservation from the human urge to develop. Works of the imagination that trouble those ideals allowing readers to better understand the connections we share with the world around us. Works of the imagination mitigate this anthropocentric

perspective as well as conceiving of alternatives to the developmental model that Dawson indicts. By looking at the scholarship written by Dawson and Ghosh, I am led to the conclusion that higher emphasis on the creation, dissemination, and study of speculative fictions that deal with climate issues, cultural perceptions of nature, and indict our past and current modes of development needs to be a cornerstone of the climate change discussion and mainstream education. Through this inclusion, there is the very important potential of having works that focus on the collective, and having that at the center is key to re-establishing humanity’s kinship to the environment. Such a literature has the potential to incite the cultural and political transformation necessary before we reach a new level of mass extinction and global environmental degradation.

There are numerous roadblocks that present themselves as writers utilize speculative fictions to discuss humanity’s hand in natural climate events. This makes it difficult to create an idea of a future beyond the current habits of society and the devastation that those habits bring, although the speculative allows for a means of pushing through. To the detriment of the literary community, theory has continuously excluded sf from what Ghosh calls “the mansion of serious fiction” (66). He suggests that science fiction and other speculative genres are better equipped to endure the test of time, as they are likely to be influential in the mainstream and have longevity: “So the real mystery in relation to the agency of nonhuman lies not in the renewed recognition of it, but rather in how this awareness came to be suppressed in the first place, at least within the modes of thought and expression that have become dominant over the last couple centuries” (Ghosh 65). A divide between the imaginative and the scientific are noted by

Ghosh as the answer to this question. By entering the age of modernity, partitioning was employed to deepen:

the imaginary gulf between Nature and Culture: the former comes to be relegated

exclusively to the sciences and is regarded as being off-limits to the latter… This

entails the marking off and suppression of hybrids-- and that, of course, is exactly

the story of the branding of science fiction, as a genre separate from the literary

mainstream. The line that has been drawn between them exists only for the sake

of neatness; because the zeitgeist of late modernity could not tolerate Nature-

Culture hybrids (Ghosh 68-71).

The partitioning of sf also allowed for the exclusion of other speculative genres from literary mainstream and the “mansions of serious fiction,” allowing a binary to come to light that ultimately placed most speculative works outside of the scholarly realm. I called these issues roadblocks earlier on, but as Ghosh comments, these are not impenetrable and he calls them “resistances rather than insuperable obstacles” (73) to creating believable literary cli-fi, and in my case I push for non-western ecological science fiction.

The goal of writers and scholars trying to bring climate change and the overlying/underlying issues surrounding it is to bring speculative fictions out of this outdated signification that was a part of the same ideology that called for the separation of nature from culture widening the gulf between the human and non-human.

By looking at how humans have historically affected the environment, we can the shift the focus of narratives to the non-human, which “provide much of the momentum of the epics; they create the resolutions that allow the narrative to move forward (Ghosh 64).

Before that is possible, humans must universally recognize their forgotten heritage to the

natural world and look deeply at how we have exacerbated the current climate crisis. The separation of the human from the environment is one of those detrimental moments in human history that has occurred over a long period of time and my work aims to add a voice to the discussion in order to bridge the gap with the speculative genre, and its malleable properties. The problem then is that there is a separation between what is popular and what is seen as “serious” or of value to human culture and studied as such, placing the novel and its ability to accomplish both in binary opposition. One of the things keeping speculative genres out of this space, in Ghosh’s point of view, is an author’s use of magical realism as a style of fiction writing. Magical realism is used in many speculative texts written by indigenous people and peoples of color. It is successfully used in the sf texts under study, Wizard of the Crow and Midnight Robber and it is one of the elements that allows these texts to be ecological science fiction.

Ghosh criticizes it for presenting urgent events, specifically, climate change disasters, as estranged from the current moment in time: “there is… an important difference between the weather events that we are now experiencing and those that occur in surrealist and magical realist novels: improbable though they might be, these events are neither surreal nor magical… the ethical difficulties that might arise in treating them as magical or metaphorical are obvious” (27). Scholars such as Shelley Streeby in Imagining the Future of Climate Change: World-Making Through Science Fiction and Activism argue against such perceptions of magical realism. She has researched how the speculative branch of science fiction can be a successful platform for Indigenous peoples to discuss the environment while still using techniques like magical realism. Her reasoning lies in the voices that are non-western or come from minority groups in the Global North “diverge

from dominant narratives of power and privilege… [and] decolonize the imagination by using speculative fiction to break with mainstream stories that center white settlers and fail to imagine deep change” (Streeby 31). Excluding surrealism and magical realism would in turn exclude “work authored by women and people of color” and that is why she chooses to use the term speculative fiction as it is “the larger category… less defined by boundary-making around the word ‘science,’ stretching to encompass related modes such as fantasy and horror, forms of knowledge in excess of white Western science”

(Streeby 20). This a call for the inclusion of alternative ways of living that are pioneered by indigenous and people of color, ways that are introduced through society through narrative methods that include magical realism and similar techniques in their creation of stories. Traditional sf had been dominated by voices that excluded people of color and of different genders, but as writers long unacknowledged come into view the genre is evolving.

For Ngugi in Wizard of the Crow magical realism is one of the tools used to discuss environmental degradation and how the connection between the destruction of the environment is inseparable from capitalist ideologies. His decision to use the speculative give allows for the use magical realism, along with other elements under the umbrella, to enhance his environmental discussion. Wizard of the Crow harshly critiques the consequences of capitalism on communities in the Global South. Ngugi’s narrative is a perfect object of study, as it provides the political message that capitalism infiltrates every corner of the world, and affects postcolonial nations in the harshest ways because of the continued commodification that they endure as they try to join in the global economic arena. The novel exemplifies how “capitalist society shifted humanity’s

relations with nature into a mode of intense ecological exploitation and unimaginable in

previous epochs” (Dawson 41). Wizard of the Crow is a key text because it exemplifies

the need for national and global change. For instance, we can see how Ngugi’s fictional

nation of Aburiria’s connection to the global market and global politics is highlighted

constantly in the novel, which is a reflection on Ngugi’s opinion on the political climate

of his home country of Kenya. Although Ngugi is constantly bringing the reader's

attention to the nation, the Ruler of Aburriria’s connection to the global is never

forgotten. We also see this thread that through the main character, Kamiti. He received

his MBA in India, and although highly educated, he his stuck in poverty due to the lack

of infrastructure in his home country. Wizard of the Crow goes beyond the discussion of capitalism and commodification in connection to environmental degradation as it also includes a stark visual representation of what Rob Nixon calls slow violence or “‘a series of chronic problems, not a big, acute crisis’ and that ‘we’ll be dealing with for a long time-- far longer than anyone alive now will live’” (Streeby 99). Nalo Hopkinson also provides examples of slow violence in Midnight Robber, through a more traditional science fiction novel. The slow violence happens on the planet New Half Way Tree, where criminal exiles from Toussaint are sent and they engage in development and racism that ultimately begins to harm the native alien population of douen. Although not outright violent, the human’s actions lead to the douen having to maneuver around them, leading to the destruction of their home near the end of the novel. Her novel exhibits how culture can perpetuate destructive modes of development that not only harm the environment, but also the connection humans have with nature. Hopkinson writes “The

Grande Nanotech Sentient Interface: Granny Nansi’s Web. They kept the Nations Worlds

protected, guided and guarded its people” (10). The panoptic system monitors everything

in Toussaint and allowed for the colonization of the planet to occur. The AI also known

as Granny Nanny is not active in New Half Way Tree, but the humans carry their

prejudices with them. Like Ngugi, Hopkinson creates a narrative that presents a stark

reality without displacing the reader, they bend time and space. The characters are all

descendants of Caribbean peoples, and in the rich history of their past, lie the awareness

of the power of the natural world, and well as the violence of colonization. This is where

the reader meets Tan-Tan, the main character, who as a child in the beginning of the

novel is curious about history and the natural world. Her personal interface, called Eshu,

after the trickster messenger in Yoruba religions, “told her about the animals that used to

live on Toussaint before human people came and made it their own” as well as the history

of Carnival, how her ancestors had been slaves, and how her people came to this planet

(Hopkinson 32). The reader is thrust into the future in both novels accomplishing classic

functions of sf, but constantly reminding of the past and present realities that can lead to

such futures. They overcome the resistances of the modern novel by subverting the

conventions already mentioned as well as others that shall be discussed in the later

chapters.

Technological advancements of the 21st century have aided in the creation of

communication devices such as social media platforms, which allow for the connection

and communication of peoples from all corners of the globe. Some communities have more access to this technology than others, yet it has never been easier to embrace new cultures and ideas, and although nationalist ideals have traditionally dealt with issues of a state or local perspective, technology has greatly expanded the borders of local issues to a

global arena. Although exceptions exist, billions of people are being born into societies

that although separated by rigid borders, may have access to technology that allows them

to transcend those borders and connect with others around the world. For many in the

Global South, this is something right out of science fiction. Technology gives

underdeveloped nations the ability to connect to the global sphere but it also allows the

Global North to learn about sustainable development that is practiced and privileged in local communities.as well as the fight against destructive development that would hurt communities and nature. Streeby looks at how the fight against the Dakota Access

Pipeline became a national and global phenomenon through the use of social media:

“Many of those arrested used Facebook and other social media to circulate photograph, videos, and testimony about the militarized police action, which included entering the tipis that water protectors had made in the pipelines path” (49). Being able to look at how local communities are fighting and living for climate justice, seeing how different nations, specifically indigenous or minority groups, treat development, agriculture, and nature allows for others to see the injustices inherent in the systems in place. Speculative fiction with the help of technology is the place to find and create the vocabulary and dialog to change current lifestyle perceptions. Scientific evidence that backs climate

change is increasingly pilling up, but due to the enduring global capitalist mindset,

humanity is not as accepting, or in some cases educated in alternative ways of being that

are kinder to the Earth.

