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A review by caedocyon
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
5.0
Pretty certain that [b:Shadowshaper|22295304|Shadowshaper (Shadowshaper, #1)|Daniel José Older|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1416429594s/22295304.jpg|41683308] can trace some of its roots to this book. This is the not-so-YA version, darker in substance, but ultimately much more hopeful than I expected.
You can get the shape of the story from the first ten pages: Toronto's city center has been abandoned by anyone privileged enough to leave, but now they've found a use for the citizens who remain: organ "donations" are in demand. And then there's Ti-Jeanne, a new single mother who's trying to figure out a lot about family and love, and is tormented by unwanted visions of others' deaths. That would be an interesting enough tale, but there's a lot more to the story that follows than what those details sketch out.
Clearly I need to read [b:Ti-Jean and His Brothers|6471136|Ti-Jean and His Brothers|Derek Walcott|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1446524607s/6471136.jpg|6661753] now too. And I want to know how the folk songs in the epigraphs go---I couldn't begin to figure out the rhythms, but there was one I did know and I realized the raw lyrics didn't suggest how it went, either.
You can get the shape of the story from the first ten pages: Toronto's city center has been abandoned by anyone privileged enough to leave, but now they've found a use for the citizens who remain: organ "donations" are in demand. And then there's Ti-Jeanne, a new single mother who's trying to figure out a lot about family and love, and is tormented by unwanted visions of others' deaths. That would be an interesting enough tale, but there's a lot more to the story that follows than what those details sketch out.
Clearly I need to read [b:Ti-Jean and His Brothers|6471136|Ti-Jean and His Brothers|Derek Walcott|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1446524607s/6471136.jpg|6661753] now too. And I want to know how the folk songs in the epigraphs go---I couldn't begin to figure out the rhythms, but there was one I did know and I realized the raw lyrics didn't suggest how it went, either.