TV Review: Washington Black

Slavery, steampunk, spirituality and science combine in a unique coming-of-age story about the search for knowledge and family connection

Washington Black is a steampunk-style adventure about Wash, a young Black boy trapped in brutal, violent slavery in 1800s Barbados, whose life is changed by his time with Titch, an idealistic but insecure inventor whose family owns the plantation where Wash is enslaved. The idea of a Disney-esque slave story may give viewers pause, especially with what initially seems to be a guilt savior trope in the premise of the story. However, Sterling K. Brown’s presence (behind and in front of the camera) grounds the story, as does the fact that the series is based on Esi Edugyan's gorgeous Booker Prize finalist novel of the same name. Ultimately, Washington Black is a story of self-determination, community, and creativity in the face of unimaginable odds.

The short, eight-episode series is primarily told in two timelines: childhood flashbacks and adult present in the life of the protagonist. George Washington Black, (wonderfully portrayed by Eddie Karanja), nicknamed Wash, is a ten(-ish)-year-old enslaved child on a brutal plantation in Barbados. He is cared for by Big Kit (Shaunette Renée Wilson), a sturdy enslaved woman who tells Wash stories of her/their original home in Dahomey. The slavemaster, Erasmus Wilde (Julian Rhind-Tutt), is particularly brutal in his abuse of the plantation slaves, leading some to commit suicide. But Kit tells Wash that if they die, they will wake up in their old home in the beautiful Dahomey.

Things change for Wash when Erasmus’s brother, Christopher Wilde (Tom Ellis), arrives at the family’s plantation to work on his invention of a flying machine. He takes an interest in Wash because the child is clever, and is the right size to balance his flying machine. When another plantation family member dies in Wash’s presence, Wash is falsely believed to be the killer, so Titch flees the island with him by using their newly created flying technology. Their journey takes them to many locales and dangerous adventures as Wash grows into a talented engineer and scientist. However, his relationship with Titch struggles under the pressures of their fugitive status and Titch’s own insecurities.

In the present timeline, Wash (Ernest Kingsley Jr.) is now a young man living under a different name in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is mentored by Medwin (Sterling K. Brown), an older Black man who helps former slaves get to freedom and find their place in Halifax’s substantial and multicultural Black community, of which Medwin is the de facto leader. Wash meets Tanna (Iola Evans), a biracial young Black woman who is passing as white and traveling with her white scientist father (Rupert Graves). Wash and Tanna share an interest in science and are attracted to each other despite multiple barriers, including Wash being stalked by a relentless Javert-like bounty hunter (Billy Boyd) and Tanna being trapped in a forced engagement to William McGee (Edward Bluemel), a wealthy young British benefactor with his own strange secret.

There is a lot to like about the series, despite some shortcomings. The fantastical flying machines and other devices that propel the characters to their next adventure add a whimsical feel to the story, which is odd, given the grim premise. Throughout the show there is an appealing contrast and overlay of spirituality and scientific exploration, both of which require faith, imagination, and commitment from Wash. Additionally, we have a classic coming-of-age/journey narrative in the spirit of The Wizard of Oz or The Snow Queen, where Wash travels to new locations on his journey (from England to Dahomey, from the Caribbean to the Arctic) and meets interesting and supportive characters along the way. In particular, he encounters a new member of the African diaspora in each adventure, including a West Indian pirate queen and female warriors in Dahomey. Other important side characters include Gaius (in the past) as the observant, well-spoken, seemingly aloof house slave in Barbados who secretly keeps an eye out for the other enslaved people; and Angie (in the present), who is the sharp-tongued but kind maternal figure who runs the restaurant and who acts as an alternative to Wash’s original maternal figure Big Kit. The collection of diverse but connected characters adds to the fantasy folktale feeling of the story, as does Wash’s spiritual visits with the dead in the spiritual realm, and the implied mystical identity of Wash’s father.

