Of One Blood

This is quite a quirky short novel that is hard to pigeon-hole and better for it. 'Of One Blood' is at times a gothic horror novel, a murder mystery, a pulpy adventure and also a tragic romance which explores dynamics of race at the turn of the 20th century.

I'm reading this as part of a reading challenge reading speculative fiction by authors of colour with a focus on writers I have not read before, with an especial focus on Nisi Shawl's 'A Crash Course in Black Science Fiction' http://www.nisishawl.com/CCHBSF.html to read some of the early ground-breaking works.

Pauline Hopkin's 'Of One Blood' was first serialised in 'The Colored American' magazine in 1903 and Hopkins herself has been referred to as a pioneer not just of African American writing, but in many ways is the literary (grand?) mother of such more recognised pioneers like Octavia Butler.

'Of One Blood' is the story of Reuel Briggs, a medical student in Boston in the late nineteenth century, and in many respects the story is about him finding his race and his identity. It isn't obviously apparent early in the novel that he is mixed race, and certainly he passes as white in American society. There is an awful lot which becomes apparent as one reads the novel, particularly in relation to his race, and his dynamics with the people in his life which I will avoid to try and stay spoiler free. Briggs joins an expedition to Ethiopia in search of archaeological evidence of an ancient Ethiopian society and their influence on civilisation, arts, culture, science and technology, which changes his relationship to his identity and his race.

The novel is in two parts - the first is set in Boston, and focuses on Brigg's relationship to the world around him. We learn he is an impoverished student and yet he is clearly mixing in white society. He attends a concert of black musicians and falls in love with one of the singers, a musician he has seen before and after. This first half of the novel can drag at times, and some of the dialogue between the characters can be a little wearisome, yet there are some set pieces in this early novel that are fantastic and they are the ones in which Hopkins draws on more speculative elements. In these early chapters there are ghosts and haunting reminiscent of a gothic horror. There is a nod to Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and mesmerism (a science very much of the time) which made me think of the more famous story twenty years later by H.P. Lovecraft and 'Herbert West - Re-animator' and I was wondering if this novel influenced the story. This early part of the novel is also very much a romance novel as Briggs courts his love and some of the adjacent characters are progressing their romances too. It feels like there is a staid, quite boring romance novel here with some exciting and unexpected insertions from horror, science fiction and fantasy tropes of the time.

It does feel like a LOT of ideas are thrown at this book, and there is something for everyone. It doesn't 'quite' hang together but I had a lot of fun finding out.

Briggs is short of cash and in order to realise his romantic ambitions joins an expedition to Ethiopia as a doctor to find evidence of a lost civilisation. The (mostly) white explorers have a hypothesis that this civilisation was far advanced than the Egyptians, long before Christianity was relevant and this culture was rich in science, the arts, language, technology, architecture. What I really like about this, is not just that Hopkins was writing just a few decades following the abolition of slavery in America but she was also writing at a time when African Americans were significantly discriminated against (as they are now, I just wish to point out that conditions at the turn of the 20th Century were likely to be significantly more racist than today). It is wonderful that the thrust of her book is that it is not white Europeans who are the birth of civilisation but instead the 'Dawn of Civilisation' was black and African. These ideas have had further exploration in the last century, but I think it is powerful that it is white explorers who are making this statement.

The sections in Africa are brilliant. The novel then becomes a pulpy adventure with the usual tropes of exotic people and cities, excitement via animal attacks and firearms and the such like. It's lots of fun - and I wanted more. There is a significant difference though - where the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Joseph Conrad in 'Heart of Darkness' 'other' Africa as a dark, inhospitable, dangerous place, Hopkins dispenses with these racist tropes (of the past and future). Briggs is definitely a 'stranger in a strange land' but it is he and the explorers who are 'alien', not the people or the environment.

Going to stray into spoiler territory but Briggs does find the 'Lost World' he is looking for and we have some really interesting explorations of his developing his 'mesmerism' which by now includes scrying with another to see the past, present and future all the way across the Atlantic! This lost civilisation is really evocative and again I am going to draw comparisons with Lovecraft. Lovecraft was a master at depicting hidden cities, ancient civilisations with awe, majesty and wonder. I'm going to say Hopkins was better at it, and a couple of decades before hand. Also, like her description of Africa, she manages to lean heavily into current - and future 'Lost World' tropes without the horrible racism which infects other writers. There are no 'savages' to be tamed here.

The last section of the novel returns to America and we are back to a melodramatic tragi-romance and there are a whole bunch of plot twists that make you go, 'oh'.

It's not a perfect novel by any stretch, at times the characterisation seems a little thin but at the same time, it's quick and there is a lot going on in here. The core message when you get past the leopard attacks, ghosts, murder and marriages is that we are all 'Of One Blood' and a racist society cannot ever be morally, or 'scientifically' be justified.