Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children—the violent and capricious separation of families—and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. So naturally his debut novel comes with slightly unrealistic expectations—and then proceeds to exceed them. The Water Dancer. He extends the idea of the gifts of the disenfranchised to include a kind of superpower. In the end, it is a novel interested in the psychological effects of slavery, a grief that Coates is especially adept at parsing. It is flecked with forms of wonder-working that push at the boundaries of what we still seem to be calling magical realism.
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A former national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine, Ta-Nehisi Coates is among the most revered and widely read intellectuals in the US. What white America fears most is black competence, Coates reasoned. Black excellence turns that fear into paranoia.
We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates review – on white supremacy
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The Water Dancer follows a young man named Hiram Walker, whose journey North is an urgent, perilous odyssey. In one early scene, Hiram encounters a group of white men charged with capturing runaways. Like the mother he cannot remember, the young man has a water-driven power called Conduction, which enables him to traverse great distances. Along the way, he meets real-world figures such as William Still and Harriet Tubman. They challenge and assist him as he attempts to secure the safety of Thena, a maternal figure, and Sophia, the woman he adores. It pulls from our particular histories, from all of our loves and all of our losses. Publishing historical fiction is a new endeavor for the author. As a national correspondent at The Atlantic , Coates produced journalism, essays, and memoir writing that earned him widespread acclaim and shifted national dialogues. This conversation has been edited.