On the other hand, many of the more central and grounded characters are introduced and then abandoned in the later episodes. This is particularly true of Medwin, who seems like a central character both in terms of the show’s narrative structure and in terms of his unwavering mentor relationship with Wash, particularly as an alternative to Titch and Titch’s insecurities. Tanna’s fiancé McGee is another key character whose surprising backstory is intriguing and highly entangled with Tanna and Wash’s relationship. However, he soon disappears from the plot with barely a one-sentence explanation. Tanna and Wash’s courtship progresses at a leisurely pace to the detriment of other key story elements, making the overall pacing of the story uneven, especially in the later episodes.

The abrupt and abbreviated treatment of many of Washington Black’s interesting characters and storylines indicates that a longer series might have created a more interesting exploration of the themes of racism, belonging, identity, betrayal, and scientific curiosity. Fortunately, the series has a satisfying ending that brings Wash’s tale full circle. Washington Black acknowledges the harshness of slavery and racism, but also opts to focus on relationships and optimism and to keep the onscreen violence moderate. This is in contrast to the novel, which has graphic content. As a result, the show is an intriguing confluence of adventure, romance, steampunk technology, and social commentary that is unique in contemporary storytelling and is certainly worth the journey.

Highlights:

• Quirky steampunk tech
• Interesting but underused characters
• An exploration of slavery and racism and self-determination through a PG lens

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Film Review: Companion

A fun slasher drama, but nothing groundbreaking

It's hard to find unique things to say about a story with so few unique elements of its own. Companion is a distillation of themes that had been previously (and better) explored in dozens of movies, including A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, The Stepford Wives, Blink Twice, Don't Worry Darling, Ex Machina, and even classics of robot cinema like Westworld and Blade Runner. A common thread running through this tradition is that people who exert control are terrified of the day when those who are controlled figure out how to control themselves. Here two branches of social critique converge: one related to patriarchal domination and another related to the allegory that robots provide for slavery. Although Companion could easily be mistaken for an entry in the killer robot genre, this killer robot has fully legitimate motivations, and we're supposed to take its side. As opposed to the usual template of helpless humans running away from a malevolent machine, this is a story with a helpless machine running away from malevolent humans.

Companion begins as a romantic drama where a generic guy (Jack Quaid) takes his new girlfriend (Sophie Thatcher) to meet his cool, rich friends. She's apprehensive, insecure, and at times disturbingly obsequious toward generic guy. As the first scenes progress, we learn that he takes her for granted and has no concern for her obvious self-esteem problems. Her puppy-eyed devotion to him is far from reciprocated, including in bed. Things are not right with this relationship.

And then the movie has the girlfriend kill a man in self-defense and we're treated to the plot reveal that the trailers had already spoiled: she's a robot girlfriend. Generic guy tampered with her programming so she'd be able to kill. The entire trip was a scheme to get rid of a man, take his money, and blame her. From this point on, the movie is a continuous chase: will the robot girlfriend find help before generic guy can turn her over to the police? Betrayals, additional murders, villain monologues, switcheroos, minor plot twists and moderate bleeding ensue.

Much of the movie's impact is lost for viewers who already had the first twist spoiled by the trailers, but even unaware viewers will find little to chew on after that moment. The choice to place the movie's biggest twist so early in its runtime can work if subsequent twists are of comparable magnitude; Companion is a slasher with an escalating body count but diminishing returns. The protagonist, who was programmed with ignorance of her nature as a robot in order to preserve the realism of her role, isn't given enough time to process the truth about herself. The villain, who has been using her all along and still tries to manipulate her by appealing to her implanted command to love him, becomes quite intimidating toward the end, with Quaid delivering a flawless image of malice concealed in politeness; however, this character doesn't have any more layers once you peel away his nice guy mask, and his act can feel one-note. The true impact of this villain is noticeable in hindsight, when one considers the opportunity that robotics gave him to shape in minute detail any partner he could have wanted. The fact that what he chose to program is a shy, anxious overpleaser reveals the extent of his evil.

One key implication that the plot seems not to notice, and thus doesn't get any development, is the robot girlfriend's self-preservation drive. Usually, in this subgenre of rebellious A.I., one would expect self-preservation to naturally emerge as an instrumental goal for the fulfillment of the core goal (in this case, the robot girlfriend could reason that she can't love her boyfriend if she's not alive). But Companion doesn't take that route. The protagonist's struggle for survival is presented as a given, with no need for a logical argument behind it. The choice is understandable. The alternative, where she would have hesitated for longer between fulfilling her programmed function and protecting herself, could have detracted from the story's feminist leanings.