One can venture to say that these methods are even elusive to citizens advanced

communities in the Global North, where consumption occurs too quickly for ecological

reflection. Prioritizing climate justice in education with materials like ecological

speculative fiction is necessary to break the current discourses that are still being taught

in support of current destructive consumer capitalism. Allowing people to have that

experience will provide a space for the connection to nature and earth to be reestablished,

something that slips away from everyday cognitive processes. Unfortunately, the inclusion of science fiction that urgently calls for a change in the way humans develop and consume is bound to incite backlash, which regrettably leads to violent encounters.

Referenced by Ngugi, Frantz Fanon and other scholars who study methods of change

believe that “violence is the midwife of history” (Globalectics 25), and if nature is seen

as “mother” Earth, who’s offspring includes all of nature, including humanity, we need to

be aware of the violence that is inherent in creating change, retrieving lost histories, and

engaging in new modes of development. Violence is clearly portrayed in Midnight

Robber, and that is why Hopkinson’s novels is a perfect specimen to examine. The

literary technique of the grotesque is heavily employed in order to discuss the violence in

relationship to the cultural history of the peoples of Toussaint. Carnival is the string that

then ties the violence and the grotesque together, and these three elements together

redeem Caribbean history, while still criticizing its colonial past. I will be discussing how

it then sets up the narrative in a way that a conversation is visible between Caribbean

history and the environment. The novel notes the violence needed to colonize land and

individuals, as well as the violence inherent in the preservation of history and identity.

The characters thus represent the turmoil carried by a colonized people, who for the most

part have to live with the dual identity of being a product of both master and slave. Tan-

Tan is torn by being both a part of nature and being apart from it. She represents the

colonizing power of humanity as well as the power to return to nature. The novel also

gives hope that technology and nature can work together, if integrated or rather

programmed by a consciousness that understands the previous damage caused by

humanity. This consciousness must also be aware of a different path to development, an

awareness that technology such as Granny Nanny has along with Western modes.

In bringing climate change to popular literature and different levels of scholarly

works and, we can decolonize the cognitive processes that lead to the continuation of

destructive modes of development. To undergo a cultural paradigm shift, we need to look

at this from a global perspective, but this starts by looking at the forms being used in our

own nations. The way we develop industry may not be in the best modes for our

particular region or landscape. The speculative fiction needed must take the national

perspectives, what we currently do and know, and meld it with what is known and done

internationally. As works of the imagination, they “are amazingly antinational even

where the author may think he or she is espousing national themes... Works of

imagination refuse to be bound within national geographies; they leap out of nationalist

prisons and find welcoming fans outside the geographic walls” (Globaletics 58). These literatures and speculative projects have to be a synthesis that can capture the global and the local concerns of our society. They also have to be in different formats so that accessibility and digestibility by all different types of people is possible.

CHAPTER 2: DAWSON, GHOSH, AND STREEBY: THE NEED FOR KINSHIP

Rewilding would require countries in the Global North to make a social, political, and economic commitment to countries in the Global South: “Introduced in the late

1990’s by biologists Michael Soule and Reed Noss, rewilding acknowledges the crisis in conservation provoked by dramatic defaunation… Rewilding entails the restoration of huge tracts of wilderness through the creation of large, linked core protected areas and the reintroduction of keystone species into such new wilderness” (Dawson 65). Dawson problematizes the ideas of rewilding by pointing out that what some people believe that what this entails taking large species out of their current native habitats in order to restore other environments, not addressing the damage this bring to the species original spaces, which are usually in Africa and Asia. Dawson calls these groups Pleistocene rewilders and comments that “Radical conservationists have begun arguing for a Pleistocene rewilding… this rewilding would, they argue, return ecosystems to an equilibrium state in place before the arrival of mankind… the contemporary rewilding movement proposes an even more romantic construction of a sublime-- and even people-less-- wilderness” (71).

In this form, rewilding is only creating more problems because it “takes the extinction crisis as an opportunity to ratchet up the commodification of life itself” (Dawson 80).

Taking species from their natural habitat takes away from the diversity of those other spaces and allows for it to be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy who pay to have the flora and fauna moved, which also hurts the people’s potential for ecotourism.

Dawson mentions that “Thus far, the most concrete embodiment of the idea is the

Russian scientist Sergey Zimov’d Pleistocene Park, established in 1989 in the remote wastes of Siberia. Zimov stocked the masive park with large, extremely cold resistant herbivores… as well as carnivores” (72). An even more radical version of rewilding called de-extinction is also being considered by radical conservationists “who embrace the full potential of genomic technologies to resurrect extinct species like the woolly mammoth… For scientists like George Church, inventor of the MAGE (multiplex automated genomic engineering) technology, synthetic biology promises nothing short of the resurrection of any extinct species whose genome is known or can be reconstructed from fossil remains” (Dawson 74-75). It brings into mind scenes from Jurassic Park films, where in the end reanimating megafauna and dinosaurs are brought back and displayed for monetary gain, only becoming an issue to humanity rather than an ecological solution: asking us to create a space for these creatures, which most likely no longer exist because of humanity’s previous hand in the matter. These creatures would only be brought back to the world to be exploited, to be another place for the elite to gain capital and by “focusing almost exclusively on Holocene extinctions, rewilders obscure the pivotal role of capitalism in global ecocide and ignore the violent and unequal histories of colonialism” (Dawson 73). There are methods of rewilding that avoid the exploitation of the human and the non-human. By reintroducing keystone species to the spaces they inhabited not long ago, we can possibly “reverse the flow of ecological time”

(Dawson 68). Dawson does point out that this has been successful in the past, when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park: “the wolves have driven elk herds out of the park’s lowlands, leading to significant reforestation. As a result, record numbers of birds have returned to the park… Wolves are thus responsible for trophic

cascades-- chains of beneficial effects set off when an ecosystem’s top predators change not just numbers of their direct prey but species with which they have no direct link”

(67). With certain limits in place, rewilding can work to revive environments that are struggling due to climate change.

Extractivism of species, at first, can seem as a way to fix the extinction crisis, but

Dawson wants us to keep in mind the kinds of rewilding and extractivism conservationist

support, warning against the extraction of natural resources from poorer countries to

bring them to wealthy countries in the name of conservation. In reality, he states,

“extractivism should be seen for what it is: a fresh wave of imperialism that is decimating

poorer nations by removing the biological foundation of their collective future” (Dawson

87). There cannot be this inherent selfishness if society actually engages in rewilding.

This is why it is important to use this practice to preserve the environment we have, and

not take species from certain habitats that are a part of poorer countries and bring those to

a Western place where they are not really serving an ecological purpose. This is also why

the elite, wealthy members of our society should make a commitment to populations

around the globe that cannot develop their nations or sustain themselves because of the

flaws in capitalist economies. A commitment to rewilding in the Global South is thus

required in order to try to avoid a continuation of exploitation. Dawson argues that “All

too often rewilding schemes focus exclusively on wealthy areas of the planet… how can

one enthusiastically endorse rewilding in the Global North when there is so little

evidence of concrete determination to preserve existing biodiversity in the South?”

Dawson proposes that we need “universal guaranteed income for inhabitants of nations

who are owed climate debt” (87-88). This would be a great way to help those who cannot

put destructive ways of living, such as poaching, aside because of their economic conditions. It is also a good place to start supporting the Global South and allow them to construct their own conservation methods. Universal guaranteed income always come off as a radical proposition, and it is usually accompanied by a multitude of questions regarding who will be doing the paying and the receiving. Dawson does not hesitate to acknowledge that the money owed as climate debt to these nations should come directly from the nations that have previously reaped the benefits of developmental inequality, as most of the world's wealth is concentrated in this handful of nations. Streeby also notes in her book that in 2010 “The [Inuit Circumpolar Council] ICC also insisted that ‘any framework adopted by the global community should recognize the responsibility of wealthy countries towards communities within their borders that are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts, including indigenous peoples’” (111). Some sort of economic commitment to poor and vulnerable peoples can help protect these communities, as well as their environments. Artists who have an ecological conscience should definitely be tackling these ideas in their creative endeavors. They are not natural climate events that would be portrayed in cli-fi, but they are issues and solutions that speak about the extinction of species in the natural world, and the consequential exploitation of indigenous peoples and other communities in the Global South. Ecological sf as works of the imagination spearheaded by indigenous peoples and people of color is the place for these radical solutions to be tested. By bringing the ideas of rewilding and a universal guaranteed income, society can begin to internalize these ideologies, allowing for a counter-hegemonic fight to occur in literature, and making these solutions plausible options.

