E. FANTASY
HISTORICAL APPROACH
THE WATER DANCER
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the most renowned authors of his time. His works have influenced a lot of people and became very famous across America. A source revealed that he is actually the author of the Black Panther series from Marvel. Indeed, Coates have produced excellent literary pieces which drawn the attention of the masses. However, among all his works, The Water Dancer is the most interesting. This is his debut novel released on September 4, 2019. With only a year after its publication, the novel is already a part of literature courses in universities. With this, questions are raised. Why the novel got so much attention? What made the author write it?
The novel highlighted slavery and oppression in most of its chapters. It emphasized the strong urge of the characters, especially the main character Hiram to escape from the bonds of slavery through the power of conduction. This perhaps is the reason why most people are enticed to read the novel since it tackled a relevant issue that is constantly happening in the society even up to now. According to an article in the New York Times, Coates has emerged as a vital public intellectual and has become America’s most incisive thinker about race over the past decade. In his non-fiction works, namely “The Beautiful Struggle”, “Between the World and Me” and “We Were Eight Years in Power”, it is undeniable that he tries to wake the consciousness of his country. The same article also revealed that the way the “The Water Dancer” is written and told have resemblance on the works of Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead and Octavia Butler. The success of Coates’s non-fiction works gave his agent the will to encourage him in writing fiction. Sources have revealed that he started writing the novel “The Water Dancer” between 2008 and 2009. It was during this time that Coates was immensely studying and researching slavery and the Civil War. In his pursuit to understand Civil War he was disappointed to notice that most people who were help up as heroic were in-fact straight up white supremacists. He was inspired by the author E.L Doctorow because of how such author made the history his in a certain kind of way. Coates even cited “Ragtime” and “Billy Bathgate” of Doctorow. An essay stated he is also inspired by his love of comic books and the idea of superheroes. With these, Coates put so much effort in writing the novel and has worked on it for a decade in various degrees.
The use of fantastical elements by Coates is crucial to his novel. It is somehow a way of representing something larger and more profound than the confines of realism. To read this novel now is timely since the issue on racial oppression in all of America has been a controversial topic this year. A lot of people may use this book on the ongoing debate on having equality to the justice system to draw inspiration in amplifying the notion that the humanity deserves better.
References:
Charles, R. (2015). In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘The Water Dancer.’ A slave makes a superhero’s journey. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/in-ta-nehisi-coatess-the-water-dancer-a-slave-takes-a-magical-journey/2019/09/23/557202f2-ddf7-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html
The Water Dancer.(2020) Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Dancer
Garner, D. (2019). With ‘The Water Dancer,’ Ta-Nehisi Coates Makes His Fiction Debut. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/books/review-water-dancer-ta-nehisi-coates.html
English 102: Literature and Composition.(2020). Hoffman Family Library. Retrieved from https://goodwin.libguides.com/c.php?g=950365&p=7427341
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