Companion won't leave any big footprint in the records of slasher cinema, but it serves as a form of vicarious comeuppance for the toxic manipulator in your life. It's painfully hard to go against programmed behavior and stop caring for the demands of a person you loved deeply. But it's worth all the trouble once you revoke an abuser's access to the buttons that control you.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

'Kindred' demonstrates the power of stories to generate empathy

To focus on the entertainment value of this story would be to miss the point of why it's being told

Roger Ebert famously described the audiovisual medium as an empathy machine. New Hulu series Kindred, adapted from Octavia Butler's 1979 novel, is a good demonstration of how accurate those words were. In this story, Dana James, a modern, independent woman from the 21st century, is mysteriously dragged across time into the Antebellum plantation where her ancestors lived, and the past horrors of American history become lived reality for her, and much less directly, for the viewer.

There's only so much that a story can tell you about the human condition, and yet our most effective way to express it is precisely via storytelling. This tension was in Butler's mind at the time of writing Kindred. One important lesson from social justice movements is the idea that some experiences can't be fully communicated. You'd have to have been there. Butler herself cited such a gap in perspective as one of the motivations for her novel: the facts of American slavery that you can find in a textbook weren't just a history lesson for the people who had to live through it. From our vantage point in this century, it's too easy to feel detached from a monstrous social order that happened to people who are now dead. It's too tempting to develop for the enslaved populations of yesteryear the same indifference one might feel for the ancient Sumerians. Kindred seems to be saying to American audiences: this isn't just a tale of times past. This is your tale, your life. You exist because of these horrors. You don't get to form a concept of yourself that doesn't include the evil that happened here.

The merit of a work like Kindred is that it helps make these truths accessible even to those of us who have no ties to that history. That's the effect of the empathy machine: someone like me, a complete outsider, gets something as close as possible to bearing witness. I still have no idea of what it's like to live under race-based slavery, and I cannot pretend to have any standing to speak on American racial relations; I'm not American, not Black, and not descended from slaves. My identity is Latino, which comes with a historical baggage of its own. I cannot say what Kindred means for Black American viewers. Black critics have already commented on Kindred's representation of slavery far more competently and acutely than I ever could. What I can say is that, for an outsider like me, the series succeeds at touching the crucial emotions of curiosity and empathy that are the base minimum for solidarity.

A while ago, when I reviewed the TV adaptation of The Underground Railroad, I said that slavery narratives don't exist to entertain you. They tell violent events, but the violence isn't supposed to be exciting. They tell of pain and betrayal and injustice, but not so that you can get vicarious satisfaction through the victory of the good guys. In Kindred, Dana comes to believe that her role in the story is that of a heroine whose quest is to preserve her lineage. But she's not thrown into the past because she's destined to save the day. She's there because those events made her, as they made the country. She's there because those events are in her and all around her, as is true of every American.

Butler published her novel in 1979, at a particularly fluid moment in both the civil rights struggle and the speculative genres. The inexplicable phenomenon of being transported to the lives of Dana's ancestors hits very differently now, for a generation of viewers who grew up with Back to the Future or The Butterfly Effect. Dana (and the screenwriting team) spends too much of the runtime trying to figure out the rules of time travel, as if this were the kind of story that gets resolved by a stroke of genius. But Kindred is not a technical mystery in the vein of Asimov or Clarke. Dana starts her journey with the wrong impression of what kind of story she's in. To be fair, this may be intentional on the writers' part: the character of Dana is a writer herself, so it's understandable that her first impulse upon meeting the unknown would be to analyze it as a story, to pull it apart and try to make sense of the plot logic. And that's the mistake that Kindred warns against. To treat history as a story is to blur its facticity. Stories have a resolution; history simply goes on. And the history of American slavery has very much gone on.