Dawson acknowledges that many of these policies, economics, and ideals that we still adhere to today as the basis for late stage capitalism have always had a need for justification. Christopher Columbus, along with philosophers like John Locke and Adam

Smith, created texts and doctrine that allowed humanity to conceive of the destruction and over-accumulation of natural resources as normal, a god-given right, as a necessary basis for personal growth and wealth. Smith’s Wealth of Nations outlined that “self- interested competition in the free market would generate beneficial outcomes for all by keeping prices low and creating incentives for a variety of goods and services… Yet,

Smith’s invisible hand completely ignored the issue of depletion and even extinction of such ‘natural’ resources as fur bearing animals and whales” (Dawson 55). Literature is also noted as aiding in the creation of these perceptions. Dawson recalls that works as early as The Epic of Gilgamesh, to The Iliad, the poetry of John Donne, and Moby Dick have all been used to create the cultural identity of Western civilization as apart from nature, needing to control it, or represented as being an unlimited resource available for humans to use as they please. In the sonnet “To His Mistress Going to Bed,” written around the same time as Lockean philosophy and the colonization of the Americas,

Donne suggests that “the lust for this imagined natural bounty was so strong that it permeated all aspects of European life, penetrating even the erotic fantasies of poets”

(Dawson 39). If the power of the arts is clearly present in its ability to endorse and justify destructive Western modes of development, then that potentiality needs to be reclaimed in order to change the current global and mainstream mindset. Ghosh asks the community of artists and writers to write stories that can portray the uncanny effects of climate change as imminent and current. The things that Dawson suggests we should do should

be portrayed in novels and other artistic modes and speculative fiction is a space that can accomplish these goals, bringing climate change closer to social and cultural consciousness.

Ghosh’s argument in The Great Derangement puts into perspective how climate change is portrayed tracing the history of the environment in literature and how it's changed throughout time. He states that “it is striking fact that when novelist do choose to write about climate change it is almost always outside of fiction. A case in point is the work of Arundhati Roy: not only is she one of the finest prose stylists of our time, she is passionate and deeply informed about climate change. Yet all her writings on these subjects are in various forms of nonfiction” He also mentions that nonfiction novelist

Paul Kingsnorth has written a nonfiction account of climate change, but never a full novel (Ghosh 8). He recalls the difficulties he had writing a scene with a cyclone in his novel The Hungry Tide, admitting that his own fiction has not been able to properly provide due justice to environmental issues. Ghosh uses Sigmund Freud’s uncanny in describing this dilemma. The feeling that something is familiar and yet unfamiliar, filled with mystery and feelings of uneasiness: “George Marshall writes ‘Climate change is inherently uncanny: Weather conditions, and the high-carbon lifestyles that are changing them, are extremely familiar and yet have now been given a new menace and uncertainty’” (Ghosh 30). Although Ghosh is inherently skeptical about the use of magical realism in narratives dealing with climate change and the environment, I can see how referring to climate change as uncanny is useful. As Ghosh discusses “the uncanny and improbable events that are beating at our doors seem to have stirred a sense of recognition, an awareness that humans were never alone, that we have always been

surrounded by beings of all sorts who share elements of that which we had thought to be most distinctively our own: the capacities of will, thought, and consciousness” (30-31).

People experience the wrath of nature all the time; we know how much destruction and beauty it can carry. Even after differentiating between the traditional form of the uncanny, as seen in ghost stories and the like, and the environmental uncanny as dealing with “nonhuman forces and beings” (Ghosh 32), the only reason these two versions seem to clash is because humanity is constantly distancing themselves from the nonhuman.

Society needs works of the imagination that have the ability to reestablish that natural, intimate connection. Magical realism, metaphors, satire, and allegory are criticized for not treating environmental issues in a serious light, but these creative tools perform similar estrangement as the uncanny and have proven to be successful in indicting corrupt developmental methods, especially in regards to how they affected the environment.

These approaches also establish connections between the human and nonhuman that are not possible in a realist narrative. Bringing to center stage humanity's familial connection to flora and fauna is not a far-fetched thought because “the freakish weather events of today, despite their radically nonhuman nature, are nonetheless animated by cumulative human actions” (Ghosh 32). By using the idea of the uncanny in literature, we are still adding a sense of magic to narratives, catching the attention of readers while still having the reader connect to these events as they should be, with a realistic view.

Writers working to bring natural weather events and humanity’s kinship to nature can take advantage of these elements of the speculative genre that are excluded from the

“mansion of serious fiction.” As humans began to try to create justifications for everything around them, there was an unfortunate exclusion of many of the thought

processes that discussed these connections between the human and nonhuman factors and

movements that occur on Earth. Ghosh reports that “even in the West, the earth did not

come to be regarded as moderate and orderly until long after the advent of modernity: for

poets and writers, it was not until the late nineteenth century that Nature lost the powers

to evoke that form of terror and awe that was associated with the ‘sublime’” (56). The

sublime effects of nature on the human imagination were placed far from reason and

thought, not because of it lacked of truth or merit, but because it did not fit the

developmental needs of the modernizing society. Ghosh makes sure to point out that this

is one of the reasons urban cities are usually near coastlines, regardless of the dangers

that such locations pose. Ghosh asserts that “proximity to the water is a sign of affluence

and education; a beachfront location is a status symbol; an ocean view greatly increases

the value of real estate. A colonial vision of the world, in which proximity to the water

represents power and security, mastery and conquest, has now been incorporated into the

very foundations of middle class patterns of living across the world.” The fear previously

evoked by the sublime is ignored due to the potentiality of profit, as “through much of

human history, people regarded the ocean with great weariness… they generally did not

build large settlements on the water's edge” (36-37). Most coastal cities are buzzing with business or work opportunities and the places that one must be in order to be able to best take advantage of the capitalist economy, so “in Mumbai, as in Miami and many other coastal cities, these are often the very areas in which expensive new construction projects are located. Property values would almost certainly decline if residents [and business owners] were to be warned of possible risks-- which is why builders and developers are sure to resist efforts to disseminate disaster related information” (Ghosh 48). Speculative

works that can portray that uneasiness that used to be so apparent in human/nonhuman

relationships are important because humanity needs to reestablish their relationship to

nature in order to regain a level of respect that will ultimately lead to less destructive

modes of living to emerge. A connection to “place” is inherently important for both

human/nature relationships as well as for establishing a narrative that can be followed by

readers of the novel.

To look at climate change requires scholars to do research that spans generations

because of the discontinuities inherent in the matter, sometimes creating the unfortunate

situation of excluding or not being able to properly track certain events. Ghosh mentions

that “In novels discontinuities of space are accompanied also by discontinuities of time: a

setting usually requires a “period”; it is actualized within a certain time horizon. Unlike

epics, which often range over eons and epochs, novels rarely extend beyond a few

generations. The longue duree is not the territory of the novel” (Ghosh 59). There is only

so much time that can be tracked in the novel, but that is the beauty of speculative works.

The sf branch of the speculative specifically allows the writer and reader to move further

in time and experience things in a place that can be familiar but still beyond current

parameters. While Wizard of the Crow seems to be set in a very near future, perhaps even the present, Midnight Robber is set in a far future and both stories allow the reader to still experience the themes in real time. The sf voices of the Global South “are now the first to experience the future that awaits all of us; it is they who confront most directly what

Thoreau called ‘vast, Titanic, inhuman nature’” (Ghosh 62-63). They are best equipped to talk about climate change and to speculate ways to combat it. The modern novel must conform to the language, needs, and techniques that best allow for indigenous, or non-

western narratives to be portrayed. Within the restrictions of the realist novel, writers cannot properly tell the stories that need to be told in order to create a larger, eco-friendly consciousness and cultural paradigm shift. The effort by the dominant hegemonic discourse to silence these voices, and to exclude the nonhuman from the consciousness of the human “has never been completely realized, not even within the very heart of contemporary modernity; indeed, it would seem that one aspect of the agency of nonhumans is their uncanny ability to stay abreast of technology” (Ghosh 65).

Speculative fiction is the genre where the nonhuman still commercially reaches the masses, but have been largely ignored in the scholarly realms. The next step is for scholars to free speculative fiction and the styles of writing that live under its umbrella from the “outhouses” of literature.

Streeby’s Imagining the Future of Climate Change has recently called for a public awareness of climate fiction written by indigenous people and people of color. She observes that scholars such as Ghosh discuss the potential of sf but ultimately have not continued to trouble it excluding

science fiction from serious consideration as a contributor to debates over climate

change, arguing following Margaret Atwood, that ‘the Anthropocene resists

science fiction’ because the latter focuses on ‘an imagined other world apart from

ours.’ He also argues that despite a few notable exceptions such as Liz Jensen’s

and Barbara Kingsolver’s novels even cli-fi, with its realist elements, fails

because it ‘is made up of disaster stories set in the future’ rather than examining

the recent past and present (Streeby 5).

