Falling in Love with Hominids

This collection of stories has been my introduction to Nalo Hopkinson. I have read a few other stories in anthologies, but I've never settled down with one of her novels, although I have the best intentions of doing so.

Especially after having read Falling in Love with Hominids, which is a pleasure from beginning to end. All of what I have thought of as Hopkinson's major themes are here: race, gender, feminism and the folklore of her Caribbean heritage. (Unless you are really up on your Caribbean folklore, expect to do some serious googling with a few of these stories. I learned the Jamaican slang term for off-brand sneakers among other things.)

Hopkinson writes a short introduction for each story. In one of these she remembers her response to a student worried about tactics for suspending the reader's disbelief. Hopkinson's advice was, "...never give them time to disbelieve."

I think that must work, because looking over the notes I jotted down in an attempt to remember these eighteen stories, I find descriptions that sound much weirder than the stories as I experienced them.

Delicious Monster - son visits father now living with gay lover. Why is Vishnu to leave with Garuda during solar eclipse?

The Smile on the Face - St. Margaret of Antioch. Google her. Do kids still play post office?

Raggy Dog Shaggy Dog - ruthless orchid pollination

Message in a Bottle - kids with big heads travelers from our future. All species make art.

Emily Breakfast - lazy Saturday morning for gay couple. A stolen chicken. Cats can fly. Chickens breathe fire. Lizard messenger service.

Old Habits - why would one shopping mall have such a high mortality rate?

So she doesn't give the reader time to think about all the strangeness because it surrounds you from the first sentence. Or it could also sneak up on you.

Hopkinson has contributed to the Bordertown Project, a shared world anthology begun by Terry Windling. Bordertown exists on the edge where the mundane world meets the world of magic. That actually sounds terrible to me, but "Ours is the Prettiest," Hopkins contribution included here, navigates the terrain with grace and humor. And her description of how her protagonist made the transition to Bordertown could describe the process she puts her readers through in her own ficition.

The Change happened slowly... At some point it crossed my mind that the flashily overlit Honest Ed's Discount Emporium seemed to have seamlessly metamorphosed into a store called Snappin' Wizard's Surplus and Salvage... but they were always bulldozing the old to replace it with something else... By the time I had to accept that I was no longer in Toronto and those weren't just tall, skinny white people with dye jobs and contact lenses, it didn't seem so remarkable. People changed and grew apart. As you aged, your body altered and became a stranger to you, and one day you woke up and realized that you were in a different country. It was just life. I hadn't needed to travel to the Border; it'd come to me.

Hopkinson brings the border to us.