The irony of this message about the value of true history is that Kindred is, of course, just a story. When the novel was first published, it was viewed by some critics as a feminist response to Roots, which does claim to be true history. Whereas Roots narrates the effort to reconstruct events from second-hand testimonies, Kindred suggests that nothing less than direct, personal experience will do. If you weren't there, you're not going to understand. And if you don't understand, it's not your fault, but you shouldn't use that as an excuse either; it's still your responsibility to make an effort toward empathy.

Despite the emotional effectiveness of this adaptation, sometimes it steers too far in the direction of a cerebral time travel puzzle, which is the wrong approach for this story. The use of a break in the rules of reality in a seemingly ordinary way to express a painful history is a narrative technique that doesn't match the Anglo-speaking tradition of hard science fiction and is closer to the Latin American tradition of magical realism. Kindred expresses a unique relationship that Black Americans have with time, one in which years' worth of suffering seem to pass while the majority doesn't notice, and the one sentiment capable of linking those incompatible perspectives is the universal human experience of mortal dread. It would have been more satisfying if, instead of the technicalities of time travel, the writers had given closer attention to the human side of the story.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

'Dragon Age: Absolution' packs dragon-sized themes in an elf-sized package

Against the common cliché that expects very little quality from videogame adaptations, this miniseries explores the danger of hunger for power with the depth of prestige TV

Across the iterations of the Dragon Age line of videogames, the common message has been about the tragedy of too much ambition. Time after time, someone seeks a quick path to greater power, and soon the repercussions become everyone's problem. Variations on this theme of human hubris range from the cosmic to the quotidian, turning the history of Thedas into a long series of misguided attempts to correct the excesses of the previous misguided attempt.

Any resemblance to actual events, etc.

The new Netflix miniseries Dragon Age: Absolution offers a chilling portrait of the insidious way ambition can seduce and eventually destroy. In a fantasy empire where humans reign and elves are a subjugated underclass, those in positions of power have seemingly never needed to learn that using others is wrong. The practice has taken root so strongly that it's reflected even in the smallest misdeeds: every time a character in the series is revealed to have done something bad, the badness is defined by a choice to use people—sometimes literally. This is consistent with the way the Dragon Age franchise has usually represented evil: humans using demons, demons using humans, humans using elves, Qunari using mages, mages using blood, mage hunters using lobotomized mages, armies using children, the noble families using each other as pawns... it's a very Kantian stance where the hallmark of evil is failing to see other people's autonomy and instead seeing only their usefulness. The main religion of the continent even has as its main precept that magic (i.e. power) should serve us, not be served by us. The fatal mistake of every overconfident mage in this setting is to lose their sense of purpose and become a plaything in the service of power.

What this worldview does for the Absolution miniseries is provide a moral anchoring point for characters' actions. One villain is so controlled by resentment that they plan to make a whole civilization pay for the atrocities committed by their rulers. Another is so disconnected from the lives of ordinary people that they plan to break the laws of nature to keep their former playmates. Even our heroic protagonist is at one point guilty of sacrificing the safety of a child to fulfill a job. And in each case, a plausible-sounding argument might be made for those terrible choices. This is a world that puts people in impossible situations and continues to punish them for desperately trying to break the cycle of mistakes. However, this is not a bleak world. The reason this particular type of moral failing has been represented so many times across Dragon Age continuity is not because the writers want to impart a nihilistic view; it's because multiple examples of the same mistake serve to illustrate how many opportunities people get (and miss) to make the world better. Nothing forces the factions in the setting to mistrust and scheme against each other; it's the unnecessary pattern of paying back revenge with more revenge that keeps the world burning. Underneath every well-written tragedy is this humanistic hope: it's not that the universe is fundamentally tainted; it's that people could choose better but don't.

The starkest metaphor for the way evils works in Dragon Age is blood magic, a route to power literally fueled by the suffering of others. In a neat practical symbolic package, blood magic can stand in for numerous forms of sociopathy, indifference, or exploitation. Quite intentionally, Dragon Age lore is vague enough about the earliest era of its universe that it's debatable whether it was the first demons who used the first humans or vice versa, but what is certain is that the theme of weaponizing others for one's ends is firmly established in the very foundation of the setting.

