I read this for the "Literary Fiction" part of my 2020 reading challenge. I expected to like this, I wish I had liked this, but I really didn't. I usually like historical fiction and fantasy and everything, but this was just really slow and lackluster. The second half was easier to get through than the first half, but I still felt really let down by this book. ( )

In similar fashion to the way Colton Whitehead used magical realism in The Underground Railroad to fictionalize the account of slaves who escaped the horrific conditions of slavery in antebellum America, Ta-Nehisi Coates employs that device in his telling of African-American agency in the heroic efforts of the agents of Underground Railroad, including Harriet Tubman, to save many, but also to destroy the institution itself. In a much more profound way, The Water Dancer excavates the soul of slavery through so many layers of love and horror, goodness and evil, and examines its psychological effects, the conflicts of the slavers and the enslaved. I took issue with his conclusion that white people who helped were doing it because the white enslavement of African-Americans — the “Tasked” — offended the nobility they believed they possessed: “All of these fanatics [that were part of the Underground] were white. They took slavery as a personal insult or affront, a stain upon their name. . . . Slavery humiliated them, because it offended a basic sense of goodness that they believed themselves to possess. And when their cousins perpetrated the best practice, it served to remind them how easily they might do they same. They scorned their barbaric brethren, but they were brethren all the same. So their opposition was a kind of vanity, a hatred of slavery that far outranked any live of the slave.” While I don’t pretend to understand what was in the the minds of white people who were brought up in this system, I don’t think Mr. Coates understands that either, but it is his story. It was the only moment that I felt misplaced in an otherwise brilliant book. ( )

Very good. Tight and tender. Not gratuitous, but more moving in its allusion, connotation, and control. A little magical realism-esque. A hopeful fantasy. But I can’t be so cynical as to begrudge. So nice to hear a tale told from a empowered hero. Still, it’s heart wrenching to contemplate.

The prose isn't always easy to read, but this story is powerful and unforgettable. Hiram was born with a gift he doesn't know how to use or control; but it has the power to change his future. He was born into servitude at Lockless, a Virginian tobacco plantation. His mother and his memory of her is long gone; all he has is his half brother, Maynard, the heir to the estate, and the plantation owner, his father. He is afforded some liberties but when you're born to the tasked; the only liberty that matters is freedom. Little does he know that his gift will soon help him on the underground. Heartbreaking and powerful! ( )

So so gooooood! ( )