The Black Witch Chronicles Volume 1

I will sing for people who might not sing for me.I will sing for people who are not my family.I will sing honor songs for the unfamilar and new.I will visit a different church and pray in a different pew.I will silently sit and carefully listen to new storiesAbout other people???s tragedies and glories.I will not assume my pain and joy are better.I will not claim my people invented gravity or weather.And, oh, I know I will still feel my rage and rage and rageBut I won???t act like I???m the only person onstage.I am one more citizen marching against hatred.Alone, we are defenseless. Collected, we are sacred.We will march by the millions. We will tremble and grieve.We will praise and weep and laugh. We will believe.We will be courageous with our love. We will risk dangerAs we sing and sing and sing to welcome strangers.~Sherman Alexie This novel deals with (among other things I'm sure I've missed): slavery, sweatshops, the role of religion in bigotry or acceptance, racial purity as largely mythical. Sex trafficking. How even people who think their not bigoted sometimes find out underlying prejudices when the issues involve their own family. How people tend to believe stereotypes even while knowing people who don???t fit those stereotypes. Homosexuality and well-meaning, but harmful, encouragement to stay in the close. Cultural and race differences in romantic relationships. Misogyny and misandry. The Black Witch begins with a sheltered girl from a privileged family venturing out to university. She is capable of kindness, but her ignorance of the broader world allows her to believe lies – lies about other races, likes about other cultures, lies about other religions, lies of homosexuality, lies about wars her family was instrumental in bringing about. When she begins at school she is feared and hated, and she allows her initial run ins with other students to change her prejudices through ignorance to morph into anger, allowing herself to double down on what she has been taught. Her aunt is punishing her for not becoming engaged to a young man from a promising family, so she makes sure Elloren is housed with 2 Icarals – the most vilified group of all. And this is her aunt's big mistake. While she gets off to a rocky start with her roommates, and the people in the kitchen where she works treat her poorly out of understandable distrust – for one thing, she is identical in looks to her grandmother, a woman who had no problem with genocide – she begins to see over time that she has been mislead or not told about so much. My grandmother stands, larger than life, my identical features finely wrought by a master???s chisel, every fold of her billowing robes perfectly rendered, so lifelike it seems as if I could reach up and move the fabric. Her left arm is raised in a graceful arc above her head, her wand arm pointing straight down at an Icaral that lies prostrate at her feet, his face a contorted mask of agony.By the end of this book, this passage when remembered, packs a punch, and seem as the propaganda it is. Want to go to war? Proclaim the other side dangerous, and inferior, until any atrocity against them is seen as justified. Elloren isn't allowed to keep the luxury of seeing a portrayal of an Icaral “in agony” and not see her roommates, not remember what she has learned about her grandmother. ???Elloren,??? he says, his expression conflicted. ???Your grandmother wanted to kill everyone who wasn???t Gardnerian.??? ???Because they wanted to attack us,??? I say, my voice tight and strained. My parents fought with her. They died fighting for her. Fighting for all of my people. They were heroes. Professor Kristian tightens his lips as if holding back a counter-argument. After a short pause he speaks again. ???An Icaral rose up during your grandmother???s push east. He killed her and died doing it. The Icaral was a Keltic healer who gave his life to save Keltania, a society that still harbored lingering prejudice against his kind.??? He sets down his tea. ???So, here we are.???Over the course of the novel, many of her blinders are removed, some of t hem by proximity to diversity, some by soul searching, some by people bluntly telling her the hard truths she'd been able to deny or not think about. ???Your clothes, Elloren Gardner,??? he begins, ???were most likely made by Urisk women on the Fae Islands. Some of these workers may have been children, but all were most certainly paid barely enough to survive and are laboring in conditions akin to out-and-out-slavery. They have no freedom of movement, no means of leaving the Islands for a better life, as they are heavily guarded. They can get off the Islands via pirates who will smuggle them out for a steep price, often delivering them to a worse master who will forever hold deportment or time in prison over their heads. Or they can get off the island by becoming indentured servants to the Gardnerians, which is, again, little more than glorified slavery with the threat of deportment always hanging over them. So, Elloren Gardner, if you are asking me whether your dress is made not of the finest silk, but of the oppression and misery of countless others, the answer would be a firm yes.??? I swallow hard. He certainly doesn???t mince words. His blunt manner of speaking makes me uncomfortable, and I have to remind myself that I haven???t come here looking for more dancing around the truth. ???Thank you for being honest with me,??? I tell him, feeling ashamed, thinking of little Fern and her fear of returning to the Fae Islands. The hard edge of his expression softens a little. His brow knits together, his eyes full of questions. ???You???re welcome.???At the end of this installment of the story she stands next to a diverse group of people from different races, cultures, religions, and abilities in becoming part of the resistance as a dictator set on ethnic cleansing rises to power. A coalition. Ignoring the breathless pull I feel toward him, I look at him levelly. ???I want to help you free your dragon,??? I say, steel in my voice. ???There may come a time when flight is needed.??? Yvan???s eyes fly open with surprise, but he quickly gathers himself. ???Elloren, my dragon can???t be freed.??? ???Maybe not by you alone, but we have a large group...??? He coughs out a dismissive laugh. ???Of inexperienced, naive youths.??? ???Of people with a large variety of gifts and skills.???While most of the story is told from Elloren's POV, there are so many wonderful characters to meet. I ended up caring about pretty much everyone who wasn't a villain. I probably like a hand full of them more than Elloren. Diana is lupine, a wold shape shifter, who is loyal and fierce in that loyalty. She doesn't understand why her tendency to be nude is seen as immoral. Lupines mate for life, and to her immortality is “mating” with someone you don't care about. And she really doesn't understand the arranged marriages Gardnerians take for granted. ???But what if you don???t love the person? What if you don???t care for their scent???? Diana seems greatly upset by the prospect of such a thing. ???Do you still have to mate with them????Ariel, one of the Icarals, treats Elloren very poorly in the beginning, and vice versa. Eventually Elloren goes to someone to help get revenge on Ariel ... and that person goes way too far. Ariel for good reason chooses not to forgive, but we understand her history, her pain, and the danger she is in under the new regime, and I found myself cheering her on against our protagonist. ???I???ll be able to speak with the dragon,??? Ariel gloats at me, ???and I???ll be able to direct her as to which of your limbs she should tear off first. But you won???t know what I???m telling her. It will have to be a surprise.???But by then the reader could assume there was only about a 27% chance she would really do this.Honestly, there's a ton of stuff that happens, lots of subjects to explore, and I could go on typing for another 2 hours in order to really express everything. I found the story interesting, and moving, and very intelligent in dealing with the overt and subtle causes and expressions of bigotry.If you can only read one book about bigotry – and why in the hell would you only read one? – that book should be ... [b:The Hate U Give 32075671 The Hate U Give Angie Thomas https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1476284759s/32075671.jpg 49638190], by Angie Thomas, because that book is probably the best novel of 2017, and I'm hoping only grows in stature, it's OwnVoice, meaning a novel where the author and the main character or a key character share identification with an underrepresented or under-heard group, and it's about one of the most pertinent issues facing the United States, in particular, right now. This is the book you absolutely need to read if you have an interest in, or questions about, the BLM movement. Spend some time in the real world, with a terrific author, hearing from marginalized voices, about what real people are experiencing. But The Black Witch is a hell of a read too. Just, you know, The Hate U Give First, and again after. :) And if you can only do one – again, why? – The Hate U Give!!! Final thoughts? Some of the transitions in The Black Witch are awkward. I would love to see more of the other POVs in the next book. But I am looking forward to the next installment.