She counters his argument by stating that “science fiction and other speculative genres

[are used to] remember the past and imagine futures that help us think critically about the present and connect climate change to social movements” (Streeby 5). Ghosh suggests that the issue is also that in the use of magical realism and in sf being excluded from serious fiction, but ultimately does not continue to trouble that idea further after his section on stories. By tracking the history of colonialism, capitalism, and extractivism, she connects those topics to how fiction by non-western communities or minorities in the

Global North provide perspectives not previously seen in the mainstream. Using the term speculative fiction seems to enable a newfound authority to these genres. Streeby points out that following Robert Heinlein the larger term speculative fiction “better captured the genre’s ability to ask big and important questions about ‘sociology, psychology, esoteric aspects of biology, impact of terrestrial culture on the other cultures we may encounter when we conquer space, etc., without end’” (19). She insists on using both of the terms, sf and speculative fiction, using the latter “as the broader frame and include science fiction as a subset” (20). This is precisely the work presented in texts such as Wizard of the Crow and Midnight Robber, as they cross the boundaries of genre and the traditional novel to expound on the socio-political implications that capitalism and its modes of development have on the environment.

Backing up her argument for sf as a genre to discuss climate and ecology, Streeby gives examples of past sf that has been able to treat these issues accordingly, and that have gained respect in the literary community. She states that “J.G. Ballard’s four disaster novels of the 1960’s, especially The Burning World (1964) and The Drowned World

(1965), which prophetically imagined drought, floods, and other climate changes in most

cases caused by industrial pollution and human activity, are usually cited as among the earliest examples of science fictions of climate change” (Streeby 20). While those texts fell into the category of cli-fi, Frank Herbert’s Dune was “arguably the most ambitious science fiction novel to deal with climate and ecology” and falls under the category of ecological sf. Rather than primarily dealing with natural weather events, the novel

“includes an explicit ecological consciousness, ‘still suits’ that turn human body moisture into water, a conflict between imperialist extractors of profit from scarce resources and locals who try to leave a small footprint and are suspicious of growth as an unexamined ideal.” Streeby comments that “when it comes to people of color’s leadership in imagining the future of climate change, [Octavia] Butler’s work is a great place to start,” praising specifically her Parable novels (23). I add Ngugi’s and Hopkinson's novels to the category of ecological sf written by people of color. Through Kamiti, Wizard of the

Crow exhibits an ecological consciousness, as he continually returns to nature in order to restore his faculties, also using herbology to help the people that come to him asking for magical cures, and stating to be an advocate for plants and animals. The Ruler is an example of leaders in power extracting resources when there is scarcity and people are suffering from unemployment and hunger. As seen through the actions of the douen,

Midnight Robber also exhibits an ecological consciousness and locals who try to leave a small footprint and are suspicious of growth. They live very close to the land, within the daddy tree, making sure to use their resources properly. The exiles in New Half Way

Tree are always trying to advance through the creation of cities and industry, and all the while the douen are carefully examining these technologies to see if they are useful and not destructive to the environment. Non-western speculative fiction written by people of

color “is not really about predicting the future but it is rather about the present-- how we in the present shape the future that is to come by thinking about it and foreseeing it. In other words, science fiction can help us take hold of the present and think about where things are heading rather than just letting time pass by as our unconscious surround”

(Streeby 25). Near the end of her book, Streeby points out that Butler’s novels are used in urban areas in order to teach people about community organization, farming, and conservation. There is practical purpose to these texts if we study them in the context of building communities with ecological purpose, and utilize them more frequently in our studies of schools.

Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow succeeds in framing environmental concerns as real and intimately connected to the human. As Joseph McLaren states, “Through the

Wizard’s character and Nyawira, both advocates for the ‘people,’ the novel shows how national and global interests are often inseparable and can be linked to such concerns as ecocriticism” (150). Kamiti’s connection to nature is not an anomaly in speculative fiction, as we also see connections that cross into unreal realms of used to portray the importance of preserving nature in Hopkinson’s characters Tan-Tan and Chichibud.

These character’s experiences of nature allow them to revalue their connection to it, which in turn allows them to have more fulfilling relationships with the human and nonhuman species in their planet. Characters such as the Ruler and Tajirika in Wizard of the

Crow and Antonio and Janisette in Midnight Robber are examples of how valuing money and industry over nature can easily lead to corruption of our environments and the human consciousness.

By continuing to place priority on money and profit, we are losing our humanity.

Nature does not care if you are the wealthiest person in the world; it will destroy people and property regardless of wealth and status, although climate change disproportionately affects those in poverty. He points out how capitalism requires that someone is always at the bottom, the whole idea of haves and have nots: “The poor nations of the world are not poor because they were indolent or unwilling; their poverty is itself an effect of the inequities created by the carbon economy; it is the result of systems that were set up by brute force to ensure that poor nations remained always at a disadvantage in terms of both wealth and power” (Ghosh 110). Ghosh wants readers to realize that climate change is real and we cannot keep masking it behind curtains of excuses. As he also notes, these environmentally hostile patterns will ultimately lead to self-annihilation.

CHAPTER 3: WIZARD OF THE CROW AS A NATION’S CRY FOR HELP

Ngugi’s sixth novel is an epic tale using satire and magical realism to create a space in which he can criticize the despotism and exploitation of African communities.

The story is also written as a rumor, so readers are able to speculate on what is true and what is not, this also adds an element of versatility to the use of magic and science in the novel, as both are possible through this type of storytelling. To further elaborate on these subgenres, “Satirical magic realism refers to the use of this literary style for the primary purpose of mockery, ridicule, and humor, rather than its use in the portrayal of characters and events simply in terms that stretch the boundaries of so-called normative reality”

(MacLaren 151). Kamiti, the main character, a beggar with a college education, becomes the Wizard of the Crow with the help of Nyawira, his love interest and revolutionary figure. When the reader first meets Kamiti, he is lying in a mountain of garbage.

Immediately a sense of his powers is revealed through the description of his out of body experience: “He could see his own body lying on the ground and the mountain of garbage, where children and dogs fought over signs of meat on white bones… This is really funny, he said to himself when he saw that he looked like a bird; he enjoyed the rush of cold air against his wings.” He uses his ability to fly over Aburiria: “Cows with udders full with milk grazed on lush lands as scrawny others abled on thorny and stony grounds… He started sneezing as a whiff of gases from the factories below reached him.

Is there no place on earth or in the sky where a person might escape this poison?” (Ngugi

38-39). As he is dying in garbage from hunger due to his poverty, he rises from man-

made waste to comment on the state of the environment. By creating a connection with a

bird, he is then able to rise from his own demise. Nature pulls him out of death like

magic. Not only are his powers revealed in this scene, but also his concerns. Kamiti is

looking at how polluted the nation is, and how there is the potential of clean skies and

healthy cattle, but because of the uneven realities of capitalism and development that is

not the case all around.

Kamiti, from the beginning, seems to be working magic and he uses that ability to

cure people of their ills; in reality, he is very good at reading people and using nature to

create remedies, so his magic can be attributed to a close connection to nature and

psychology rather than the supernatural. While performing a cure on Constable Arigaigai

Gathere (A.G.), who works for the police, the reader sees how Kamiti’s magic works as

he convinces the patient of his abilities. A.G. is convinced that there is a spirit, or shadow

keeping him from success and Kamiti uses a mirror to free him from it: “The sound of his

knife scratching the mirror made my teeth hurt, as if they were being scratched. All at

once I saw the vague image in my mind explode into a thousand stars disappearing into

the edge of the darkness in my mind” (Ngugi 117). He also convinces the A. G. that for

the magic to work, he must change his ways, which ultimately leads to bigger change:

“From today on, never molest a beggar, a diviner, a healer, a wizard, or a witch. If you

ever do any harm to the helpless, this magic will turn against you. Everything you have,

including peace of mind, will be taken away. Go now. Your actions will be the mirror of

your soul.” As he tells the story, A.G. states that “he was asking me to look at my own actions. Maybe the enemy was hidden within my actions” (Ngugi 118). The combination of his having had a Western education in the subjects of economics and business

administration while also studying subjects such as herbology is exactly what Streeby identifies when she states that “both Indigenous and Western sciences, working together for the sustainability of the earth, are necessary at the current conjuncture” (35).

Attending to a poor old man that he initially did not intend to help, Kamiti shows his knowledge of natural remedies: “He was suffering he said, from a big stomach ache…

His eyes roamed, and before he knew it his curiosity had been aroused by the abundant multiplicity of plants. He soon found himself among them, searching out those he thought had medicinal properties.” Going into nature refreshed Kamiti’s perception and convinced him to help the old man: “By now he knew that he was not looking for medicinal roots and leaves for their own sake but because there was a patient outside

Nyawira’s house waiting for a cure.” He even provided the man with some food so the man could take the medicine (Ngugi 130-131). Kamiti has these abilities yet because of economic and political conditions, he initially cannot use his knowledge to make a change or even get a job. At one point he describes how he has a keen, animalistic, almost magical sense of smell, “he often knew the identity of a person before he appeared. He could follow, if he concentrated hard enough, the trail of a person.” Due to this ability, he was able to smell something rotten all around Eldares, a town in Aburiria.

Evoking the grotesque and the uncanny, Ngugi writes “it did not smell quite like rotting leaves; it was more like the stink of rotting flesh-- not of dead flesh but of a human body at once alive and decomposing and yet… not quite; it was intensely familiar and unfamiliar” (48). The smell is later connected to the Aburirian currency, which is inflated to the point that it is almost worthless. Money represents the desecration of nature as well as corruption and the despair it creates for the people and the environment.

