Nalo Hopkinson begins her novel, Midnight Robber, with a poem by David
Findlay entitled “Stolen”. “I stole the torturer’s tongue,” the narrator proclaims,
“it’s the first side of me some see/ the first line you hear/ first line of
defense when I say/ “See this tongue illicitly acquired – doesn’t it suit me
well?””(Findlay). Findlay’s poem is one rooted in the literary discussion of
colonialism, and following his words lies the world that Hopkinson soon plunges
the reader into – an imagined, technologically advanced planet, known as
Toussaint, that is colonized by a people whose society is colored with
Caribbean culture.
It is a world monitored by an omniscient
AI known as Granny Nanny, a world in which the humans who are born into it are
quickly integrated into the computerized system of government the minute they
are born by small “ear bugs” implanted in their ears. It is a world where all
humans are equal, and addressed as “Compère,” no matter status or rank, a world
in which physical labor is virtually unknown, a world, in most respects, very
different from our own. However, as Findlay’s poem indicates, while the planet
of Toussaint is close to utopic, it is still a world that is shaped and formed
by the echoing effects of colonialism, much like our own.
Even without the introduction of
Findlay’s poem, Hopkinson’s text is one clearly situated in the discussion of
colonialism. Hopkinson’s main character, Tan-Tan deals with this overtly when
she and her father Antonio are exiled to the prison colony of New Half-Way Tree
where, for the first time, she encounters a race of people other than her own.
When Tan-Tan and Antonio reach the settlement of Junjuh, they are met by two
men known as Claude and One-Eye. These are the first humans they encounter in
New Half-Way tree, and when Chichibud, their douen trail guide addresses
One-Eye as “Boss,” Tan-Tan scolds him saying, “He not your boss, Chichibud…Shipmates all have the same status. Nobody
higher than a next somebody. You must call he ‘Compère” (Hopkinson 121).
The men laugh and Claude asks Tan-Tan, “Is a human that? … how he could call we
Compère?” (Hopkinson 121).
It
is here that Tan-Tan is first faced with the distinction between human and
other, or, on a more fundamental level, the difference between who is a person and
who is not. However, what points the discussion of the novel towards
colonialism, rather than pure race relations, is the fact that the settlement
governed by Claude and One-Eye is one made up of a group of people who have
come to settle in a new place through the displacement of another. The humans
in New Half-Way Tree, while having come as outsiders, have situated themselves
as the dominant people in an area once inhabited only by the douen people.
Thus, the interactions between the douen and the humans are a very clear
allegorical tool in the discussion of human expansion, colonialism, and the subordination
of a native people.
However, while Tan-Tan’s interactions
with the douen people in New Half-Way Tree stand as her first physical
encounters with colonialism and its ramifications, the world imagined by
Hopkinson for The Midnight Robber is
one that is deeply entrenched with the cultural effects of the institution. The
novel begins on Tan-Tan’s home planet of Toussaint, which the back of the novel
describes as a “Caribbean-colonized planet” (Hopkinson). Hopkinson quickly
immerses the reader into this colorful world with the jaunty prose of her
invented creole, a blend of Jamaican and Trinidadian that is spoken by both the
characters and the narrator of the novel (SF Site).
The character’s speak in a language
recognizable as English, but at the same time identifiable as its own distinct
vernacular, placing the story both physically and linguistically within
Hopkinson’s imagined cultural world. In this way both the language and the
events of the novel place the text within a specific cultural geography, and
more importantly, place the novel within a cultural context that for most
readers is connected inherently with a history of European colonialism and
cooptation of culture.
Because of this it is impossible to read
even a sentence of Hopkinson’s words, impossible to hear of Granny Nanny –“named
after the revolutionary and magic worker who won independent rule in Jamaica
for the Maroons who had run away from slavery” (SF Site)– without immediately
connecting Hopkinson’s text with images of colonialism, and a culture forever
altered by its implications.
Thus, Hopkinson’s text deals with
colonialism on two fundamental levels. There is the more overt layer of surface
events: the cultural interactions between human and douen. But there is also
the underlying cultural understanding that the world of Toussaint and, by extension,
the world of New Half-Way Tree, is one that has been forged by a history of
colonialism back on earth, a history that we ourselves remember. In this way,
colonialism is both past and present in a world that has been founded by the
colonization of another, making both Toussaint and New Half Way Tree
communities that are inhabitable by humans only through the expulsion of their
former inhabitants.
The root, then, of Hopkinson’s less overt
discussion of colonialism lies not in the events that take place during the
novel, but in the events that have occurred long before the novel’s opening,
and that have led to the creation of the culture and people who enact them. One
of the most distinct aspects of The
Midnight Robber is the writing and the language used by Hopkinson to
narrate Tan-Tan’s story. The language spoken by the characters in the novel
connects them directly to a specific cultural heritage, identifies them
undoubtedly as equal participants in political life (as Compère), and separates
them from those who do not speak the same language – namely, the douen. Thus,
language, in many ways, becomes the basis of personhood within the novel. It is
what distinguishes “people” from “creatures,” and what entitles some to address
a figure as Compère, and leaves others to address him as Boss.