This is what makes the character of Rezaren, the main antagonist in the Absolution miniseries, so instantly compelling to watch. He is so deeply convinced of his own good intentions that he doesn't notice the incongruity of resorting to blackmail, backstabbing, torture and enslavement in order to regain a distorted idea of childhood harmony. In our times, we're sick of hearing of the ties between totalitarianism and toxic nostalgia, but the boring trope exists for good reasons. Rezaren exemplifies the villain with a motivation disproportionately smaller than his methods. A lifetime of infinite privilege has rendered him incapable of empathy, because, for the pampered nobility he comes from, the pain of growth is not a normal part of life but an embarrassment that must be punished.

Dragon Age: Absolution relies on too many flashbacks, which do the pacing no favors, but one key event in the past of both the heroine Miriam and the villain Rezaren is revisited from their opposite perspectives in a narratively fascinating manner. It's unfortunate that the plot takes so long to get to its actual theme (there's an air of the perfunctory in the boilerplate D&D party adventure of the first two episodes), but once the viewer learns what this series is actually about, once the extent of Rezaren's evil is exposed, the rest of the story goes by in a thrilling breeze. The mage Rezaren is a fantastic achievement of characterization precisely because of how casually appalling he can be. And again, we see an effective use of ambiguity in the portrayal of his backstory: is he a bad person because of the elitism of his upbringing, or was he honestly a good child who only turned bad because he was briefly in contact with a demon?

Be that as it may, Rezaren outshines our heroes in terms of viewer's interest. We've seen D&D campaigns so many times it's difficult to present an interesting group dynamic that doesn't resemble every game we've played. Rezaren is something else. He's so deluded by his privilege, so oblivious to the inherent dignity of others, that he considers the death of a slave as an affront to his property rights. He has lived such a suffocatingly sheltered life that he cannot comprehend why his former enslaved playmate would want nothing to do with him, and he even offers to enslave her again as if he were doing her the greatest favor.

The tragedy of Rezaren is that he knows no way of interacting with people apart from using them. This is nominally supposed to be Miriam's story, the epic journey that reconciles her with herself and heals her inner wounds, but as usually happens in epic stories, the heroine's victory is only as interesting as the villain's villainy.

If the viewer only gets to the first episode, it would be easy to be fooled by the appearance that Dragon Age: Absolution is like every other D&D-adjacent show. Miriam's companions are assorted flavors of generic archetypes and comic relief. But finishing the series (which should have been a single feature-length movie, honestly) is very much worth the less than stellar beginning. The combat scenes are decently animated, and the visual style fulfills its function of catching the eye, but where the show excels is in the moral drama. To be clear, there's never a doubt that Rezaren is in the wrong; there's no possible "other side" to the argument. What nonetheless makes him such an interesting character is how easily self-deceived someone can become when no one dares challenge the proclaimed goodness of their intentions.

Rezaren is a complex, fleshed-out villain on a par with the most wicked that Game of Thrones or its imitators can offer. There's no mystery to his motivation; there's just an incorrigibly warped perspective that no amount of emotional contact can fix. That such a feat of writing was possible in just six half-hour episodes is reason enough to recommend Dragon Age: Absolution. But for fans of fantasy warfare, heist missions gone catastrophically wrong, or gruesome forbidden magic, there's abundant material to sate that hunger. There's also a dragon, if you're into that. But the seriousness with which this story addresses horrifying extremes of pride, ambition and callousness is the true jewel hidden inside the sparkling, colorful exterior.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10.

Bonuses: +1 for the touch of genius that was using an imprisoned dragon to symbolize the lingering tensions of a highly unequal society, +1 for creating a villain that is at the same time fully reprehensible and fully understandable.

Penalties: −1 for excessive exposition of world history facts that are foreign to this specific plot.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

On the surreal horror of The Underground Railroad

How can evil be told so beautifully? How can depravity look so mesmerizing?

