Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark was published in 2020.
The Ku Klux Klan plays a big role throughout the story. A significant moment was when the movie Birth of a Nation (1915) was being set up for public viewing. I thought this was an example of the power of stories to get into people’s minds and affect their character and behavior. The movie communicated the ideas of the inferiority of black people and presented white people as heroes.
The author also played with that idea of the power of stories by creating this novella where racism is presented as an infection, contamination, a monster that takes possession of people’s bodies. It floats in the culture, in the air, and the environment and reproduces so that it can infect the young and spread further. The monster uses the bodies of people it possesses to generate hate upon which it feeds. Racism is a monster that must be fought against.
Racism is one form of the monster. Hatred is another manifestation, and it is something that can also infect the people who are the target of racism. Slavery, Jim Crow, mistreatment and disrespect, limited opportunities, and other injustices weigh on the people who are the targets of racism. One of the characters was invited to join the monsters. They attempted to entice the wounded individual with the promise of sharing their power so that all the wrongs of history and on the personal level could be corrected. She refused to become a monster.
There were relaxed moments in the story where the characters listened to music and danced. They drank their beverages and discussed the present and the future. They participated in a struggle to make the world better. Political ideas of the time in the early 1900s came up, such as Marcus Garvey and his return to Africa movement and the idea that socialism or communism might be a good alternative that helped people of all ethnicities see their common oppression and join together.
There was mention of Charles Darwin and the scientific idea of biological evolution. The question was asked by some characters if all of humanity was “colored” at one time. It was not mentioned in this novel, but there was some book I had decades ago that used the term Albino Mutant Variant to refer to light-skinned people. I don’t know what Darwin himself said on the topic of the evolution of light skin, but scientists today place the origin of humanity in Africa. People spread from there over thousands of years to other parts of the world. When humans entered new environments, their bodies had to adapt, and they did so over many generations. Light skin was advantageous supposedly because of the need for sunlight and the production of vitamin D.
Genomic maps have been created using mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome data to establish patterns of relatedness and migration patterns. The genomic maps show that the greatest genetic diversity of humanity is in Africa, and subgroups of that large pool migrated. I suggest researching and taking a look at the National Geographic Society Genographic Project. Author Spencer Wells wrote the book Deep Ancestry, which provides information about this project.
The Origin of Species may have sold out in England, but it was illegal to teach it in public schools in the United States. There was probably also a strong biblical creationist movement in existence at the time. I would expect that would hinder the sale of Darwin’s books and limit availability. I don’t know. Yet the characters in his story were well-informed. Maybe it was smuggled to them along with books by Karl Marx. I have not read any history of the communist party of the United States, but knowledge of them and their ideas and stories must have been in the air at the time of this story around World War 1.
I listened to an elderly African American author almost 20 years ago who was speaking about his experience with the communists in the United States and their vision of brotherhood. Someone in the audience had brought up the topic by offering communism and socialism as solutions to oppression that would result in various groups working together due to common experiences, just like one character in the novella suggested. The author said things similar to another character in this novella and said that those shared interests did not overcome racism and exclusion.
The Story has a lot of action involving fighting against the physical manifestations of the monsters of racism and hatred. I listened to the audiobook, and the actress did a great job with her voice. Some of the monsters had creepy little voices coming from mouths described as located in various places on the human bodies they possessed that would speak to the main characters.
I had the good fortune to speak with the author during an online Author meeting hosted by a library near the end of May 2023. I learned that he is a history professor and I think that is great. I enjoy learning about history and using fiction to figure things out, make connections, and learn more.
People will learn different things from reading this book. It is worth reading.