The Water Dancer in SOULar Powered Afrofuturism Reading Group

Sep 23, 2019 Monica **can't read fast enough** rated it it was amazing

Shelves: aa-fiction, adult-fiction, fiction, aa-authors-reads, my-favorites, black-writers

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a skillfully written fictionalized slave narrative told in Coates' unique voice. It slowly unfolds with details and dialogue that exposes the raw pain, horror, and abuse of the Tasked. Coates also puts on full display the perseverance of enslaved people to hold their own sense of worth and desire for freedom despite their daily pervasive injustices and how it molds who the characters are at their core. Coates made his characters relatable in their dreams, The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a skillfully written fictionalized slave narrative told in Coates' unique voice. It slowly unfolds with details and dialogue that exposes the raw pain, horror, and abuse of the Tasked. Coates also puts on full display the perseverance of enslaved people to hold their own sense of worth and desire for freedom despite their daily pervasive injustices and how it molds who the characters are at their core. Coates made his characters relatable in their dreams, fears, and flaws. There's goodness and selfishness shown in varying degrees in all of them.The one thing that all of the characters seem to share is a desire for full agency over their bodies as well as their destinies.

One of the most impactful things that occurs in the book for me happens to Hiram in the very beginning. With the selling of his mother, this nine year old child with a brilliant memory and ability to remember the tiniest of details is so traumatized by her loss that he can no longer remember what she looks like. He can only conjure her image as a hazy indistinct figure. Hi's memories of her disappear as a means of protecting himself from the pain of her memory. For a child to lose the memories of the person who was the center of his world as a means of self preservation just stole my breath. So yes, my heart was broken within the first twenty pages of the book.

I'm not going into any more details of this book because this is one I hope people get to go into a little blind so that the experience isn't ruined. This isn't a book that you will fly through in a day. It's a story that demands that you take your time and sit with what Coates is exposing you to. I'm not an avid literary fiction reader, I sometimes find it a burden to slog through what so many consider beautiful prose and artfully woven passages. However, even I can recognize when my reader's heart is touched by a story that is so well written that it won't let me go and The Water Dancer has done just that. It gave me absolutely everything that I expected to get from a writer like Ta-Nehisi Coates.

This is a favorite read and I highly recommend it to every reader.

***I received a finished copy in exchange for an honest review.***

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Dec 30, 2019 enyanyo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It’s always scary reading overly hyped books. But this was good, very good. I so love Ta-Nehisi’s mind! This is more than just another slave narrative. So many layers within The Water Dancer, it would make an excellent discussion book.

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Feb 08, 2023 Erriel Roberson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: stunning-masterful-rich

A friend gave me Ta-Nehisi's book to read. It was stunning, immediately relevant, urgent, and moving for me. So much in the way of characters dealing with deep-seated contradictions and the treacherous waters, of a reality for them and a history for us, that so many try to escape. The book was a joy to read. I give the complement of saying that it was at once exhausting, liberating, energizing, hopeful, magical, painful, thoughtful, healing, and brilliantly written, of course. There are undoubte ...more

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