Rita Woods Folds Time in Powerful Remembrance

 

 

Remembrance (2019)

By Rita Woods

Forge/Macmillian, 415 pages

★★★★★

 

One of Carl Jung’s more controversial psychological theories is his notion of collective consciousness. He argued that consciousness could be passed on to generations that never experienced the things to which memories are attached. Whether or not you are skeptical of that is of little consequence, as many African Americans believe that their culture is shaped by ancestors and their travails.

 

Remembrance, a powerful novel from Rita Woods builds off of collective consciousness and mixes in what some might call magical realism and others voudon. In present-day Cleveland, Gaelle dreams of an earthquake. It makes sense, as she is about to be evicted from her home despite the fact that she is employed full time at a care facility. What she does not realize, is that her dream is also a rupture in time. Woods plays loosely with time in a tale that takes us from Haiti to New Orleans to Ohio and bends time between 1791 and the 21st century.

 

In 1791, Abigail is enslaved by the Rouse family in Haiti. Despite her bondage, Abigail’s situation is agreeable enough. She loves the warmth, the scents, and Hercule, whom she views as her husband.* The Rouse family is even on the cusp of freeing her. However, 1791 was the beginning of the Haitian Revolution that (eventually) cast off French colonial rule. Hercule is swept into that struggle, arrested, and burned at the stake. To make matters even worse, when the Rouses fall into debt, promises fall by the wayside and Abigail is among those sold to Far Water, a plantation near New Orleans. She has never experienced such “cold” before! 

 

The heart of the novel takes place in 1857, after Abigail has escaped bondage and is “Mother Abigail,” the acknowledged doyenne of a community of runaways in Ohio near the Kentucky border. At this point, readers need to let their imaginations roam. Abigail has kept the community of Remembrance free of whites for many decades. Local Quakers trade with the community, but no white has or could set foot in Remembrance because of The Edge, a “fold” that makes it unfindable. The Edge is hard to describe. Think of it as a manipulation of what is seeable. It could be a cloaking device/force field, voudon, magic, simply a well-chosen location, or an illusion. (Your choice!) Abigail is the one who raises The Edge in moments of threat, but she is now quite elderly and her powers are diminishing.

 

In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, perhaps the most contested legislation in US history. It allowed slaveholders to seize runaways in any part of the country irrespective of whether their “property” resides in a free state. Abigail once used her power to fend off raiders near Remembrance with such effectiveness that it killed one raider and drove another to madness. Abigail and the mysterious Josiah sense that Winter is also “special,” but like many 20-year-olds, she lacks the discipline or concentration to recognize her power or use it safely. When The Edge crumbles and Winter and prickly Louisa, Remembrance’s healer, are seized by slave patrollers, a series of life- and history-altering events unfold that ripple into the 21^st century.

 

Woods uses a “braided time” technique in which stories from different time periods–often with characters of the same name–overlap. Hers is not always calendar time and several characters are deliberately ambiguous. Josiah, for instance, dispenses advice but is surprisingly passive and ageless. Is he a loa (a voudon god) or simply meddlesome? Woods folds stories of those with unusual powers similar to how Abigail folds physical space. Her descriptions of life inside Remembrance and the people therein paint vivid images for readers.** Like all communities, the relationships and hierarchies within Remembrance were complicated. The character of Margot, an educated but haunted individual, is especially intriguing. Present-day figures such as Gaelle and her friend Toya appear sparingly in the text, but help carry forward notions of a collective unconscious and of inexplicable forces and capabilities.

 

Remembrance might remind you of the works such as Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, or Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing but it is uniquely its own gumbo. A delicious one.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Most marriage among slaves were customary, not legal.

 

** Even if you don’t buy into magical aspects of Remembrance, Woods is on solid historical grounds in that “hidden” communities of runaways indeed existed.