Status Updates From Contending Forces: A Romanc...

foreword is beautiful

The American Colored League hearing is where the aim of this novel became apparent to me and why there has been such an emphasis on mixed race heritage and miscegenation. Hopkins sees these people as bearing the psychosexual trauma of being the living legacy of decades of slavery and sexual violence.

Part of what is nice about this book is how it places in fiction so much of the problems plaguing African Americans in the northern United States that, yeah, I vaguely remember from history books, but which hits a bit different in this fictionalized account. Hopkins also tries to shine a light on the complex sectional politics and notions of “blackness” that lead to the self-destruction of Pan-Africa.

I ran into a cognitive speedbump because Hopkins is purposefully evasive in directly connecting the Smith family to the escaped Jesse Montfort, I assume as a way to thematically underline his attempted break from his past. It’s doubly confusing when his… grandchildren??? are presented with what appears to be the Montfort last name, but I assume that this is, like, their second middle name.

This covers a lot of ground, from how the English were abolishing slavery to how race relations were managed in the Bahamas to how someone like Charles Montfort could expect to be treated in the south. The answer, based on rules that Hopkins outlines about miscegenation and fomenting dissatisfaction among the slaves and other weird slavery-era Southernisms, is you can expect to die.