Blog 4 - Future

The setting of the Brown Girl in the Ring has its own fascinating aspects as well. The story takes place in Toronto and fast forward that to the future where the city is more or less abandoned by businesses and traditionally infostructure. There isn't really a city government besides a small amount of law enforcement. The basic needs of the city isn't provided like electricity and municipal water. But of course there is organized crime that mildly controls the population. People of middle and upper class that used to live in the city have flead to the suburbs and the ones that are of lower class meaning Ti -Jeanne and her grandma and bunch of other characters have stayed. The technology is essentially back to being like the 1920s.

The narrative voice in the novel was third person omniscient, although each character had there own version of speaking english. It was amazing how Hopkinsons had effectively shown each character's language use differently and none of the characters would overlap or be present identical to another. Each character can be identified by the way they spoke in situations and the type of broken english they used to explain themselves. " "Come. Bring her inside," Mami said, switching to the more standard English she used when she was speaking to non - Caribbean people." (Hopkinson 63). Demonstrates how characters are multi talents and also shows the division between people racially, and how they behave with someone that isn't of there own kind. As though it isn't acceptable in the society to follow what you truly believe. But still Ti -Jeanne and Mami knows the standard english but choose to use their own flavour.

Nalo Hopkinson is known to be a Black "Queer" Women be authors and readers around the world, and in this book she had  given a very small role too gay characters in the story as though they were just some characters that were passing by, nothing else, no plot enhancement. One was a minor villain and another was a kid that showed up for a spilt minute to sacrifice himself to save Ti - Jeanne. Its surprising cause although the story took place in Toronto it did not show the points that make it Toronto, like the fact that Toronto is one of the three places in Canada that is known for accepting LGBT people.

Since Brown Girl in the Ring was Nalo Hopkinson's first novel she wrote, it lacked the in depth analysis of some aspects in the text considering it is a very short book therefore its very easy to conclude to that thought. It isn't nowhere near what she capable of writing in today's time. After reading this book I would say I was intrigued by the world building, the caribbean magics and the characters but unfortunately they weren't focused on quite as much as I would like them to be. Some say that have read the book that it was more plot driven, Ti - Jeanne confronting the Posi boss who is the organized crime lord, but they were more interested in what the city is like, interactions and dynamics of the characters and the elements from caribbean culture. Others say that the main character Ti - Jeanne was a very passive person, following the events that takes place instead of driving them. They book would have more effective if other things were brought in besides the plot, should have focused more on the caribbean influence on science fiction.