5 Minutes with Nalo Hopkinson

This interview with Nalo Hopkinson was completed in 2007 shortly after The New Moon’s Arms was published

1) How do you describe your work?

NH: Doesn't matter to me. I tend not to use "speculative fiction" so much, because few people outside the genre know what it means. If a story of mine is set in the future and extrapolates from what we know of science and technology, then it's technically science fiction.  If it's set in the past or present -- or perhaps even the future -- and draws on myth, legend, folk tales, fairy tales, religion, or magic, then technically, it's fantasy.  But there are all kinds of shades in between that are not easy to define.  And there are people who don't like to use genre terms to describe my work.  I don't mind what people call it.  I'd just like them to read it.

2) You were born in Jamaica, your mother is Jamaican and your father Guyanese. Before you moved with your family to Canada, you lived in Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad -- you are truly pan-Caribbean. Did you hear 'duppy' stories, stories of magic and witchcraft growing up? Have any of those stories found their way into your work?

NH: I read a lot of folk tales, fairy tales, and duppy/jumbie stories, from all over the world, including the Caribbean.  Yes, they've made their way into my work; those types of older tales form the jumping-off point for a lot of contemporary fantasy literature, and it was natural for me to look first to the ones I knew.  I do research all the time, though; as any sf/f/h writer must.  So I come across tales I haven't heard before, and sometimes I use those as well.

3) You are one of only a handful of black sci-fi writers, one of a few women writing sci-fi, and perhaps the only sci-fi writer with a Caribbean background. How does that liberate or constrain you?

NH: There are a *lot* of women writing science fiction.  But you're correct that there aren't many black people writing it, and few Caribbean people (Tobias Buckell and Karin Lowachee are two other Caribbean background science fiction writers who come to mind. Great writers, both of them.)  I don't find it constraining at all.  Being outside the margins is a very freeing thing.

4) In your new book, THE NEW MOON'S ARMS, the world of Calamity Lambkin, your protagonist is shifting quickly beneath her high heeled feet -- she loses her father, is starting menopause, has her special ability as a "finder" return without warning. Most women of a certain age can relate to Calamity. Was this a conscious decision on your part to reach out to a broader audience and especially to female readers?

NH: Yes and no.  The idea came first -- that menopause, like adolescence, could be a magical time.  The story built around that idea.  But it's also true that I'm 46 years old, and menopause is fast approaching.  So it was intriguing to do the research for the story, because among other things, it was a way of learning more about menopause.  (I also had to learn about Caribbean monk seals, and the salt industry, and some of what paramedics do.)  I realised that a lot of women might be intrigued by a story in which menopause is magic.  We mostly hear about the disadvantages of menopause, so it was fun to come up with magic as one of the advantages.  Though it's a mixed blessing for Calamity.  Some of the things she finds, she'd rather they'd stayed lost.

5) The story is set on a fictitious island, one we could call, "Nalo's Fantasy Island."

NH: Well no, it's called Cayaba!  When you write science fiction and fantasy, you invent worlds and places all the time.  "Nalo's fantasy island" sounds like I've only invented one.  I derived the name "Cayaba" from "coyaba,"  an Arawak word for a place of ease and rest.

Why did you create an island and how does making it so remote affect the story?

NH: Cayaba is a mixup of aspects of the Caribbean countries I know, so it didn't feel remote to me.  As to why I made it a fictitious island; it was so that I could invent fictitious things, like the legend of the finder, and monk seals in the Caribbean even though the Caribbean monk seal has been extinct for over fifty years.

6) One of the characters in the book is a little boy you call Agway. He's not a merman, but he is able to live in the sea. Do sea people really exist or is this your creation?

NH: Thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight!  Like me, you've probably run across the misconception that people who write science fiction and fantasy can't tell the difference between their stories and the real world.  I write fiction.  I'm quite aware that it's fiction.  Yet a fiction writer can get her or his inspiration from anything at all.  In the case of the sea people in my story, there's a scientific theory -- first proposed by Sir Alister Hardy about half a century ago -- that human beings might have gone through a semi-aquatic phase of evolution.  It could explain our relative hairlessness, our well-developed mammalian diving reflex, our lack of estrus (we don't go into heat like so many other mammals do).  It could explain many of our traits as a species.  I read a description of the theory many years ago, and I've never forgotten it.  So it was in my mind when I was creating the sea people, even though the ones in my story have a magical genesis, not a biological one.  If anyone's interested, the first place I read about the aquatic ape theory was in a book called, The Descent of Woman, by Elaine Morgan.

7) Of all the characters you have created, which is your favorite? Is there one you would like to explore more?

NH: I find that in order to write your characters well, you have to be a little bit in love with them, even the ones that aren't lovable at all.  Perhaps especially those ones.  So no, I don't have favourites.  I could probably write a bit more about Calamity, though.  I didn't tie up all the threads in her story, because real life is messy like that.

8) I love to read and I'm also an avid fan of sci-fi movies, TV shows, e.g., Star Trek, in its various iterations, The Twilight Zone, etc.,

NH: Me, too.  Used to scare myself silly staying up late at night to watch Dark Shadows.  And I don't think there's an episode of Star Trek inna old school stylee that I haven't seen.  The new Star Treks, not so much.  For one thing, I don't have a television, and haven't for years.

but had never thought of making the leap to anything considered 'sci-fi'

NH: You mean science fiction in print, as opposed to on television or in films?

Yes, that is until I did a bookparty for Sheree Thomas' sci-fi anthology, DARK MATTER. How can we capture the TV audience and bring them over to books?

NH: By not teaching people to hate reading.  I was very lucky to have good reading and literature teachers, starting with my parents.  A lot of people aren't so lucky.  I hear from students who've been taught to approach my stories as though they were test problems with right and wrong answers.  I hear from students who've been told that what they like to read is crap.  I hear from students who've never read a story with a setting or characters to which they can relate.  There is so much good storytelling in the world, in every genre; comics, poetry, dance, romance, journalism, rap, film, erotica/porn, biographies, rapso, plays, dance hall; absolutely everything.  I wish it were easier to help people approach reading and storytelling like going into a candy store and tasting everything to figure out which kinds they like.  That's what it's been like for me.  I wish everyone could have that experience.  I'm not laying blame on teachers.  I think the problem's more complicated than anything any one group of people is doing.  I think that many of our societies have a wrongheaded approach to art.

9)  Which of your books would you select to be made into a TV show or movie?

NH: I wouldn't.  I find that a lot of people assume that the point of writing a novel is so that a director will option it to make a film from it.  I like watching films and television as much as the next person, but when a director makes a film, even if it were to be based on something I wrote, the film is their art work, not mine.  If someone were to approach my agent with a solid film or television option, I'd be intrigued, but I don't want to be a director or a screenplay writer.  I'm focused on writing short stories and novels.  I would like to do comics and children's picture books, too.  But even there, my expertise lies in creating the text.

10) Any idea what your next book will be about?

NH: Oh, yes.  I know what the next three will be about, because they're all under contract, and I had to write proposals in order to sell them.  The next one is called Blackheart Man, but I don't want to talk too much about it until I have a solid draft written.

Thanks, Nalo, for another beautiful story.