As contrast to Kamiti, we have The Ruler of Aburiria, who embodies a godlike persona and he uses that status to monopolize the environment. The reader learns that his clothes are “made from the skins of the big cats, mainly leopards, tigers, and lions. In short no politician was allowed to wear clothes with patches made from the skins of His

Mighty Cats” (Ngugi 20). The Ruler has an awareness of the powers of animals but instead of trying to preserve these creatures, he seeks to harness and control their might.

He abuses nature and consequently says he “owns” the wildcats of Aburiria, keeping the citizens from having a connection to the animals themselves. Moreover “rumor had it that all his clothes were made to measure in Europe, that his London, Paris, and Rome tailors did nothing else but make his clothes” (Ngugi 19). Ngugi suggests that the Western world has its hand in even the smallest aspects of the Ruler’s life. The work of making these clothes does not go to the local community, even though the citizens need jobs. Aburirian money and animals are being funneled to countries in the Global North, concentrating the profits in those countries: “Although presented in the satirical mode, the global dimensions of the novel suggest the ‘real’ problematic relationships between international capital institutions and African regimes” (MacLaren 151). The Ruler also allows his country to be controlled by the Global North through a mock of the World Bank, which

Ngugi titles the “Global Bank.” This creates an example of the inside/outside dynamic in which the people of Aburiria believe that the Ruler has the power to change the country but in reality everything is in the hands of an external force. McLaren states that “When viewed as ‘externally and internally driven,’ both forms exist in Ngugi’s formation of the

Ruler and his relationship to the West. The ‘external’ form suggests control by Western capital institutions aligned with Western states” (153). The state of Aburiria is presented

through the contrasting images of excess and luxury, as when the Ruler hosts a banquet for the envoys of the Global Bank. The Paradise Hotel is the location for this lavish events and it “was one of the biggest hotels on the Ruler’s square, famous for the seven statues of the Ruler all in watchful silence, as seven fountains from the mouths of seven cherubs performed a kind of water dance in obeisance to the sculptures… The cherubs spouted jets of water into the air in turns night and day. Spots lighted the statues and fountains in the hours of mist and darkness” (Ngugi 72). Meanwhile, this waste of resources is juxtaposed by the abuse of the people and the environment, is seen in the immense poverty: “Everywhere people were hungry and thirsty, and in rags. In most towns, shelters made out of cardboard, scrap metal, old tires, and plastic were home to hundreds of children and adults. He found it ironic that, as in Eldares, these shacks stood side by side with mansions of tile, stone, glass and concrete” (Ngugi 38). Besides the contrasts between the structures of the city, the streets are littered with trash and public restrooms are literally filled with excrement: “he headed to a public toilet not far from a seven-star hotel. The septic system had collapsed; all the pails were full of shit” (Ngugi

71). This represents the reality that the Ruler does not want the members of the Global

Bank to see. One may even argue that the Ruler is so caught up in his own bubble that he does not understand the damage that he is doing.

Senayon Olaoluwa in “There was a Time” states, “The neglect and absence of social security for the citizens find a parallel in the neglect of the ecology and environment, underlining the impossibility of discussing the fate of humanity in isolation from nature and the environment” (Olaoluwa 128). Kamiti and Nyawira as the Wizard of the Crow represent the healing powers of nature, while the Ruler and his followers

represent the current exploitative affairs of the capitalist economy. This elite government body is only concerned with its own advancement and pitches the Heavescape, or

Marching to Heaven project as a way to impress the Ruler, but not because this tower can help the country as a whole. As a birthday present to the Ruler “The whole country, the

Minister of Foreign Affairs was saying, the entire Aburirian populace, had decided unanimously to erect a building such as had never been attempted in history except once by the children of Israel, and even then they had failed miserably to complete the House of Babel” (Ngugi 16). The masses were confused about the construction of this building, as they in fact had not suggested or agreed to erect this building in honor of the Ruler.

The Aburirian government is so poor that they obviously cannot afford this project, but the Ruler and his followers want to achieve global notoriety. This project, which would be considered the greatest wonder in the world, requires money that can only be provided by the Global Bank; and if funded, it would continue the trend of financial dependency of the Global South on the Global North. This exemplifies what Dawson’s concerns: “The neoliberal era has seen much of the global South become increasingly indebted, leading international agencies such as the World Bank to force debtor nations to harvest more trees, mine more minerals, drill for more oil, and generally deplete their natural resources at exponentially greater rates” (61). The need of Global South countries, like Ngugi’s fictional Aburiria, to follow developmental methods pioneered by European nations is not a sustainable goal, especially since they have to sell off the future of their land in order to gain a spot in the capitalist economy. Even then, the example of Aburiria shows that the developmental goals of some rulers are not in line with the needs of the community.

Ngugi presents Kamiti’s connection to nature in relationship to Nywira’s connection to

the people, inferring that both leaders need to help save these species, giving equal

importance to the human, plants, and animals. When they are out in nature, alone and

taking some time off their duties as the Wizard, Nyawira states:

Nature may be abundant, said Nyawira… but it is also good to build a granary for

when nature has the flu. I understand that long ago there was no home that could

answer to the name of home without a granary… Look at our Aburiria today.

How many households have a granary? None, because they have nothing to

store… I suppose what is bothering me is the image of the hermit competing with

animals for honey and wild berries… Even now I am an advocate. An advocate of

the people… And me? A self-appointed advocate for the rights of animals and

plants, Kamiti said laughing. But you will agree with me that my lawyering is

more selfless, because animals and plants have no tongues with which to lawyer

for themselves (Ngugi 204).

There is no longer a surplus of resources in Aburiria, yet before colonization, communities were able to enjoy the abundance of nature and give it time to heal in earlier times. This ability to let the earth heal is not common in capitalist ideals, as the extraction methods used upon the earth care little about restoration and more about accumulation.

Kamiti, in response to Nyawira’s commitment to the people, points out that his main commitment is to nature and that is important because nature does not have a voice. Both are participants in giving a voice to the voiceless whether it is the human or non-human.

Since they together make up the persona of the Wizard, it is a great example of how people or groups can advocate for human rights while also advocating for the rights of the land. They are intertwined; an issue with one group also affects the other. The

combination of these two characters also addresses one of the shortfalls of the traditional

novel that Ghosh indicts. While noting John Updike’s criticism of Abdul Rahman

Munif’s novel, he recalls that “the reason why Cities of Salt does not feel ‘much like a

novel,’ he tells us, is that it is concerned not with a sense of individual moral adventures

but rather with ‘men in the aggregate.’ In other words, what is banished from the territory

of the novel is precisely the collective” (Ghosh 78). Ngugi, and we will see this happen in

Hopkinson’s novel in my later chapter, fights this conception of the novel by creating

characters like the Wizard who embody more than one individual. Not only that, but he

also has multiple characters as the narrator throughout the novel. Readers do not get a one

sided story, they can connect to more than one individual, which allow the collective

perspectives of the fictional nation of Aburiria to be heard.

Brady Smith’s essay on Wizard of the Crow discusses in detail how Ngugi “works to reimagine the politics of the grotesque as well. The novel therefore emphasizes, to be sure, the vulgar excesses of the Ruler and the people who live in his thrall” (169). The grotesque is a trope that is frequently used in the science fiction genre. Its dystopian future depicts humans in the Global South still struggling to succeed in the global economy, but ultimately failing. They are failing because they have lost their connection to nature, while the Ruler is only a puppet being controlled by the whims of the Global

North. While protesting the Rulers “heavenscape” project, the protesters outside the

Paradise hotel, where the members of the Global Bank are staying, state on their posters

“Marching to Heaven is Marching to Hell. Your Strings of Loans Are Chains of Slavery.

Your Loans Are the Cause of Begging. We Beggars Beg the End of Begging. The March

to Heaven is Led by Dangerous snakes” (Ngugi 74). The chains of slavery are portrayed

science fictionally through the characters Machokali, Sikiokuu, and Big Ben, the three closest advisors of the Ruler. Machokali has his eyes enlarged in London to be able to better keep an eye on the state, Sikiokuu gets his ears enlarged in Paris in order to be able to better overheard any conversations that may be against the Rulers interests; finally, Big

Ben attempts to get his mouth enlarged in Germany in order to better speak on the Rulers behalf. Big Ben’s surgery ends up failing and he ends up with an enlarged tongue that actually inhibits his ability to speak, suggesting that the eyes and ears of the government are always vigilant while the mouthpiece of the country cannot even voice the needs of the Ruler, let alone the people. These characters serve as an example on how the grotesque aspects of science fiction, presented through an author that is looking at science fiction from a non-western perspective, can serve to exemplify the inadequacies of the capitalist economy. In this future, we have Kamiti and Nyawira fighting for nature and the people, but their fight seems nearly impossible when they live in a panoptic state that does not allow for the people or nature to have agency. Smith connects the science fiction aspects of the grotesque to the magical aspects of African myth and folklore and argues further that:

This emphasis on vulgarity in its different guises is also always crossed by what I

call “fabular realism,” a narrative mode whose myths, fables, and fabulous tales

work to represent the realities of a postcolony whose politics beggar belief while

still insisting on the materiality in which its economic life is enmeshed. Indeed,

the mix of vulgar spectacle and fabular realism that define the grotesque in

Wizard of the Crow is critical to the argument being developed here: while it

enables the novel to critique the politics of its fictional postcolony on the

spectacular terms through which it is lived, it also provides the means through

which the movement insists on the link between the economy and ecology of

Aburiria and in so doing evacuates the authority of the state over which the Ruler

rules (169).

