Re-purposing African elements in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber

Abstract

Abstract This paper places Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, which is steeped in Caribbean traditions, under the umbrella of black speculative fiction. In Midnight Robber, Hopkinson’s tech-sophisticated projected future human settlement, becomes a creative space that subverts colonial legacies and creatively utilizes symbolism in imagined speculative futures to subliminally assert a decolonial agenda. In Midnight Robber, these symbols lie in the placement of certain historical African elements in the viable future. Anthony Kwame Appiah’s Thick Translation provides a hinge for contextual engagement with the text in order to clearly discern the implications of the use of these African elements. I argue that the weaving of these valorized African cultural elements into the speculative future space, imagines a reconnection to pre-colonial Africa thus introducing the Sankofa theory of return. This paper will show that in the treatment of African elements through the reclamation of traditional African storytelling technique, the reification of an ancestor as a supreme being and the use of an indigenous African god as an artificial intelligence body, Midnight Robber does not only present many analogies consistent with the Sankofa principle but also becomes an avenue for previously marginalized communities to move forward into the future with valorized elements sourced from Africa in a productive way.