ISU Bengal

Issue date: 4/18/07 Section: Life

Media Credit: Samantha Evans Author Nalo Hopkins reads from her book "The New Moon's Arms."

Not often do you have the opportunity to experience a novel from the vocal chords of its author. However, that is exactly the experience Nalo Hopkinson offered ISU, last Friday evening.

Immersed in Hopkinson's Caribbean accent, The New Moon's Arms vividly unfolded for audience members. Hopkinson's most recent novel offers an enticing combination of humor, wit, elaborately developed characters, engaging dialogue, and unique plot twists. When given the full affect of the author's voice the novel doesn't strike you as a two-dimensional book, but rather as a fully developed play being acted out.

The clever dialogue and scene setting drew laughter from the audience throughout the evening, as the heroine's personality came to light.

After this enjoyable reading, Hopkinson engaged the audience in a lively question and answer session. Questions ranged from: 'Who do you enjoy reading' to 'What is speculative fiction' to 'Could you comment on The Comet being very ignored?' Hopkinson took her time, answering each question thoughtfully and with a wit echoed in her writing. "Speculative fiction," Hopkinson explained with a smile, "is the term that people who read and write it use to describe it to those who don't." After laughter from the audience subsided, Hopkinson went on to explain that speculative fiction is an attempt to address what would happen if this occurred. As such, this style of fiction usually assumes large-scale social change and then addresses how it impacts populations and individuals.

For example, in The New Moon's Arms, Hopkinson borrowed from Alexander Hardy's theory on mammals undergoing a semi-aquatic state in their lives. She applied the theory in the book as if it were real, and allowed this to help develop the plot. When combined with the rumor of mermaids on her fictional island Cayaba, and the politics involved on the island and the environment from salt mining and globalization, this form of fiction seems less speculative and more believable.

An audience member also asked Hopkinson to address the dialect changes in her books. In Midnight Robbers, Hopkinson used what she refers to as "code switches" to draw the readers attention. Code switching is simply speaking differently to your friends than you would to your boss or pastor, and everyone does it. Hopkinson commented that she enjoyed the way Rastafarians used their own terms to emphasize the reality of others words; for example, instead of using the term oppressed, Rastafarians say 'downpressed.' Hopkinson elaborated on the complexities of writing a novel that played with the vernacular in this manner adding that "Every book [she] learns something you shouldn't do." However, Hopkinson's familiarity with dialect and how people speak give her characters an added dimension that is both captivating and rare.

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