IBARW: Gods of Mostly-White Manhattan
Aug. 6th, 2008 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerArgh. I just finished reading Gods of Manhattan, and all I can say is argh. Okay, I lie; I can say a lot more. But still - argh!
It sounded awesome. Everyone and everything that's remembered enough in Manhattan lives on in Manhatta, the magical city unnoticed in the midst of ordinary Manhattan. For instance, tenements torn down long ago linger in Manhatta, still filled with the miserable shades of those who suffered there. People remembered especially well, like Babe Ruth and Alexander Hamilton, become gods. Plus, secret tunnels and cockroach warriors riding rats! How could it go wrong?
To give the following some context, keep in mind that it is International Blog Against Racism Week. I've been reading the many wonderful posts linked in the community, plus things I've found through those links, and so on. The ones relevant here are Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's "Stephen King's Super-Duper Magical Negroes" and the blog American Indians in Children's Literature.
So. First off, one of the gods of Manhattan is Caesar Prince, The God of Under the Streets. He first appears with two other black men (never mentioned again) singing for money. He indicates that White Boy Protagonist is special. Later, he shows up to help WBP learn to use his special power better, then vanishes. In the tradition of manipulative mentors, he, well, manipulated events in a way that increased the danger to WBP, but his goal all along - according to the god himself - was to help WBP get powered up. Hi there, Perfect Example of Magical Negro Trope. *points to Okorafor-Mbachu's essay*
Frederick Douglass is also a god of Manhattan - the God of Freedom - but you might miss him if you blink, because he doesn't do anything. This is peculiar, considering that the plot for most of the book hinges on freeing the Munsee Indian spirits trapped in Central Park. Shouldn't this be his jurisdiction? And if you are writing a YA novel for American children, who would you expect the kids to recognize, Frederick Douglass or Peter Stuyvesant? (Peter who? The Dutch guy with way more page time and a son who's a main character, that's who.) Stuyvesant is the God of Things Were Better in the Old Days and spends most of the book sitting on his ass, so it's not like he has more reason to have page time than Fredrick Douglass. Unless it's because one of the major secondary characters is his son. But Douglass also has a son (who is the only one of the five gods' kids not to have a subplot or a memorable quirk. or more than a handful of lines). So that doesn't explain it.
But getting back to WBP's special power. Caesar Prince helps him strengthen the power with a magical wampum belt. This belt is also one key to unlocking the magical barrier which traps the Munsee in Central Park; the barrier is due to a conflict between the Munsee and the white settlers which didn't end even after they became spirits or gods. There is much emphasis on how the Munsee are noble and tragic and DOOMED, rather like Tolkien's elves, but also like a lot of "noble savage" portrayals in fiction. They sigh and talk about how powerless and doomed they are and don't use contractions. As for characters, we get a wise medicine woman, a flirtatious girl, a savage boy who likes shooting any living thing he can, and a "brave" (yes, the narrative calls him that - the flirtatious girl smacks down WBP's sister for asking if she's a squaw, but this goes unchallenged) who pops up every now and then to give WBP history lessons and wise advice. Pretty much all the Munsee can do in this book is talk, because they're all powerless.
Here's the kicker: White Boy Protagonist's power is a traditional Munsee power, so he must have a Munsee ancestor, like, a million generations ago! He still gets to be white and privileged, but has super-cool Indian Magic and real Magical Indians to spout wisdom at him!
And... I think those are the only characters of color in the book. In freaking Manhattan.
But! It gets worse when you look at how gender intersects with race! For starters, it's bad enough that the black men are written out of events (like Douglass) or shoved into Magical Negro roles (Caesar Prince). Then you start to wonder, where are the black women? Answer: they don't exist. The book is another example of the Missing Black Woman Formation.
Or take the Munsee. The Munsee males are either mindlessly violent or mystical mentors, covering both sides of the bloody savage/noble savage coin of representations of male Native Americans. (Oh, and the violent one has tattoos of snarling dogs on his cheeks, because he's animalistic like that.) Violent or noble, the men are all warriors. Of the two female characters, one is another mystical mentor, and the other flirts with White Boy Protagonist. There's no mention of sex, this being a PG novel, but she's definitely portrayed as romantically available to the white male protagonist. Being the "haughty-but-flirtatious, available Native girl" is her only role in this book. (Oh, yes, she does tell them to run before her brother shoots them, but only because she thinks WBP has a nice nose.)