This brings us back to the inevitable connection between ecology and economy and the fact that the Ruler has no real control of his community.

CHAPTER 4: MIDNIGHT ROBBER AS A WARNING ABOUT OUR FUTURE AND

THE POTENTIALITY OF CARIBBEAN MULTIPLICITY

In Midnight Robber, Hopkinson tackles colonialism and the environment by using

a more traditional mode of science fiction, one in which humans are now post-Earth and living on another planet. She explores how a society would react to going to a different planet after our Earth is no longer inhabitable, emphasizing violence and using the jarring techniques of the grotesque, by comparing the abuse of the human body with the abuse of nature. She also portrays this future as a place in which the inhabitants of Toussaint are doomed to repeat history. The Caribbean culture is mixed with “Taino Carib and Arawak;

African; Asian; Indian; even the Euro, though some wasn’t too happy to acknowledge that there bloodline” (Hopkinson 19). Caribbean descendants end up engaging in the same colonization methods that the Western colonialists, who Hopkinson denoted as the

Euro in the novel, had previously performed on the Global South, which ultimately resulted in Caribbean peoples being a blend of multiplicity races and identities.

The grotesque in this novel is seen more specifically through Carnival, as it is presented in its traditional form at the beginning of the novel and continued in unconventional ways. According to Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and his World.

“Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change, and renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalized and completed” (10). We are thrust into this exact scenario when we meet Antonio, the father of the main character, Tan-Tan. He has just discovered that his wife has cheated on him, and as the town prepares to celebrate

Carnival, Antonio prepares to exact his vengeance. Infidelity and murder, as well as

cultural continuity and a utopian capacity to “speak truth to power” mark Toussaint’s

celebrations, fueling change through violent action. The celebration itself is described in

grotesque terms: “What a racket! Bodies danced everywhere: bodies smeared with mud;

men’s bodies in women’s underwear; women wearing men’s shirt-jacs and boxers; naked

bodies. They pressed against the car, pressed against one another, ground and wound

their hips in the ecstatic license of Carnival” (Hopkinson 55). The chaos, role switching,

and sexualization that comes with Carnival suggest at once beauty, vulgarity, and

multiplicity, productively celebrating the tearing down of established hierarchies.

Carnival serves as a mirror image of the inner workings of the past on the current society

in Toussaint. Tan-Tan is a small child at this point and is obsessed with the famous

trickster hero called the Midnight Robber. She takes on the mantle of that character by

becoming the female version, the Robber Queen.

We see grotesque aspects not only in Toussaint, but also on New Half-Way Tree, where we encounter even more scenes of death and also rape not just of the human body, but of the natural environment around them. New Half-Way Tree itself is essentially a

“lawless” place, which has not been colonized as Toussaint has, and it is still inhabited my many native species of flora and fauna. Upon arriving Tan-Tan meets one of these species: “Douen! Nursie had told Tan-Tan douen stories. Douens were children who had died before their naming ceremonies. They came back from the dead as jumbies with their heads on backwards. They lived in the bush” (Hopkinson 93). Tan-Tan uses the stories she learned from her Nursie to give an identity to Chichibud, the indigenous alien she meets. Antonio kidnapped Tan-Tan and brought her to this mirror planet, bringing

with them their potential for destruction. Here, Tan-Tan experiences abuse that leads her

to continue embodying the persona of her childhood hero the Robber Queen. She splits

from herself after the first instance of rape, which happened after her ninth birthday party,

creating a dual identity. As the incident is happening, she talks herself into the split:

She must be very bad for Daddy to do her so. Shame filled her, clogged her mouth

when she opened to call out to Janisette for help. Daddy’s hands were hurting,

even though his mouth smiled at her like the old Daddy, the one before the shift

tower took them. Daddy was two daddies. She felt her own self split into two to

try to understand, to accommodate them both… She closed her mind to what bad

Antonio was doing to her bad body… She wasn’t Tan-Tan, the bad Tan-Tan. She

was Tan-Tan the Robber Queen (Hopkinson 140).

This is the only way that she can cope with the rape and subsequent impregnation that she suffers at the hands of her father, and the murder that she has to commit in order to change her circumstances. Zobel states “Tricksters are agents of destruction and creation who offer a psychological release to listeners, onlookers, storytellers and masquerade players” (211). Tan-Tan becomes an agent of the grotesque through her impersonation of the popular Carnival trickster as a way to escape her trauma. In her reclamation of agency, she begins to redefine her abused body as well as the identity of the Robber

Queen, no longer allowing both to be negative identities. As seen “in grotesque realism, therefore, the bodily element is deeply positive. It is presented not in a private, egotistic form, severed from the other spheres of life, but as something universal, representing all the people” (Bakhtin 19). Tan-Tan begins to accept her body as a source of potential change, a positive force that can bring justice to New Half-Way Tree, since she has not

been afforded the same by the people around her. She also protects characters that are

morally ambiguous, highlighting the fact that all bodies can work towards redemption,

although also marked by the ability to participate in depraved or evil deeds. The abuse

enacted by Antonio creates trauma that can be compared to the trauma that is enacted

upon nature, as her female body serves as a metaphor for the colonization of the

environment later on in the novel. Since Tan-Tan is able to redeem her abused body and her persona Robber Queen, it is clear that grotesque through eliciting disgust and empathy at once, works to redeem humanity through catharsis. Human’s estranged relationship with nature can similarity be reestablished through this literary technique. As previously stated, Hopkinson is exploring these ideas through a society that is essentially

“post-race” due to the mixture of cultures, and in this new world the next issue that arises

humans are again the imperialists and colonizers, although their history is that of the

previously colonized.

Hopkinson tackles the issues of the history of colonization by comparing the

abuse of the human body with the abuse of the land, which was also a key tenet used to

subjugate both female bodies and feminized nature. When the Marryshow Corporation

ship first landed on Toussaint, it brought all the history and religions of these cultures

along with the people. Everything in this future is controlled by artificial intelligence:

The Nation Worlds were one enormous data-gathering system that exchanged

information constantly through the Grande Nanotech Sentient Interface: Granny

Nansi’s Web. They kept the Nation Worlds protected, guided and guarded its

people ... The tools, the machines, the buildings; even the earth itself on Toussaint

and all the Nation Worlds had been seeded with nanomites – Granny Nanny’s

hands and her body. Nanomites had run the nation ships (Hopkinson 10).

Granny Nanny becomes a godly figure, one that is monitors everything and everyone at

all times. Uppinder Mehan in discusses the relationship with science of members of a

postcolonial history of abuse and trauma; that relationship exacerbates their socio-

political positioning in the world. Mehan also discusses how technology replaces the

spiritual in cyberpunk literature, also a branch of speculative fiction: “In cyberpunk

literature the spiritual is found in cyberspace. Here beings whose primary mode of

existence is computer code take on personality and agency” (8). The religious aspects of

Yoruba religion, a traditional African religion that is the basis for much of what we now

call Vodou or Santeria, are embedded in this new planet. Rather than its being used in a

traditionally mystic form, it is in the form of nanobites, shifting the original history and

beliefs. This is discussed by Paromita Mukherjee: “The setting of Midnight Robber is in

Planet Toussaint, a space beyond the Caribbean, and beyond the Earth. Hopkinson rejects

the white dominated scientific terms, and embraces certain terms from the Caribbean

folklore and combines them with the elements of science fiction.” Granny Nanny is

programmed to know about traditional Afro-Caribbean folklore and beliefs, but also carries the history of colonization. Humans now worship a god that is post-human but

still mirrors the original traditions. This implies that this community is doomed to repeat

history and to take up the position of the white (Euro) colonialists from Earth. The

humans who colonized Toussaint have had the opportunity to build a home that rejected

the destruction that had previously occurred to their ancestors, but Hopkinson uses her

novel to point out that the Caribbean is still tainted by a history of violence that needs to

be addressed.

As descendants of the Caribbean, Tan-Tan and her community’s actions are

influenced in this future narrative by their designation as oppressed and oppressor. This

can be seen through their celebration of Carnival and in how this world required no manual labor. This embrace of Carnival and rejection of labor suggests that these colonizers are aware of the horrors of the past, specifically those that came out of slave labor, and want to work to preserve their culture while removing parts of their history that were painful. One can see through Carnival that many themes of the grotesque are still valued, which in some cases these themes can be closely connected to violence. Although representing freedom, Jour Ouvert is an example, as citizens are permitted to exert violence on each other in a duel. Although it is a practice that still occurs today, in the novel it ends up representing actual rather than representational violence. The hosts attempt to even out the playing field by only allowing the use of traditional weapons, also indicating once more the endurance of an ancient history. They are not allowed to murder each other but they can greatly incapacitate each other: “‘When people does fight in a

Jour Ouvert duel, them does fight in the old ways, with machete and bull pissle and stick and thing. All to remind them of their history, of times back on Earth. Them does even fight with hand and foot’” (Hopkinson 35). This tradition presents a society that does not want to let go of the past because of all the crimes that had been done to them and all the erasure of history that has previously occurred. This creates a space for violence to thrive, as Antonio’s takes advantage of the event by cheating and murdering Quashee. The preservation of violence is something that Granny Nanny tries to avoid by stopping

premeditated crimes but ultimately by preserving violent parts of the culture, Granny

Nanny allows violence and crime to exist. The AI carried ideas that lead to the

decimation of the natural environment and the extinction of the douen community and

much of the indigenous flora and fauna. Violence is exacerbated by technology and can

be compared to how the indigenous douen species deal with violence in their world. The

douen are still able to keep their technological advances at a minimum, and this creates a

space for racism to fester. Their way of life protects the environment, but allows them to

be mistreated by the humans, who are quickly advancing technologically.