The role of language within The Midnight Robber, and within the
discussion of colonialism as a whole, is introduced, once again, in Findlay’s
poem in the opening pages of the novel. The “torturer’s tongue” can be
understood as a number of metaphorical symbols, but within the context of The Midnight Robber, it is best
understood in linguistic terms: the torturer’s tongue is the language of the
torturer. It is the native tongue of a people who have arrived to assert their
cultural dominance. It is the langue of the European colonizers.
However, as the narrator of the poem
notes, the tongue has been altered after its acquisition. “I stole the torturer’s
tongue!” the narrator declares, “man wouldn’t recognize this dancing, twining,
retrained flesh” (Findlay). Here, Findlay alludes to the creation of creole
languages, languages that arise through the amalgamation of native and foreign
tongues. The tongue stolen by the narrator of the poem is one that has been
twisted into a creole, in order to create a language that is based off of
another, but that is entirely its own. It speaks of the birth of the Jamaican
and Trinidadian dialects after contact with English settlers, and it speaks of
the very tongue in which Hopkinson’s novel is told.
What is important about Findlay’s poem is
that it equates the adoption and transformation of the torturer’s tongue with a
sense of empowerment. By coopting and altering the language of the oppressor,
the oppressed has in some way found the ability to give himself a certain
agency. He has taken a tool of the oppressor, a symbol of his dominance, and
made it his own in a way that places a sense of power and agency in the hands
of the “thief.”
In much the same way as Findlay’s poem,
Hopkinson’s novel lends to language great symbolic weight. Language means
knowledge, it means intelligence, it means an allegiance to a specific cultural
heritage, and it is the basis of personhood and status between the human and
douen characters in the novel. In fact, it can be argued, that the levels of
personhood within Hopkinson’s novel exist on a spectrum of who speaks what
language, and how well. There is, of course, the clear distinction between
douen and human. However, even within these two broad categories, further
classifications can be made that lead to different outward manifestations of
personhood within the novel.
At the top of the social ladder, of
course, are those for whom the language of Toussaint is their native tongue. Ostensibly,
these are the humans: all of those who, as Tan-Tan recites in her parable to
Chichibud, have come to the planet of Toussaint as shipmates. However, within
the humans, limits of linguistic prowess translate to limits in personhood.
This can be seen in the character of Quamina, who is developmentally delayed
because of having gone through the portal to New Half-Way Tree while still in
her mother’s womb.
The adults in New Half-Way Tree
frequently speak of Quamina’s ailments, noting that for a great while she could
not even speak (Hopkinson 129) and noting how her mother “never think say one
day she would be able to help sheself” (Hopkinson 147). Here, it is the
acquisition of language that initiates Quamina’s change from helpless creature,
to quasi-personhood. After beginning to speak, Quamina begins to be able to
care for herself. However, it is frequently noted that Quamina “might never
come into she full age” (Hopkinson 130), which leaves her forever in the role
of a child, unlike Tan-Tan who eventually graduates into personhood at the age
of sixteen, or the age of adulthood in New Half-Way Tree.
In a similar in-between state lay the
douen men, who speak the language of the humans, but are not themselves part of
the human race. The ability to communicate with the humans gives the douen men
some aspect of agency: they interact with the humans and fit into an
established hierarchical system. However, while the ability to speak the
language of the humans allows them recognition as thinking creatures, it does
not allow them recognition as people. Because they are not human, they are not
granted the label of personhood; they will never be considered Compère.
On the other end of the linguistic
spectrum lay the douen women. The douen women are seen as pack birds by the
humans because they do not speak. Because the women never converse with the
humans, it is incomprehensible to them that the pack birds might be people.
This distinction is evident in Tan-Tan’s reactions to Chichibud’s wife. Tan-Tan
repeatedly forgets that Benta is “a woman, not a pack animal” (Hopkinson 183).
But what is notable about Tan-Tan’s understanding of Benta’s personhood is that
it hinges on Benta’s ability to speak. It is not until Tan-Tan learns that
Benta can communicate, that Tan-Tan grants her the position of personhood.
Furthermore, the way in which Tan-Tan fails to acknowledge her personhood is by
failing to speak directly to her, and by speaking through Chichibud instead.
“Talk to me!” Benta insists
(Hopkinson 182), asking her, essentially, to address her as a person.
The idea of language as a symbol of
personhood, as an instrument of cultural power, is one that is threaded
throughout Hopkinson’s tale and is a unique look on the cultural implications
of colonialism. Much in the same way that the narrator in Findlay’s poem manipulates
language to assert his own cultural dominance, the douen women manipulate their
use of speech to keep their identities hidden. By not revealing their ability
to speak, the douen women choose to be viewed as animals rather than people.
What is so interesting about this manipulation is that the douen women are
asserting their agency, and their personhood, by refusing to do the one thing
that would grant them agency and personhood. By remaining silent, they are both
renouncing their agency, and acting on it.
Midnight
Robber is a fascinating tale that delves bravely into the discussion of
colonialism. However, what makes it unique amongst other literature of its kind
is its attention to the role of language within that narrative, and its
understanding of how language makes us people, how languages gives us agency,
and how language is both shaped by and shapes the cultures in which we live.
Works Cited
Findlay,
David. Stolen. 1997
Hopkinson,
Nalo. Midnight Robber. New York: Warner, 2000. Print.
"The SF Site: A Conversation With
Nalo Hopkinson." The SF Site. N.p., n.d. Web.
<http://www.sfsite.com/03b/nh77.htm>.