White Boy Protagonist is a Light, someone with this special Munsee power to see the truth of things. This makes him the most important person in the city; everyone but the villain drops everything to help (or manipulate) this kid, and the villain only leaves him alone because he doesn't know WBP exists until the end. Two previous Lights are mentioned, both male. When one character talks about a hypothetical future Light, he refers to this Light as "he." No one says only boys are Lights, but so far, it seems that's the case. Anyway, as a white male, his choices and his actions matter about fifty times more than anyone else's. The other white boy characters help him, but unlike Caesar Prince, they are already doing stuff to fight the bad guy before WBP shows up and we hear about it. They have agency.
His little sister, on the other hand, gets robbed of power and agency multiple times, despite her desire to go out and kick butt. (She even has a cardboard sword named Butt-kicker.) She's spunky, or perhaps feisty - whichever the little sisters are these days - in the way that only sheltered little sisters who have no experience with actual trouble are. You get the sense that the only violence she's ever known about is on the equivalent of Buffy for fourth-graders. She gets to follow her brother around and even think of a few things that help him, which is a nice privilege considering what the Munsee women and the non-existent black women get stuck with.
However, like fictional little sisters do, she gets kidnapped. Well, her body gets kidnapped while her brother keeps her soul in his pocket. Then she gets a super-tough paper-machier body (long story) and finally gets to kick some monster butt, to her glee - but it turns out that the whole sequence of events leading up to her paper cyborgitude, including the one where she gets really lucky and survives several death traps, were orchestrated by Caesar Prince to help WBP get powered up. The only time she has power, it's because several men (including the papersmith) gave it to her. Furthermore, the body won't last, and she has to get her old, powerless one back, stat.
I don't know that this feisty-yet-helpless trope is only a trope for white little sisters, but I can think of others white little sisters who fit the mold (Dawn, Ginny) off the top of my head, and can't think of any black or Latina or Korean little sisters who do. But this could be due to my limited experience. I'd like to hear others' thoughts on this.
I could go on about minor characters like the mom and the cockroach warrior couple, but you get the picture. Needless to say, I am not enthusiastic about the rest of the trilogy.
It sounded awesome. Everyone and everything that's remembered enough in Manhattan lives on in Manhatta, the magical city unnoticed in the midst of ordinary Manhattan. For instance, tenements torn down long ago linger in Manhatta, still filled with the miserable shades of those who suffered there. People remembered especially well, like Babe Ruth and Alexander Hamilton, become gods. Plus, secret tunnels and cockroach warriors riding rats! How could it go wrong?
To give the following some context, keep in mind that it is International Blog Against Racism Week. I've been reading the many wonderful posts linked in the community, plus things I've found through those links, and so on. The ones relevant here are Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's "Stephen King's Super-Duper Magical Negroes" and the blog American Indians in Children's Literature.
So. First off, one of the gods of Manhattan is Caesar Prince, The God of Under the Streets. He first appears with two other black men (never mentioned again) singing for money. He indicates that White Boy Protagonist is special. Later, he shows up to help WBP learn to use his special power better, then vanishes. In the tradition of manipulative mentors, he, well, manipulated events in a way that increased the danger to WBP, but his goal all along - according to the god himself - was to help WBP get powered up. Hi there, Perfect Example of Magical Negro Trope. *points to Okorafor-Mbachu's essay*
Frederick Douglass is also a god of Manhattan - the God of Freedom - but you might miss him if you blink, because he doesn't do anything. This is peculiar, considering that the plot for most of the book hinges on freeing the Munsee Indian spirits trapped in Central Park. Shouldn't this be his jurisdiction? And if you are writing a YA novel for American children, who would you expect the kids to recognize, Frederick Douglass or Peter Stuyvesant? (Peter who? The Dutch guy with way more page time and a son who's a main character, that's who.) Stuyvesant is the God of Things Were Better in the Old Days and spends most of the book sitting on his ass, so it's not like he has more reason to have page time than Fredrick Douglass. Unless it's because one of the major secondary characters is his son. But Douglass also has a son (who is the only one of the five gods' kids not to have a subplot or a memorable quirk. or more than a handful of lines). So that doesn't explain it.