Toussaint represents a space which is trying to be seen as a utopia, where people

have equality and where if they commit any crimes they are exiled to Toussaint’s mirror

planet, New Half Way Tree. Granny Nanny who works through panoptic modes, is able

to stop premeditated crimes and this helps control the population. At the beginning of the

novel Tan-Tan’s Nursie, through the use of Granny Nanny, tells young Tan-Tan, about how Toussaint used to be a primitive land. She also recounts how humans destroyed the native species in order to create a “safe space” for humans to live: “It told her about the animals that used to live on Toussaint before human people came and made it their own… ‘the indigenous fauna: the mako jumbie-them, the douen…Don’t frighten young

Mistress. It ain’t have no more mako jumbie on Toussaint no more. You safe”

(Hopkinson 32-33). It seems that the human race, if continuing in certain types of exclusionary Western modes of thinking, is always going to be afraid of the other, and in a world in which color is not a mode of oppression, humans found a way to oppress nature to the point where it changed the whole environment of the planet. Through slow violence and uneven development, being anti-environmental ultimately leads to racism

against being peoples stuck in these margins, as they are continuously exploited and

classified as the other if they intervene in the extraction of wealth. Hopkinson is warning

her readers that history can very easily repeat itself even centuries into the future, because

humans inherently need the past in order to conceive a future. Caribbean traditions are

not inherently violent, but there is a need to acknowledge the violence within certain

actions in order to avoid destructive methods to continue. Tan-Tan continues to inquire

about the indigenous species that used to inhabit the planet, asking about more

information about the douen. Nursie goes on to say “‘I don’t know plenty about them,

young Mistress’ it said finally. ‘Indigenous fauna, now extinct… To make Toussaint safe

for people from the nation ships’” (Hopkinson 33). The douen are actually an intelligent

alien species that had a society that valued nature and worked within its natural confines

to survive. After the colonization of Toussaint, they became extinct, which mirrors how

many indigenous communities of people, plants and animals became extinct shortly after

the colonization of the Caribbean. The problem that occurs is that in Toussaint, humans

engage in the same oppressive development that had subjugated and silenced their

ancestors in the past. They play the part of both colonizer and colonized in a body of

culture that is now supposed to be unified, pointing out the turmoil inherent in that

duality. Caribbean peoples kill the native population of species and continue to expand.

The douen are the “other,” a position that their ancestors had previously inhabited. This is interesting because on the mirror planet, New Half Way Tree, the douen and the mako jumbie, along with other flora and fauna, are still alive, and when Tan-Tan ends up exiled in that planet, she begins to realize that the history of her people has not portrayed these creatures accurately. After Antonio and Tan-Tan cross the dimensional portal and the

reach the human human village, Tan-Tan notices how the humans are treating the douens, who seem to be kind and intelligent creatures. They treat them like children, using them for their labor. The douen were referring to the humans as master and boss: “Tan-Tan scolded, ‘He not your boss, Chichibud.’ She repeated her lesson exactly as Nanny had sung it to them in creche: ‘Shipmates all have the same status. Nobody higher than a next somebody. You must call he “Compere,’’ she explained to the douen… ‘Pickney-child,’

said Claude, ‘is a human that?... ‘No,’ Tan-Tan replied doubtfully. ‘So how he could call we Compere?’” (Hopkinson 121). Granny Nanny had previously taught Tan-Tan that everyone was equal, and initially Tan-Tan considers Chichibud as such. In Toussaint the douen were killed off because they did not fit the colonizers description of human. The reader was previously informed that the douen were exterminated for the human’s protection, so Granny Nanny stripped them of their agency and did not recognize them as anything by “other.” This resembles how Western modes of religion and science allowed for some peoples to be dehumanized because they didn’t fit their definition of human, which then led to slavery and erasure.

Modern science was a method of improvement and the people who came to

Toussaint as well as the exiles in New Half Way Tree see technological advancement as such, ignoring the potentiality for destruction. Scientific innovation used under that mindset led the exiles to erect towns, clear forests, and rebuild what they saw as true a civilization. The douen were employed without compensation and were seen as less than human. While traveling through the dimensional portal that will take her to New Half

Way Tree, Tan-Tan experiences veils of transformation: “Tan-Tan felt as though her

tailbone could elongate into a tail, long and bald like a manicou rat’s. Her cries of distress

came out like hyena giggles. The tail-tip twitched. She could feel how unfamiliar muscles would move the unfamiliar limb” (Hopkinson 73 – 75). Tan-Tan in this scene grows parts that are animalistic, showing how technology reveals that the line between animal and human is miniscule and easily crossed. Hopkinson through this scene gives the reader a hint of how this line will continue to be blurred in the novel. The douen women for example were hidden from the exiles, which was not very difficult to do, as they didn’t look much like the male douen, taking on a close resemblance to giant birds. The actions of the colonizers of Toussaint followed Baconian methods of development and those methods were brought to New Half Way Tree by the exiles: “As it was conceptualized by

Francis Bacon and his followers in the seventeenth century, the scientific method involved interventions in a natural world represented as a female body, a body that had to be ‘twisted on the rack’ and ‘tortured by fire’ before it would reveal its secrets” (Dawson

49). The Caribbean descendants still follow a patriarchal mindset, allowing for the continuation of the belief that a feminized nature needs to be under the control of man.

The colonization of the environment is personified by Tan-Tan, as she experiences sexual abuse by her father mirroring the patriarchal abuse of a feminized nature. She finally cries out “He rape me, Abifeta. He put this baby in me, like the one before. He was forever trying to plant me, like I was his soil to harvest” (Hopkinson 260). By being exiled, Antonio, who as mayor held a position of power in Toussaint, needs to reclaim authority over his surroundings. Since there are little to no laws or technological advancements in this wild planet, he follows the path of obtaining control by dominating feminine nature. Dawson states, “As Bacon’s account of scientific inquisition suggests, the scientific method took this reign of terror as one of its core metaphors, generating a

model of patriarchal mastery over a passive feminized nature that sets the terms for

subsequent notions of progress through domination of the natural world” (51). By raping

and impregnating his daughter Antonio reclaims his male agency, while at the same time he, along with other exiles, are participating in the rape of the land by cutting down trees and using the douen as slaves. As Olaoluwa, speaking about Wizard of the Crow, states

“The region’s ecology also comes under threat from a sit-tight administration that extracts resources without any thought for replenishment, and one striking narrative epiphany in the text – as the far-reaching consequences of the reckless performance of power unfold – demonstrates the convergence of both human and environmental dislocation and loss” (127). This observation about the loss of the human and the environment is evident in the new administrative body that is taking over New Half Way

Tree as the humans begin to dispossess the douen and destroy the environment. It is interesting to analyze the way the douen react in light of this violence.

After Tan-Tan murders her father, she escapes the village with the help of

Chichibud and Benta. Although Chichibud knows about the terrible violence that had been exerted on Tan-Tan for years by her father, he still does not justify it, but rather teaches Tan-Tan that if violence is exerted one must work to remedy it somehow.

Chichibud presents this belief to Tan-Tan through a sort of spell, which allows him to really make an impact: “Tan-Tan’s heart was hammering hard like and slow in her chest like a drum. When you take one life, you must give back two. Tan-Tan bowed her head and accepted the obeah that Chichibud had just put on it. ‘I swear Chichibud’”

(Hopkinson 174). The douen value peace and life over violence and death, and besides the interspersed oral tales that interrupt and eventually become the primary narrative,

they are a connection that the reader receives to mysticism. This ecological sf text is

hinting to readers that society needs to have a closer relationship to valuing the human

and their connection to each other and nature. As the exiles main concern is to rebuild the

cities that they are used to, as they see no other way to survive, the douen provide an

alternative to that lifestyle. The humans “technological attitude sees the world only as

stuff for consumption and comprehension” (Mehan 5), while the douen try to integrate

new scientific discoveries while maintaining ecological balance. Douen are not treated with the agency that they deserve, they are just seen as a community to study and exploit, which is something that Tan-Tan does not agree with after all that she goes through.

