74 pages • 2 hours read
Marlon JamesMoon Witch, Spider King
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Marlon James
James fills Moon Witch, Spider King with creatures from African mythology and folklore—shapeshifting lions, vampire birds, winged ogres, predatory demon spirits—and his interest in these fantasy genre tropes may be just as much personal as intellectual and literary. As a young, gay man growing up in Jamaica, where sexual contact between men is illegal, James at one point sought a religious exorcism to rid himself of his sexual orientation. The exorcists claimed he was possessed by eight demons, and James “had the delirious thought that they were hearing the spirits that he had invented for his African fantasy story [John Crow’s Devil]” (Tolentino, Jia. “Why Marlon James Decided to Write an African ‘Game of Thrones.“ The New Yorker, 21 January 2019). As a young man unable to express his sexual orientation in his parents‘ religious household, James sought refuge in books. The exorcism didn’t “cure” him of his sexual desire, and James would later find self-acceptance, but ironically, it did offer catharsis for his feelings of guilt (Tolentino).
These two important influences—his love of fantasy and his sexuality—infuse both Jim Crow’s Devil as well as the first two installments of his Dark Star trilogy. The sex scenes are visceral and specific, perhaps James’s way of thumbing his nose at the moral judgment he experienced. James has also claimed that his Dark Star trilogy is intended to create a Black mythology as intricate and detailed as anything J. R. R. Tolkien or C. S. Lewis wrote, and much about James’s work seeks to subvert traditional, Eurocentric notions of fantasy. The elevated diction and high-fantasy phraseology fantasy readers are accustomed to are replaced with a patois dialect; “elves” and “dwarves” are replaced by Ishologus, Elokos, and shapeshifters. James’s work stands both as a bold, new entry in the fantasy canon as well as a unique cultural artifact. It falls neatly alongside N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy (winner of three consecutive Hugo Awards), as the two writers of color stake their claim in a genre that is infamous for perpetuating racial biases and featuring racial hierarchies, and that has long been considered a venue for white writers.
Literary Context: Post-Colonial Fantasy
James’s work falls into the post-colonial fantasy category, a genre which can be defined as “a way of reconsidering the identity of a nation after independence” (Mambrol, Nasrullah, “Postcolonial Magical Realism.” Literary Theory and Criticism, 24 October 2017). His Dark Star trilogy “reconsiders” not only the potential of African mythology as a basis for fantasy literature, but claims a place at the table for Black writers of the genre, and stands in opposition to the genre’s Eurocentric norms of wizard robes, broadswords, and misty barrows.
Another way in which Moon Witch, Spider King opposes colonial norms is by its emphasis on oral traditions. “See the girl” (4) is a consistent mantra throughout the novel as if the narrator is beckoning the reader to visualize a story as told by a bard (or griot). Much of Sogolon’s lost memory is filled in by Ikede, a storyteller. As so much Indigenous oral history was erased by colonization, James seeks to reclaim that tradition as culturally significant, a bulwark against the imposition of dominant cultures. Post-colonial literature also focuses on the political and historical, and Moon Witch, Spider King has ample helpings of both. Political and historical concerns are staples of the fantasy genre—kings, court intrigue, the deeds of heroes long past—and they operate on the dual levels of fiction and reality. James’s “white scientist” necromancers are both fictional creations and metaphors for white, European imperialism. The brutality perpetrated by the Kwash line of kings is emblematic of humanity’s long history of war and killing. The Aesi’s witch purges can easily be read as parallels to patriarchal societies and their oppression of women. James’s work has been described as “messy and incantatory” (Tolentino), and indeed, Moon Witch, Spider King covers an epic sweep of literary territory, some of it contradictory. While subverting standard fantasy norms with his culturally unique settings and prose, James also adheres to those same norms in other ways, with his depictions of royal courts, wars and warriors, and magic and magical creatures. The novel is a barrage of African mythology riding roughshod through a genre that has only recently welcomed it.
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