But getting back to WBP's special power. Caesar Prince helps him strengthen the power with a magical wampum belt. This belt is also one key to unlocking the magical barrier which traps the Munsee in Central Park; the barrier is due to a conflict between the Munsee and the white settlers which didn't end even after they became spirits or gods. There is much emphasis on how the Munsee are noble and tragic and DOOMED, rather like Tolkien's elves, but also like a lot of "noble savage" portrayals in fiction. They sigh and talk about how powerless and doomed they are and don't use contractions. As for characters, we get a wise medicine woman, a flirtatious girl, a savage boy who likes shooting any living thing he can, and a "brave" (yes, the narrative calls him that - the flirtatious girl smacks down WBP's sister for asking if she's a squaw, but this goes unchallenged) who pops up every now and then to give WBP history lessons and wise advice. Pretty much all the Munsee can do in this book is talk, because they're all powerless.
Here's the kicker: White Boy Protagonist's power is a traditional Munsee power, so he must have a Munsee ancestor, like, a million generations ago! He still gets to be white and privileged, but has super-cool Indian Magic and real Magical Indians to spout wisdom at him!
And... I think those are the only characters of color in the book. In freaking Manhattan.
But! It gets worse when you look at how gender intersects with race! For starters, it's bad enough that the black men are written out of events (like Douglass) or shoved into Magical Negro roles (Caesar Prince). Then you start to wonder, where are the black women? Answer: they don't exist. The book is another example of the Missing Black Woman Formation.
Or take the Munsee. The Munsee males are either mindlessly violent or mystical mentors, covering both sides of the bloody savage/noble savage coin of representations of male Native Americans. (Oh, and the violent one has tattoos of snarling dogs on his cheeks, because he's animalistic like that.) Violent or noble, the men are all warriors. Of the two female characters, one is another mystical mentor, and the other flirts with White Boy Protagonist. There's no mention of sex, this being a PG novel, but she's definitely portrayed as romantically available to the white male protagonist. Being the "haughty-but-flirtatious, available Native girl" is her only role in this book. (Oh, yes, she does tell them to run before her brother shoots them, but only because she thinks WBP has a nice nose.)
White Boy Protagonist is a Light, someone with this special Munsee power to see the truth of things. This makes him the most important person in the city; everyone but the villain drops everything to help (or manipulate) this kid, and the villain only leaves him alone because he doesn't know WBP exists until the end. Two previous Lights are mentioned, both male. When one character talks about a hypothetical future Light, he refers to this Light as "he." No one says only boys are Lights, but so far, it seems that's the case. Anyway, as a white male, his choices and his actions matter about fifty times more than anyone else's. The other white boy characters help him, but unlike Caesar Prince, they are already doing stuff to fight the bad guy before WBP shows up and we hear about it. They have agency.
His little sister, on the other hand, gets robbed of power and agency multiple times, despite her desire to go out and kick butt. (She even has a cardboard sword named Butt-kicker.) She's spunky, or perhaps feisty - whichever the little sisters are these days - in the way that only sheltered little sisters who have no experience with actual trouble are. You get the sense that the only violence she's ever known about is on the equivalent of Buffy for fourth-graders. She gets to follow her brother around and even think of a few things that help him, which is a nice privilege considering what the Munsee women and the non-existent black women get stuck with.
However, like fictional little sisters do, she gets kidnapped. Well, her body gets kidnapped while her brother keeps her soul in his pocket. Then she gets a super-tough paper-machier body (long story) and finally gets to kick some monster butt, to her glee - but it turns out that the whole sequence of events leading up to her paper cyborgitude, including the one where she gets really lucky and survives several death traps, were orchestrated by Caesar Prince to help WBP get powered up. The only time she has power, it's because several men (including the papersmith) gave it to her. Furthermore, the body won't last, and she has to get her old, powerless one back, stat.
I don't know that this feisty-yet-helpless trope is only a trope for white little sisters, but I can think of others white little sisters who fit the mold (Dawn, Ginny) off the top of my head, and can't think of any black or Latina or Korean little sisters who do. But this could be due to my limited experience. I'd like to hear others' thoughts on this.
I could go on about minor characters like the mom and the cockroach warrior couple, but you get the picture. Needless to say, I am not enthusiastic about the rest of the trilogy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-08 12:52 pm (UTC)I will say, though, that I don't think I've ever seen a book/movie/show where the Magical Negro was also a manipulative mentor. A mentor, certainly, but usually not manipulative. So...maybe that's something different here? Though I'm not sure whether that would be a good thing or not.
I keep meaning to make a post for this week...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-09 01:26 am (UTC)I'd love to read anything you post! It can be late, too - it's good all year round.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-09 02:02 am (UTC)