Conjuring Roots in Dystopia: Reconciling Transgenerational Conflict and Dislocation Through Ancestral Speakers in Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring and Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying

Abstract

Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying, and Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring address conflicts that many Black diasporic communities face as they migrate to Western urban metropolises. Danticat’s and Hopkinson’s works address dystopian displacement in metropolitan areas and highlight ongoing issues of cultural inclusivity and social inequality that many Black immigrant families experience in cities. While surviving the poverty and violence in their new locations, Danticat’s and Hopkinson’s protagonists find refuge in the personal connections that they maintain with family and through the spiritual systems passed down by their ancestors. Despite the many instances of embodied dystopia that these protagonists experience, the characters work with their families to reconcile their individual and collective loss of socio-political agency, cultural ties to their native countries, and safety as they attempt to settle into their Western urban metropolises.