How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul
When I was growing up, many of the books that were available to me — what would now be called “Middle Grade” — were books by Enid Blyton. I read them all: Secret Seven; Famous Five; Malory Towers; Naughtiest Girl; Magic Faraway Tree; and of course, her version of Bre’r Rabbit and the Tar Baby. I dreamt of boarding schools and tuck boxes and “getting into scrapes”.
I read these books before they were “updated”; I read these books decades after a UK politician in 1966 argued that the Blyton story “The Little Black Doll” was so racist as to be in possible contravention of the Race Relations Act then in force. Not even the half of it, really. To say I have a complicated nostalgia for those books might be generous, might be accurate, might be both.
There was also Nancy Drew (and her always-dieting friend, Bess Marvin) around this time, and Hardy Boys.
Somewhere between primary and secondary school, I started reading Animorphs - a series about traumatised teenagers repeatedly committing war crimes.
In secondary school, thanks to the extensive collections and well-travelled parents of a few classmates, I was introduced to the Eddings canon: Belgariad (Polgara, what a legend); the Malloreon; the Elenium. I didn’t find out about the child abuse conviction until after the co-writing couple had already died.
So, so, so much Anne Rice - not just the Vampires (Pandora is an underrated book) but the Witches. I attribute some of my appreciation for good editing to The Wheel of Time series, which did not show many signs thereof.
Then there was Wilde, Blake, Shakespeare, in conversation with Kincaid and Naipaul. I came to Lovelace late, as with most Caribbean literature that didn’t make it onto our examination-based required reading lists. Atwood, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, because of those lists. I stayed up into the wee hours tearing through Crichton and Grisham, which I would liberate from my cousin as soon as he was done with them.
CLR James sustained me all through my first year of undergrad, Letters from London having been published just as I was arriving there.
And of course, between 1997 and 2007, Harry Potter. I read the British versions and the American ones and the French ones; whenever a new one was published, I’d re-read the previous books in the series. Later, in London, I queued in Leicester Square for a couple of the movies, surrounded by throngs of people my age, younger, and older holdings wands and wearing markers of house allegiance. That boarding school thing never really went away. I do not need to read these books again. I do not need to see the newest movies, or the plays, or whatever the series will be.
I spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours reading as a child and then a teenager. I do not remember not being able to read; I started young and I was relentless. I would finish books in the car on the way back from the bookstore. My mother eventually stopped buying books for me, and got me library memberships instead.
I can name many of the ways in which all those books shaped who I am and who I am not; it is why I am so specific about the books I buy for the young people in my life. It is why I was so taken aback by The Marvellers, by Dhonielle Clayton. A book about magic and a magical school, yes. A book in which the characters eat doubles at lunch time and make reference to Anansi, more so.
People ban books because they know stories inspire, provoke, reveal.
What would it have been like, to have had the Conjurverse as child? I cannot know how it might have challenged my definitions and interests. But I know that now, as an adult who loves words and appreciates story, who still finds solace in fiction, I can choose to share authors like Clayton and Daniel José Older and Ellen Oh with my nieces and nephews.
I will buy them books and get them library cards and we will talk about plot and character and motifs. I will introduce them to RSA Garcia and Nalo Hopkinson alongside Le Guin and Butler.
We need diverse books is a fact, and a rallying cry.
Attribution:
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –
— There is no Frigate like a Book by Emily Dickinson