Viet Thanh Nguyen once said, "One of the unspoken silences of the Great American Novel is the assumption that it can only be written by white men." Maybe this is the reason why the literary scene still hasn't found this elusive Holy Grail; critics and academics keep waiting for it in the wrong places. Similarly, David Vann said the Great American Novel could only be anti-American, by which he meant it should focus on the country's greatest shames. Without a doubt, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead fits the description. As one character in the television adaptation just released by Amazon Studios declares toward the end, "America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. [...] This nation shouldn't exist if there's any justice in the world."

The book on which this production is based is not a historical novel; it is more, but the literary scene still seems not to understand how uchronia works. To summarize: in real life, the Underground Railroad is the metaphorical name for the secret network of allies who helped enslaved people escape into free soil. This was the rare kind of conspiracy formed for the cause of good, estimated to have saved one hundred thousand people before the Civil War. In fiction, The Underground Railroad takes place in an alternate world where the metaphor is reimagined as a literal railroad that goes literally underground. In the realm of the symbolic and the dreamlike, represented by the impossible feat of tunnels that go beneath and across the country, protagonist Cora Randall embarks on an allegorical journey through the history of American racial relations.

The first couple of episodes provide us with the key to interpret this story, which is Gulliver's Travels. Each location the protagonist visits is meant to stand in for a political reality. In the case of The Underground Railroad, the fact that one character speaks of vitamins, even though the word wasn't coined until 1912, gives the rest of the key: the tracks are a form of time travel. This can be read in two ways. One is as a collapsing of time: even if there had really been a magical fantasy train to take Black people out of the plantations, the states (and epochs) without slavery were not morally advanced enough to welcome them. The other way is as a more conventional time travel narrative. When Cora visits a fictional version of South Carolina where Black population is kept in check under the guise of benevolent uplift, we are visiting the era of eugenics, unethical medical research and forced sterilizations. When she stops by fictional North Carolina, where the mere presence of Black people is forbidden, we are in the era of segregation and of exclusion laws like the ones enshrined in the foundational documents of Oregon. When she marches through this story's version of Tennessee, it is a barren land consumed by unending fire, a reminder of the lingering pain that violence continues to inflict on the country. And when she reaches an agrarian utopia in Indiana, where Black people can live in freedom, we are given a skewed look at the purportedly equal 20th century and the ideological division between the strategy of respectability and the movement for Black separatism. All of these are revealed to be, as Cora declares, "no places to escape to, only places to run from." Episode 8 shows us a house located at the end of the railroad, and for a few seconds the camera lingers on the wooden lid of a tunnel. The beams of wood and the positions of the nails on it are arranged in a way that resembles the Confederate flag. This is stated to be a house that dates back to the Revolutionary War, which implies that America's rottenness has been hidden there all along.

Our villain is slave catcher Arnold Ridgeway, introduced with his own origin story that leaves us with no satisfying explanations, because evil is never so simple (take note, Disney). The son of a blacksmith with hippie leanings (Ridgeway Sr. both looks and speaks like a very high Walt Whitman), he is given an establishing moment of resounding significance when he is shown to be unskilled at forging chains. His lifelong insecurity belies the myth of Manifest Destiny, expounded only in later scenes when he's drunk and rambling incoherently, because such a perverse doctrine does not deserve a more dignified expression.

Ridgeway is an individual, because stories need characters in whom ideas can be embodied to put them in opposition, but defeating Ridgeway is not the point. The evil of racism goes beyond individual actions, and sometimes, when evil has developed an entire system, it has so much blame to spread around that it can fall on an innocent head. It's easy for viewers of The Underground Railroad to hate the character of Homer, to watch each of his choices and despise the little traitor. But such sentiment is misdirected. He's not morally responsible for having been turned into a tool by Ridgeway. One should instead hate Ridgeway, a hundred times more, for what he did to Homer. This kind of confusion in the task of assigning responsibility mirrors real-life situations where Black people are unfairly blamed for the few choices they have available. When the runaway Jasper chooses to die via hunger strike, Cora accuses him of giving up, but in his circumstances that's the only freedom he can still choose.

