A Water Dancer's Worth

I have to admit. Reading and getting through this book was no easy feat. It covers a period of time in American history that one would not take pride nor glory in. Ta-Nehisi Coates’s take of this turbulent time is a wonderful example of story-telling on a topic that is often hard to tell. Rather than it being a despondent tale of slavery (which slavery is), it focuses more on the hope presented by the Underground Railroad and the appreciation and value for human life at a time when one’s worth is measured by how much they can be sold off at the auction block. The main character, Hiram, finds his place in this time of American history and finds himself in a unique circumstance of being a child caught in between.

A (Hard) Tale to Tell

From all accounts, the real Underground Railroad did use actual railroad terms as code words for their freedom movement. “Conductors” were the guides; “station masters” were people who helped hide the slaves in their homes; and “passengers” were the escaped slaves. The word “conduction” itself may not have been actually used (though I cannot know for sure as I am not a scholar on this topic), but Coates used this word to talk about the transport of “passengers” from their “coffins” to the “Promised Land”. This transport, however, is not through the use of vehicles. Rather, it is a power channeled through the use of stories, memories, plus the presence of water to enable the one with the inherited ability to “conduct” his fellow travelers to their destination in a whirl of mist and fog. The deeper the memory, the farther the conduction can travel. The inclusion of this supernatural element makes the story-telling less tedious without belittling the hardship and suffering of slaves. For the conduction to take place, sometimes, the painful memories have to be dug up—the memories evoked are oftentimes just as, if not more, agonizing than physical pain.

Life Has Worth

Perhaps what struck me the most in the reading of this tale is the affirmation that every life, born or unborn, has worth. That worth is not measured in dollars and cents when a slave is sold; it is not measured by how much Ryland’s jail gets for every slave they catch and return to their masters. Granted that there were plenty of musings on whether a child would be a “joyful thing” especially when,

“…[the] women would not wish a child upon themselves...forming their whole life around it."

Despite the circumstances surrounding the conception of life in which they refer to as the “coffin”, the hope of “a small thing blooming” in Sophia, Hiram’s love, has helped her carry on and to withstand her despairing situation.

"And I see you have formed your life around this young’un, formed your life around her before she even came.”

Beyond unborn babies, the story recounts how each person who was torn from the arms of their parents, families, and loved ones, is not mere chattel. They have a name, a family that they are forbidden to have as they are treated as objects for sale. The strength of conduction depends on the strength of the memories of people who have come and gone. Beyond saying that conduction is powered by memories, I say that conduction is powered by these lives for as long you have that memory, that person is still alive and well in your minds. Harriet Tubman declares in the book, 

“We forgot nothing, you and I…. To forget is to truly slave. To forget is to die.”

This book serves to be a part of the anthology of books that reminds us to not forget, to keep the memory of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, the Hirams, the Sophias, the Whites, the Micajah Blands, and even the Corinne Quinns of those times alive.

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