“I was young and love to me was a fuse that was lit, not a garden that was grown. Love was not concerned with any deep knowledge of its object, of their wants and dreams, but mainly with the joy felt in their presence and the sickness felt in their departure.” ~ from the novel The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

I’ll be honest: I hate when people couch their candor in caveats like “I’ll be honest”. Or “if I’m being honest”. Or “to tell you the truth”. Or “I ain’t gon lie”. First thing I think when I hear such sentiments is: “So what were you being before you announced that you would be honest?”

That being said, I’ll be honest: I was a bit apprehensive to read another story about slavery. It’s not about not being “woke” (or whatever the hell term has replaced “woke”, since I haven’t heard an unironic “woke” in a while; must have gone the way of “Hotep”). It’s not about not wishing to acknowledge the history or those who lived it. It’s just that, quite simply, as a reader/writer who continuously seeks to balance my need for information with my desire for inspiration, I must acknowledge what emotional toil it is to invest in the environment of slavery. It is not about being ashamed to take this legacy on; it is about being thoughtful about the ways in which I take it in. Aka self care. I hope that that’s not disrespectful, but I have found that I cannot help who takes what to be disrespectful. Nor should I allow such considerations to unduly hem in my expression of self.

Roots was incredible. But there is a reason that I have read the book only once. 12 Years A Slave was amazing. Yet there is a reason that I have seen the film only once. Kindred? Technically I read it twice (the novel and then the graphic novel), but you get the idea.

That being said, this is Ta-Nehisi. THE Ta-Nehisi. One of my “top 5 dead or alive”. The man who hypnotized me with The Beautiful Struggle, floored me with Between the World and Me, and knocked me out once more with We Were Eight Years in Power. I’ve been a fan since devouring his Hilltop articles when we were at Howard. So it was never a question of whether I would read his first novel. I pre-ordered it as soon as I heard about it.

And of course he did not disappoint. Even with a theme of water, the book is “fire”. Like if historical fiction was mixed with a kiss of magical realism. Like if Butler had written Kindred with the poetic pen which she reserved for her Parables. Like if Butler and Baldwin birthed a book baby. Like. If.

The story follows Hiram Walker, “illegitimate” son of an enslaved African mother and their white Virginian slavemaster. He loses his mother to mysterious circumstances and at first seeks validation through the same society of “Quality” which damned half of his DNA. Then Hiram accidentally discovers a mystical power within him with the potential to supercede his circumstances. But he can only learn to channel it by recalling its source: his mother. And hers. And . . . Home.

If Sankofa is the Ghanaian philosophy of going back to fetch the forgotten fruit of the past so as to plant seeds for the future, then perhaps that serves as a metaphor for my having to return to the first chapter after finishing the first four so that I could better understand with context. But a much richer Sankofa metaphor lives in the way in which Coates has here masterfully melded the message of remembrance into this compelling narrative about identity, destiny, struggle, and love. He clearly wielded his hard-studied handle of history as he wrote a Virginia as stately and self-important as the courts of old. And then wrote a Virginia anything but “virgin”; as dried and dead as the tobacco that had once given it grandeur. Mordor itself; that “fell place” fallen.

SPOILER ALERT: Ta-Nehisi apparently also took lessons from his recent years of penning Black Panther stories for Marvel and applied some “superheroics” to the telling of this tale. I wonder if some will take it as disrespectful that Coates literally grants superpowers to the likes of Harriet Tubman, as if her real-life deeds required any further “hot sauce” to be deemed more “flavorful”. But like me, Ta-Nehisi cannot control what is deemed disrespectful to whom. Nor, indeed, should he allow such considerations to confine his expression. Nor, indeed, did he.

Go and fetch #TheWaterDancer . Its fruit is worth its seeds. And vice versa indeed. Sankofa.