The Underground Railroad devotes much attention to the importance of leaving testimony at each stage of the journey. The railroad administration values those records highly, because the price of riding the train, which symbolically is the price of moving forward, is to share the truth. And that truth burns. I had to pause the episodes several times to take a breath, and at one point I had to ask myself why I was pausing, why I was letting my discomfort get in the way of the story. It is fictional, but it tells a truth that calls out for our attention, and on the face of which my and your discomfort matters not one bit. Just as Cora feels guilty for the slaves she couldn't bring with her, this story invites us to consider all the people who lived and died under injustice and who will now remain there forever. As much progress as we're making right now, we can do nothing for the millions who were enslaved. They are in the past, beyond our help, but this story makes the case that that doesn't absolve our generation.

Episode 9 features the traumatic sight of white men assaulting a Black church. As it was then, it is today, like the events of myth, which exist in eternity and are therefore always in the process of happening. The scars of this evil will never vanish, and that is the point. It would be unfair to expect them to vanish, or to actively make them vanish. It is a truth that demands to be told and retold. Like the stuff of myth, The Underground Railroad is told in symbols, with an impeccable use of sound and lighting and shot composition and atmospheric music that enthralls at the same time it horrifies. Director and showrunner Barry Jenkins has crafted a lasting testimony where the characters frequently stare at the viewer, saying nothing, because words are too small and cannot carry this message. Many of these shots have the sun directly behind the characters, obscuring their features to the point it's not clear whether we're seeing them from behind or face to face. We'd like to believe we're watching the show, but it points its gaze firmly at us.

The Underground Railroad is fully aware of the dual nature of this gaze. In episode 2, Black people are employed in a museum where they perform their exploitation for the entertainment of visitors, a metaphor for the show itself. The responsibility inherent to the telling of this type of story is best expressed in episode 8, when a character asks a poet, "If I gave you my sorrows, would you make them sound pretty?" The importance of dramatizations of American racism does not rest on its entertainment value. In fact, online discussion about this show cites its brutality as the main explanation for why Amazon subscribers are choosing to skip it. This is not a fun story. It contains no excitement, no catharsis, no moral validation of America. It will not amuse you. It will not make you feel better about yourself. But that does not diminish its narrative accomplishments. The Underground Railroad is a supremely beautiful piece of art, even while portraying supremely ugly truths, and you need to ask yourself what it says about you when the ugliness of truth is the reason you refuse to look.

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Interview: Rita Woods, author of Remembrance

Remembrance is a multi-generational story of how to protect those you love against the background of horrific circumstances.  A little magic and magical realism never hurt, but what happens when the magic is at its limit?    Debut author Rita Woods has created an emotional and beautiful story of generations of women who are connected through tragedy and unique supernatural powers.   Fans of magical realism, stories of endurance,  and unique storytelling need to get their hands on a copy of Remembrance!

Remembrance is a secret stop on the Underground Railroad. If you can make it there, if you can find it, you'll be protected there.  As Mother Abigail's  abilities fade,  so does the protection of Remembrance. Who will take on her mantle and responsibilities? As the world changes, will Remembrance still be needed, or will it be needed all the more?  Where do these magical abilities come from, and how will the bearers know when and where they are needed?  In this bold and uncompromising novel,  Woods' strong characters do what needs to be done, as they know the far-reaching consequences of giving up.

Rita Woods was kind enough to answer my questions about her favorite scenes to write in Remembrance,  how she developed the characters, the scene that still gets under her skin, the book tour,  tips for healthy travel,  how her career in medicine has informed her writing, and more.  She lives in suburban Chicago with her family, and you can learn more about her on her website, ritawoodswrites.com  and by following her on twitter, where she is @RitaWoodsAuthor .  

This month she is wrapping up a whirlwind book tour that took her all across the Midwest, and then to Texas, California, Lousiana, Georgia, and elsewhere. I hope we see many more novels and short stories from Rita Woods!  And I hope once her tour is finished, that she gets some well deserved rest.

Let's get to the interview!

NOAF: Congratulations on your debut novel, Remembrance! Can you give us the elevator pitch?

RW: Remembrance is the story of four women, each imbued with unique powers over the physical world. Spanning three centuries, beginning just before the Haitian Revolution and reaching into the 21st century, it tells the story of woman linked through the centuries, using their powers under some of the most horrific of circumstances to protect themselves and the ones they love.

