Clap Back, page 3
Ain’t we people, too? she thought. Wouldn’t freeing us be a step toward freeing all humanity? Would dark skin cease to be an axis of violence if everyone had it?
Did she dare? She sat in the dark, trying to decide.
On the screen, ancestor Wenda shakes her head as though to music, the fat, eager coils of her hair slapping across her face as she does. Her iwin flap free, keening scraps of gray that skirl and twirl until they’ve whipped her locks up into a silver cloud cyclone.
The ghost with ghosts in her hair stills. She gives Xiomara a mischievous grin and calmly waits for her decision.
Yet where can we go that they will truly know us?
Into our heads, if we’re lucky,
If we’re lucky, into our lovers’ arms.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2017 David Findlay
Jamaican Canadian writer Nalo Hopkinson has been a published author since 1995, with six novels, two collections of short stories, and a chapbook. She has received numerous literary awards, including the World Fantasy Award and the Andre Norton Nebula Award. Between 2018 and 2020, she wrote scripts for the DC Comics series House of Whispers, set in the universe of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. She currently lives in California and is on the faculty of the creative writing department at the University of California, Riverside.
Nalo Hopkinson, Clap Back