The douen, near the middle of the novel, are forced to move from their homes because Janisette, Tan-Tan’s stepmother, finds her living with the douens Chichibud,

Benta, and their daughter Abifeta. Along with some friends, Gladys and Michael,

Janisette comes ready to destroy the tree home of the douen. She is fueled by vengeance after Tan-Tan murders Antonio. They see themselves as holding more power because they have cars and modern weapons, and this power clearly leads to even more corruption and indifference towards nature. The douen, like Kamiti and Nyawira in

Wizard of the Crow, are the individuals that have a connection to nature that is appreciative and protective. After the community is forced to move, they erase all traces of their lives there by cutting down the tree that they have lived in. This destruction of nature is quickly remedied, as they do not just leave death behind. They perform a ritual that heals the scorched land, showing their dedication to the preservation of nature. The description of this ritual sounds magical and afterwards the douen give their final thanks to the land before departing. Tan-Tan observes how “They keened their loss to the sky.

Each one mourning its loss… Tan-Tan felt say she didn’t have any right to be part of their mourning, but the tree had held her in its arms too. Quietly she whispered, ‘Thanks.

I so, so sorry. Thanks’” (Hopkinson 277). The fact that the douen show so much respect for the tree which had housed and fed them shows the beauty of nature and the need for redemption in regards to the environment. This appreciation of nature is juxtaposed by the connection to technology, specifically the car built by Gladys and Michael: “A car!

Big and loud and smelly; body made of rusting sheets of iron held together with rivets; and large lumpy wheels made from tree sap or something. The car’s exhaust pipe was pumping out one set of black smoke, clouds of it rolling up into the clean air”

(Hopkinson 261). This description paints an ugly picture of technology, which infers that the things that the human population are building are not safe for nature or the native inhabitants of the planet. It suggests that like on Earth and Toussaint, science in the hands of the wrong people will lead to destruction.

Technology is an important aspect of Hopkinson’ science fiction narrative, as it is also portrayed ambiguously. Having technology in the novel can be either extremely positive or negative. The distinction lies in having technology that employs mysticism from Afro-Caribbean folklore or has a connection to the natural world rather than embracing unchecked industrialization. The positives and negatives are visible when looking at technological use in Toussaint and New Half Way Tree. In Toussaint, Granny

Nanny is a technological program but has the voice of someone who was considered a mystical woman in traditional Afro-Caribbean folklore. Hopkinson explains that, “the

‘artificial intelligence that safeguards all the people in a planetary system becomes

Granny Nanny [as well as Anansi, the Ghanaian trickster figure], named after the

revolutionary and magic worker who won independent rule in Jamaica for the Maroons who had run away from slavery’” (Mukherjee). It is disappointing to see how in Granny

Nanny’s society, technology was used negatively, allowing for the development of

Toussaint to destroy the native inhabitants, flora, and fauna. In real life she was someone who opposed oppression and the “African folklore elements come alive in her

[Hopkinson’s] novel as the technological elements of science fiction” (Mukherjee), but these elements ultimately lead to the extinction of the douen. The AI is not able to bypass this part of the colonization, suggesting that the AI is not aware of the reality that it is recreating. It labels the douen, which are an intelligent alien species, as “other” and goes on to destroy them and their land. This is one of the negatives of technology, while

Hopkinson takes advantage of the mystical background of the AI that is directly fueled by

African folklore and magic.

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

Reestablishing the connection between the human and nature is a feature visible in both Wizard of the Crow and Midnight Robber, and through the rediscovery of kinship, the need for ecological conservation is strengthened. These novels show that Dawson’s call for the preservation of the environment is already present through literary examples, although these positive portrayals are still connected to the negative portrayals of capitalist modes of development. Olaoluwa states:

Changes in the ecosystem cannot be divested of their political dimensions

(Mung’ong’o, 2009: 192). The dislocation that results from such changes is

evident not only at the level of the depletion of flora and fauna, but also in the

geographical and social dislocation to which Africans have been subjected both

internally and externally...The neglect and absence of social security for the

citizens find a parallel in the neglect of the ecology and environment, underlining

the impossibility of discussing the fate of humanity in isolation from nature and

the environment (127-128).

Kamiti’s continuous advocacy for nature and the douen’s practices show that humans need to stop neglecting their responsibilities to the natural world because the survival of the human race and their ties to culture, politics and survival is intricately connected to the environment. Even though both of these novels are speculative science fiction, we can see the current reality that technological advancement cannot save our planet if we continue to participate in such exploitative methods of consumption and development.

This is why it is so important for writers to present the environment and climate change in a way that is intelligible for the public. Teachers of all levels should then bring these narratives into classrooms, so that the importance of these texts is highlighted. Discussing

Octavia Butler, Streeby states that “we might… start preparing people for the climate changes to come, partly by changing the way we educate” (100). Ngugi works to do this and breaks Western tradition bringing in satire and magical realism into science fiction.

Literature has been an agent in the ways we see and treat the natural world long

before colonization even began. Dawson mentions that “The English philosopher John

Locke, for example, argued that God intended the land to belong to those who were

‘industrious and rational.’ These attributes were manifested in Europeans’ ‘improvement’

of the land through their labor, development work that, he argued, removed the land from

its original communal state and made it the property of the Europeans” (49). If Locke's

writings were able to shape the way humans view nature, then it is definitely possible for

writers to continue to do this. Ghosh is hesitant about the ability of the traditional novel

to portray climate change as a phenomenon that needs to be addressed sooner rather than

later, but as we have seen through Ngugi and Hopkinson’s novels texts like these exist.

Although Ngugi breaks Western tradition by writing in his native language, Gikuyu, and

bringing in satire and magical realism, his examples and methods are always bombarding

the reader with anti-capitalist, pro-nature messages. This keeps the reader from getting

lost in the magic and it also helps the reader see that the ideologies that Ngugi is trying to

discuss are important and that something needs to be done soon in order for humanity to

avoid a similar future. McLaren writes how “In one situation, some observers consider

the Wizard to have been drunk at a bar, but through A.G.'s voice, the Wizard was

‘overwhelmed by a vision of all the evils he saw before the land; his throwing up on the

grass by the roadside was his way of saying that the land needed cleansing’ (Ngugi 597-

98)., foreshadow the larger global issues relating to the environment and eco-criticism”

(152). In this quote, McLaren points out that another method of narration that is not

usually in the traditional novel, orality, also allows for magic and the important issues of

the environment in a global scale to shine though.

Language also plays an important part in the preservation or destruction of culture

as Dawson notes: “The pivotal moment was the human development of language, and

with it a capacity for conscious intentionality… With this ‘great leap forward,’ Homo

sapiens essentially shifted from biological evolution through natural selection to cultural

evolution… emancipation as a species from what might be seen as the thrall of nature

also made us a force for planetary environmental destruction” (20-21). Ngugi decided to

write his novel in his native Kenyan language of Gikuyu, allowing for certain themes less

expressible in English. Hopkinson begins her novel by letting the reader know that she is

taking the colonizer’s language. This does not only include language by itself but all its

cultural connotations. She uses the English language to tell her story, but she uses the

transformations that were created by the slaves when they were forced to learn the

language. It is important to know that “Through transformation of the language by

stealing the “torturer’s tongue” as described in David Findlay’s poem Stolen (quoted in

Midnight Robber), Hopkinson establishes a unique vision that may have fantastic and utopian elements mixed with magic realism, but can also be interpreted as hope for an emerging culture” (Mukherjee). Hopkinson’s choice to write her novel in a Creole

English acknowledges the resilience of the indigenous cultures, who instead of letting the

dominance of Europe completely erase their culture, created their own language by blending many elements. It also allows for magic to be at the forefront of the narrative, as many of the countries that participated in the transformation of the colonizer languages had this deep rooted belief in mysticism. The rejection of the standard also reflects that the use of languages native to countries in the global South is important to framing a multicultural multi voiced narrative of cooperation.

If we can show climate change through many different modes, we can begin to establish the importance of action to our global community. We need to show that ecological loss is as important as human loss. As Olaoluwa states, “while human loss is irreparable, there is a sense in which ecological loss is redemptive. We are at this point confronted with the imperative of replenishment and ecological restoration” (131). We are at a point in history where can still make changes that will change the future of climate change. Dawson’s rewilding can happen as long as we can learn to change the way we see the world and our relationship to nature. Commenting on Wizard of the Crow

Olaoluwa also mentions that “The novel’s insistence on the interdependence of the survival of humanity, flora and fauna suggests that the local ecology must be restored through a process of what I call relocation. Relocation returns us to the necessity of replenishment and the redemptive values of ecological mourning” (133). This idea of relocation mirrors Dawson’s ideas of rewilding which shows that Dawson isn’t the only one concerned with the restoration and maintenance of the environment. Writers such as

Olaoluwa and Ngugi also show their concerns through literary and critical pieces of writing.

As McLaren states, “the eco-critical is additionally significant because it returns

to a fundamental principle, connecting the fate of world populations to maintenance of

the environment” (156). Writing eco-critical pieces like the novels discussed here can help create those connections. The use of multiple voices, languages and narratives are a trait of speculative fiction and its subset of ecological sf. If we continue to employ the methods used by Ngugi and Hopkinson we can accomplish Ghosh’s goal. They prove that magical realism doesn’t actually separate the reader for the reality of environmental issues, but rather allows for a space to be created in which the reader can be bombarded with eco-critical examples while still reading a fun and entertaining text. This allows the creativity of fiction writers to shine through while their dedication to the environment and social issues still remains center stage.

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