Ta-Nehisi Coates' THE WATER DANCER--Magic & Annihilation, the use of fantasy as a means of survival

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ THE WATER DANCER may be the most satisfying novel I have read recently. I  believe Coates was once a student of both Tony Morrison and E.L. Doctorow. These two as influences make sense in a novel that weaves African spiritual tradition with the cultural annhilation that was the slave economy in the South. The darkness of this human infamy has an unexpected light in this novel, a kind of awe for the mystery of life.

THE WATER DANCER is written in a lyrical mythic style within a historical narrative of plantation life in Virginia in the 1800s, where slave families were destroyed on whim or business interests of owners.  As loved ones were sold down “Natchez Way” in Texas and other destinations west, those born to the “task” suffered husbands, wives, children disappearing often with no warning or forwarding address. The threat was enough to quell outer rebellion, while those so bereaved took comfort where it can be found–knowing it was transient..

The narrator, Hiriam Walker cannot remember the face of his disappeared mother but knows she told him that his father was the “Massa.” She seemed not to like him, but young Hiriam is proud his father is the “Massa”of the plantation. And, working in the fields, he’s recognized by his father, who flips him a rough totemic coin. He’d heard of Hiriam’s clever tricks, based on his ability to remember anything he’s seen or read–a fact he must conceal.

When his gives instructions that Hiriam is to move to the house, he sees it as a first step to his aspirations. He hears but doesn’t believe the warning of  the woman who raised him, that the house people were not real family. So Hiriam’s values are split. He gets an upper room with books, a tutor and is mesmerized by learning. But he’s nurtured by the subterrean slave life, literally under the house. He is shockeed, when his education is suddenly aborted before his first astronomy lesson. Hiram has enough education for his task, man servant to his white legitimate half brother. To Hiriam’s chagrin, the destined master of the estate is a childish doofus with little respect for his class, “the Quality”  of Virginia. Hiriam must save him from his ignorance.

The ability he was born with is no match for the other’s privilege. Yet as his father’s son, Hiriam is determined to uphold the standard of the “Quality” as opposed to the low whites, who do their bidding and bully slaves as they can. Life under this “task”is bearable. But as time moves on, many slaves are sold to compensate for the depleted Virginia soil that had fuelled the tobacco plantations.
Hiriam knows his father values his intelligence and judgment but that he could also sell him away like his mother. She haunts him, a faceless trauma he cannot resolve.

Then he meets beautiful Sophia, the consort of his uncle. Though allowed more independence than a field worker, Sophia’s bitterly aware she cannot command the use of her body. Their relationship is radical, transforming.  What happens when a slave can no longer live under the task? Hiriam’s “fall” from privilege, means the loss of everything he loved that defined him.

Yet this psychic destruction leads him to the reality underlying the tasked slaves of the South–the Underground Railroad. Here Hiriam’s abiltiies are invaluable and he meets the invincable Harriet Tubman. Along the way, he learns the secret of his mother’s disappearance and his own startling transcendent powers. Like a ballad, where the past intersects with the future, THE WATER DANCER travels to the free land–Philadelphia, where slaves could live as free men–if they avoided capture by preying bounty hunters.

I have read the stories of Singer, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978 for works like The Magician of Lublin. What Singer did for his massacred people, forced to flee at the whims of governments, was provide vibrant stories and myths from lost  homelands. In a similar vein, Coates’ novel celebrates myth and memory,

From Virginian tobacco plantations to the secret lore of African kings and the real spycraft of the  Underground railroad, this is an enchanting novel. It’s full of truth about the human evil of men, strange, unexpected deliverance, and the joy of  true companions. Ultimately, THE WATER DANCER explores the coming of age of a biracial boy in a nation becoming indivisible.

S.W.