NOAF: Abigail,  Margot, and Gaelle are women who are living in drastically different worlds and circumstances.  How did you develop their personalities, their supernatural abilities,  and their specific backstories?

RW:  Abigail was the first character to appear, the one around which Remembrance was meant to pivot. While the initial idea was to have this powerful priestess create this amazing sanctuary for runaway slaves, it became clear that in order to tell the story it was necessary to know how she got to this place. Where had she come from? Why would she create this place as opposed to a different response to slavery? How did her power come into being? This led back to New Orleans and ultimately to pre-Revolutionary Haiti. Much of the same calculus was in effect for the other characters.

Who were the people that populated Remembrance? What was it that made them strike out for their freedom?   While slavery was the constant background refrain, I wanted it to be clear that these were individuals, with different perspectives, different experiences and very different responses to their circumstances. And while not a slave, there were still reverberations of history/historic events in Gaelle's catastrophic loss. Like the other women of the story, she suffers great tragedy and has to find a way to herself again.


NOAF: I appreciate that we see your characters in times other than their robust youths.  As Abigail ages, she realizes there will be a time when she isn't strong enough to provide the protections her community has become accustomed to. Speculative fiction is filled with young people who are in their prime. Why is it important for readers to see powerful characters who are of an older generation?  Why write older characters?  

RW:  In the real world, power is most often not the currency of the very young. One need only to examine the world of business, medicine, politics. Power consolidates around experience, around alliances and is strengthened with practice over time. In Remembrance, while each of the women have raw talent, raw abilities, in each case these abilities have to be honed, focused, a process that takes time. I believe there is also a maturity of thinking that was necessary to make the decision to use their power for something bigger than themselves. It felt right that it was the elders (and this is a relative term) were the ones to step up and try to right the wrongs of the world, to be the keepers of tradition and their people.

NOAF: What was your favorite scene to write?  Which character was the most satisfying to write? 

RW:  I loved all my characters but surprisingly, it was some of the secondary characters that I had the most fun writing. I loved Dix and the little twins. Louisa was always fun and of course Josiah who was so deliciously creepy. Favorite scene is a bit harder. I loved writing the pivotal scene when Winter confronts the slavers in Remembrance. Another extremely satisfying scene to create, the one that haunts me and continues to live under my skin is the one in which Abigail accompanies her mistress to the Quenelle plantation on Saint Domingue in an effort to save Hercule.

NOAF: As I write these interview questions, you are in the middle of a book tour across the Midwest.  What's been your favorite experience on the tour so far?  Any tips for keeping your health and sleep in check, while being a travelling celebrity?  (I used to travel for work, and failed miserably in the "keeping my health & sleep in check" dept.)

RW:  There are so many super cool things about this tour. I've really enjoyed meeting other authors. Almost to a one, they have been such supportive, generous people and, for an insecure first time writer, offered encouragement and advice on an unexpected level. I'm trying to learn everything I can from their experience. It's also been amazing meeting people who've read and loved Remembrance, people who grab you and talk about Josiah and Winter and Margot like people they know personally.

As for the travel itself, I've been loading up on elderberry, vitamin C and echinacea. I try to get into the sauna at least once a week and have been disinfecting every airplane surface I can (something I saw another passenger do, and thought . . .BINGO). I've also been trying to drink my water (a struggle when all I want to do is mainline caffeine) and whenever possible pick up a Pilates class. 

NOAF: When you're not writing fantastic fiction, you're a Physician. How has your career in medicine informed your writing, if at all?

RW:  Medicine, it sharpens your storytelling skills. Every time a patient comes to you, they're telling you a story. Why they're there. When did the problem start. Can you describe exactly where the pain/swelling etc is. What does something sound/look/feel like. What makes it better. What makes it worse. All problems have a beginning, middle and hopefully an end. Physicians have to be extremely astute observers. We have to be able to interpret both verbal and nonverbal clues. We have to pick up subtext. All of those skills are directly transferable to writing. 

NOAF:  Thank you so much!  Now excuse me while I go buy some Vitamin C and echinacea!