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Abstract
This paper places Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, which is steeped in Caribbean traditions, under the umbrella of black speculative fiction. In Midnight Robber, Hopkinson’s tech-sophisticated projected future human settlement, becomes a creative space that subverts colonial legacies and creatively utilizes symbolism in imagined speculative futures to subliminally assert a decolonial agenda. In Midnight Robber, these symbols lie in the placement of certain historical African elements in the viable future. Anthony Kwame Appiah’s Thick Translation provides a hinge for contextual engagement with the text in order to clearly discern the implications of the use of these African elements. I argue that the weaving of these valorized African cultural elements into the speculative future space, imagines a reconnection to pre-colonial Africa thus introducing the Sankofa theory of return. This paper will show that in the treatment of African elements through the reclamation of traditional African storytelling technique, the reification of an ancestor as a supreme being and the use of an indigenous African god as an artificial intelligence body, Midnight Robber does not only present many analogies consistent with the Sankofa principle but also becomes an avenue for previously marginalized communities to move forward into the future with valorized elements sourced from Africa in a productive way.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 This paper is built upon the experience of Caribbean people of t African descent and not the indigenous people of the Caribbean who populated the islands before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
2 Hulme, Peter. “Making sense of the native Caribbean.” New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 67.3-4 (1993): 189–220.
Sued-Badillo, Jalil. “Facing up to Caribbean history.” American Antiquity 57.4 (1992): 599-607.
3 See Blogpost: Hopkinson, Nalo. “2021 Damon Knight Grand Memorial Award.” Nalo Hopkinson: Author, Creator, Nalo Hopkinson: Author, Creator, 1 Dec. 2020, https://www.nalohopkinson.com/blog/2021/damon/knight/memorial/award.
4 See: Okorafor, Nnedi. “Africanfuturism Defined.” Nnedi's Wahala Zone Blog, 19 Oct. 2019, https://nnedi.blogspot.com/2019/10/africanfuturism-defined.html.
5 See Akwaeke Emezi’s Pet (2019) and Bitter (2022), Irenosen Okojie’s Butterfly Fish.
6 See Chapter 2 of Isiah Lavender III and Lisa Yaszek’s Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century. Ohio State UP, 2020. 264p
7 See Owusu-Sampah Citation2014, Osei Citation2020
8 Variant spellings include anancysem.
9 Variant spellings are Anansi/anancy. In Jamaica, ananse is sometimes referred to as Aunty Nancy or bra Nancy. In Midnight Robber, the spelling used is Anansi.
10 See: Marshall, Emily Zobel. “Anansi, Eshu, and Legba: Slave Resistance and the West African Trickster.” Human bondage in the cultural contact zone: Transdisciplinary perspectives on slavery and its discourses (2010): 171–186.
11 A Conversation With Nalo Hopkinson: interview courtesy of time warner trade publishing https://www.sfsite.com/03b/nh77.htm
12 Refer to above-cited interview.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Elizabeth Abena Osei
Abena Osei holds an MA in Comparative English Studies, Literature and American Culture from Heinrich-Heine Universität, Düsseldorf, and is currently pursuing an MPhil in English Literature at the University of Ghana. She has published on Black Speculative fiction, specifically Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism in peer reviewed journals. She is also the winner of the Best Graduate Student Essay Award, organized by the prestigious African Literature Association Conference. When she is not conducting research, she is singing simple English Songs with her Kindergarten students.